A festival of broken people, blood flows in the center ring. Come one and come all, to the greatest show in all of Paris.
Angel's Orchard
Harry Bogosian
After the events in Demon's Mirror, Gerda has accepted her role as a Demon Hunter, and Cezar has traveled back to the Demon City. Demons have existed alongside humans for millennia, so things begin to return to normal. But an impossibly powerful Relic has been taken by one of the Demon Masters, and a silent war enters its final stages.
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.
Not Drunk Enough
Tess Stone
Logan Ibarra is possibly the unluckiest repairman in the world. A late night job should not have landed him in the middle of a mad scientist's squabble, but he soon finds himself surrounded by monsters and further madness with little tools to get out.
Augustine
Winter Jay Kiakas, Windy
August and her ragtag group are just like everyone else, simply surviving in the treacherous Crater... When they stumble into what may be an artifact of the ancient past, their lives are thrown into a much bigger loop as they trifle with bounty hunters, monsters and gods.
Namesake
Isa, Meg
There's ghosts at your heels and fairy tale worlds ahead. What do you do? Jump down the rabbit hole!
Barbarous
Ananth Hirsh, Yuko Ota
A crummy wizard and an anxious monster have to get over themselves and bring order to an apartment building full of misfits.
Edison Rex
Chris Roberson
The adventures of the world’s greatest villain who, after defeating his superheroic nemesis, decides that he’s the only one left to defend the world.
The Messenger
indui
In a ruin-abound town cursed with bad luck, Kai and Kalla--a young boy and a fledgling dragonbird spirit--take on a quest in hopes the reward will solve all of their problems.
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.
Three Panel Soul
Matt Boyd, Ian McConville
It's a pretty rigid format but we keep the content loose, you know?
Sakana
Mad Rupert
Our heroes must navigate a hazardous dating scene, overcome personal anxieties, and wrangle unruly seafood in order to find love, peace of mind, and a paycheck.
Sleepless Domain
Mary Cagle (Cube Watermelon)
In a world where magical girls and their battles are commonplace, loss has become all too common as well.
Saint for Rent
Ru Xu
Saint Halliday runs an inn for Time Travelers. Unfortunately, he seems to attract other supernatural "guests," too.
Ozzie the Vampire
Eric Lide
Ozzie and her best friend Kimmy are your average everyday normal art students – except one is an immortal vampire with superpowers and the other possesses a magic talking grimoire. Also they have to save their town from a demonic invasion.
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!
Heroes of Thantopolis
Izzy Strontium Hall
A living boy fights to save the City of the Dead.
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.
Nerf Now!!
Josué Pereira
A cute webcomic about fanservice, video games, and... love. Mostly video games, though.
Lies Within
Lacey
Lysander's aimless and carefree life is turned upside down when he accidentally discovers that the cute boy next door, Simon, is a literal monster
ARISE, YE SKELETON KING
Brian Clevinger, Escher Cattle, Lee Black
A troupe of wandering "adventurers" down to their last silver "acquire" a map only to find the real treasure was the fiend they dug up along the way.
Darkling Bright
Chris Hazelton
Kieran Bright is a college student home for the summer and roped into an online reunion with his old neighborhood friends in the most recent update of their favorite childhood MMORPG.
At least, he was, and that was the idea...
Join Kieran and his friends as they are pulled into another reality that may or may not be real and are forced to confront their own identities, the nature of simulated universes and reality itself.
Monster's Garden
Ash G.
Champion pit fighter Kilo Monster was content to spend the rest of his days tending to his quiet garden alone... until he met a curious robot girl and her human family.
Little Tiny Things
Clover
What are the little things that move us? The simple joys that warm our bodies and hearts? The micro life of insects that influence our world more than we think? The tiny steps we make everyday to have a happier tomorrow?
The Golden Boar
Magnolia Porter Siddell
A young woman joins a group of summoners who call forth Guardian Beasts to protect their isolated magical island. Unfortunately, her Guardian Beast is nothing like she'd imagined, and he's about to change her life, and everything she thought she knew about herself...
Sister Claire
Yamino
In the troubled aftermath of a great war between Witches and her fellow Nuns, novice Sister Claire just wants a purpose.
Peritale
Mari Costa
A fairy godmother with no magic tries her best to successfully fulfill a Fairytale and win the respect of her peers.
Novae
KaiJu
A historical romance with a touch magic and a dash of astronomy. It chronicles the romantic adventures of Sulvain, a sweet tempered necromancer and Raziol, a passionate 17th century astronomer.
Nigh Heaven & Hell
Scotty
Heather Vodihn is on a simple mission: find her father. However she becomes entangled with two strangers with mysterious powers being stalked by a group with bizarre demands. Heather must learn to trust her new traveling companions, even if she is untrustworthy herself.
Blindsprings
Kadi Fedoruk
Tamaura, wrested into a world 300 years in the future, must find a way to save the magic fading from her country.
The Weave
Rennie Kingsley
A young woman pursued by bad luck is witness to the murder of the Fairy Queen of Summer. Can she get to the bottom of this mystery?
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Why should Robin be inna closet? It’s not like she doesn’t have any male romantic relationships and has been seen in the company of an “out” lesbian recently and is part of a violently homophobic political party full of self-loathing gay people…
“homophobic political party full of self-loathing gay people”
While I’m sure there’s some number in the party that’s true for, the “full of” concept has been pretty thoroughly debunked. The main psychological premise for bigotry is actually in a desire to exploit those who are perceived as weaker than oneself, rather than being based in internal conflict. While this can’t really be noted for various sexualities or sex/gender or race, it’s notable in the fact that disabled people are actually one of the most abused minorities. Historically, that also extends to the mentally ill and elderly, and you still see some of that in modern day as well.
To reframe that, that means there’s no grounds for sympathy (however forced and bewildered) with such individuals, as they’re not dealing with some complex emotional state that makes them act irrationally- they’re simply destructive and callous and callow by nature.
Naturally, that doesn’t mean we should make assumptions that everyone is irredeemable and driven by nature rather than a complex emotional state [that’d kinda backfire, in regards to the implied ‘let’s not be bigoted towards the mentally ill’ I brought up earlier], but it does mean that there’s no reason to put oneself at risk or struggle for communication in those circumstances where it’s clear constructive interaction can’t be made.
Spiteful people are, ultimately, just spiteful, and nothing else. You can find some exceptions, perhaps, but much like Hollywood style Romances, those are incredibly rare outside of fictions. There’s no benefit to being caught up in those kind of illusions in real life, no matter how gratifying they may be.
Then again, considering how many such people have tried to actively kill me, or who’ve scammed me, or so forth, I can’t really say I’m rooting for their redemption any, to begin with. Which says less about my perspectives, and more serves as a reminder that if someone acts truly awful, then there’s no redeeming them regardless of their supposed justifications for their past behaviors. Ultimately, people do need to take responsability for their actions, especially when their actions are shockingly extreme and blatantly out of the realm of rational behavior.
Full of is certainly an exaggeration, though there certainly are examples to point at. I’m really not fond of the common equation of homophobia with self-loathing closeted gay people. That does happen, but overwhelmingly homophobia is a straight problem, not something queers do to themselves. Don’t let straights off the hook here.
More broadly, while there certainly are spiteful people who take to bigotry by their very nature, I don’t think that’s the majority either. Mostly it’s just cultural, not innate. You’re taught hate, you learn stereotypes, you absorb prejudices from the world around you. We all do, to greater or lesser degrees
And this means they can be unlearned – though unlearning deeply set childhood prejudices is a long hard process.
I think bigotry is sort of like our love of sugar, in that its both. Even little kids will believe that their group is better than the other group and will work for the betterment of their group first.
But what is mostly taught is what even is your group and what makes your group better than all others and how to handle that other group.
As silly as it sounds while we can make a world with less prejudice and where prejudice doesn’t cause as much damage to others; a world where people are killed for eating fruit flavor icecream instead of chocolate is more likely than a world with no prejudice.
I recommend checking out the work of conflict studies expert/professor Dennis Sandole, as well as Daniel Bar-Tal, for some counterpoints to this narrative that bigotry is all learned and is about beliefs. There are also physiological aspects of human existence that contribute to tribalism or in-group/out-group behavior, and I don’t think we can really address intergroup confict without understanding these physiological aspects. For example, the pathway of “fear” in our brains is literally shorter – as in the length of travel along synapses – then the pathways for hope (see work by Jarymowicz and Bar-Tal). So while we can unlearn some things about out-groups, we will always have to reckon with these reactive human tendencies if we want to mitigate the more violent outcomes they can give rise to. None of us is above it.
I certainly agree that there are physiological aspects and it’s unlikely we could eliminate it entirely. At the same time, it’s not all innate, which the poster I was replying to implied. Or even overwhelmingly innate.
The cultural aspects matter too – even if it’s only reinforcing or discouraging the expression of more physiological aspects.
Do you have a source on the idea that bigotry is caused by a desire to exploit others? I am sincerely asking, because I’m working on a graduate project about intergroup conflict, and I have not come across this, so if someone is arguing this with evidence I want to know so I can include it in my thesis.
The Lion King? Land Before Time? Any given Batman film?
Robin, if the previous universe is any indication, doesn’t get along with her family very much, so it’s possible that her movie collection reflects some subconscious issues.
Yeah…I’m kinda grateful we only get stuff from our “mom” in AC. If I got anything from my “dad”, my fiancee would just come home to me in tears and me not being able to explain why dad telling me he’s proud of in a video game makes me shatter.
Yeah….I’m crying at that idea, I miss my dad, okay? (Becky crying ain’t helping!)
There’s a fan theory out there that the dude Ina rabbit costume who shows up around Easter could be the PC’s dad trying to connect with his child in his awkward dad way. I hope that helps
It’s a feature. Your NPC gets letters from ‘Mom’ periodically, same as the automated ones your animal villagers can give. (In New Horizons it’s usually the start of the month and things like your birthday, in older games they were more random.)
There are… quite a few people who have had this reaction or similar to the cheery letters about how often she thinks of you. (There’s sometimes references to your father, as well, who is equally nice. Last game you’d get a letter from him for Father’s Day.)
My Mom was very much looking forward to New Horizons. She had the game pre-ordered, she had the New Horizon switch pre-ordered and paid for and she’d been waiting for an animal crossing game to come out on a console she could play on the television for years…quite impatiently. The last time I was with her I showed her a youtube video of some of the features it was going to have. We were excited to play together. February 27th my mom woke up not feeling well, she asked my Dad what she should do and he told her only she knew how she felt and it would have to be up to her. She called a receptionist for a doctor on call who said they’d call her back. They never returned the call. She told my Dad she was going to rest for a bit and she slipped away while he was sitting on his phone waiting for her to be ready to get up. She was 65 years old and we had no idea it was coming. My Dad plays it now in her stead and when I started the game, the letter from mom…Absolutely wrecked me. I miss her so much and I feel so robbed. This hits me on a very raw level.
Mom had some health problems, Rheumatoid arthritis and a birth defect in her heart that sometimes sent her into Afib. She had picked me up from the hospital for a pulmonary embolism a week or so before, and when she picked me up she said she was coughing up some blood. This had happened before, phemonia due to her arthritis infusions attacking her lungs, but she couldn’t function without them. I suggested she go to the doctor. She went to her cardiologist the day before she died, she was back in afib. They put her on blood thinners and a heart monitor and sent her home. My Dad believes and we agree, that putting her on the blood thinner while she was already coughing up blood caused her to suffocate. Her death certificate cited about 5 causes of death…including pulmonary embolism. It’s very possible that her condition was horribly mishandled and the treatment plan she was put on actually ended up killing her due to her pre-existing bleeding in the lungs. I hadn’t known anything about the doctor visit or the blood thinner until it was too late. She and Dad had ran around doing errands the day before and she had been fine. It was only after she took the medicine that she spiraled. My Dad’s seeking legal action for wrongful death.
A couple of weeks after my dad died was Father’s Day. Which is OK, I’m a father too… but I didn’t appreciate all the companies sending me emails, “Did you remember to buy something for your dad?”
You get numb to it after a while. But I’ve been “Don’t forget your father on father’s day!” at for 24 years now without one. You kinda have to if you wanna survive June at a retail store.
I strongly empathize with Becky here. It took me months after my mom died before I could functionally deal with even banal stuff that reminded me of her and even over a decade on, now, certain things will still occasionally break me on that front. When you add on the other recent events that’d reopen that emotional wound for her…
At least you get letters from your mom in that game. Joker from Persona 5 doesn’t receive letter from his parents, making Sojiro a better parental figure. Also, on the opposite direction, Sora hasn’t contacted his mom since Kingdom Hearts 1.
Hey now, the Island Trio all spent time “home” before KH3. That’s why they were there for Sora to get the letter about saving all of the people in his heart.
Then you got the pokemon games, where the only one of those games where your mother would contact you was in gen 2, she wouldnt even show up to congratulate you once you beat the game, but the professors did. Hell the only time when the mother would contact you in Gen 2 was when they spent your money without your permission and sent you a usually useless item lol.
The item your ‘mom’ sends in Gold and Silver is actually pre-programmed up to a point, and then she’ll buy stuff out of a random pool each time you have exactly a multiple of 円2300 in savings. That said, 4 of the items are room decorations.
The Heartgold and Soulsilver works similarly, except it triggers every time you reach a multiple of 円10000. However, the list has been modified to instead give you useful held items instead of the pokédolls, and once you have all of the ‘you only get this once’ items, you get sent a bundle of 5 berries that weaken Supereffective attacks of a specific ‘element’.
Great now I’m thinking how something I didn’t really care either way about in a videogame could be triggering to people who suffered from a specific type of abuse, like Sal I’m sure she just loved that her mother took the money she was saving and decided she knew what to use it on better than Sal.
The one saving grace is that Gen II Mom saving money is an optional feature – Sal could opt out of it, all money is her own, and it is never spent on things she doesn’t want. I think the mom offers by default, but talking to her again you can turn it off immediately. (By contrast, there’s no way to opt out of Animal Crossing’s parental letters system, and you have to open them to delete them, plus every object she sends in this game has ‘Mom’s X’ as its name.)
This comic is normally more DC than Marvel, but I think this quote fits.
“Try this. It’s like somebody shot a cannonball right through your stomach, leaving a great big hole. Eventually it starts to close up from the outside in. And one day it’ll be different. The load won’t feel as heavy.
Course, then you’ll hear a song or somebody will laugh or the wind will blow the wrong way. And the hole will tear wide open again…Believe it or not it grows back faster each time.
Wanna know why it’s called depression? Because it is depressing. A death isn’t like losing a job or getting divorced. You don’t “get over it.” You have to integrate it into your life. Learn to live with it. But… life does get better.”
So Wolverine isn’t only a Japanophile, but also an internet geek? Y’know, I just keep learning new and interesting things about the guy, even after all these years. Though, I admit, I’m not really sure what to think about the internet’s claims about him being involved in a three-way with Spider-Man and Deadpool.. Definitely sounds like he has quite the involved life, though!
Not sure why my comment didn’t show up right, but the quote is from Fallen Son: The Death of Captain America #4. There’s an imgur gallery of the conversation that you can find if you look up “wolverine on grief.”
I love everything about this update.
The idea of the Animal Crossing mail, and the mail being heartbreaking and heartwarming also. Becky letting go. Her worded reesponse
Robin jumping from nowhere with a movie to see.
:rofl:
And then he bamf’d out of heaven, so at one point he actually couldn’t die, because he was too good to go to Hell and Heaven wouldn’t take him back since he’d escaped.
yeah in all the AC games sometimes your “mom” will send you letters. you never actually meet her, she just sends you stuff saying she’s been thinking about you and hopes your doing well and usually sends gifts
So for those kids who are neglected by their parents in real life, they can’t even get their parent’s attention within a game, huh? Nintendo really went a weird direction with that presentation, however unintentional it may have been.
Now the real question is, if you get married [if that’s not possible in animal crossing, just assume a Harvest Moon type game] and your parent finally shows up just for that, would that make up for things, or would that just further emphasize the lack of parental connection? :/
Side-note, given the context, now I want to watch Hook again. Seriously probably Robin William’s best film. ..And now we have more sadness to consider.
I mean I guess you can interpret it like that if you want lmao
the “””story””” of the first three games is that you’re moving out on your own for the first time to a new town, and in the most recent game you’ve moved away to a deserted island to build up a town from scratch, so presumably your player character had a good relationship with their mom and she sends you letters to keep in touch
but yes the letters from mom understandably have mixed reactions from players depending on their relationships with their real parents
*the first FOUR games. but in the fourth game you also get mistaken as the new mayor who was supposed to arrive in town that day and the day after you start playing you get a letter from whoever the real new mayor was thanking you for taking their place bc they didn’t want to do it lmao
let it out becky, holding it in never works.
Best case scenario is that you hold it in for a bit, then can’t hold it in any longer, and you finally let it out.
worst case scenario is you hold it in for years and years and years and it destroys you on the inside, an it takes even more years and years to come close to what can be graciously considered “feeling better” (like what my father did when his dad died, because everyone told him he needed to be “strong for his mother”. yeah, friggin 15 year old boy lost his father to an aneurism, but he can’t cry because he gotta take care of mom)
Honestly, I think it’s good that Becky’s crying here. Before, I’m not sure that she had come to terms with what had happened. Sure, she had acknowledged all of that had happened, but I don’t think she had allowed herself to emotionally process it. I’m a little annoyed with Robin jumping in to try to distract with more entertainment, but she’s doing the best she can with how she knows how to deal with this kind of thing.
Unrelated to anything, is anyone getting some very noticeable slowdown on any sites (including DoA) with the Hiveworks banner they started rolling out? I’ve noticed it here and on GWS.
Ever since the banner was introduced, anything beyond the banner (the news-posts and comments) haven’t been loading at all about 1/3 or even 1/2 times.
Probably all the ad spam. If I load the site without adblock on, it goes flippin crazy. Tons of ad pop-ups, internal pop-up which cover the comic and comments, site glitches, slow-down, and more. When I have adblock up, I load in with about 45 ads blocked and I get another 12 every few seconds. For a few months now, I’ve been having to view this site as one of the trashiest on the internet. :S
Side-note, my ads blocked counter went up over 100 additional ads blocked just while typing this out. It’s seriously a hot mess.
*Also, some of the ads I get when I load the site without adblock are dubious quality, which really doesn’t help the unprofessional impression the site is giving. Though I tested it now, and got pain stain remover, Nike, and Williams-Sonoma ads, so I guess it’s pretty inconsistant. I assume the dubious ones pop up due to the Slipshine association? They’re never entirely ribald or overt, but they’re definitely not what I’d associate with general webcomics. Eg, sexualized dating site ads.
I haven’t seen anything that severe, but the page does tend to jump around a lot when I scroll down near the bottom on mobile.
As for content, I mostly get ads for face masks and The Home Depot lately. Yeah, I know I need new windows and a new garbage disposal, but I mostly shop Lowes and Harbor Freight! Ooh, interlocking concrete pavers…
If you have any local landscaping or hardscaping suppliers, check with them. Usually you can get better stuff than the big-box home centers carry for a similar price, and they’ll deliver it for you.
Also look for a concrete or materials supplier. Buying sand by the bag at the store is a lot more expensive, and you really want graded base and stone dust anyway.
It’s not even usable on my tablet. Ads block the entire screen and, as you noted, the page jerks every which way when you try to interact with it (though in my case, it’s a universal interaction issue, not just specific to bottom-of-page-scrolling). :/
So now all she needs to do is win ‘her lesbian’ back, and then they can co-parent Becky? Not really sure it’d work out for them, in their current state, but it’d be a nice evolution of their previous-continuity relationship.
It was originally called “Bluto, The Building”, but Famous Studios retained the rights to the character name of, “Bluto” (sorry for the obscure Popeye reference, but I’m a retired copyright lawyer).
As I understand it, Brutus came about because King Features assumed Paramount owned the rights to Bluto (through their acquisition of Fleischer Studios/Famous Studios and their IP), but Bluto actually debuted in the comic first. In the 80s, the comics retconned the two characters to be brothers.
Though I admit my knowledge of Popeye lore is mostly from Wikipedia and the deep cuts Randy Milholland put into his Popeye’s Cartoon Club run back in May.
The given date of September 12, 1932 for the Thimble Theater debut of Bluto aligns with the idea that Bluto was a Fleischer creation first, given the lead time required to produce the cinematic cartoons, and that Segar placed him into the strip to promote the films. I like the Wiki suggestion that Tyrone Powers Sr. as Red Flack was an inspiration for Bluto’s look and sound.
Great replies by both Needfuldoer and Ryek to my (honestly) extremely off-topic comment earlier today! I do own Volumes 1 and 3 of the complete Elzie Segar Popeye reissues, printed by Fantagraphics Publishing (wish I had bought the entire set, now out of print). In Volume 3 (page 13). Bluto appears in the June 23, 1932 installment (he appears in that panel’s 4th frame and gets walloped by Popeye in the 5th). The first Fleischer Popeye animated cartoon (“Popeye The Sailor) premiered on July 23, 1933. Over 1 year later.
Thimble Theater’s version of Bluto didn’t seem to be on a level with the other villains such as the Sea Hag, at least in the continuity he was written into, (I’ve read the reprints) so I always suspected that Segar was promoting the film cartoons, which would lead to King Features Syndicate de facto acknowledging who created Bluto, by renaming the character later on.
OK!! I just realized that I was either REALLY tired or something when I wrote my replies last night. The discrepancy in the premiere dates for Bluto was September 12, 1932 v. July 23, 1932. That’s a 54 day difference, not 1 year as I said last night. Sorry for the confusion. I wonder why the is so. Could the Fantagraphics chronology be off (at least in the 2006/7 six-book series, anyway)?
The wiki on the Fleischer feature Gulliver’s Travels had it taking more than a year to create, and there was likely some merit to having several Popeye episodes “in the can” at the time the first one was released in theaters, so it’s close enough to support Bluto being a Fleischer creation. I just don’t recall any Thimble Theater Bluto continuity that came anywhere near what Segar wrote for his other villains. Sea Hag got eight months of Sunday strips for the epic Plunder Island storyline.
Yes, that argument makes much more sense. I know that Segar only focused featured Bluto in the one story arc before he made his 1st film appearance. So it’s more than likely either he was directed to include the character (meaning he did not it directly -or- it was a cooperative concept with Dave & Max Fleischer) OR he created him and essentially gave up on him only to find that the Fleischer’s took a fancy to a what was essentially a one-off character in a comic strip.
Why is it that so many adults cannot stand Any One crying?
If someone’s crying my immediate reaction is to offer support, companionship, Slash ‘let them know I’m here,’ but not make them stop crying. Crying is often helping them heal.
Don’t try to stop the crying – Support the process!
Honestly!
As a child I was always told “Stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about” and it got integrated into my source code. Now I have almost no control over the faucet and feel deep shame if I cry watching an anime.
Yeah, I, too, got that stop crying, men don’t cry crap from my father. But I got the “It’s ok to cry” from my Mom. So,… ‘if you ask Dad and the answer is No, it is sneaky but o.k. to ask Mom and get permission’ was my young excuse for permitting myself to cry, even at Hallmark moments, if I need to.
Hi, fellow Valerie! You probably won’t come back and see this reply, but maybe you are the alternate universe version of me who doesn’t like Animal Crossing.
Optimus Prime broke down and cried on the set of "Transformers" (2007) due to the extensive use of green screen filming. He reportedly said, "This is not why I became an actor."
“I’m just going to say it, shame on any of us who throws a trans child under the bus for thinking they’re going to get elected. That child deserves our support. Don’t worry about the pollsters calling it distractions, because we need to be the party of human dignity.”
Minnesota Star Tribune@startribune.com ⋅ 1d
Gov. Tim Walz is doubling down on trans rights — and criticizing members of his party who are retreating — at a time when the issue has become a political lightning rod nationally and back home in Minnesota.
they managed to get the arms and thighs to be different grays, which I wasn't sure they'd be able to do, the way the mold's set up
though maybe they're just producing a lot of extra thighs and/or arms in the wrong colors and throwing those away, i dunno
Minnesota Star Tribune @startribune.com ⋅ 1d
preternia @preternia.com ⋅ 1d
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oh no
…
…fluff moment, my husband is playing New Leaf, and HIS mom gave him a “lab chair”… completely different feels on that one =o
Non-fluff: I just pictured getting this letter and thinking of my still-alive Mom, and now I’m crying, thanks Corona
“…for a nickel”
Those are some pretty cheap butts at that price.
It could be worse. I’m not sure how, but it could be worse.
They could be in the middle of a pandemic!
I don’t know how, the apartment could be full of rats?
This comic is how – https://external-preview.redd.it/-hkThp13lIxxzGo2cmr975X_dyAjxMYdZSCx0OLt1Dw.jpg?auto=webp&s=d2ee3f16fcfbdfb029dad591febdb487ecb202ec – it’s simultaneously heartwarming and heartbreaking.
Why did I read that?! You detailed exactly what it was going to do, and I read it anyway. And saved it to disk.
your comic gave me the feels, when I browsed the comment section for relief for the feels I had when I read the DoA comic. Damn you.
“I miss you but I’m proud of you”
Brutus is a deep cut reference oh my god
Damn you Animal Crossing. How could you.
8-({
I can’t believe Animal Crossing was the real villain all along, maybe Roz was right.
Whoops, Mary, I meant Mary.
Oh no is that worse
That is worse.
Not how I expected Robin to finally come out of the closet, but I’ll take it.
Yeah, I was like, are you hiding in the closet, Robin?
Why should Robin be inna closet? It’s not like she doesn’t have any male romantic relationships and has been seen in the company of an “out” lesbian recently and is part of a violently homophobic political party full of self-loathing gay people…
“homophobic political party full of self-loathing gay people”
While I’m sure there’s some number in the party that’s true for, the “full of” concept has been pretty thoroughly debunked. The main psychological premise for bigotry is actually in a desire to exploit those who are perceived as weaker than oneself, rather than being based in internal conflict. While this can’t really be noted for various sexualities or sex/gender or race, it’s notable in the fact that disabled people are actually one of the most abused minorities. Historically, that also extends to the mentally ill and elderly, and you still see some of that in modern day as well.
To reframe that, that means there’s no grounds for sympathy (however forced and bewildered) with such individuals, as they’re not dealing with some complex emotional state that makes them act irrationally- they’re simply destructive and callous and callow by nature.
Naturally, that doesn’t mean we should make assumptions that everyone is irredeemable and driven by nature rather than a complex emotional state [that’d kinda backfire, in regards to the implied ‘let’s not be bigoted towards the mentally ill’ I brought up earlier], but it does mean that there’s no reason to put oneself at risk or struggle for communication in those circumstances where it’s clear constructive interaction can’t be made.
Spiteful people are, ultimately, just spiteful, and nothing else. You can find some exceptions, perhaps, but much like Hollywood style Romances, those are incredibly rare outside of fictions. There’s no benefit to being caught up in those kind of illusions in real life, no matter how gratifying they may be.
Then again, considering how many such people have tried to actively kill me, or who’ve scammed me, or so forth, I can’t really say I’m rooting for their redemption any, to begin with. Which says less about my perspectives, and more serves as a reminder that if someone acts truly awful, then there’s no redeeming them regardless of their supposed justifications for their past behaviors. Ultimately, people do need to take responsability for their actions, especially when their actions are shockingly extreme and blatantly out of the realm of rational behavior.
Full of is certainly an exaggeration, though there certainly are examples to point at. I’m really not fond of the common equation of homophobia with self-loathing closeted gay people. That does happen, but overwhelmingly homophobia is a straight problem, not something queers do to themselves. Don’t let straights off the hook here.
More broadly, while there certainly are spiteful people who take to bigotry by their very nature, I don’t think that’s the majority either. Mostly it’s just cultural, not innate. You’re taught hate, you learn stereotypes, you absorb prejudices from the world around you. We all do, to greater or lesser degrees
And this means they can be unlearned – though unlearning deeply set childhood prejudices is a long hard process.
I think bigotry is sort of like our love of sugar, in that its both. Even little kids will believe that their group is better than the other group and will work for the betterment of their group first.
But what is mostly taught is what even is your group and what makes your group better than all others and how to handle that other group.
As silly as it sounds while we can make a world with less prejudice and where prejudice doesn’t cause as much damage to others; a world where people are killed for eating fruit flavor icecream instead of chocolate is more likely than a world with no prejudice.
I didn’t understand your comment at first – was taking me longer to process the analogy – but now I think I was saying a similar thing to you.
I recommend checking out the work of conflict studies expert/professor Dennis Sandole, as well as Daniel Bar-Tal, for some counterpoints to this narrative that bigotry is all learned and is about beliefs. There are also physiological aspects of human existence that contribute to tribalism or in-group/out-group behavior, and I don’t think we can really address intergroup confict without understanding these physiological aspects. For example, the pathway of “fear” in our brains is literally shorter – as in the length of travel along synapses – then the pathways for hope (see work by Jarymowicz and Bar-Tal). So while we can unlearn some things about out-groups, we will always have to reckon with these reactive human tendencies if we want to mitigate the more violent outcomes they can give rise to. None of us is above it.
I certainly agree that there are physiological aspects and it’s unlikely we could eliminate it entirely. At the same time, it’s not all innate, which the poster I was replying to implied. Or even overwhelmingly innate.
The cultural aspects matter too – even if it’s only reinforcing or discouraging the expression of more physiological aspects.
Do you have a source on the idea that bigotry is caused by a desire to exploit others? I am sincerely asking, because I’m working on a graduate project about intergroup conflict, and I have not come across this, so if someone is arguing this with evidence I want to know so I can include it in my thesis.
Oh, that was DIRTY, Animal Crossing.
Nooooo Becky don’t cry, if you cry then I’ll cry and that’ll be ugly, nooooo
Awwww baby
Robin has Bambi set up and ready to go!
NO! ABORT! ABORT! Negative on watching Bambi right now, I repeat negative!
You’re so right. Old Yeller is a much better movie to watch.
The Lion King? Land Before Time? Any given Batman film?
Robin, if the previous universe is any indication, doesn’t get along with her family very much, so it’s possible that her movie collection reflects some subconscious issues.
Both the parents in Old Yeller survive the whole movie (although the father is absent for most of it), so probably wouldn’t be nearly the trigger.
What about that scene where the family dog takes the father out back and shoots them, though?!
..I probably should stop buying bootleg chinese versions of popular products. :/
Is it wrong that I might have been better with this version?
To quote Coyote Ugly: “You’re the right kind of wrong”.
Well, either way, “it’s bound to be a heartbreak situation”.
Reference association for the uncultured:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwmzOCbFHPA
~.^
I was going to suggest Bambi!
Yeah…I’m kinda grateful we only get stuff from our “mom” in AC. If I got anything from my “dad”, my fiancee would just come home to me in tears and me not being able to explain why dad telling me he’s proud of in a video game makes me shatter.
Yeah….I’m crying at that idea, I miss my dad, okay? (Becky crying ain’t helping!)
-walks up-
-deposits sealed box of hugs-
This is for you, open if you want.
There’s a fan theory out there that the dude Ina rabbit costume who shows up around Easter could be the PC’s dad trying to connect with his child in his awkward dad way. I hope that helps
So is it implied that robin sent her the letter in animal crossing? Or is that actually a feature in the game?
Actual feature. You routinely get letters from your mom with gifts and advise.
It’s a feature. Your NPC gets letters from ‘Mom’ periodically, same as the automated ones your animal villagers can give. (In New Horizons it’s usually the start of the month and things like your birthday, in older games they were more random.)
There are… quite a few people who have had this reaction or similar to the cheery letters about how often she thinks of you. (There’s sometimes references to your father, as well, who is equally nice. Last game you’d get a letter from him for Father’s Day.)
Does this mean it recently turned to November in-comic now?
It’s October 21.
Next chapter suggests a time skip, though.
Unless there’s an overnight blizzard.
Games really ought to have a way to opt out of stuff like that. For some people, it’s a trigger.
I really do wish there were some way to change who sends you those Letters From Home. At least then you could make up a sibling or something.
My Mom was very much looking forward to New Horizons. She had the game pre-ordered, she had the New Horizon switch pre-ordered and paid for and she’d been waiting for an animal crossing game to come out on a console she could play on the television for years…quite impatiently. The last time I was with her I showed her a youtube video of some of the features it was going to have. We were excited to play together. February 27th my mom woke up not feeling well, she asked my Dad what she should do and he told her only she knew how she felt and it would have to be up to her. She called a receptionist for a doctor on call who said they’d call her back. They never returned the call. She told my Dad she was going to rest for a bit and she slipped away while he was sitting on his phone waiting for her to be ready to get up. She was 65 years old and we had no idea it was coming. My Dad plays it now in her stead and when I started the game, the letter from mom…Absolutely wrecked me. I miss her so much and I feel so robbed. This hits me on a very raw level.
oh damn that is tragic. best of luck.
did you find out what did her in? scary to be that sudden
Mom had some health problems, Rheumatoid arthritis and a birth defect in her heart that sometimes sent her into Afib. She had picked me up from the hospital for a pulmonary embolism a week or so before, and when she picked me up she said she was coughing up some blood. This had happened before, phemonia due to her arthritis infusions attacking her lungs, but she couldn’t function without them. I suggested she go to the doctor. She went to her cardiologist the day before she died, she was back in afib. They put her on blood thinners and a heart monitor and sent her home. My Dad believes and we agree, that putting her on the blood thinner while she was already coughing up blood caused her to suffocate. Her death certificate cited about 5 causes of death…including pulmonary embolism. It’s very possible that her condition was horribly mishandled and the treatment plan she was put on actually ended up killing her due to her pre-existing bleeding in the lungs. I hadn’t known anything about the doctor visit or the blood thinner until it was too late. She and Dad had ran around doing errands the day before and she had been fine. It was only after she took the medicine that she spiraled. My Dad’s seeking legal action for wrongful death.
I’m sorry for your loss, stranger.
I really hope your family wins the court case and that you continue having fun in the game.
A couple of weeks after my dad died was Father’s Day. Which is OK, I’m a father too… but I didn’t appreciate all the companies sending me emails, “Did you remember to buy something for your dad?”
You get numb to it after a while. But I’ve been “Don’t forget your father on father’s day!” at for 24 years now without one. You kinda have to if you wanna survive June at a retail store.
I strongly empathize with Becky here. It took me months after my mom died before I could functionally deal with even banal stuff that reminded me of her and even over a decade on, now, certain things will still occasionally break me on that front. When you add on the other recent events that’d reopen that emotional wound for her…
At least you get letters from your mom in that game. Joker from Persona 5 doesn’t receive letter from his parents, making Sojiro a better parental figure. Also, on the opposite direction, Sora hasn’t contacted his mom since Kingdom Hearts 1.
Hey now, the Island Trio all spent time “home” before KH3. That’s why they were there for Sora to get the letter about saving all of the people in his heart.
Then you got the pokemon games, where the only one of those games where your mother would contact you was in gen 2, she wouldnt even show up to congratulate you once you beat the game, but the professors did. Hell the only time when the mother would contact you in Gen 2 was when they spent your money without your permission and sent you a usually useless item lol.
The item your ‘mom’ sends in Gold and Silver is actually pre-programmed up to a point, and then she’ll buy stuff out of a random pool each time you have exactly a multiple of 円2300 in savings. That said, 4 of the items are room decorations.
The Heartgold and Soulsilver works similarly, except it triggers every time you reach a multiple of 円10000. However, the list has been modified to instead give you useful held items instead of the pokédolls, and once you have all of the ‘you only get this once’ items, you get sent a bundle of 5 berries that weaken Supereffective attacks of a specific ‘element’.
Great now I’m thinking how something I didn’t really care either way about in a videogame could be triggering to people who suffered from a specific type of abuse, like Sal I’m sure she just loved that her mother took the money she was saving and decided she knew what to use it on better than Sal.
The one saving grace is that Gen II Mom saving money is an optional feature – Sal could opt out of it, all money is her own, and it is never spent on things she doesn’t want. I think the mom offers by default, but talking to her again you can turn it off immediately. (By contrast, there’s no way to opt out of Animal Crossing’s parental letters system, and you have to open them to delete them, plus every object she sends in this game has ‘Mom’s X’ as its name.)
My own mom passed away in March, and when my game letter came in, I couldn’t stop the tears.
I feel you, Becky. I’d hug if I could.
Dina got Dina-ed!
This comic is normally more DC than Marvel, but I think this quote fits.
“Try this. It’s like somebody shot a cannonball right through your stomach, leaving a great big hole. Eventually it starts to close up from the outside in. And one day it’ll be different. The load won’t feel as heavy.
Course, then you’ll hear a song or somebody will laugh or the wind will blow the wrong way. And the hole will tear wide open again…Believe it or not it grows back faster each time.
Wanna know why it’s called depression? Because it is depressing. A death isn’t like losing a job or getting divorced. You don’t “get over it.” You have to integrate it into your life. Learn to live with it. But… life does get better.”
-Wolverine
“This comic is normally more DC than Marvel”
I hadn’t thought about it before, but that’s definitely true.
Where’s that Wolverine quote from, by the way? The most useful google result for the quote is actually your post. :S
That’s because Lumino just came up with it. They’re actually one of Wolverine’s many aliases.
So Wolverine isn’t only a Japanophile, but also an internet geek? Y’know, I just keep learning new and interesting things about the guy, even after all these years. Though, I admit, I’m not really sure what to think about the internet’s claims about him being involved in a three-way with Spider-Man and Deadpool.. Definitely sounds like he has quite the involved life, though!
Not sure why my comment didn’t show up right, but the quote is from Fallen Son: The Death of Captain America #4. There’s an imgur gallery of the conversation that you can find if you look up “wolverine on grief.”
I love everything about this update.
The idea of the Animal Crossing mail, and the mail being heartbreaking and heartwarming also. Becky letting go. Her worded reesponse
Robin jumping from nowhere with a movie to see.
:rofl:
Rip nightcrawler (until he bamfed out of hell)
And then he bamf’d out of heaven, so at one point he actually couldn’t die, because he was too good to go to Hell and Heaven wouldn’t take him back since he’d escaped.
Damn, betrayed by Animal Crossing. The dam finally breaks. It’ll be ok Becky, just let it out
Fuckin ow.
Ultimately I think it is good that she cries, but daaaaaaang God – that was a low blow.
Can someone explain this for a person who does not play Animal Crossing? Is she talking about her mom in-game?
yeah in all the AC games sometimes your “mom” will send you letters. you never actually meet her, she just sends you stuff saying she’s been thinking about you and hopes your doing well and usually sends gifts
So for those kids who are neglected by their parents in real life, they can’t even get their parent’s attention within a game, huh? Nintendo really went a weird direction with that presentation, however unintentional it may have been.
Now the real question is, if you get married [if that’s not possible in animal crossing, just assume a Harvest Moon type game] and your parent finally shows up just for that, would that make up for things, or would that just further emphasize the lack of parental connection? :/
Side-note, given the context, now I want to watch Hook again. Seriously probably Robin William’s best film. ..And now we have more sadness to consider.
I mean I guess you can interpret it like that if you want lmao
the “””story””” of the first three games is that you’re moving out on your own for the first time to a new town, and in the most recent game you’ve moved away to a deserted island to build up a town from scratch, so presumably your player character had a good relationship with their mom and she sends you letters to keep in touch
but yes the letters from mom understandably have mixed reactions from players depending on their relationships with their real parents
*the first FOUR games. but in the fourth game you also get mistaken as the new mayor who was supposed to arrive in town that day and the day after you start playing you get a letter from whoever the real new mayor was thanking you for taking their place bc they didn’t want to do it lmao
Alternatively they get to pretend even for a little while that their moms are taking time and energy to tell them they love them.
Thank you for confirming that, angie.
Actually, Becky? For what it’s worth? That would be what Bonnie would want to tell you: It’s all going to be okay.
I can’t tell if Dina is horrified or angry in the last panel.
yeahhh it does this to me all the time. After my mom died, I now keep all the gifts and letters and actually use what she sends.
let it out becky, holding it in never works.
Best case scenario is that you hold it in for a bit, then can’t hold it in any longer, and you finally let it out.
worst case scenario is you hold it in for years and years and years and it destroys you on the inside, an it takes even more years and years to come close to what can be graciously considered “feeling better” (like what my father did when his dad died, because everyone told him he needed to be “strong for his mother”. yeah, friggin 15 year old boy lost his father to an aneurism, but he can’t cry because he gotta take care of mom)
Oh…oh man oh child, that fuckin’ hurt.
“Vote Trump.”
-Mom
And that is how you know you’re dealing with a ghost who wishes for nothing but harm on others. >.>
We’d expect to see that on Joyce’s phone.
Honestly, I think it’s good that Becky’s crying here. Before, I’m not sure that she had come to terms with what had happened. Sure, she had acknowledged all of that had happened, but I don’t think she had allowed herself to emotionally process it. I’m a little annoyed with Robin jumping in to try to distract with more entertainment, but she’s doing the best she can with how she knows how to deal with this kind of thing.
I’m not crying, YOU’RE crying. Just kidding, I’m crying silently. My Mom died in 2004, Dad in 2012.
Unrelated to anything, is anyone getting some very noticeable slowdown on any sites (including DoA) with the Hiveworks banner they started rolling out? I’ve noticed it here and on GWS.
Ever since the banner was introduced, anything beyond the banner (the news-posts and comments) haven’t been loading at all about 1/3 or even 1/2 times.
Probably all the ad spam. If I load the site without adblock on, it goes flippin crazy. Tons of ad pop-ups, internal pop-up which cover the comic and comments, site glitches, slow-down, and more. When I have adblock up, I load in with about 45 ads blocked and I get another 12 every few seconds. For a few months now, I’ve been having to view this site as one of the trashiest on the internet. :S
Side-note, my ads blocked counter went up over 100 additional ads blocked just while typing this out. It’s seriously a hot mess.
*Also, some of the ads I get when I load the site without adblock are dubious quality, which really doesn’t help the unprofessional impression the site is giving. Though I tested it now, and got pain stain remover, Nike, and Williams-Sonoma ads, so I guess it’s pretty inconsistant. I assume the dubious ones pop up due to the Slipshine association? They’re never entirely ribald or overt, but they’re definitely not what I’d associate with general webcomics. Eg, sexualized dating site ads.
I haven’t seen anything that severe, but the page does tend to jump around a lot when I scroll down near the bottom on mobile.
As for content, I mostly get ads for face masks and The Home Depot lately. Yeah, I know I need new windows and a new garbage disposal, but I mostly shop Lowes and Harbor Freight! Ooh, interlocking concrete pavers…
But are the pavers at a ‘good’ price? Best I can get is $0.46 each, and I pick em up there.
If you have any local landscaping or hardscaping suppliers, check with them. Usually you can get better stuff than the big-box home centers carry for a similar price, and they’ll deliver it for you.
Also look for a concrete or materials supplier. Buying sand by the bag at the store is a lot more expensive, and you really want graded base and stone dust anyway.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIwtGWxF-IM
It’s not even usable on my tablet. Ads block the entire screen and, as you noted, the page jerks every which way when you try to interact with it (though in my case, it’s a universal interaction issue, not just specific to bottom-of-page-scrolling). :/
Yes. I have to reload the page sometimes three times to load much of the page.
Huh, Robin finally came out the closet. Took her long enough.
So now all she needs to do is win ‘her lesbian’ back, and then they can co-parent Becky? Not really sure it’d work out for them, in their current state, but it’d be a nice evolution of their previous-continuity relationship.
Appropriate Claire is appropriate.
Oh no, was this comic inspired by firsthand experience?
It was originally called “Bluto, The Building”, but Famous Studios retained the rights to the character name of, “Bluto” (sorry for the obscure Popeye reference, but I’m a retired copyright lawyer).
As I understand it, Brutus came about because King Features assumed Paramount owned the rights to Bluto (through their acquisition of Fleischer Studios/Famous Studios and their IP), but Bluto actually debuted in the comic first. In the 80s, the comics retconned the two characters to be brothers.
Though I admit my knowledge of Popeye lore is mostly from Wikipedia and the deep cuts Randy Milholland put into his Popeye’s Cartoon Club run back in May.
The given date of September 12, 1932 for the Thimble Theater debut of Bluto aligns with the idea that Bluto was a Fleischer creation first, given the lead time required to produce the cinematic cartoons, and that Segar placed him into the strip to promote the films. I like the Wiki suggestion that Tyrone Powers Sr. as Red Flack was an inspiration for Bluto’s look and sound.
Great replies by both Needfuldoer and Ryek to my (honestly) extremely off-topic comment earlier today! I do own Volumes 1 and 3 of the complete Elzie Segar Popeye reissues, printed by Fantagraphics Publishing (wish I had bought the entire set, now out of print). In Volume 3 (page 13). Bluto appears in the June 23, 1932 installment (he appears in that panel’s 4th frame and gets walloped by Popeye in the 5th). The first Fleischer Popeye animated cartoon (“Popeye The Sailor) premiered on July 23, 1933. Over 1 year later.
Make that EXACTLY, 1 year later (according to Wikipedia’s Popeye Cartoon site, anyway).
Thimble Theater’s version of Bluto didn’t seem to be on a level with the other villains such as the Sea Hag, at least in the continuity he was written into, (I’ve read the reprints) so I always suspected that Segar was promoting the film cartoons, which would lead to King Features Syndicate de facto acknowledging who created Bluto, by renaming the character later on.
OK!! I just realized that I was either REALLY tired or something when I wrote my replies last night. The discrepancy in the premiere dates for Bluto was September 12, 1932 v. July 23, 1932. That’s a 54 day difference, not 1 year as I said last night. Sorry for the confusion. I wonder why the is so. Could the Fantagraphics chronology be off (at least in the 2006/7 six-book series, anyway)?
The wiki on the Fleischer feature Gulliver’s Travels had it taking more than a year to create, and there was likely some merit to having several Popeye episodes “in the can” at the time the first one was released in theaters, so it’s close enough to support Bluto being a Fleischer creation. I just don’t recall any Thimble Theater Bluto continuity that came anywhere near what Segar wrote for his other villains. Sea Hag got eight months of Sunday strips for the epic Plunder Island storyline.
Yes, that argument makes much more sense. I know that Segar only focused featured Bluto in the one story arc before he made his 1st film appearance. So it’s more than likely either he was directed to include the character (meaning he did not it directly -or- it was a cooperative concept with Dave & Max Fleischer) OR he created him and essentially gave up on him only to find that the Fleischer’s took a fancy to a what was essentially a one-off character in a comic strip.
Why is it that so many adults cannot stand Any One crying?
If someone’s crying my immediate reaction is to offer support, companionship, Slash ‘let them know I’m here,’ but not make them stop crying. Crying is often helping them heal.
Don’t try to stop the crying – Support the process!
Honestly!
As a child I was always told “Stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about” and it got integrated into my source code. Now I have almost no control over the faucet and feel deep shame if I cry watching an anime.
Yeah, I, too, got that stop crying, men don’t cry crap from my father. But I got the “It’s ok to cry” from my Mom. So,… ‘if you ask Dad and the answer is No, it is sneaky but o.k. to ask Mom and get permission’ was my young excuse for permitting myself to cry, even at Hallmark moments, if I need to.
oh good im not the only one who reacts viscerally to mail from mom in acnh
HOW DARE YOU BETRAY ME
It’s okay, Becky. I got up in my feels about Animal Crossing Mom, too.
She sent me a sweater and I got all like “at least my fake mom loves me T-T”
You must be me. Same name, same mom problems, sounds right. Although when did I play AC? Don’t remember that.
Hi, fellow Valerie! You probably won’t come back and see this reply, but maybe you are the alternate universe version of me who doesn’t like Animal Crossing.
Read the third panel and was like “Oh no, this is gonna be the faucet to Becky’s emotions.”
I wonder what movie Robin has selected for them. Willy Wonka because candy?
Oh no
what, was Robin hiding in there the whole time?
Yep, you can see her eyes peering out in yesterday’s last panel.