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That’s the actual cause of his coma. He met her on the ambulance on the way to the hospital, and medically speaking “mid-coitus with your mom” and “comatose” are indistinguishable.
Still a shitty thing to do IMO, I for one don’t want to see weeks of strips involving Walky going ‘SO ANYWAYS My ROOMATE IS DEAD, SO I guess I get a pass eh?”
He’s done it twice so far, not looking forward to a lovely bunch of Walky being asked to do a thing/discuss a thing “Yeah well my roommate died, so I think you should hand over that last slice of pizza”/ “My roommate died so I guess that means I pass all my finals right?”
Never said it wasn’t, but it’s a traumatic thing that Walky went through. Can’t imagine he’d come out unscathed, and if this is how he is going to address it, then that’s how it is.
Guaranteed someone is going to call him out on it, eventually.
NGL I like both- ideally happening at the same time in the same room, because social cringe comedy with a *touch* of jerkass tendencies is what I live for- We need our mike vibes from somewhere
I love both because they’re the kind of humour I’m all in.
Becky fully knows Dorothy only means her well, and Walky fully knows how flippant and dark it is for him to say that. They’re just both too detached to care about impressions more than they care about this… narrative? keyfabe? run-on joke?
At any rate I’m fairly certain they could and would stop if anybody asked them (not without effort but they would) but right now they’re crafting something out of their situations.
I don’t know if it’s the generation, the trauma, the queer influences, or a mix of all three but that’s exactly what I’m into. They don’t mean any harm, can be expected to stop rather than risk harm in bad situations, but will otherwise make people mildly wince for the sheer heck of it.
Listen, I love Becky. I do. But Dorothy has asked her to drop the nemesis act several times. It would have to be someone else – probably Joyce or Dina – telling her to knock it off.
I know Walky isn’t exactly a high-functioning human being, but I’m not sure that’s a good enough reason to assume he means what is acknowledged within the strip to be snark as being meant entirely literally. It’s not a genuine attempt at an excuse.
The death and the person who died also were not real.
One of Willis’ narrative strengths is his ability to write characters he doesn’t agree with but flesh out his stories as more true to life.
I’m not sure I’d even say these are awful coping mechanisms. It’s been months for him and both Booster and Lucy were far less close to Mike than he was, so it’s not like he’s messing with anyone emotionally attached.
Except us, because for us, we just found out a couple days ago that he’s really dead. So this can be rough for the audience on the meta-level, but it’s not something that Walky can be blamed for.
If Walky’s snarking about it to Amber or Ethan, then that’s a different story and should likely be seen as an awful coping mechanism for him. Unless they’ve set it up and are using a similar approach themselves.
Even then though, it should be seen as a failure to read the room and awkwardly trying to use humor to defuse the pain rather than deliberate provocation.
Agreed. Sometimes humor is what a person needs to cope. Yes it can be unhealthy if they’re using it to avoid confronting their feelings and just bottling them up inside instead. But also when you’ve dealt with or are dealing with something that is very painful and unsolvable, you don’t want to spend the rest of your life being depressed about it every second. So you make jokes.
It doesn’t mean you don’t care, it just means you do not want to be sad about this thing right at this moment (or do not want to talk about it at all right now) which is a very valid thing to feel. People who are experiencing trauma do not have to live every second of their life being sad about it.
As someone who has experienced permanent, life-changing trauma that involves often mourning the loss of what I once had, I would not have been able to get through this without the ability to sometimes joke about it, because the alternative would be curled up in bed feeling like life is pointless.
And was for whether Walky specifically does it in a healthy or unhealthy way, I think it’s maybe a bit of both? He clearly has some avoidance issues (see: his math grades, not wanting to have serious talks with his sister, etc). But I’d say it’s also sometimes a great benefit to him, like being able to not fall apart/panic while being kidnapped. Sometimes shoving your feelings down for later is harmful but sometimes it is helpful. These things aren’t always black and white.
I would add also (sorry, so many thoughts. I need an edit button lol): Walky doesn’t know Lucy that well and JUST met Booster. As someone who sometimes uses humor to cope I am WAY more likely to employ it when difficult topics get brought up with people I barely know or just met because I do not feel comfortable having a deep heart-to-heart about deeply personal painful things with someone I barely know in a casual social setting.
If a good friend (or someone in a polite context in which I’ve brought it up) asks, then sure I’ll talk about my feelings. But if It comes up with a neighbor or random relative or work peer then I’m much more likely to make a joke about it to ease the tension because I don’t want to make things awkward by suddenly turning this casual social experience into a dark depressing thing.
So yeah, Walky’s responses seem very very normal and familiar here to me and even though mike was literally my favorite character I do not at all read this as the author making fun of/making light of his death in an offensive way.
I don’t recall Walky actually saying a bad thing about Mike, other than that he fell off a building and died. That’s more a statement of fact than anything.
I certainly don’t see him making fun of Mike’s death. Especially not here, where he’s simply acknowledging that he doesn’t want to talk about it, but also that he wants to move stuff even less.
Honestly can’t agree with this. Humor is almost entirely how I navigated my brother’s death for the first two or three years, including jokes directly about his death. Mike and Walky may not have been bosom buddies, but living with someone still changes a relationship and can make emotions complicated. You cope how you gotta cope.
I can’t seem to find it now, but I remember reading something by someone with a recently-deceased (friend? family member?) that went something like, “I don’t visit the grave site. Why would I? He left behind hundreds of open graves, everywhere we’d been. Mostly I try not to fall into any. Some days I even succeed.”
I’m heavily paraphrasing, obviously, b/c if I could remember it accurately enough I’d have probably found it by now, but if anyone recognizes it, I’d love to see it again.
The only caveat to that is that you’ve got to be careful with your coping mechanisms when they run into someone even more affected – unlikely with your brother, but definitely a potential problem with Walky.
Not here, since Booster never met Mike and I don’t think Lucy did either, but he’d need to watch the snark around Amber or Ethan.
My dad died of lung cancer. One day, I was coughing and said “oh my god I’m dying” (as I always say when I cough), and my husband said, “you’re not dying.” I said, “Dad coughed a lot, and then -he- died.”
So yeah, dark humor is sometimes the way we cope with loss. If you think Walky’s a bad person for it, then I guess I am, too.
This isn’t about a death; but a few years ago I was diagnosed with bilateral breast cancer, and had to stay in the hospital overnight after the double mastectomy. I was feeling pretty fantastic and joking about it pretty heavily online (I was heavily dysphoric about them so getting them taken off was amazing, ngl).
A good friend was at work and laughing her ass off at her computer and her boss came over and asked her what was so funny and she replied “Oh my friend has cancer” and I’m actually pretty proud of getting that reaction (and her boss’s D: face) out of her ha ha (“Wait! No! She’s joking about it! She’s really funny!” XD)
They’re bad the first half of the year, then they start realizing they need to learn a whole bunch of statistics to make sense of their data and turn sad.
Yeah I read them as socially awkward and has maybe been painfully misinterpreted in the past. I have sympathy for anyone who employs this kind of awkward overly precise language because I am someone who does this out of anxiety and has been made fun of for it many times in the past because people think I’m being annoying/arrogant when really I’m just stressed tf out and trying not to be misunderstood.
The real question is whether they’re a Cousin Oliver or more of a Scrappy Doo.
(That said, most of the commenters seem to like them, so maybe they’ll turn out to be a Dawn Summers. But at the moment I’m getting some serious Scrappy Doo vibes.)
That or they (he, she, xi, ?) has had a lot of experience with these sorts of potential conversational landmines, and so deliberately takes steps to walk around them.
Everybody likes Booster, because they haven’t seen them being shitty yet. Everyone puts on their best face when they first meet people. We’ll get to know them eventually, give Willis time.
That’s how I read it, yeah. He seems like a big ol’ ray of sunshine for the most part, and aside from Joyce and now Becky, that isn’t really how this hall acts.
Maybe that is what Reed Hall needs to change status quo. Not everyone is a jerk like our main cast, or maybe Booster has their own problems and doesn’t want people to know about them.
Somehow I feel like Booster’s perceptive ability is part of their own issue or issues, minor and/or major. A way for them to deflect or project onto others.
Just a theory I’m throwing out there. If Booster turns out alright I’d love them even more.
Actually plausible, yeah. Apart from their name and ‘why I changed roommates’, we have no actual information about them, and the redirect goes straight to Lucy and not back to themself.
(Also, I’m gonna guess from the facial expressions last strip, it is not hard to tell from Walky’s tone that the bluntness yesterday and Tuesday is coming from a place of hurt. That was a frown, not a joke. This, kind of a joke, but more that Walky doesn’t want to help with moving in because work.)
I could be wrong but I’m thinking maybe anxiety. That overly outwardly confident and precise way of carefully wording things seems like it might be covering up a loooot of internal anxiety.
They remind me of something mentioned by the late Frank Zappa on on a 1983 edition of the David Letterman show about “Brown Lipstick In The Corporate Suite”!
Could’ve used the words cis or hereto lol. And as far as we know the other 2 people in this strip are cishet, as are sal, Joe, Jacob, idr all the names but lots of the cast
Sarah, Amber, and Dorothy by all indications, and Joyce… if she isn’t fully straight, I don’t think it’s become obvious to her yet or outside the ‘oh huh my best friend is a lesbian who had a crush on me that explains my idea of female friendships looking like I’m gay to outsiders!’ (Actually thinking about that… it just now occurred to me that Sal ALSO has a best friend who had a crush on her she didn’t know about. Granted, she’s not as touchy-feely to begin with and wasn’t nearly as sheltered, but… huh.)
Like, it’s a pretty sizable chunk of the main cast, really.
(Incidentally, *twitches in queer autistic at that use of the world normal.* I was gonna be fine with leaving it at Beef’s comment but actually no, it’s a sore spot for me on multiple levels, I’m bringing it up.)
Sorry about that, but at my age I’m not too sure what the appropriate terms are today (or what they will be by next week) …. so I have to fall back on the terms we used back in the ’60s and ’70s.
“I used to be with ‘it’, but then they changed what ‘it’ was. Now what I’m with isn’t ‘it’ anymore and what’s ‘it’ seems weird and scary. It’ll happen to you!”
Going by the cast page as of today, 3/6 of the men are cis and straight, and 8/15 of the women. At least as of current knowledge, I remember some speculation about Malaya’s gender identity, and we all joke about Joyce.
Malaya has talked about questioning her gender identity. It seemed to be kind of flippant at first, but got revisited more seriously. She’s also very likely not straight.
(Can you even be straight if you’re non-binary? What would that mean?)
There’s also been speculation about Walky’s sexuality, sparked by various comments of his. I think that’s more just his snark than anything, but he’s certainly comfortable joking about not being straight.
I read them as enby too but I don’t think it’s appropriate to make a big deal about correcting someone’s pronouns until the character has actually indicated that they care.
Booster is in a male dorm and hasn’t asked to be referred to with they/them so I think it’s not unreasonable for someone to use he/him. Some enby people literally don’t care about pronouns. (Before anyone tries to gatekeep me, I’m enby and am in that camp.)
Sure, some people don’t care, I’m cis male and I get misgendered on the phone all the time, bothers me not at all. As far as that goes, I’m not picky about my name either, “What do you go by?” followed by some options is a pretty common question, my response is “Eh, any of those are fine, ‘hey you’ works too.”
Yeah, this tends to be the case more often than not. The people doing the correcting tend to be pretty matter of fact about it, while people who are corrected get defensive. Most people won’t get offended or upset if you use the wrong pronoun on accident, even trans and nonbinary people. It may sting or be annoying, but unless it’s intentional, most won’t be upset.
Not to worry though, since the subject hasn’t been specifically introduced in-comic, so if, like me, you don’t obsessively follow the other sources, it was very reasonable to question.
It has not come up in-comic. It may be so, but I don’t expect anyone to read the bio.
I believe assuming someone’s preferred pronoun is common and harmless. I don’t expect (or want) people to ask me first what I prefer to be called before telling them my name. If they guess right, that’s fine. If they guess wrong, it’s my choice whether I correct them.
Correcting someone is also pretty harmless, though. Especially when the correction is pretty matter of fact and neutral like it was here. If someone accidentally called Walky a she and was corrected, you wouldn’t see a bunch of people jumping in to discuss the validity of the correction. It would be as simple as “whoops, my bad.”
Why can’t we do that when the person is correcting with they/them pronouns?
I have a feeling Booster will be the exact opposite of Mike in almost every single way and thats gonna cause a few outbursts from several cast members.
I’m guessing nothing happened to Billie, though she and a Ruth may have broken up.
Ruth was talking about people leaving her floor. She said there was only one person who left her floor, and Dorothy reminded her that Billie also left her floor.
Well, for a reasonable guess at how long before we find out what happened to Billie, take the time before we found out happened to Mike and use that as an estimate.
If Billie’s still going to IU, then she’s likely still Lucy’s roommate based on how everyone is conveniently getting the same dorms, so we could find out more much quicker than if she had been cut to a standard satellite character.
Not so much ‘convenient’ as ‘pretty standard’ – if you ask to change roommates, that’s one thing, but between fall and spring semesters a lot of schools don’t reassign rooms if the roommates are still fine with each other, not if they can help it. Saves everyone some work. (It’s not uncommon, at least from my experience, for schools to let you keep some things in your room over the winter break, since it tends to be about a month/month and a half. With the obvious caveat of ‘if something gets lost or stolen in that time that’s a risk you took’ and such.)
Thank you, the whole way this thing is being handled is kinda…idk it’s hard to describe, tbh being drip fed introductions is agonizing for me lol, if I want to wait for a result for days on end I’ll go play animal crossing..Probably gonna take a break from the comic for a week or two and come back to catch up.
Working full time as an essential worker is stressful enough.
Take care of yourself! 2020 is just terrible and we all just need to do what we need to do. This comic will be here. I’ve got a different comic I’m going to go back to in a few months, it’s just too dark right now. I’m sure they’ll all be OK probably but reading the comic one day at a time is just too much.
I mean I think the question is more about the way this is being treated by Willis then Walky. Walky has no reason to be tasteful about the guy who objectively treated him like shit around people who didn’t no him.
Willis isn’t brushing over it at all. We’ve just seen the first character react to it in a manner that is typical for that character. We will almost certainly see other characters react as the story progresses.
Also, Willis might not be writing the comic you thought he was. “Dumbing of Age” is not be the story about how Mike died. Except for Amber and Ethan, none of the characters knew this guy for more than about eight weeks, right? Mike has been dead longer than he was Walky’s roommate.
Was he really “tastless” about it before the last pannel in this strip?
The other comment just felt like he was beeing up front about it. It can be easier than to wait for the inavetable “so what happend to your last room mate?” question.
He’s being really blunt about it, but up until this last panel it didn’t feel flippant. (‘My roommate died. I kind of had to be alone.’ doesn’t imply a whole lot of tone, but taken with the way he continued to shut Lucy down and the way he says it immediately with a frown after Booster discusses their previous roommate, there’s definitely a ‘if I mention the elephant in the room immediately then maybe we can stop talking about this thing that hurts’ element.)
I mean, he’s also had about two months to come back every night to an empty room. (We don’t know when exactly Mike died or when his parents packed his stuff – and hoo boy, THERE’S something you don’t want to be present for – but ‘Mike’s side of the room, still set up but devoid of Mike’ does not sound like a huge improvement over ‘empty’ given the circumstances!) He didn’t like Mike, Mike was never really pleasant to him, but this is probably the first time Walky’s had a peer die, and he would be reminded of that fact every time he came back to his room. I suspect that’s a complicating factor in his ability to deal with it. Joyce and Sarah and Dorothy could all feel shocked and terrible for their friends but start moving on in that time. Becky might have had some complicated emotions knowing her Terrible, Recently-Dead Dad had a role in it, but that’s already a mess of complicated emotions. Walky tends to avoid or deflect from the things that hurt him, but he couldn’t avoid or deflect that empty desk.
*their* way of talking. (Correcting people on the internet about a fictional character is so much easier than correcting people about myself in real time)
ikr? got misgendered by a bus driver yesterday (though it hurts a lot less to me when it is someone like that, who I never expect to see or recognize me again)
I get ‘not everyone has checked the cast page or Twitter,’ and I think the confirmation of they/them pronouns on Patreon was on the early update tier, but at the same time, if you’re in the comments and this discussion’s been going on for the last day with people giving multiple sources for ‘use they,’ don’t… don’t act surprised by that.
Am I seriously the only one who reads down the comments before starting my own? Because if so, huh.
I dont want to casually find out Mike is definitely dead or if he was murdered ( probably ) or whether amber is in an asylum , Bille was arrested for drunk driving etc, in slow drips in casual conversation about other things for the next 3 years.
after the previous comic semester it just feels like cheating.
Willis cant you just do a Star Wars Crawl ?
Now we know Ethan and Amber are gone and why ( mikes only friends ) .
This is the kinda thing I saw coming as soon as the time skips started happening. It works for Willis and a bunch of the readers, but it’s not to my taste. Still, ain’t like I have too many other things to do during the pandemic hours.
Another thing , Is this the Right Way to introduce a brand new Trans masc or Nonbinary Male character … ?
i feel like you dont cross All these streams / tropes
This strip Confirms BURY YOUR GAYS, and a Queerbaiting/ shipteasing of Dannyx Ethan for 5 years !!!
and we know per cannon Danny discovered his Bisexuality to make it easier to write for Ethan .
I invested a lot of trust in that story line, as did many other readers
and to have it confirmed in the 2nd strip of a BRAND NEW QUEER , pinks wearing character ( NO hate on Booster ) it cheapens their introduction for me, and tokens them.
What it does is Lampshape that Booster is a hand picked token to replace two queer male characters, and the only Gay Male- male relationship of main characters which was written to have any emotional content.
( I am not objecting to the introduction nonbinary and Transmasc characters but I think Booster deserved better intro than to be a coded replacement )
Booster isn’t replacing anything. There’s no indication they’re taking anyone else’s role in the story. Hell, we don’t know for a fact Ethan isn’t going to be back. We just know we haven’t seen him yet.
There’s also no confirmation we won’t get more on Danny/Ethan. It might take a while given how their last conversation went, but they’d hardly be alone in being the only couple that had one person say something super fucked up to the other (Ruth/Billie anyone?)
Ethan’s still on the cast page, as well. He’s gonna be grieving, I’m sure, and there was a definite strain between him and Amber, but I don’t think he or Jacob are done with the rest of the cast.
The time skip might even help Danny/Ethan as a possibility. Danny being not a total asshole, I’m gonna bet he felt like absolute SHIT and did some groveling to Ethan (and Amber) as soon as he heard the news. Having a couple months there means he could give them some space and we don’t have years before seeing him interact with two of his most significant friends again (at least without him feeling like absolute shit.)
Mike was also on the cast page up until yesterday. Clearly, Willis is using the cast page to tease out these drips of information and screw with our heads, so I wouldn’t really put any stock in what’s written there.
But There was no Bury your gays* or queerbaiting. They got to be real and matter to each other, even in the midst of addiction and suicidal impulses.
Yes there is “No Confirmation” . It can be mentioned in passing in Booster as a joke , and get removed from the cast page that day.
that also tells me not to commit to Booster as a character. I didnt think Mike was dead yesterday either. But here we are.
No disrespect intended, but methinks you’re waving that BYG flag a mite early. Willis is just one person, the plot moves slowly and he is likely feeling very cautious with how he handles his characters relationships specifically because he’s sensitive to the community and doesn’t want to do what you are flatly accusing him of. Willis is literally (actually literally) in the midst of introducing a non-binary character, gave us a deeper female relationship than hollywood typical and is handling teen/early 20s death. I know this generation is supposed to be woke and sensitive, but that doesn’t negate patience being a virtue.
Danny and Ethan DO matter to each other. They haven’t gotten together yet and, given how their last conversation turned out, it may still be a long while.
I don’t see it. We saw the end of his relationship with Dorothy and that was pretty awful, but we didn’t see much of what led up to that.
He’s certainly passive in his interests, which is common in Nice Guys, but I can’t think of anything in his relationship with Amber or his non-relationship with Ethan that showed anything of the entitlement of the Nice Guy. He’s jealous of Ethan, but not possessive beyond that. And he’s never tried to claim he’s entitled to sex or affection from any of them.
see their Silhouettes? Thts almost definitely Joe in back.
( unless he also been killed offscreen by Amber and we are getting a New tall Jew to be Mikes replacement )
During the time-skip Ethan and Danny got married. Their parents will no longer pay for their college, and so Ethan is working (and so is not currently part of the cast) while Danny goes to school and once he graduates Ethan will start going to school until Danny runs off with Billie.
Because the whole cast grieving would make the strip depressing for DECADES of real time and he doesn’t want to do it. One or two cast members still in the deepest part of grief is a lot more manageable.
The silhouettes are not the be all and end all of the cast. That’s not a fakeout.
This is a good read. Booster isn’t just a narrative replacement for Mike though — they’re also a type inversion of Mike’s brand. Piercingly insightful about people’s psychology, but nice about it? Which other character’s very first interaction with others started with casually psychoanalyzing them? How can attentive readers not see what’s happening here?
Eh, honestly I think having a new character that’s like, a weird mirror of another character that just left and that they’re filling the role of is sorta neat.
But the weird thing to me is, this actually doesn’t seem to be the case at all. Willis said on twitter that the silhouettes weren’t actually supposed to be too misleading and that Booster’s looking like Mike was just a coincidence, and even after he realized it he figured people would still figure out they’re not Mike because of the glasses.
I guess what you said specifically could still be true, but it’s still a bit surprising to me that the visual similarity at least doesn’t seem to be intentional.
Well, I’m sure it was supposed to require a little guessing and speculation about who’s who and if the more vague silhouettes are new characters, but at the very least Willis seemed to be saying that Booster wasn’t designed to look like Mike in the silhouette.
From what we’ve seen, half the cast members revealed so far had pretty significant new haircuts. Billie seems likely to have gotten a cut in the timeskip as well, there seems to have been a subtle change in how Joyce’s haircut is drawn, and Dorothy and Joe both got their new looks fairly recently and while they were pretty frazzled in-story – this is I think the first cast lineup showing them with the new looks. Ruth is smiling in her art, genuinely smiling, for I think the first time ever in New Storyline Baseline Art.
But also, I think this is a lineup of, well, New Storyline Character Models. Ethan being absent suggests he’s not in this particular one – if he and Amber are strained and she’s deliberately giving him space, that makes sense. And since his roommate is Jacob (definitely still a relevant character, not one who needs to be established immediately post-timeskip) I can see this particular storyline not working out to put him back in the others’ way. That doesn’t mean he’s not on-campus – we go arcs without seeing Lucy, Joe, or Carla, after all – but it does suggest he’s not getting a checkin every storyline the way virtually every story includes Amber, Billie and Ruth, or Joyce in some capacity. (The thing is, I’m not sure he WAS before this, but strain with Amber and Danny means he may not be worked in as quickly.)
Like, based off who’s remaining: Malaya is Sal’s roommate, and Carla will almost certainly visit as a result. Danny and Joe are roommates, and while I usually consider them more support cast than main, they’re also the original two Roomies protagonists so if nothing else, tradition mandates they show up. (They may also be getting a cast upgrade with the soft reboot to more consistently carry their own storylines, as could Carla.) Amber and Dina are roommates. Billie’s a slight outlier in that Lucy and Ruth have both shown up first, but they both have good story reasons to do so and neither of them has been shown in their own room yet.
So I’d expect a bit of a downgrade from Ethan, at least in this next book, but not a permanent one by any means. (Amber and Joyce hopefully having started to work through their most immediate traumas, and Becky no longer having to worry about the election, both kind of open the plot docket a bit for other characters to get more spotlight time, too. Maybe the men’s wing finally gets some more presence?) Until we see Amber saying he’s taking a semester off, I’d have hope – and the absolute shittiness of his parents makes me think he’d go back, especially since he has an established friend group outside Mike and Amber here and at home there’d be nothing but ghosts and memories. (I’d expect to see him around Joyce for a bit before having non-awkward interactions with Amber and Danny, personally, but Ethan’s casual flings were definitely framed by him as ‘safer’ than a boyfriend in terms of upsetting/Not Mentioning to Naomi. The way in which that’s unresolved says to me it’s not over yet by a long shot, and he’s not going to grieve Mike and be sad forever.)
I can’t promise Danny/Ethan’s endgame – I’m not willing to say Dina/Becky is, and they’re my favorite – but I think they’ll reconcile eventually (Amber and Sal could, after all) and that if Ethan has a longterm relationship with someone else, it will be a relationship that developed organically itself.
That said, taking a step back for a week or two and catching up once we’ve got everyone moved in again might be a good idea as well. One strip a day is pretty slow for a cast reveal, and most discussions merit at least two.
They aren’t a narrative replacement for Mike at all. There’s no indication they’ll serve an even remotely similar role other than ‘Walky’s roommate’ which….is not a big deal. Someone was always going to take that role.
I wasn’t asking your for education, I was asking you to justify your claim that that’s an applicable trope. As the page says,
> However, sometimes gay characters die in fiction because, well, sometimes people die. There are many Anyone Can Die stories: barring explicit differences in the treatments of the gay and straight deaths in these, it’s not necessarily odd that the gay characters are dying. The occasional death of one in a Cast Full of Gay is unlikely to be notable, either.
yes you are asking for an education and being …. ( ugh )
For most of this comic Ethan was the only Gay Male character.
That meant NO M-M ships.
Which by your bias, is something which is NOT important to you.
I was OK with it. Mike was queerin in name only. and Danny given a Bi revelation to shiptease ( queerbait )
< and a bunch of very very minor gay male characters were added to the background whos lifes we dont follow or care about )
" I was asking you to justify your claim that that’s an applicable trope."
Yeah doing that would involve educating you all about the trope, its history, gay representation in fiction UGH. keeping reading tv tropes
You are prob straight and thinking im griping at killing off an edglord. I' mnot. Or that gay characters cant be killed off.
but that totally misses the point, it misunderstands what Queerbaiting and Bury Your gays function in fiction to readers.
it functions to deny full life representation in fiction. To punish Gay lives for being gay. To deny them even a Brief happy ending.
( and thats what happened here )
But with your everyones gay snark, you cant see it. It doesnt effect you.
"There are many Anyone Can Die stories" And this aint it.
Its a NO ONE can die story, so dont waive that in my face.
I'm not reading this to watch Willis gleefully murder Ethans ex lovers.
Hi gay man. Very familiar with the tropes you’re describing but think you might be overreacting here personally. Willis clearly doesn’t have any issue writing in queer characters and Mike’s death doesn’t have any of those hallmarks.
As for queerbaiting, also disagreed. Ethan isn’t possibly gay in a “will they wont they” with Danny, he’s an out gay man who is perfectly happy hooking up with dudes. He just also happens to have a mutual crush with another character. The problem with queerbaiting is that is never actually provides representation, Ethan has confirmed his sexuality.
I feel like you intended to be respectful, so I am going to show you specifically why I disagree.
I dont think its possible for me to convince you off all of this, as we have different life experiences .
Youyve misunderstood the terms or have an incomplete understanding.
“He just also happens”
No its on purpose per the author. Your conception trivializes what it means to be gay and have real life experiences. its not incidental, its essential.
“n out gay man who is perfectly happy hooking up with dudes” for a week before the kidnapping maybe.
Much of the strip he was closeted. That was recent event enabled by MIke, none of the “dudes” are main or secondary characters. or worth showing.
and if they arent worth showing, THAT is NOT representation, its backstory.
“to have a mutual crush with another character”
NO , The only gay emotional connections he had were with Danny and briefly MIke.
“will they wont they” with Danny” is the what has been teased for 5= years.
danny had his bi revelation because Willis had No One on the main cast to put to write danny in with Relationships with . .
“Mike’s death doesn’t have any of those hallmarks” What hallmarks?
You can like writing queer characters and like killing them off FIRST.
( how many straight students are currently dead? )
………….
. thats the only hallmark you need for “Bury Your Gays” .
Has Willis ever explicitly said he wouldnt kill off any gay characters in DOA ?
( Not any characters, but specifically LGBT ) …
Has he ever made a special point to say this, when putting one jeopardy?
If you can remember this; and the only student to die in strip is a Queer male its a fair criticism.
When an author says this outside the strip it changes the relationship to LGBT readers. Its OK to believe them. Mike is not my favorite character, but this changes the type of story i am reading. It means that no longer holds.
yes, I get to feel this is a crappy way to be told that. Backhand. Offstory. Out of sight.
what about the Queer fans that LOOOOVE MIke ?
But if you tell fans ‘this is the comic where we DONT do that’ its a fair criticism if you do .
i think you are not as familiar with these tropes as you thought.
It Boggles my mind that you think Representation **is complete** with making a character LGBT per cannon. Thats not representation , thats the definition of Tokenism.
( I am NOT saying Willis created token characters , im saying you are using a token definition for representation )
YES, you can make a character gay and still queerbait with them or shiptease.
( I notice Dumbledore isnt getting it on those prequels ).
Queerbaiting isnt just one thing. The Queers being baited here arent necessary characters either, its also the audience .
You denying the full definition implies I should be happy with teases, inferences, OFF camera, out of sight gay stories , backstories or throwaway / disposable characters, subtexts: ie. scraps. But thats exactly my point, that is still queerbaiting.
“Willis clearly doesn’t have any issue”
I am *NOT* attacking Willis as a person. ( We all have “issues” but im not going to talk past him or for him. )
There is no need to inject this adhominen . I am not attacking Willis.
You are confusing the author for the tropes. They exist independently .
But No one is a saint here:
Authors can write themselves into a corner.
forget plot threads. Kill off characters they are bored with . Tease relationships but never fulfill them. Who gets redemption arcs, and who gets run over by trucks and Volvos ( walkyverse ) ?
But who does that normally happen to?
What if I wasnt overreacting ( I AM of course!! ; but not about queerbaiting, my overreaction is I was tricked to care about plotline of comic characters, being invested in fiction . VERY Guilty there . I can be honest with my feelings. I probably shouldnt care )
what if there was more to representation ?
especially when they spend most of the story sad, miserable , closeted and celibate.
Now think about WAlky-Dorothy , or Danny- Amazigirl or Walky-Amber . do you see any differences here?
A problem with Queerbaiting is Authors get queer representation credit up front. But they dont have to spend it ( on you ) .
Until Mike got with Ethan he barely even qualified as queer representation. He didnt talk about it. He never had people over when walky was around. it was segregated and closeted even inside the strip.
You are proving the point , Willis wrote in cannon gay and bi characters so you think that ought to be enough.
>>>>>>>A large part of coming out is finding someone its worth it to come out to or for. <<<<<<
That is what I thought I was invested in reading with Danny and Ethan.
Maybe thats a level of representation you cant comprehend .
But it is what I believed I was reading.
This is what Ethan meant to Danny too .
But if you werent expecting it its not because I Projected it onto the strip. This also functioned to make Danny More likeable . He was probably the most hated character before then. ( for being clueless, spineless and trivializing others feelings. )
Another problem with this is you think you can tell me I am Not baited, After i EXPLICITLY SAID I WAS.
i would know.
Its not Theoretical, its actual , proven, objective.
If someone makes you hungry by baking cookies on purpose, thats real isnt it?
What if they Hold a hot cookie over your face 3 times ? is that Cookie baiting?
Ok what about 20x ? what about 50x ?
What if they Hold that cookie over your face 3 THOUSAND friggin times?
after 3000 times would it qualify as cookie baiting ?….if you never get to take a bite?
( dont you tell me there are other cookies somewhere else or at home )
Thats NOT a Hypothetical ok? ITs MORE than 3000.
I get you dont feel it, but its real. ( if YOu felt it it probably wouldnt be called gaybaiting would it ?) .
One of the main Banners Across the strip , Multiple times per week over 5 years is as picture of Ethan pouncing on Danny, ( implied danny Gets erect ) and discovers his attraction.
Sometimes this title banner showed up 4-5 times in a week. Hells YEAH the strip has been queerbaiting this ship right in its title for **YEARS** as a form of self identity.
This is a form of ADVERTISING. After hundreds of times it changed my relationship to the strip. it changed my expectations.
Thats not entirely my fault, thats good faith.
You clearly have good faith in willis and DOA, so why shouldnt I?
I think hes a good person.
I think he works really hard. i think he cares about being a good ally.
When I am told something thousands of times, why wouldn't I believe it?
Maybe im too impressionable, but gives me a level of immersion that makes webcomics worth it for to read.
If its NOT TRUE , can I still offer good faith the author will write another M-M ship **I care about** ?
Can I offer good faith its not a tease, a setup for dead gay or queerbait ship?
I could literally DIE before that happens again:
The strip is over 10 years old.
Human Life is ONLY so long. Its a Pandemic.
We got climate change natural disasters, and fascism. Most strips take Hiatuses before 10 years.
As another gay man, I totally agree with adam Black. Having three MLM main characters and killing one of them off is killing of 1/3 of their population. Ethan isn’t on the silhouette page, which likely means he won’t be around as a major character much, if at all. And Danny torpedoed all of his chances with him, putting paid to a relationship that has been teased and built up for years.
Saying it’s not bury your gays because there are still queer characters utterly misses the point. There is a difference between the treatment of female queer characters and male queer characters, in general, and in this particular comic. The queer female characters get to have fully fleshed-out romantic arcs. Ethan and Danny are attracted to each other, but agree not to date to spare the feelings of one of the female characters (who has literally given her blessing), Ethan bangs Mike, Ethan bangs some dudes, Mike catches feelings/realises he had feelings all along, Mike dies. They’re not comparable. And the background characters don’t count either.
I was really interested in Mike. He was a queer male character who wasn’t a good person. He was a total asshole, but he had depth and potential for growth. And then that potential was thrown out and he just died. I don’t understand the point in building up his character, just to unceremoniously kill him off. And I don’t see how the treatment of queer male characters in this story isn’t a massive problem.
If you make a factual claim, it’s on you to support the claim. Otherwise you’re just some voice making baseless assertions on the Internet.
There aren’t many gay males because there aren’t many *males*. The cast page has 21 people, 6 of whom are male (or nb for Booster). Of those 6, one is gay (Ethan) and two were bi (Danny, Mike) (assuming Booster took Mike’s spot, I’d never looked at the cast page before.)
Of the 15 women… I was wrong about majority, ‘only’ 7 are known lesbian or bi. 4 of them were in active relationships before the timeskip. There are even more as minor characters (the polycule) but not cast-page important.
So you’re saying that killing 1 out of 10 queer characters, and one for whom being bi was the least defining aspect of his character, is “Bury Your Gays”? Yeah, I’m going to continue to disagree. I’m not happy with Mike’s death or how it was handled, but it’s got nothing to do with his being bi. Literally half the male characters of the main cast were queer!
I also note that this isn’t the first Willis universe Mike has died in.
DRs, there are actual University level classes on Queer tropes in fiction, queer coding in Film .
Its clear you have multiple misunderstandings, including what “a Trope” is.
You cant MATH your way out of a trope. thats not how they work.
>>>>Its NOT empirical, its qualitative <<<<<
TV TrOPEs has an excellent page on that. see "top level" tropes.
( It doenst help that many people including progressives are reductive about this, treating a mere trope as inherently radioactive ) .
"it’s on you to support the claim" NOT TO YOU i dont. thats a level of respect you must earn.
"some voice making baseless assertions on the Internet."
.
Heavens me, that just sounds AWFUL. I would hate to be mistaken by you for some anonymous Rando making Baseless assertions on the internet.
I beg a thousand pardons , What are you a doctor of again?
“So you’re saying ”
Nope YOU are saying that , rather sarcastically.
“that killing 1 out of 10 queer characters”
look you would HAVE TO Pretend you care about reading M-M fiction, and you made it obvious you do not. It doesnt matter to you.
How am I supposed to fill that hole in your heart?
The best i could have hoped was willis finished telling that story in a way that made you care.
thats not a mathematical Proof, thats a type of empathy for experiences and people different than your own.
>>>one for whom being bi was the least defining aspect of his character<<< That isnt True.
I'll leave it to Willis to tell you otherwise.
You think this purely because of the Gay stuff was mostly hidden from you, or happened between scenes or was inserted as backstory ( just like real life ) .
That You would have this upside down viewpoint of LGBT people from this type of representation is EXACTLY what is wrong with it.
All Your fiction is lying to you about LGBT people in real life . Mostly by omission.
These are elements of queerbaiting. and BI Invisibility .
You are accidentally pointing out something thats wrong and dont even know it.
Willis has made a point to show that he's been bedding boys all the way back to high school in the earliest timeline of the story.
"I also note that this isn’t the first Willis universe Mike has died in."
Its not the First Universe a gay character or specifically Ethans lover was run over.
THATS the point. LBGT readers were specifically told by Willis this is the Universe/ comic where that doesnt happen. This was EXPLICIT.
Thats why your homophobic division is irrelevant .
How many students are dead? just a Pansexual Male. thats it?
the only dead student is LGBT , than yes , its a fair trope to say "bury your gays" , per its literal definition.
You ONLY need 1 . Just 1.
It IS the first time a student dies and we find out in passing as backstory and offscreen.
what does that sound like to you ?
Its just another omission of this character the story doesn't focus on.
By your own logic , the death of this character would be a least defining aspect of his character too ( instead of the most ) because you are confusing the focus of the story ( an authorial choice ) with whats essential or definging to the character .
"The cast page" is in FLUX. Mike was still on it the other day.
Its like Black Guy dies in the Horror movie first. Then the heterosexual kids who had sex ( as punishment ) . These are actual tropes. You may not understand this but the author does, because Walky started explaining that trope to Joyce.
is “Bury Your Gays”? yup. We are rare and special creatures with secret lives and initiations you will never understand.
But you only have to Kill ONE …. ( after you take us by the hand outside the text and promise the audience specifically you will not KIll even one gay ) for it to count.
Those are the rules. You dont have the authority to challenge it.
This is because there is less of us in real life, we are more likely to be murdered or attacked, and underrepresented in fiction .
****************************************
Finally what you said is Narratively FALSE.
You made a ridiculous claim MIke sexuality is disconnected from his death, "nothing to do with his being bi." when it was actually the motivation for putting himself in harms way!!
The story made it clear that his machinations backfired and he actually had feelings for ethan. Or he knew this and sacrificed them anyway so Ethan would fully come out all the way. He actually had his feelings a little hurt by Danny at the party.
Then he deliberately Led Toedad and hammerface away from the party where he thought Ethan was to protect him. its his entire motivation for heroic sacrifice.
its also lowkey homophobic that you made this error: Straight people never misunderstand heroic sacrifices for Het ships/ feelings.
While gays are fed a starvation diet of subtext and innuendo , you have been overfed by heavy handed text in compensation. You have been harmed by it and not know, because its made you numb ; this is about qualities .
I proved your claims false, tried to explain your false definition of a trope, told you where to look it up, reminded you Willis made a specific out of text claim of no dead gays ,
and showed you conclusively Mike Pansexuality was essentially tied to his hospitalization.
If you missed this you should reread it again from the party.
and in the future:
“I was asking you to justify your claim that
that’s an applicable trope.”
is a demand a total stranger write you an essay in comparative fiction.
its Obnoxious as hell. i sent you to TV tropes to self educate . ( i know you didnt open all the examples )
As a big tvtropes reader, going to have to disagree with you. Bury Your Gays does not apply here. Mike wasn’t killed off for being pan, nor was he one of only a few LGBTQ characters in the comic, nor was he the only person to die in the strip.
I actually kind of have to agree with adam Black on this. The cast does not have many gay male characters. It was 3. Ethan, Mike, and Danny revealed to be bi. adam Black is definitely passionate about this topic but I don’t think that makes the criticism invalid. In ten years DoA has not presented a male couple in a functioning, long term relationship. That is a flaw. Mike and Ethan was a brief fling, and while it did receive a tasteful porn which I think in DoA is a good validation. That’s rpemium content and possibly not very appealing to people looking for relationship representation beyond sex.
Background characters are just that. Background characters. Ethan briefly hooking up with “Finger guns” guy is cool but no one cares about “Finger guns” guy. It means nothing compared to seeing the details of other relationships like Dorothy or Walky, or Amber, ect enjoying being couples, arguing, being cute. Especially the girl couples, one of which is still in a committed and working relationship Becky and Dina. (I’d say Billie and Ruth too but I’m not certain how that’s turned out now)
I don’t think it’s intentional. DoA from the start has been a comic more focused on the girl’s stories and perspective so it’s kind of understood at least for me that the guys get a little short served, but it can feel a little bitter to now have one of the potential male relationships basically taken off the table for now considering how slow paced this story is.
I do have some hope for Booster though. I don’t know their sexuality or if they’re even into romance at all but there’s at least potential now for another run at a male couple in the main cast maybe.
Adam Black, thank you so much for putting words and passion into something that I have neither of right now. I share your anger and disappointment, and I’m so frustrated that Booster’s introduction and character is now forever tangled up with association of this really really unfortunate decision.
Because at the end of the day, this WAS a conscious decision by a cisgender heterosexual man to have this character’s death be delivered in this fashion.
Doesn’t change the core point (or at least, I don’t remember hearing them say they’re not heterosexual,) but I do think it’s worth pointing out. It is DEFINITELY a flaw of DOA that we’ve gone so long without a proper m/m romance. That said, given Amber and Sal could make up for WAY worse, I don’t think Ethan and Danny are sunk forever. (We are DEFINITELY getting a good grovel, though. There’s a reason it’s a thing in romance novels.) And I don’t think Ethan’s going to grieve exclusively for the next ten years, either way, nor that he wants to only have casual sexual encounters. Willis is definitely imperfect, but I do tend to trust them to try.
Take a break if you need it – this year’s certainly been hell, and I’m making predictions that are fairly long-game – but the other thing Booster’s introduction does is say ‘brand new characters can join the main cast now.’ I’m hoping that means some more gay dudes in meaningful roles, because lord knows we need them, and with that, an actual romance even if Danny/Ethan is slow burning again. And I do think Ethan’s story isn’t done.
Bury Your Gays doesn’t apply here. Mike wasn’t killed off for being a sinful pansexual.
Queerbaiting also doesn’t apply here. There’s enough representation to show that Willis doesn’t intend to string people along with hints and vagueries to go “Well maybe these two guys are attracted to each other.” Showing attraction between a confirmed gay man and a confirmed bi man and then having the gay man decide he wants to bang his best friend is not queerbaiting.
The low number of queer male characters of significance and not having a solid m/m romance is a genuine issue with the comic, so I get why queer male characters is being considered distinct from queer female ones.
At the same time, yeah, I have seen the discussions of Steven Universe queerbaiting by pairing Peridot up more with Lapis instead of Amethyst, or the existence of queer characters that do not have unambiguous on-screen relationships (by whatever weird metric gets used,) so I get why that one in particular is getting pushback since it’s become used for ‘my ship isn’t canon’ even as similar, equivalent relationships are. There is no equivalent ship for Ethan/Danny or Ethan/Mike, so if Danny’s sunk forever and Mike’s dead, then yeah, that is a problem. I’m hoping Danny’s not sunk forever, and I’m hoping adding a new character to the main cast means we’ll get more queer male characters as well in prominent positions soon to lessen the need for Ethan to be paired up with someone, but those are just that: hopes. Frustration is merited there.
Just gonna throw in with the chorus of people here: This isn’t Bury Your Gays, and it isn’t Queerbaiting. Just because you’ve seemingly created an arbitrary checklist of a couple of tropes doesn’t mean it’s using or actively/passively engaging in those tropes.
I’d probably like his introduction better if we watched them walk in , use phone / text.establishing him as a viewpoint character ( like so many other charcters have been shown to do )
and not someone of importance through mere relation to other characters.
or to lampshade a narrative minefield.
ie a sidekick … or worse the dreaded Queer Campy sidekick.
But Its not my comic. Maybe Willis has narrative fatigue and wants to end it.
Frankly, I have no idea how ANYONE mistook that silhouette for Mike. The hair was totally different and, as Willis pointed out, was obviously wearing glasses. I can get the other one but Booster’s looked nothing like Mike to me.
I think it’s understandable. I originally though it could’ve been Mike. Most of the cast getting new hairstyles shakes things up and coming out of a coma is more reason to have new hair than not. Boost also has a similar head shape and build to Mike. Only now that they’re revealed do they look completely different.
Also just speaking about silhouettes this actually makes me distrust the other ones more. The one we think is Billie could be someone else now! The one next to Becky that is most likely Dina could be another girl entirely. Maybe wearing a big fluffy coat or something. That’s the nature of silhouettes and part of the fun of theorizing to me.
Although I admit that the Mike/Booster discourse has kind of ruined it now.
Willis has said outright they didn’t think people would mistake Booster for Mike, and none of the silhouettes are intentional fakeouts. The haircut could have theoretically been explained by those bandages on Mike’s head, but height is different. (Head shape’s subtly a bit wider for Mike than Booster, I think, but that’s also only noticeable once the full jawlines are shown. I totally get the confusion, though – if you’re only looking at the below-comic resolution, I can see missing the glasses, and from there haircut seemed much more reasonable.) So I’m pretty sure our Billie guess is a correct one. Booster was an unfortunate coincidence in being JUST similar enough in silhouette to have questions.
The little chip in the back of the hair was what made it really look like Mike for me, and the front hair seemed like it could reasonably be a shorter version of Mike’s
I still look at the silhouette version and don’t think glasses. It looks like an ear on each side, with one smaller since they’re turned partly away. Turned less so than they actually are when you see the real image.
Is Joe wearing glasses too? He’s got a bump on each side of his head.
The hair’s got the same chip and the front sticks out like Mike’s though not as impossibly.
Part of it of course is that we were looking for cast members to match the silhouettes too and there was no one existing closer than Mike.
I feel like the guy closest to the right is closer to Mike but I guess that’s just me. I thought Booster might have been Danny with a new haircut but it looked nothing like Mike to me.
I think it would help if you focused on the core issue you seem to be having, that the confirmed death of a main character was one that was one of three queer men in the cast.
Which, Mike for the longest time (since Shortpacked) was “I sleep with men because it’ll make reader laugh” and that cartoony antipathy carried over into DoA. Then we found out he had caught genuine feels for Ethan, and suddenly Mike was a real character. Now, unfortunately, we are stuck with the death of a queer male character in a cast not exactly bursting with them.
So Booster is going to point out the main characteristics of each character? Like Becky using comedy to deal with pain, Joyce being repressed, Joe being an ethical hedonist, etc.
Booster seems like they’ll bring a breath of fresh air and be good for
the cast. It will be nice having one character who isn’t emotionally scarred and traumatized, and doesn’t know the whole tragic story.
I, for one, am looking forward to learning Booster’s tragic story and how they were exiled to this planet. That and welcoming our new Martian overlords.
A character that the rest of the cast can explain to what happened in the past months?
Slightly less contrived than “As you know,…”, but only slightly…
I give them a week, strip-time, before their Tragic Backstory catches up with them.
Or they meet Dina, and bond instantly by virtue of only being crushed under the weight of societal pressures trying to force square pegs into round holes, and not terrible parents or year-long ostracization campaigns or the like. We could use some more of those!
It’s probably not what they meant, but something about the wording of the last couple lines in the first panel makes it sound like Booster is trying to use reverse psychology or something. Something along the lines of “wow that sounds like you just accidentally told me something you weren’t supposed to tell anybody about and so now you’re definitely NOT going to proceed to give me all the juicy juicy details.”
Gotta say, it’s so NICE to see fresh blood in a major role. Not that I don’t love Joyce and Amber, not that I consider Dorothy or Becky or even Dina all that similar to their Walkyverse counterparts, but Lucy was the last really major new character to join the Willis roster (Carla being a human UC) in 2012. If you want to go out to significant supporting cast, Jocelyne’s first strip is 2013.
Willis will build the plot, flesh out the characters to a mind-boggling degree, show their development into flawed but lovable adults who are struggling to overcome life’s hurdles, then just as we’re reaching the inevitable dramatic climax of their lives’ major conflicts… Willis will DIE, and his will shall stipulate that his notes be burned and that no entity shall ever be allowed to acquire the copyrights to his storyline until they expire. Thus we shall effectively be denied ever knowing the fates of our beloved cast. muwahahahahhAHHAAAAA
Yeah I’m definitely on board for Booster. I super hope they’re a theatre/drama kid.
Yesterday there was a comment about how we only accept “normalized” queer characters, who angst about the weight of their sexuality and gender identity, and that really him me hard because I’ve never thought about that.
Booster coming into the cast and being openly, unambiguously queer in a visual way that no one can turn their eyes from, I think that’s huge. It helped me realize my own shortchanging of queer characters if they “look too queer.”
Booster is probably ok, but the mixing of their introduction with the 2020 saga of is Mike dead?? kind of pollutes the atmosphere. I’ll still be checking the comic from force of habit, but this is an uncomfortable resolution to Schrodinger’s Mike.
I’d bet that Willis spent some considerable time trying to figure out how to handle this without either annoying some readers or hurting the story or both. I doubt there was a way so he decided to do what was best for the story and just take the heat from the upset readers
Ugh, I mean I hope my feelings go away and I come to like the character. But, I’m having a surprisingly strong reaction to Mike being gone and I feel like Poochie, I mean Booster is interloping, which they aren’t but still…
I uh, I think the comparison between Booster and Poochie is generally being heavily frowned upon, given that I distinctly remember there being a thread talking about it in yesterday’s comments which has now mysteriously disappeared. So yeah you probably wanna not do that.
If so, Booster’s lying about their old roommate not adhering to their chosen name.
Also, if Booster that transferred from another dorm would, in theory, should have someone somewhere (friends, classmates, teachers, administrators) on campus who knew who they were. A Booster who’s a complete stranger to everyone would stick out like a sore thumb.
Booster is clearly a highly experienced dorm roomie if they know the difference between someone being a friend and being a “friend”. That they had a degree of uncertainty about Lucy and Walky’s status augers for a situation where everyone will assume that they are in a relationship based on their behaviour.
Walky: “I’ve never had to process death or a traumatic situation like this before, and I am established to be pretty bad at dealing with social situations and just sort of blurting things out in order to address them. Hence my repeated invocation of the dead roommate I’m sort of grieving.”
Comments: “when will Walky stop literally peeing into Mike’s dead mouth. the disrespect???? Willis cancelled????”
Srsly either these folks have never personally dealt with trauma, or don’t understand that different people process trauma and grief very differently and if we’re gonna get mad about disrespecting a dead fictional character then I’d argue it’s also disrespectful to complain about how those close to him are processing their potent grief.
2.) I would understand the ire if it was, like, Danny waltzing around cracking wise, because we last saw Danny going “maybe Mike SHOULD be dead”, and there is an established antagonism there, it would be gross
But Walky? Walky and Mike were practically friends. Sure, Mike gave him shit over the breakup with Dorothy, but that was Mike’s whole fucking…brand, he was the Troll Friend. Walky knew how to deal with him.
Now he’s just…gone. Forever. And Walky doesn’t know how you deal with that, yet.
Yeah, Walky’s blunt attitude about it seems true to his character as well as a fairly realistic way to deal in general.
When my mother died (don’t smoke, kids!) I informed my friends with a group message announcing I was halfway to Batman. Talking about hard subjects in a blunt, kinda jokey way is normal for lots of folk.
Ha, sadly no. Everyone was very respectable and offered condolences. If someone had sent something like that I would have probably burst out laughing. Then cried a touch before spending way too much time trying to write a clever reply.
Yeah I am also a person for whom bloke 80% of how I cope with heavy shit is through snark and sarcasm.
I just don’t attend funerals. Not because I don’t want to commemorate the dead, but because it’s not fair to the ppl who will interpret my gallows humor as making fun of their pain.
“Practically friends” is a weird way to describe the asshole roommate you’ve kind of learned to put up with, but who sabotages you at every turn.
It’s still hard because death is always rough. And it being someone you didn’t like but who was still close to you adds a different layer of awkward guilt.
I’d argue that likely makes his feelings about the whole thing even *more* complicated, and it is 100% in character for Walky to deflect from complicated feelings using humor.
Yup! As someone who has experienced prolonged ongoing trauma and uses humor as a primary coping mechanism it really rubs me the wrong way how people are talking about how disrespectful Walky’s statements are here. They are 100% in character for him and he seems like he is having a tough time processing and trying hard to pretend he’s okay when he’s not (that sort of deflection is usually why people use this kind of humor), NOT just being rudely cavalier about someone’s tragic death.
No, it’s just this irritating modern social media phenomenon that demands that primary characters in modern entertainment be morally, behaviourally, emotionally and politically perfect at all times or they should be removed and, ideally, the creator ruined and shunned for life.
this is a weird thing to say after several days’ worth of people lamenting that mike, the character whose main purpose was to be an asshole to everyone around him, has not been treated well enough by the narrative.
There have also been plenty of commentators who made it clear that they hated Mike and that their only problem with his sudden off-screen death is that it means he never got his social comeuppance for his behaviour.
I haven’t seen that – though I come close to it if you squint weirdly.
I didn’t want Mike to git his “social comeuppance”, I wanted to see Mike deal with his own realization of how badly he’d screwed up his friends.
And I do in general dislike the “redemption through death” arc. Narratively, it’s an easy out. I’m more interested in character growth and change. Death precludes that.
I’m closer, I think – I’ve said both ‘lets him off easy’ and the discussion of how Amber and Ethan deserved better, and I wanted them to tell him off rather than martyr him – but I’m not sure I’d describe the latter as ‘social comeuppance’, that kind of implies something more widespread. Also, because Mike is fictional, and so it is narratively letting him off easy. At its core my objections are much like yours – death cuts potential off.
To be fair to BenRG, back before Mike’s life was in danger, you couldn’t express any fondness for the character in the comment section without a bunch of people dogpiling you telling you that you must be a horrible person who supports toxic abusive behavior because of fondness for a *fictional* asshole In a totally fictional context, which has no bearing on what sorts of behavior one might approve or disapprove of in real life.
Maybe newer readers or newer Mike fans aren’t aware of or don’t realize that, but it’s definitely been bizarre suddenly seeing the comments go from “Mike is horrible and so is anyone who enjoys him being in this comic” to “his death was treated terribly and he should not have been killed.” I would *assume* those two sentiments are not being made by the same groups of people, maybe readership has shifted, but definitely seems like he can’t win here.
I don’t know if he got rid of Mike because of reader complaints or because he just personally didn’t have anywhere else he wanted to go with the character, either is possible.
I’ve been a pretty harsh critic of Mike here, but I mostly objected to the commenters who claimed Mike was REALLY doing good. The “asshole sage” approach. Nothing wrong with enjoying a fictional asshole as long as you’re enjoying him as an asshole.
You can’t deny there was also always a bunch of people dogpiling on to explain how Mike was helping out by making characters face truths about themselves or some such bullshit.
I’m not fond of the way his death was handled, largely because I’ve never liked the “redemptive death” arc – it’s too simple and easy narratively. Trying to change and find a way to live with the shit you’ve done is much harder – and more of a realistic problem.
I’d been getting more interested in Mike since he showed real signs of actual feelings over Ethan and was never more so than after his realization during the fight with Blaine and Ross that he’d been behaving like Blaine to Amber. I really wanted to see where he could go from there.
That’s fair enough! I definitely wasn’t one of the people defending his behavior as actually good, I just enjoy assholes in fiction. I would hate knowing someone like that in real life, but have always been fond of kind of sympathetic villains (Spike in Buffy, Team Rocket in Pokemon, Baltar in Battlestar, etc). Not really sure why.
I also agree I definitely would’ve preferred to see a living redemptive arc, I love bad guys get truly redemptive arcs in fiction where they change and try to do better. But I can also understand why Willis may not have wanted to go that direction or spend as much time focusing on the redemption of an often problematic character in a strip that’s heavily about calling out and showing the consequences of harmful behavior.
And yeah it was specifically him showing that other side beyond being just a jerk that originally made me like him in SP! And made me excited to see where his character was going in this because that is one of my favorite types of character arcs. So it was definitely a bummer his story ended riiiiight as we were getting that.
But ah well. I respect Willis’ right to write the story he wants to write and will likely still enjoy whatever comes next.
While I understand that Walky’s way of coping is that, I feel like. This was just an insensitive way narratively to go ‘Mike died off-screen, here’s a new character, here’s Walky repeatedly bringing up that Mike died, rubbing salt in the readers’ wounds for three strips’.
It kind of further soured Booster’s introduction for me and for some others because it’s not about Walky himself but the way it comes across as mocking the reader for actually giving a damn about Mike and not feeling particularly up for Walky’s casual referencing of it or shoving a new character in everyone’s face immediately afterwards as if it doesn’t matter.
Mike’s death is a sensitive spot for the readers that expected he would live, possibly with a disability, carer or other support or wanted to see his character grow into an actually good person. Some of the readers are prickly about it because they are hurt and they are real people whose feelings actually matter, and casually dropping in the death, then new character, with constant ‘Mike’s dead’ being dropped, is a very narratively insensitive way to approach both changes for the readers that DID care about Mike and it can feel very mocking, especially with it being the punchline of the previous strip, and it being the second to last remark of this one.
I find myself in agreement. I don’t think this was the best way to introduce the death of a character because even if the immediate mourning is gone in the cast, the readers just found out and have little time to process it.
We’ll see where it goes but for now I don’t know what how much better to the narrative it is that Mike is dead than Mike living with a disability, staying in his coma until dramatically convenient, trying to actually change as a person, and more.
This is about where I’m at with this whole thing too. I wasn’t even a big fan of Mike, but after dragging out the question of whether or not Mike’s dead for months and months, and ending the last chapter on an overall optimistic note, it’s really jarring to have his death suddenly confirmed in an off-hand way and used as a punchline repeatedly.
If Willis was gonna kill Mike off anyway, I just don’t understand why they bothered leaving it an open question for so long. Resolving it quicker would’ve allowed the characters and fans of Mike a chance to mourn, and given the reveal some gravity. I get not wanting to dwell on something as heavy as grief, but even one scene addressing it before heading into the time skip would’ve, I think, made the narrative run smoother.
This doesn’t read like “Walky is having issues processing Mike’s death.” It reads like “Willis is intentionally rubbing Mike’s death in the face of people who were hoping his story would take another turn.”
Mike was an asshole. But I liked him at the end, because I identified with him after he saved Amber. I emotionally hurt someone who was very important to me when I was younger, and it took me several years to fully understand what I had done – and seriously considered suicide over it. It’s taken me close to ten years to not feel like an absolute monster all the time, every day of my life.
I understood the realization Mike had in the moments before the fall.
But no, apparently I’m overreacting.
I saw some other comments about TV Tropes and a “killing your gays” page (sorry, too worked up to look for it) and while I may not agree 100% with it, I understand where they’re coming from.
I got sick and tired of Marvel and DC comics killing off characters for drama years ago. It’s part of why I stopped reading comics for years. I had hoped Willis wouldn’t fall under that same trap. I guess I was wrong.
I think it was a waste to kill him, but I also think given the number of people in the comments who genuinely believed Mike was an ‘asshole sage’ that Mike genuinely repenting and not being an asshole at all (which is what he would’ve would’ve needed to make up for the shit he pulled on Ethan, Amber and Walky) would have gotten a lot of pushback, too. So I get WHY it happened, as little as I like it.
Honestly I’d go back and give Ethan or Amber a line last storyline about ‘the Warners asked to be alone so they can discuss options with the doctors’ or something to more clearly indicate how bad it’d gotten. (Probably not to Danny, even though it’s the easiest point – his discussion’s salvageable because Ethan’s not saying outright ‘it’s very possible he dies’ – but between each other could’ve worked.) Give the readers time to brace ourselves, and then Walky’s the blunt confirmation because we’ve had Amber and Ethan start coming to terms with it and they’re both less likely to say it outright, at least at first.
We do at least have Ruth for redemption arcs – that storyline with Rachel is definitely long game. But, sigh. Nine months of waiting was definitely too long.
Again, based on my life: Sometimes the best thing you can do for someone you’ve hurt is walk away from their lives completely and pray they can heal.. and you try to make amends for all the damage you did to them by helping others not make the same mistakes you did.
But all of this is falling on deaf ears now. (Not you specifically.)
Yeah, best case I think would have been writing Mike out – would have made sense with him spending time comatose and severely injured to be in physical therapy for well more than a semester and/or adjusting to a traumatic brain injury. But since that would also write him out, the narrative choice between ‘alive somewhere but never coming back’ and ‘dead, in a very traumatic fashion’ has one offer way more dramatic options for the castmembers close to him. (Ethan can’t hold a torch for someone who’s dead, for one thing, Walky gets confronted with 18-year-old mortality, and Amber guilt is the gift that keeps on giving. Plus Danny guilt.)
Unfortunately, it also sandbags the readers with the way it was drawn out, and basically implies the best thing Mike could do was commit suicide. Which I’ve gotta say, is terrible. I hadn’t quite connected that one until today, at least not at the top of my mind, but it is a consistent issue with the Redemption Equals Death trope and made all the worse by Mike being 18.
Yeahhhhh no. Writing him out because he is now disabled and implying that means he can no longer participate in the regular cast activities would *not* have been a better solution. That would have made me extremely uncomfortable.
People who require physical therapy don’t spend every waking moment doing said physical therapy. It’d made sense for someone with traumatic injuries to be unable to return to school right away but I don’t think just deciding that’s enough to mean his story isn’t worth focusing on anymore would send very much the wrong message.
I was one of those people who hoped he might remain in the cast with a redemption story and now as a disabled character. I am literally a disabled person, and Mike was my favorite character.
And for what it’s worth, I read this entirely as just how I would expect Walky to deal with this situation because he makes jokes in response to every serious situation (he did it when his life was in danger while kidnapped) rather than Willis trying to dismiss his readers’ feelings.
If disabled readers are frustrated by the missed representation opportunity, I can absolutely understand, but if able-bodied readers are trying to say this writing is inherently insensitive to disabled people, I would *prefer* they not speak for us, please. We are not a hive mind and I fee, uncomfortable being used as a shield to criticize a writer/artist for storytelling choices that are fairly subjective and don’t seem to have any ill-intent.
(If you are disabled and simply speaking for yourself, then my apologies, I just wasn’t sure how to read that)
And for the record, I wish Mike hadn’t been killed off, but it is worth remembering he is not a real person, he is a fictional character who exists inside Willis’ head and if he genuinely didn’t know what direction to go with his character (possibly because his brand of humor doesn’t fit as well in today’s discourse as it did back when he was created, as evidenced by the frequency with which people hated him in the comments) then I get why he killed him off.
Sure he could’ve just left him alive but rarely included him in the story but I’m not sure that’s an inherently better direction to go.
Not just “in today’s discourse”, but in a much more grounded strip, with much more focus on the psychological lives of the characters. When we’re dissecting their problems on a moment by moment basis, you just can’t have this battering ram of an asshole wander through unexamined like you could in SP! or even IW!. And once you start critically examining him, it gets ugly.
Yeah that’s basically what I meant. He doesn’t fit the tone of this comic as well as the previous ones because of the amount of careful self-reflection present in this one, and I imagine that became increasingly awkward to write.
So much as I enjoyed him, I get it.
Also it’s possible I’m taking this so well because for some reason my favorite characters always die in everything I watch/read for whatever reason so I’m used to it if not outright expecting it at this point.
In terms of meta-narrative justification: I think that kind of response is why we’re getting Walky consistently bringing it up. That or he was expecting waaaay more “He’s Just Hiding” being a serious take than he got.
Ultimately, like. I expect when Amber’s reintroduced there’s going to be issues too.
Almost certainly a ‘dark horse’ surprise romantic foil for one of the main characters as well as being someone who, by their very nature, challenge others’ tolerance and understanding.
And bad therapy can actually be worse than no therapy at all, because now a PROFESSIONAL is telling you brain garbage to internalize! Booster’s not a professional, of course, but if they seem informed enough for Amber to try then they’re informed enough for Amber’s confirmation bias.
25% off all drinks if you work or study at the local university? Pretty much every bar, pub, and discotheque does that on wednesdays here. Or at least they used to.
Well, like I said yesterday wrt Danny; the context of the conversation he had with Ethan is now *significantly* worse if Mike actually died.
I don’t think too many of us wanted Mike to die. I think, more or less, we all wanted him to either fuck off with his edgelord trash and be a better person.
Not a huge fan of Booster so far, honestly. I feel like it’s being laid on a little thick to make them seem likable and it doesn’t quite feel naturalistic to me.
If I were Walky, I’d be all “Ding dong, the asshole’s gone” and dancing a jig of grief. But he’s had time to get over that. Now Mike is just an unpleasant memory. We are now seeing Walky being tactful and nuanced.
Even without that, there’s likely a conflict there that makes it even more awkward, since I’m sure there is a part of Walky that’s relieved – not coming back to the room everyday wondering what new knife Mike is going to twist. And then feeling guilty because he’s dead, not just gone away somewhere.
Roommates, which is kind of a forced intimate relationship, even if you don’t like each other. It certainly would have messed me up if one of my roommates in college had died – even the ones I was quite happy to never see again after that semester.
It depends; college is a time when a lot of people realise things about themselves that break parental relationships. I hope not because there’s already too much of that in the cast list.
On the other hand, Mike’s parents are nice people. Maybe Booster’s parents are not so great, if their family is all equal-but-opposite bizarro Warner counterparts .
Maybe George and Harriet can adopt Booster.
(Also, since they’re designed as idealized ’40s-’50s sitcom nuclear family parents, I’m going to assume they’re named after old-timey radio show stars George Burns and Harriet Nelson.)
Honestly, the parents of nearly every kid I knew in college showed up for second semester. Someone had to drop them off and at that point there was usually stuff to haul up to the room.
In this case, even more since none of Booster’s stuff was already in the dorm. Is it all just sitting in a pile by the side of the road? I guess they could have driven themselves or all their stuff could still be in their old room. Still seems odd that the parents wouldn’t have come up to meet the new roomie.
Parents rarely came to my college. But I went to Caltech, where most students were flying in, vs. IU where most people are driving in. OTOH in grad school I did know undergrads at IU who weren’t from the Midwest, usually for a specific major was good at like Classics, Theater, Music, and maybe Library Science (not sure there was an undergrad program for that.)
Booster might be from afar. Or might have their own car. Or the parents are downstairs with the stuff and Booster went ahead to find the room.
I’m not sure how IU handled semester breaks; I think students had to leave the dorms, or camp out in lounges if they couldn’t leave, but I doubt stuff was removed entirely, so “their stuff is in their old room” seems fairly plausible. Don’t know how IU handled room changes either.
Some of Walky’s stuff seemed to be in his room already. So
possibly Booster’s stuff (that which they didn’t take home with them) was in their old room. And that they’ll move it themselves, or maybe with Walky and Lucy’s help.
Gallows humor I can take. Especially when it comes from someone who was close to the deceased and is probably dealing with stuff in their way. Well, provided they aren’t using it around someone who was even closer to the situation than themselves anyway.
Calling someone you just met out on their “blurted self-protected response” though…
Depends – they immediately respected Walky’s apparent desire not to go into it and switched to another subject. I like this a lot better than a sudden plunge into “Oh, that’s terrible, if there’s anything I can do, blah, blah, blah…”
That’s twice in two strips, I get the feeling Booster will respect your space
Booster doesn’t know Mike, and could be making an erroneous assumption. Also, the word “late” is not perfectly unambiguous. From Thank You, Jeeves by PG Wodehouse:
“‘You did what? Where do you pick up these expressions?’
‘Well, I suppose from Jeeves, mostly. My late man. He had a fine vocabulary.’
‘When you say “late”, do you mean he’s dead? Or just un-punctual?’
‘He’s left me. He didn’t like me playing the banjolele. Words passed, and he is now with Chuffy.’”
Boosters done that like, once so far, given they’ve only been in 2 strips, so I’m not too sure where you got that from. They also literally ask A Normal Question in the panel before the one youre referencing.
Sorry if I seem annoyed, it was probably just an offhand comment, it just seems to me that some people in the comments are grasping at straws to dislike a character thats been in, again, two whole strips, which I think is silly.
Oh goodness, the Shock of a male-at-birth wearing Lipstick, truly a stuff of nightmares. Like an overanimate android or a lifelike doll. Just putting visible makeup on your face as a male, you should expect to strike terror into the hearts of all honest men.
booster’s lips are no different than the ones i draw on conquest, rachel, other rachel, grace, and others, and you’ve never said anything, but suddenly on booster they’re “98% of their face”
Interesting that you’ve taken such time and effort to respond to the conversation. All of those examples are women. Interesting. It’s all SO interesting!!
Maybe for other commenters, that might be the case, but I can promise I was just havin’ a bit of a joke. It would be really weird if I had something against a they/them individual.
And you put their likeness on as your avatar since the site’s owner made a barely veiled comment on said joke! Absolutely nothing to see here. Not the most literal case of saving face at all.
Today, in the news, I read the words: “At one point, David Willis, a felon currently being sued for his alleged role in an earlier episode of political violence, joins a discussion about the use of paintballs.”
Very disorienting for a moment, before I remembered multiple people can share a name.
I’m viewing the time skip as a move to a new season. Looks like we have a new showrunner too. We ended last season on a real downer with death and damage. This seasons going to be different and more like the earlier seasons.
Some writers keep the same tone throughout a series (Evanovich) but others mix it up (Louise Penny, Laurie King). DYW is giving us something fresh this book and if you don’t like it you can ask for your money back. (Yes, the comic is free).
Me if I ever see Tony Hawk: Hey you’re Tony Hawk the famous skateboarder. That’s right I recognise you. Won’t be able to get any content out of this will you, you piece of shit
How to read all 28 issues of my Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane run on Marvel Unlimited:
1: The first four issues were published as the miniseries "Mary Jane."
www.marvel.com/comics/serie...
today in #9chickweedlane i learned we have to be shown children learning and relearning what sex is, for Reasons, even though they already clearly know and have prepared nuanced questions about it!
also that Gran must hate, if she's still alive, how Old Juliette is the same but with gray hair
one of my favorite things is when a commenter explodes WHEN DO THESE CHARACTERS GET THERAPY but directed towards a character who canonically has a regular therapist
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btw if you're one of those rando bluesky weirdos who doesn't know me but sees me in the wild being sarcastic and don't know i'm being sarcastic because you haven't taken like 30 seconds to, like, maybe look at my user profile or something, keep walking, you're not going to score internet points here
Here's an entertaining cite at the bottom of the first page
Josh Gerstein@joshgerstein.bsky.social ⋅ 3d
JUST IN: Milwaukee Judge Hannah Dugan moves to dismiss federal criminal case against her for allegedly helping immigrant hide from ICE. Her lawyers say she's protected by official acts & judicial immunity and 10th Amendment. Doc: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
Where did Hollywood go so wrong? I thought movies were supposed to be an escape from reality, a chance to put your worries aside and not have to think about any underlying ideas or concepts. Well, not anymore.
theonion.com/you-can...
It's not a new argument, of course, but Chesterton dismissed it effectively in 1908.
"You will hear everlastingly... this argument that the rich man cannot be bribed. The fact is, of course, that the rich man is bribed; he has been bribed already. That is why he is a rich man."
Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com ⋅ 3d
Hawley dismisses Trump lining his pockets with his memecoin: "Listen, I think nobody believes that Donald Trump can be bought. I mean, what does Donald Trump need more money for?"
preternia @preternia.com ⋅ 2d
Josh Gerstein @joshgerstein.bsky.social ⋅ 3d
Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com ⋅ 3d
Pavel
@spavel.bsky.social ⋅ 12d
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so NOW it’ll be all strips about how Mike died, ok
Well, Booster certainly has Mike’s ability to read a room.
Booster is Anti-Mike, they uses Mike’s powers for good.
Your dead roommate’s not a joke you can toss around Walky, for fucks sake..
Hey now. You and I both know that’s how Mike would’ve wanted it.
Mike wished he could have died like he lived… fucking your mom for a nickel. Probably crushed by her.
The way your mom fucks, he would’ve died of boredom, which would’ve pissed him off since he can’t demand the nickel back after he’s dead.
That’s the actual cause of his coma. He met her on the ambulance on the way to the hospital, and medically speaking “mid-coitus with your mom” and “comatose” are indistinguishable.
huh huh, nickelback
[Donald Sutherland screaming intensifies]
;_;7
Gallows humor is often the comedy of the emotionally strained.
Still a shitty thing to do IMO, I for one don’t want to see weeks of strips involving Walky going ‘SO ANYWAYS My ROOMATE IS DEAD, SO I guess I get a pass eh?”
Oh lord, I hope not.
He’s done it twice so far, not looking forward to a lovely bunch of Walky being asked to do a thing/discuss a thing “Yeah well my roommate died, so I think you should hand over that last slice of pizza”/ “My roommate died so I guess that means I pass all my finals right?”
Ugh
I think you might be overreacting a bit given what we’ve seen. This could just be a short-term thing.
That being said, I share your dislike for Walky. He had like five entire strips of being likeable and now we’re back to this.
In Reaver’s defense, “short term” could be months worth of strips.
From now on Walky only wears t-shirts that say “MY OLD ROOMMATE DIED AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY T-SHIRT”.
Never said it wasn’t, but it’s a traumatic thing that Walky went through. Can’t imagine he’d come out unscathed, and if this is how he is going to address it, then that’s how it is.
Guaranteed someone is going to call him out on it, eventually.
Yeah, let’s go back to Becky being unnecessarily antagonistic to Dorothy.
BUT I DON’T LIKE THAT OPTION EITHER DX
NGL I like both- ideally happening at the same time in the same room, because social cringe comedy with a *touch* of jerkass tendencies is what I live for- We need our mike vibes from somewhere
I love both because they’re the kind of humour I’m all in.
Becky fully knows Dorothy only means her well, and Walky fully knows how flippant and dark it is for him to say that. They’re just both too detached to care about impressions more than they care about this… narrative? keyfabe? run-on joke?
At any rate I’m fairly certain they could and would stop if anybody asked them (not without effort but they would) but right now they’re crafting something out of their situations.
I don’t know if it’s the generation, the trauma, the queer influences, or a mix of all three but that’s exactly what I’m into. They don’t mean any harm, can be expected to stop rather than risk harm in bad situations, but will otherwise make people mildly wince for the sheer heck of it.
Listen, I love Becky. I do. But Dorothy has asked her to drop the nemesis act several times. It would have to be someone else – probably Joyce or Dina – telling her to knock it off.
The Dorothy antagonism is definitely more cringy than this is. Both need to, and likely will be, in comic-time.
It’s called gallows *humor.*
I know Walky isn’t exactly a high-functioning human being, but I’m not sure that’s a good enough reason to assume he means what is acknowledged within the strip to be snark as being meant entirely literally. It’s not a genuine attempt at an excuse.
I lost half my family in the span of nine years. I joked around a lot, but NEVER MADE FUN OF THEM FOR DYING.
Walky has no reason to be nice about the guy who was objectively a huge piece of shit to him to people who didn’t know him
Walky….. isn’t a real person. There’s no actual will or motivations behind the speech bubbles except those of the comic creator.
There are narrative choices being made here that don’t sit right with people for good reason.
I have said elsewhere that I’m fine with people being mad at Willis for this.
The death and the person who died also were not real.
One of Willis’ narrative strengths is his ability to write characters he doesn’t agree with but flesh out his stories as more true to life.
Including people having awful coping mechanisms.
I’m not sure I’d even say these are awful coping mechanisms. It’s been months for him and both Booster and Lucy were far less close to Mike than he was, so it’s not like he’s messing with anyone emotionally attached.
Except us, because for us, we just found out a couple days ago that he’s really dead. So this can be rough for the audience on the meta-level, but it’s not something that Walky can be blamed for.
If Walky’s snarking about it to Amber or Ethan, then that’s a different story and should likely be seen as an awful coping mechanism for him. Unless they’ve set it up and are using a similar approach themselves.
Even then though, it should be seen as a failure to read the room and awkwardly trying to use humor to defuse the pain rather than deliberate provocation.
Agreed. Sometimes humor is what a person needs to cope. Yes it can be unhealthy if they’re using it to avoid confronting their feelings and just bottling them up inside instead. But also when you’ve dealt with or are dealing with something that is very painful and unsolvable, you don’t want to spend the rest of your life being depressed about it every second. So you make jokes.
It doesn’t mean you don’t care, it just means you do not want to be sad about this thing right at this moment (or do not want to talk about it at all right now) which is a very valid thing to feel. People who are experiencing trauma do not have to live every second of their life being sad about it.
As someone who has experienced permanent, life-changing trauma that involves often mourning the loss of what I once had, I would not have been able to get through this without the ability to sometimes joke about it, because the alternative would be curled up in bed feeling like life is pointless.
And was for whether Walky specifically does it in a healthy or unhealthy way, I think it’s maybe a bit of both? He clearly has some avoidance issues (see: his math grades, not wanting to have serious talks with his sister, etc). But I’d say it’s also sometimes a great benefit to him, like being able to not fall apart/panic while being kidnapped. Sometimes shoving your feelings down for later is harmful but sometimes it is helpful. These things aren’t always black and white.
I would add also (sorry, so many thoughts. I need an edit button lol): Walky doesn’t know Lucy that well and JUST met Booster. As someone who sometimes uses humor to cope I am WAY more likely to employ it when difficult topics get brought up with people I barely know or just met because I do not feel comfortable having a deep heart-to-heart about deeply personal painful things with someone I barely know in a casual social setting.
If a good friend (or someone in a polite context in which I’ve brought it up) asks, then sure I’ll talk about my feelings. But if It comes up with a neighbor or random relative or work peer then I’m much more likely to make a joke about it to ease the tension because I don’t want to make things awkward by suddenly turning this casual social experience into a dark depressing thing.
So yeah, Walky’s responses seem very very normal and familiar here to me and even though mike was literally my favorite character I do not at all read this as the author making fun of/making light of his death in an offensive way.
I don’t recall Walky actually saying a bad thing about Mike, other than that he fell off a building and died. That’s more a statement of fact than anything.
I certainly don’t see him making fun of Mike’s death. Especially not here, where he’s simply acknowledging that he doesn’t want to talk about it, but also that he wants to move stuff even less.
Honestly can’t agree with this. Humor is almost entirely how I navigated my brother’s death for the first two or three years, including jokes directly about his death. Mike and Walky may not have been bosom buddies, but living with someone still changes a relationship and can make emotions complicated. You cope how you gotta cope.
The worst thing about living someone who leaves or dies is that you build so many memories in the space you shared.
Your brain is just ready for them to come in at any moment and start talking like they always do for some time.
I can’t seem to find it now, but I remember reading something by someone with a recently-deceased (friend? family member?) that went something like, “I don’t visit the grave site. Why would I? He left behind hundreds of open graves, everywhere we’d been. Mostly I try not to fall into any. Some days I even succeed.”
I’m heavily paraphrasing, obviously, b/c if I could remember it accurately enough I’d have probably found it by now, but if anyone recognizes it, I’d love to see it again.
The only caveat to that is that you’ve got to be careful with your coping mechanisms when they run into someone even more affected – unlikely with your brother, but definitely a potential problem with Walky.
Not here, since Booster never met Mike and I don’t think Lucy did either, but he’d need to watch the snark around Amber or Ethan.
Reaver, do you not know Walky? I mean the evidence suggests that he certainly can.
. . . Toss was a poor choice of words.
Or fantastic. Depends on what you were going for.
My dad died of lung cancer. One day, I was coughing and said “oh my god I’m dying” (as I always say when I cough), and my husband said, “you’re not dying.” I said, “Dad coughed a lot, and then -he- died.”
So yeah, dark humor is sometimes the way we cope with loss. If you think Walky’s a bad person for it, then I guess I am, too.
This isn’t about a death; but a few years ago I was diagnosed with bilateral breast cancer, and had to stay in the hospital overnight after the double mastectomy. I was feeling pretty fantastic and joking about it pretty heavily online (I was heavily dysphoric about them so getting them taken off was amazing, ngl).
A good friend was at work and laughing her ass off at her computer and her boss came over and asked her what was so funny and she replied “Oh my friend has cancer” and I’m actually pretty proud of getting that reaction (and her boss’s D: face) out of her ha ha (“Wait! No! She’s joking about it! She’s really funny!” XD)
Dark/gallows humour is definitely how I cope lol.
It’s not entirely snark ALL the time.
Walky speaks fluent goofus, after all.
And cultural references! And #stool! He’s a very well-rounded character!
Cultural references are his first language.
Snark is his second.
English? Distant fourth, maybe even fifth.
I’m starting to feel like Booster’s a psyche major.
I thought you meant psychic, and wondered if this comic was gonna go in a Scott Pilgrim direction for a sec.
They could still have vegan powers. We’ll know if they’re vegan; it’d take 5 strips max to mention it.
Reminds me of
“Is Superman from Texas?”
“For that to be true,” Batman said, “it would need to be possible for a man to be from Texas without telling anyone about it for years.”
Would Scott Pilgrim be the Ender if the strip?
god i hope not freshmen psych majors are the Worst
They’re bad the first half of the year, then they start realizing they need to learn a whole bunch of statistics to make sense of their data and turn sad.
Not as bad as freshmen philosophy majors
– a psych major who just started second year
Not impossible, but I am thinking not neurotypical and has learned to be very precise to deal with it.
Yeah I read them as socially awkward and has maybe been painfully misinterpreted in the past. I have sympathy for anyone who employs this kind of awkward overly precise language because I am someone who does this out of anxiety and has been made fun of for it many times in the past because people think I’m being annoying/arrogant when really I’m just stressed tf out and trying not to be misunderstood.
The real question is whether they’re a Cousin Oliver or more of a Scrappy Doo.
(That said, most of the commenters seem to like them, so maybe they’ll turn out to be a Dawn Summers. But at the moment I’m getting some serious Scrappy Doo vibes.)
Mike died and someone else took over his role as Walky’s roommate, so wouldn’t that make it a Blake/Potter situation?
That… that would be fine. One can hope.
That or they (he, she, xi, ?) has had a lot of experience with these sorts of potential conversational landmines, and so deliberately takes steps to walk around them.
Willis uses they/them pronouns for them.
Everybody likes Booster, because they haven’t seen them being shitty yet. Everyone puts on their best face when they first meet people. We’ll get to know them eventually, give Willis time.
This is Lucy. She’s horny 24/7 but doesn’t know how to communicate it in a way I catch on to yet.
booster’s in the wrong dorm hall
What makes you say that?
i hope reed means they fit in more with the peppy lucy floor squad
That’s how I read it, yeah. He seems like a big ol’ ray of sunshine for the most part, and aside from Joyce and now Becky, that isn’t really how this hall acts.
They, rather, not he.
Too mature and level headed, can read a room and be appropriate in conversation for one.
Maybe that is what Reed Hall needs to change status quo. Not everyone is a jerk like our main cast, or maybe Booster has their own problems and doesn’t want people to know about them.
Their problem is they’re probably about to become the MOST adultiest of adults amonst their peers.
Somehow I feel like Booster’s perceptive ability is part of their own issue or issues, minor and/or major. A way for them to deflect or project onto others.
Just a theory I’m throwing out there. If Booster turns out alright I’d love them even more.
Actually plausible, yeah. Apart from their name and ‘why I changed roommates’, we have no actual information about them, and the redirect goes straight to Lucy and not back to themself.
(Also, I’m gonna guess from the facial expressions last strip, it is not hard to tell from Walky’s tone that the bluntness yesterday and Tuesday is coming from a place of hurt. That was a frown, not a joke. This, kind of a joke, but more that Walky doesn’t want to help with moving in because work.)
I could be wrong but I’m thinking maybe anxiety. That overly outwardly confident and precise way of carefully wording things seems like it might be covering up a loooot of internal anxiety.
In lieu of Mike, Walky takes the charge in snark. Got it.
Wonder where the others are.
Why do you have little dots under your dots?
They hold up the world. IT’S DOTS ALL THE WAY DOWN!
Hovertext comment.
For those trapped on touch screens who don’t know how or can’t view source:
“In lieu of Mike, Walky takes the charge in snark[. (And not in a good way)] Got it.
Wonder where the others are[. (Especially the silhouette in between Booster and Lucy. Looks new, and so not Malaya)]”
-Suet
I thought the silhouette between Booster and Lucy was Walky, bein’ all dark and not quite joking about death.
The power of
<abbr title="">Commentary, but with less clutter.
[daily pro-tip reminder: tap outside the First and Latest buttons for the comic’s alt-text (in mobile)]
The silhouettes between Booster and Lucy seem to me to be Amber, Billy and Danny.
I like Booster so far.
His lips are a tad disturbing, though.
Right?
They remind me of something mentioned by the late Frank Zappa on on a 1983 edition of the David Letterman show about “Brown Lipstick In The Corporate Suite”!
Their lips, the character is non binary.
Has that actually been confirmed or are you just assuming?
It literally says it on their bio, and Willis has confirmed on twitter.
Also confirmed it on patreon during their debut.
Talking of ‘his’ lips is also assuming, might as well saying they’re until it’s confirmed either way. I read them as non-binary so far.
Is anybody ‘normal’ (using the traditional, customarily-accepted meaning of ‘normal’) in this strip?
Could’ve used the words cis or hereto lol. And as far as we know the other 2 people in this strip are cishet, as are sal, Joe, Jacob, idr all the names but lots of the cast
Sarah, Amber, and Dorothy by all indications, and Joyce… if she isn’t fully straight, I don’t think it’s become obvious to her yet or outside the ‘oh huh my best friend is a lesbian who had a crush on me that explains my idea of female friendships looking like I’m gay to outsiders!’ (Actually thinking about that… it just now occurred to me that Sal ALSO has a best friend who had a crush on her she didn’t know about. Granted, she’s not as touchy-feely to begin with and wasn’t nearly as sheltered, but… huh.)
Like, it’s a pretty sizable chunk of the main cast, really.
(Incidentally, *twitches in queer autistic at that use of the world normal.* I was gonna be fine with leaving it at Beef’s comment but actually no, it’s a sore spot for me on multiple levels, I’m bringing it up.)
Sorry about that, but at my age I’m not too sure what the appropriate terms are today (or what they will be by next week) …. so I have to fall back on the terms we used back in the ’60s and ’70s.
Straight and normal are not the same thing anyway. I am a reasonably straight white male. Normal, not so much.
Since when is Walky straight? He talks about banging dudes literally always. It may not have occurred to him that bisexuality is an option though.
Walky communicates in snark. His joking about banging dudes might hide a real interest or it might just be his usual snark
Your capacity to learn new things stopped in the 60-70s? That’s pretty darn sad.
Don’t make fun of your elders.
At least not until you’re sure they aren’t armed.
“I used to be with ‘it’, but then they changed what ‘it’ was. Now what I’m with isn’t ‘it’ anymore and what’s ‘it’ seems weird and scary. It’ll happen to you!”
“Heterosexuality is not normal. It’s just common.” – Dorothy Parker
Rule of thumb when it comes to things learned half a decade ago, don’t use it as a basis for assumption in case of social things.
Going by the cast page as of today, 3/6 of the men are cis and straight, and 8/15 of the women. At least as of current knowledge, I remember some speculation about Malaya’s gender identity, and we all joke about Joyce.
Malaya has talked about questioning her gender identity. It seemed to be kind of flippant at first, but got revisited more seriously. She’s also very likely not straight.
(Can you even be straight if you’re non-binary? What would that mean?)
There’s also been speculation about Walky’s sexuality, sparked by various comments of his. I think that’s more just his snark than anything, but he’s certainly comfortable joking about not being straight.
Otherwise, I’d agree with your count.
I was alive in the sixties too. Means I’ve had sixty years to learn better and not live in the past.
Thank you.
I read them as enby too but I don’t think it’s appropriate to make a big deal about correcting someone’s pronouns until the character has actually indicated that they care.
Booster is in a male dorm and hasn’t asked to be referred to with they/them so I think it’s not unreasonable for someone to use he/him. Some enby people literally don’t care about pronouns. (Before anyone tries to gatekeep me, I’m enby and am in that camp.)
Sure, some people don’t care, I’m cis male and I get misgendered on the phone all the time, bothers me not at all. As far as that goes, I’m not picky about my name either, “What do you go by?” followed by some options is a pretty common question, my response is “Eh, any of those are fine, ‘hey you’ works too.”
But in this case, Willis has specified that they/them are appropriate for Booster. https://www.dumbingofage.com/2020castbooster/
I don’t think Reaver did make a “big deal” about the correction. It was a simple pronoun correction that was then responded to more defensively.
Yeah, this tends to be the case more often than not. The people doing the correcting tend to be pretty matter of fact about it, while people who are corrected get defensive. Most people won’t get offended or upset if you use the wrong pronoun on accident, even trans and nonbinary people. It may sting or be annoying, but unless it’s intentional, most won’t be upset.
Not to worry though, since the subject hasn’t been specifically introduced in-comic, so if, like me, you don’t obsessively follow the other sources, it was very reasonable to question.
You are assuming. Have they said so?
Their creator has soooooo
It has not come up in-comic. It may be so, but I don’t expect anyone to read the bio.
I believe assuming someone’s preferred pronoun is common and harmless. I don’t expect (or want) people to ask me first what I prefer to be called before telling them my name. If they guess right, that’s fine. If they guess wrong, it’s my choice whether I correct them.
Correcting someone is also pretty harmless, though. Especially when the correction is pretty matter of fact and neutral like it was here. If someone accidentally called Walky a she and was corrected, you wouldn’t see a bunch of people jumping in to discuss the validity of the correction. It would be as simple as “whoops, my bad.”
Why can’t we do that when the person is correcting with they/them pronouns?
Makes sense, power rods are non-binary by definition.
I assumed that Booster is wearing lipstick, and just picked a shade that doesn’t suit them today. It happens.
Walky is fluent in several dialects of snark, to be precise.
Also avoidance and redirection.
A multi-talented polysnark.
He also is one of the few fluent in Billiese.
Imma go ahead and ship Booster and Lucy before anyone else does
Well, I’m thinking you may already be behind Lucy, but we’ll see.
i hope willis does too because lucy yearning for walky is giving me the sads
she needs someone attentive and caring
Too late, some of us already started on patreon.
I have a feeling Booster will be the exact opposite of Mike in almost every single way and thats gonna cause a few outbursts from several cast members.
I don’t know, I already find his way of talking beyond annoying so I figure they’ve got that in common at least.
And commenters!
He’s clearly drunk Mike, whether literally or not. Concussions will do that to you.
Booster is a sweetie! I like them!
But if I don’t learn what happened to Billie I’m gonna lose it!! :))))
She got into Yale’s journalism program
I’m guessing nothing happened to Billie, though she and a Ruth may have broken up.
Ruth was talking about people leaving her floor. She said there was only one person who left her floor, and Dorothy reminded her that Billie also left her floor.
Well, for a reasonable guess at how long before we find out what happened to Billie, take the time before we found out happened to Mike and use that as an estimate.
There were 16 silhouettes in the new cast picture. We’ve uncovered 9 of them in 16 days, so it should be roughly 2 weeks before we’ve seen them all.
By then, we’ll at least know whether Billie is still in the main cast – if not, it might be much longer.
If Billie’s still going to IU, then she’s likely still Lucy’s roommate based on how everyone is conveniently getting the same dorms, so we could find out more much quicker than if she had been cut to a standard satellite character.
Not so much ‘convenient’ as ‘pretty standard’ – if you ask to change roommates, that’s one thing, but between fall and spring semesters a lot of schools don’t reassign rooms if the roommates are still fine with each other, not if they can help it. Saves everyone some work. (It’s not uncommon, at least from my experience, for schools to let you keep some things in your room over the winter break, since it tends to be about a month/month and a half. With the obvious caveat of ‘if something gets lost or stolen in that time that’s a risk you took’ and such.)
A risk you took, but the rooms/dorms are usually locked up during that time anyway, so it’s not a big risk.
Yeah, odds of it happening are damn slim.
She and Ruth probably haven’t seen each other during the semester break. New relationship energy fading so Ruth is worried.
I can only ever read his dialog in King Shark’s voice from Harley Quinn.
*Booster’s
Oh I love them already. Booster’s a quick favorite until deemed otherwise by possible future actions/revelations
It may be slightly too early to tell for sure, but so far I do believe I love Booster.
That’s three strips in a row making fun of Mike’s death.
Yeah. I’m done.
You have pretty low standards for what constitutes “making fun of”.
“Mentioning in any way that’s thot somber and gloomy” is basically all it takes, right?
Wait until he finds the stuffed body of Mike in his closet.
So .., Mike was dying to come out of the closet?
…”thot”? I obviously meant “not”.
At what point is ‘Walky’s tastelessness being played for laughs’ going to shade into ‘this is a tasteless way to treat a character death’?
Jk that was three strips ago
Thank you, the whole way this thing is being handled is kinda…idk it’s hard to describe, tbh being drip fed introductions is agonizing for me lol, if I want to wait for a result for days on end I’ll go play animal crossing..Probably gonna take a break from the comic for a week or two and come back to catch up.
Working full time as an essential worker is stressful enough.
Take care of yourself! 2020 is just terrible and we all just need to do what we need to do. This comic will be here. I’ve got a different comic I’m going to go back to in a few months, it’s just too dark right now. I’m sure they’ll all be OK probably but reading the comic one day at a time is just too much.
Which comic
He’s not going to stop until called out on it.
I mean I think the question is more about the way this is being treated by Willis then Walky. Walky has no reason to be tasteful about the guy who objectively treated him like shit around people who didn’t no him.
And self defensive snark is kind of his thing.
Walky isn’t the issue here (well he is but he’s only a symptom of the issue)
Walky isn’t the one writing the comic that’s brushing over a character death
Willis isn’t brushing over it at all. We’ve just seen the first character react to it in a manner that is typical for that character. We will almost certainly see other characters react as the story progresses.
Also, Willis might not be writing the comic you thought he was. “Dumbing of Age” is not be the story about how Mike died. Except for Amber and Ethan, none of the characters knew this guy for more than about eight weeks, right? Mike has been dead longer than he was Walky’s roommate.
Was he really “tastless” about it before the last pannel in this strip?
The other comment just felt like he was beeing up front about it. It can be easier than to wait for the inavetable “so what happend to your last room mate?” question.
He’s being really blunt about it, but up until this last panel it didn’t feel flippant. (‘My roommate died. I kind of had to be alone.’ doesn’t imply a whole lot of tone, but taken with the way he continued to shut Lucy down and the way he says it immediately with a frown after Booster discusses their previous roommate, there’s definitely a ‘if I mention the elephant in the room immediately then maybe we can stop talking about this thing that hurts’ element.)
I mean, he’s also had about two months to come back every night to an empty room. (We don’t know when exactly Mike died or when his parents packed his stuff – and hoo boy, THERE’S something you don’t want to be present for – but ‘Mike’s side of the room, still set up but devoid of Mike’ does not sound like a huge improvement over ‘empty’ given the circumstances!) He didn’t like Mike, Mike was never really pleasant to him, but this is probably the first time Walky’s had a peer die, and he would be reminded of that fact every time he came back to his room. I suspect that’s a complicating factor in his ability to deal with it. Joyce and Sarah and Dorothy could all feel shocked and terrible for their friends but start moving on in that time. Becky might have had some complicated emotions knowing her Terrible, Recently-Dead Dad had a role in it, but that’s already a mess of complicated emotions. Walky tends to avoid or deflect from the things that hurt him, but he couldn’t avoid or deflect that empty desk.
I like Booster. They’re good.
I ship Lucy and Booster
I’m kinda joking, but come to think of it, have we ever seen any other character have a first meeting with Lucy that went this well?
Boocy or Looster is the real question.
Boocy sounds better but Looster is just hilariously adorable so it has my vote
So not Luster?
Oohh, that has such a well polished finish on it. I love it.
Lobster?
I do too, they seem like a good egg.
Soon we’ll learn that Booster picked up Danny’s hat and the Good Egg energy transferred to them.
Wait until they hatch.
*their* way of talking. (Correcting people on the internet about a fictional character is so much easier than correcting people about myself in real time)
ikr? got misgendered by a bus driver yesterday (though it hurts a lot less to me when it is someone like that, who I never expect to see or recognize me again)
I get ‘not everyone has checked the cast page or Twitter,’ and I think the confirmation of they/them pronouns on Patreon was on the early update tier, but at the same time, if you’re in the comments and this discussion’s been going on for the last day with people giving multiple sources for ‘use they,’ don’t… don’t act surprised by that.
Am I seriously the only one who reads down the comments before starting my own? Because if so, huh.
No, you’re not. I read all the comments and I usually find that someone has already said whatever I was thinking of saying. So I don’t need to
Booster to Walky as he snarks about Mike’s death: Awfully morbid little thing, aren’t you?
Walky: Yes.
“This is Lucy. I haven’t realised it yet but she wants to bone me into orbit. She’s also very much friend-shaped.”
So, Booster seems like they’re nice. Seems. Props for the neutral name choice, though.
I just keep thinking of Booster Gold from DC.
Ugh.
This strip is disappointing.
I dont want to casually find out Mike is definitely dead or if he was murdered ( probably ) or whether amber is in an asylum , Bille was arrested for drunk driving etc, in slow drips in casual conversation about other things for the next 3 years.
after the previous comic semester it just feels like cheating.
Willis cant you just do a Star Wars Crawl ?
Now we know Ethan and Amber are gone and why ( mikes only friends ) .
Thankfully he didn’t write the Homestuck Epilogues. He is unstoppable at making people cry and feel uncomfortable.
that is usually from plotlines. not just throwing plots in the trash .
This is the kinda thing I saw coming as soon as the time skips started happening. It works for Willis and a bunch of the readers, but it’s not to my taste. Still, ain’t like I have too many other things to do during the pandemic hours.
Another thing , Is this the Right Way to introduce a brand new Trans masc or Nonbinary Male character … ?
i feel like you dont cross All these streams / tropes
This strip Confirms BURY YOUR GAYS, and a Queerbaiting/ shipteasing of Dannyx Ethan for 5 years !!!
and we know per cannon Danny discovered his Bisexuality to make it easier to write for Ethan .
I invested a lot of trust in that story line, as did many other readers
and to have it confirmed in the 2nd strip of a BRAND NEW QUEER , pinks wearing character ( NO hate on Booster ) it cheapens their introduction for me, and tokens them.
What it does is Lampshape that Booster is a hand picked token to replace two queer male characters, and the only Gay Male- male relationship of main characters which was written to have any emotional content.
( I am not objecting to the introduction nonbinary and Transmasc characters but I think Booster deserved better intro than to be a coded replacement )
Booster isn’t replacing anything. There’s no indication they’re taking anyone else’s role in the story. Hell, we don’t know for a fact Ethan isn’t going to be back. We just know we haven’t seen him yet.
There’s also no confirmation we won’t get more on Danny/Ethan. It might take a while given how their last conversation went, but they’d hardly be alone in being the only couple that had one person say something super fucked up to the other (Ruth/Billie anyone?)
Ethan’s still on the cast page, as well. He’s gonna be grieving, I’m sure, and there was a definite strain between him and Amber, but I don’t think he or Jacob are done with the rest of the cast.
The time skip might even help Danny/Ethan as a possibility. Danny being not a total asshole, I’m gonna bet he felt like absolute SHIT and did some groveling to Ethan (and Amber) as soon as he heard the news. Having a couple months there means he could give them some space and we don’t have years before seeing him interact with two of his most significant friends again (at least without him feeling like absolute shit.)
Mike was also on the cast page up until yesterday. Clearly, Willis is using the cast page to tease out these drips of information and screw with our heads, so I wouldn’t really put any stock in what’s written there.
or with drip drip backstory it could be months before we even find out what happened with Ethan.
Danny can remain a serial monogamist and Bi in theory till end of the strip.
or if you are right we can wait another 5 years for them to even make out.
its just very frustrating that Wilis wrote a M-M with Genuine Chemistry and warmth, one that might be worth reading;
… teased it for 5+ years, advertised it across the top banner of the strip, and now here we are.
Ruth and Billie were screwed up.
But There was no Bury your gays* or queerbaiting. They got to be real and matter to each other, even in the midst of addiction and suicidal impulses.
Yes there is “No Confirmation” . It can be mentioned in passing in Booster as a joke , and get removed from the cast page that day.
that also tells me not to commit to Booster as a character. I didnt think Mike was dead yesterday either. But here we are.
* that was roomies and it was retroactive ) ;
No disrespect intended, but methinks you’re waving that BYG flag a mite early. Willis is just one person, the plot moves slowly and he is likely feeling very cautious with how he handles his characters relationships specifically because he’s sensitive to the community and doesn’t want to do what you are flatly accusing him of. Willis is literally (actually literally) in the midst of introducing a non-binary character, gave us a deeper female relationship than hollywood typical and is handling teen/early 20s death. I know this generation is supposed to be woke and sensitive, but that doesn’t negate patience being a virtue.
Danny and Ethan DO matter to each other. They haven’t gotten together yet and, given how their last conversation turned out, it may still be a long while.
Ethan deserves better than Danny.
Danny is a possessive Nice GuyTM and it’s nice to see that he’s more than just a romantic lead.
I don’t see it. We saw the end of his relationship with Dorothy and that was pretty awful, but we didn’t see much of what led up to that.
He’s certainly passive in his interests, which is common in Nice Guys, but I can’t think of anything in his relationship with Amber or his non-relationship with Ethan that showed anything of the entitlement of the Nice Guy. He’s jealous of Ethan, but not possessive beyond that. And he’s never tried to claim he’s entitled to sex or affection from any of them.
I’ve seen literally nothing that indicates that Danny/Ethan/Amber have been written out?
https://www.dumbingofage.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Year11Castobscured08.png
see their Silhouettes? Thts almost definitely Joe in back.
( unless he also been killed offscreen by Amber and we are getting a New tall Jew to be Mikes replacement )
Yes, that’s probably Joe and not Ethan. That doesn’t mean Ethan will be written out just because he’s not in the silhouettes.
You clearly have more faith than I.
Willis originally said he doesnt want to write a grieving cast in a sliding timescale.
Danny Doubles down how important MIke is to him at the hospital. Timeskip, gone from silhouettes. Either hes gone or its a fakeout.
During the time-skip Ethan and Danny got married. Their parents will no longer pay for their college, and so Ethan is working (and so is not currently part of the cast) while Danny goes to school and once he graduates Ethan will start going to school until Danny runs off with Billie.
Danny is on the cast Silhouettes .
Danny is going to school supported by Ethan and so is in the cast.
According to my randomly generated scenerio.
Because the whole cast grieving would make the strip depressing for DECADES of real time and he doesn’t want to do it. One or two cast members still in the deepest part of grief is a lot more manageable.
The silhouettes are not the be all and end all of the cast. That’s not a fakeout.
I think Amber is the silhouette next to Booster.
This is a good read. Booster isn’t just a narrative replacement for Mike though — they’re also a type inversion of Mike’s brand. Piercingly insightful about people’s psychology, but nice about it? Which other character’s very first interaction with others started with casually psychoanalyzing them? How can attentive readers not see what’s happening here?
Booster deserves better and so does Mike.
Eh, honestly I think having a new character that’s like, a weird mirror of another character that just left and that they’re filling the role of is sorta neat.
But the weird thing to me is, this actually doesn’t seem to be the case at all. Willis said on twitter that the silhouettes weren’t actually supposed to be too misleading and that Booster’s looking like Mike was just a coincidence, and even after he realized it he figured people would still figure out they’re not Mike because of the glasses.
I guess what you said specifically could still be true, but it’s still a bit surprising to me that the visual similarity at least doesn’t seem to be intentional.
maybe i’m misunderstanding .
what purposes are the silhouettes supposed to serve? ( i thought it was surprise cast changes )
Well, I’m sure it was supposed to require a little guessing and speculation about who’s who and if the more vague silhouettes are new characters, but at the very least Willis seemed to be saying that Booster wasn’t designed to look like Mike in the silhouette.
After all the cosmetic witness protection surgery, they were supposed to look very different. But the personality change is the best disguise of all.
Personality changes could be explained/ written in as post head injury,
relearning to walk / and on anti seizure medications …
its a better explanation than Good Mike= happy drunk
or he could need a semester to recover off screen.
From what we’ve seen, half the cast members revealed so far had pretty significant new haircuts. Billie seems likely to have gotten a cut in the timeskip as well, there seems to have been a subtle change in how Joyce’s haircut is drawn, and Dorothy and Joe both got their new looks fairly recently and while they were pretty frazzled in-story – this is I think the first cast lineup showing them with the new looks. Ruth is smiling in her art, genuinely smiling, for I think the first time ever in New Storyline Baseline Art.
But also, I think this is a lineup of, well, New Storyline Character Models. Ethan being absent suggests he’s not in this particular one – if he and Amber are strained and she’s deliberately giving him space, that makes sense. And since his roommate is Jacob (definitely still a relevant character, not one who needs to be established immediately post-timeskip) I can see this particular storyline not working out to put him back in the others’ way. That doesn’t mean he’s not on-campus – we go arcs without seeing Lucy, Joe, or Carla, after all – but it does suggest he’s not getting a checkin every storyline the way virtually every story includes Amber, Billie and Ruth, or Joyce in some capacity. (The thing is, I’m not sure he WAS before this, but strain with Amber and Danny means he may not be worked in as quickly.)
Like, based off who’s remaining: Malaya is Sal’s roommate, and Carla will almost certainly visit as a result. Danny and Joe are roommates, and while I usually consider them more support cast than main, they’re also the original two Roomies protagonists so if nothing else, tradition mandates they show up. (They may also be getting a cast upgrade with the soft reboot to more consistently carry their own storylines, as could Carla.) Amber and Dina are roommates. Billie’s a slight outlier in that Lucy and Ruth have both shown up first, but they both have good story reasons to do so and neither of them has been shown in their own room yet.
So I’d expect a bit of a downgrade from Ethan, at least in this next book, but not a permanent one by any means. (Amber and Joyce hopefully having started to work through their most immediate traumas, and Becky no longer having to worry about the election, both kind of open the plot docket a bit for other characters to get more spotlight time, too. Maybe the men’s wing finally gets some more presence?) Until we see Amber saying he’s taking a semester off, I’d have hope – and the absolute shittiness of his parents makes me think he’d go back, especially since he has an established friend group outside Mike and Amber here and at home there’d be nothing but ghosts and memories. (I’d expect to see him around Joyce for a bit before having non-awkward interactions with Amber and Danny, personally, but Ethan’s casual flings were definitely framed by him as ‘safer’ than a boyfriend in terms of upsetting/Not Mentioning to Naomi. The way in which that’s unresolved says to me it’s not over yet by a long shot, and he’s not going to grieve Mike and be sad forever.)
I can’t promise Danny/Ethan’s endgame – I’m not willing to say Dina/Becky is, and they’re my favorite – but I think they’ll reconcile eventually (Amber and Sal could, after all) and that if Ethan has a longterm relationship with someone else, it will be a relationship that developed organically itself.
That said, taking a step back for a week or two and catching up once we’ve got everyone moved in again might be a good idea as well. One strip a day is pretty slow for a cast reveal, and most discussions merit at least two.
https://twitter.com/damnyouwillis/status/1309135108130177024
Oh, and here’s the tweet in question for convenience if anyone happens to be reading this in the future or something.
They aren’t a narrative replacement for Mike at all. There’s no indication they’ll serve an even remotely similar role other than ‘Walky’s roommate’ which….is not a big deal. Someone was always going to take that role.
“Bury Your Gays”? *One* bi guy died. Out of a cast that I think is majority non-straight.
mike was actually pan,
im not going to educate you. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BuryYourGays
I wasn’t asking your for education, I was asking you to justify your claim that that’s an applicable trope. As the page says,
> However, sometimes gay characters die in fiction because, well, sometimes people die. There are many Anyone Can Die stories: barring explicit differences in the treatments of the gay and straight deaths in these, it’s not necessarily odd that the gay characters are dying. The occasional death of one in a Cast Full of Gay is unlikely to be notable, either.
thats your bias : Cast Full of Gay.
yes you are asking for an education and being …. ( ugh )
For most of this comic Ethan was the only Gay Male character.
That meant NO M-M ships.
Which by your bias, is something which is NOT important to you.
I was OK with it. Mike was queerin in name only. and Danny given a Bi revelation to shiptease ( queerbait )
< and a bunch of very very minor gay male characters were added to the background whos lifes we dont follow or care about )
" I was asking you to justify your claim that that’s an applicable trope."
Yeah doing that would involve educating you all about the trope, its history, gay representation in fiction UGH. keeping reading tv tropes
You are prob straight and thinking im griping at killing off an edglord. I' mnot. Or that gay characters cant be killed off.
but that totally misses the point, it misunderstands what Queerbaiting and Bury Your gays function in fiction to readers.
it functions to deny full life representation in fiction. To punish Gay lives for being gay. To deny them even a Brief happy ending.
( and thats what happened here )
But with your everyones gay snark, you cant see it. It doesnt effect you.
"There are many Anyone Can Die stories" And this aint it.
Its a NO ONE can die story, so dont waive that in my face.
I'm not reading this to watch Willis gleefully murder Ethans ex lovers.
Hi gay man. Very familiar with the tropes you’re describing but think you might be overreacting here personally. Willis clearly doesn’t have any issue writing in queer characters and Mike’s death doesn’t have any of those hallmarks.
As for queerbaiting, also disagreed. Ethan isn’t possibly gay in a “will they wont they” with Danny, he’s an out gay man who is perfectly happy hooking up with dudes. He just also happens to have a mutual crush with another character. The problem with queerbaiting is that is never actually provides representation, Ethan has confirmed his sexuality.
Shade, thank you but no.
I feel like you intended to be respectful, so I am going to show you specifically why I disagree.
I dont think its possible for me to convince you off all of this, as we have different life experiences .
Youyve misunderstood the terms or have an incomplete understanding.
“He just also happens”
No its on purpose per the author. Your conception trivializes what it means to be gay and have real life experiences. its not incidental, its essential.
“n out gay man who is perfectly happy hooking up with dudes” for a week before the kidnapping maybe.
Much of the strip he was closeted. That was recent event enabled by MIke, none of the “dudes” are main or secondary characters. or worth showing.
and if they arent worth showing, THAT is NOT representation, its backstory.
“to have a mutual crush with another character”
NO , The only gay emotional connections he had were with Danny and briefly MIke.
“will they wont they” with Danny” is the what has been teased for 5= years.
danny had his bi revelation because Willis had No One on the main cast to put to write danny in with Relationships with . .
“Mike’s death doesn’t have any of those hallmarks” What hallmarks?
You can like writing queer characters and like killing them off FIRST.
( how many straight students are currently dead? )
………….
. thats the only hallmark you need for “Bury Your Gays” .
Has Willis ever explicitly said he wouldnt kill off any gay characters in DOA ?
( Not any characters, but specifically LGBT ) …
Has he ever made a special point to say this, when putting one jeopardy?
If you can remember this; and the only student to die in strip is a Queer male its a fair criticism.
When an author says this outside the strip it changes the relationship to LGBT readers. Its OK to believe them. Mike is not my favorite character, but this changes the type of story i am reading. It means that no longer holds.
yes, I get to feel this is a crappy way to be told that. Backhand. Offstory. Out of sight.
what about the Queer fans that LOOOOVE MIke ?
But if you tell fans ‘this is the comic where we DONT do that’ its a fair criticism if you do .
i think you are not as familiar with these tropes as you thought.
It Boggles my mind that you think Representation **is complete** with making a character LGBT per cannon. Thats not representation , thats the definition of Tokenism.
( I am NOT saying Willis created token characters , im saying you are using a token definition for representation )
YES, you can make a character gay and still queerbait with them or shiptease.
( I notice Dumbledore isnt getting it on those prequels ).
Queerbaiting isnt just one thing. The Queers being baited here arent necessary characters either, its also the audience .
You denying the full definition implies I should be happy with teases, inferences, OFF camera, out of sight gay stories , backstories or throwaway / disposable characters, subtexts: ie. scraps. But thats exactly my point, that is still queerbaiting.
“Willis clearly doesn’t have any issue”
I am *NOT* attacking Willis as a person. ( We all have “issues” but im not going to talk past him or for him. )
There is no need to inject this adhominen . I am not attacking Willis.
You are confusing the author for the tropes. They exist independently .
But No one is a saint here:
Authors can write themselves into a corner.
forget plot threads. Kill off characters they are bored with . Tease relationships but never fulfill them. Who gets redemption arcs, and who gets run over by trucks and Volvos ( walkyverse ) ?
But who does that normally happen to?
What if I wasnt overreacting ( I AM of course!! ; but not about queerbaiting, my overreaction is I was tricked to care about plotline of comic characters, being invested in fiction . VERY Guilty there . I can be honest with my feelings. I probably shouldnt care )
what if there was more to representation ?
especially when they spend most of the story sad, miserable , closeted and celibate.
Now think about WAlky-Dorothy , or Danny- Amazigirl or Walky-Amber . do you see any differences here?
A problem with Queerbaiting is Authors get queer representation credit up front. But they dont have to spend it ( on you ) .
Until Mike got with Ethan he barely even qualified as queer representation. He didnt talk about it. He never had people over when walky was around. it was segregated and closeted even inside the strip.
You are proving the point , Willis wrote in cannon gay and bi characters so you think that ought to be enough.
>>>>>>>A large part of coming out is finding someone its worth it to come out to or for. <<<<<<
That is what I thought I was invested in reading with Danny and Ethan.
Maybe thats a level of representation you cant comprehend .
But it is what I believed I was reading.
This is what Ethan meant to Danny too .
But if you werent expecting it its not because I Projected it onto the strip. This also functioned to make Danny More likeable . He was probably the most hated character before then. ( for being clueless, spineless and trivializing others feelings. )
Another problem with this is you think you can tell me I am Not baited, After i EXPLICITLY SAID I WAS.
i would know.
Its not Theoretical, its actual , proven, objective.
If someone makes you hungry by baking cookies on purpose, thats real isnt it?
What if they Hold a hot cookie over your face 3 times ? is that Cookie baiting?
Ok what about 20x ? what about 50x ?
What if they Hold that cookie over your face 3 THOUSAND friggin times?
after 3000 times would it qualify as cookie baiting ?….if you never get to take a bite?
( dont you tell me there are other cookies somewhere else or at home )
Thats NOT a Hypothetical ok? ITs MORE than 3000.
I get you dont feel it, but its real. ( if YOu felt it it probably wouldnt be called gaybaiting would it ?) .
One of the main Banners Across the strip , Multiple times per week over 5 years is as picture of Ethan pouncing on Danny, ( implied danny Gets erect ) and discovers his attraction.
Sometimes this title banner showed up 4-5 times in a week. Hells YEAH the strip has been queerbaiting this ship right in its title for **YEARS** as a form of self identity.
This is a form of ADVERTISING. After hundreds of times it changed my relationship to the strip. it changed my expectations.
Thats not entirely my fault, thats good faith.
You clearly have good faith in willis and DOA, so why shouldnt I?
I think hes a good person.
I think he works really hard. i think he cares about being a good ally.
When I am told something thousands of times, why wouldn't I believe it?
Maybe im too impressionable, but gives me a level of immersion that makes webcomics worth it for to read.
If its NOT TRUE , can I still offer good faith the author will write another M-M ship **I care about** ?
Can I offer good faith its not a tease, a setup for dead gay or queerbait ship?
I could literally DIE before that happens again:
The strip is over 10 years old.
Human Life is ONLY so long. Its a Pandemic.
We got climate change natural disasters, and fascism. Most strips take Hiatuses before 10 years.
Peace out.
As another gay man, I totally agree with adam Black. Having three MLM main characters and killing one of them off is killing of 1/3 of their population. Ethan isn’t on the silhouette page, which likely means he won’t be around as a major character much, if at all. And Danny torpedoed all of his chances with him, putting paid to a relationship that has been teased and built up for years.
Saying it’s not bury your gays because there are still queer characters utterly misses the point. There is a difference between the treatment of female queer characters and male queer characters, in general, and in this particular comic. The queer female characters get to have fully fleshed-out romantic arcs. Ethan and Danny are attracted to each other, but agree not to date to spare the feelings of one of the female characters (who has literally given her blessing), Ethan bangs Mike, Ethan bangs some dudes, Mike catches feelings/realises he had feelings all along, Mike dies. They’re not comparable. And the background characters don’t count either.
I was really interested in Mike. He was a queer male character who wasn’t a good person. He was a total asshole, but he had depth and potential for growth. And then that potential was thrown out and he just died. I don’t understand the point in building up his character, just to unceremoniously kill him off. And I don’t see how the treatment of queer male characters in this story isn’t a massive problem.
If you make a factual claim, it’s on you to support the claim. Otherwise you’re just some voice making baseless assertions on the Internet.
There aren’t many gay males because there aren’t many *males*. The cast page has 21 people, 6 of whom are male (or nb for Booster). Of those 6, one is gay (Ethan) and two were bi (Danny, Mike) (assuming Booster took Mike’s spot, I’d never looked at the cast page before.)
Of the 15 women… I was wrong about majority, ‘only’ 7 are known lesbian or bi. 4 of them were in active relationships before the timeskip. There are even more as minor characters (the polycule) but not cast-page important.
So you’re saying that killing 1 out of 10 queer characters, and one for whom being bi was the least defining aspect of his character, is “Bury Your Gays”? Yeah, I’m going to continue to disagree. I’m not happy with Mike’s death or how it was handled, but it’s got nothing to do with his being bi. Literally half the male characters of the main cast were queer!
I also note that this isn’t the first Willis universe Mike has died in.
DRs, there are actual University level classes on Queer tropes in fiction, queer coding in Film .
Its clear you have multiple misunderstandings, including what “a Trope” is.
You cant MATH your way out of a trope. thats not how they work.
>>>>Its NOT empirical, its qualitative <<<<<
TV TrOPEs has an excellent page on that. see "top level" tropes.
( It doenst help that many people including progressives are reductive about this, treating a mere trope as inherently radioactive ) .
"it’s on you to support the claim" NOT TO YOU i dont. thats a level of respect you must earn.
"some voice making baseless assertions on the Internet."
.
Heavens me, that just sounds AWFUL. I would hate to be mistaken by you for some anonymous Rando making Baseless assertions on the internet.
I beg a thousand pardons , What are you a doctor of again?
“So you’re saying ”
Nope YOU are saying that , rather sarcastically.
“that killing 1 out of 10 queer characters”
look you would HAVE TO Pretend you care about reading M-M fiction, and you made it obvious you do not. It doesnt matter to you.
How am I supposed to fill that hole in your heart?
The best i could have hoped was willis finished telling that story in a way that made you care.
thats not a mathematical Proof, thats a type of empathy for experiences and people different than your own.
>>>one for whom being bi was the least defining aspect of his character<<< That isnt True.
I'll leave it to Willis to tell you otherwise.
You think this purely because of the Gay stuff was mostly hidden from you, or happened between scenes or was inserted as backstory ( just like real life ) .
That You would have this upside down viewpoint of LGBT people from this type of representation is EXACTLY what is wrong with it.
All Your fiction is lying to you about LGBT people in real life . Mostly by omission.
These are elements of queerbaiting. and BI Invisibility .
You are accidentally pointing out something thats wrong and dont even know it.
Willis has made a point to show that he's been bedding boys all the way back to high school in the earliest timeline of the story.
"I also note that this isn’t the first Willis universe Mike has died in."
Its not the First Universe a gay character or specifically Ethans lover was run over.
THATS the point. LBGT readers were specifically told by Willis this is the Universe/ comic where that doesnt happen. This was EXPLICIT.
Thats why your homophobic division is irrelevant .
How many students are dead? just a Pansexual Male. thats it?
the only dead student is LGBT , than yes , its a fair trope to say "bury your gays" , per its literal definition.
You ONLY need 1 . Just 1.
It IS the first time a student dies and we find out in passing as backstory and offscreen.
what does that sound like to you ?
Its just another omission of this character the story doesn't focus on.
By your own logic , the death of this character would be a least defining aspect of his character too ( instead of the most ) because you are confusing the focus of the story ( an authorial choice ) with whats essential or definging to the character .
"The cast page" is in FLUX. Mike was still on it the other day.
Its like Black Guy dies in the Horror movie first. Then the heterosexual kids who had sex ( as punishment ) . These are actual tropes. You may not understand this but the author does, because Walky started explaining that trope to Joyce.
is “Bury Your Gays”? yup. We are rare and special creatures with secret lives and initiations you will never understand.
But you only have to Kill ONE …. ( after you take us by the hand outside the text and promise the audience specifically you will not KIll even one gay ) for it to count.
Those are the rules. You dont have the authority to challenge it.
This is because there is less of us in real life, we are more likely to be murdered or attacked, and underrepresented in fiction .
****************************************
Finally what you said is Narratively FALSE.
You made a ridiculous claim MIke sexuality is disconnected from his death, "nothing to do with his being bi." when it was actually the motivation for putting himself in harms way!!
The story made it clear that his machinations backfired and he actually had feelings for ethan. Or he knew this and sacrificed them anyway so Ethan would fully come out all the way. He actually had his feelings a little hurt by Danny at the party.
Then he deliberately Led Toedad and hammerface away from the party where he thought Ethan was to protect him. its his entire motivation for heroic sacrifice.
its also lowkey homophobic that you made this error: Straight people never misunderstand heroic sacrifices for Het ships/ feelings.
While gays are fed a starvation diet of subtext and innuendo , you have been overfed by heavy handed text in compensation. You have been harmed by it and not know, because its made you numb ; this is about qualities .
I proved your claims false, tried to explain your false definition of a trope, told you where to look it up, reminded you Willis made a specific out of text claim of no dead gays ,
and showed you conclusively Mike Pansexuality was essentially tied to his hospitalization.
If you missed this you should reread it again from the party.
im done
and in the future:
“I was asking you to justify your claim that
that’s an applicable trope.”
is a demand a total stranger write you an essay in comparative fiction.
its Obnoxious as hell. i sent you to TV tropes to self educate . ( i know you didnt open all the examples )
As a big tvtropes reader, going to have to disagree with you. Bury Your Gays does not apply here. Mike wasn’t killed off for being pan, nor was he one of only a few LGBTQ characters in the comic, nor was he the only person to die in the strip.
I heard from my imaginary friend that Ethan committed suicide after Mike died.
Mike would have wanted it that way, but he was too busy introducing himself to Blain’s mother to notice.
My dude. As a bi man, I’ll just say: You are being way more obnoxious than anyone else in the conversation.
You are basically saying “I’m right, anyone who questions my opinion is wrong, ignorant, and RUDE for expecting me to back up my opinion.”
And yeah, I don’t think it is bury your gays at all. The cast has had multiple non-straight male characters, one of them happened to die. That’s it.
I actually kind of have to agree with adam Black on this. The cast does not have many gay male characters. It was 3. Ethan, Mike, and Danny revealed to be bi. adam Black is definitely passionate about this topic but I don’t think that makes the criticism invalid. In ten years DoA has not presented a male couple in a functioning, long term relationship. That is a flaw. Mike and Ethan was a brief fling, and while it did receive a tasteful porn which I think in DoA is a good validation. That’s rpemium content and possibly not very appealing to people looking for relationship representation beyond sex.
Background characters are just that. Background characters. Ethan briefly hooking up with “Finger guns” guy is cool but no one cares about “Finger guns” guy. It means nothing compared to seeing the details of other relationships like Dorothy or Walky, or Amber, ect enjoying being couples, arguing, being cute. Especially the girl couples, one of which is still in a committed and working relationship Becky and Dina. (I’d say Billie and Ruth too but I’m not certain how that’s turned out now)
I don’t think it’s intentional. DoA from the start has been a comic more focused on the girl’s stories and perspective so it’s kind of understood at least for me that the guys get a little short served, but it can feel a little bitter to now have one of the potential male relationships basically taken off the table for now considering how slow paced this story is.
I do have some hope for Booster though. I don’t know their sexuality or if they’re even into romance at all but there’s at least potential now for another run at a male couple in the main cast maybe.
Adam Black, thank you so much for putting words and passion into something that I have neither of right now. I share your anger and disappointment, and I’m so frustrated that Booster’s introduction and character is now forever tangled up with association of this really really unfortunate decision.
Because at the end of the day, this WAS a conscious decision by a cisgender heterosexual man to have this character’s death be delivered in this fashion.
Willis actually came out as non-binary a while back (I missed it too until yesterday).
Not trying to derail your feelings about Mike’s death, but I wanted to correct that.
As discussed yesterday, Willis isn’t cisgender.
https://itswalky.tumblr.com/post/190486276797/hey-i-dont-mean-to-be-presumptive-but-i-saw-a
Doesn’t change the core point (or at least, I don’t remember hearing them say they’re not heterosexual,) but I do think it’s worth pointing out. It is DEFINITELY a flaw of DOA that we’ve gone so long without a proper m/m romance. That said, given Amber and Sal could make up for WAY worse, I don’t think Ethan and Danny are sunk forever. (We are DEFINITELY getting a good grovel, though. There’s a reason it’s a thing in romance novels.) And I don’t think Ethan’s going to grieve exclusively for the next ten years, either way, nor that he wants to only have casual sexual encounters. Willis is definitely imperfect, but I do tend to trust them to try.
Take a break if you need it – this year’s certainly been hell, and I’m making predictions that are fairly long-game – but the other thing Booster’s introduction does is say ‘brand new characters can join the main cast now.’ I’m hoping that means some more gay dudes in meaningful roles, because lord knows we need them, and with that, an actual romance even if Danny/Ethan is slow burning again. And I do think Ethan’s story isn’t done.
Bury Your Gays doesn’t apply here. Mike wasn’t killed off for being a sinful pansexual.
Queerbaiting also doesn’t apply here. There’s enough representation to show that Willis doesn’t intend to string people along with hints and vagueries to go “Well maybe these two guys are attracted to each other.” Showing attraction between a confirmed gay man and a confirmed bi man and then having the gay man decide he wants to bang his best friend is not queerbaiting.
The low number of queer male characters of significance and not having a solid m/m romance is a genuine issue with the comic, so I get why queer male characters is being considered distinct from queer female ones.
At the same time, yeah, I have seen the discussions of Steven Universe queerbaiting by pairing Peridot up more with Lapis instead of Amethyst, or the existence of queer characters that do not have unambiguous on-screen relationships (by whatever weird metric gets used,) so I get why that one in particular is getting pushback since it’s become used for ‘my ship isn’t canon’ even as similar, equivalent relationships are. There is no equivalent ship for Ethan/Danny or Ethan/Mike, so if Danny’s sunk forever and Mike’s dead, then yeah, that is a problem. I’m hoping Danny’s not sunk forever, and I’m hoping adding a new character to the main cast means we’ll get more queer male characters as well in prominent positions soon to lessen the need for Ethan to be paired up with someone, but those are just that: hopes. Frustration is merited there.
Just gonna throw in with the chorus of people here: This isn’t Bury Your Gays, and it isn’t Queerbaiting. Just because you’ve seemingly created an arbitrary checklist of a couple of tropes doesn’t mean it’s using or actively/passively engaging in those tropes.
Yea I’m really not enjoying this rn, I don’t dislike Booster themselves but this all just feels off
I’d probably like his introduction better if we watched them walk in , use phone / text.establishing him as a viewpoint character ( like so many other charcters have been shown to do )
and not someone of importance through mere relation to other characters.
or to lampshade a narrative minefield.
ie a sidekick … or worse the dreaded Queer Campy sidekick.
But Its not my comic. Maybe Willis has narrative fatigue and wants to end it.
Alternately, maybe Booster is a stand-in for the Comment Section.
If booster was a stand in for the comments they wouldn’t be so nice lol
So they really are replacing Mike then
Amber and Billie are in the character silhouettes! I wish you guys would stop with this.
They are. And are absolutely not new characters that look coincidentally like existing characters.
In silhouette. I mean, Willis wouldn’t do that to us.
Frankly, I have no idea how ANYONE mistook that silhouette for Mike. The hair was totally different and, as Willis pointed out, was obviously wearing glasses. I can get the other one but Booster’s looked nothing like Mike to me.
I think it’s understandable. I originally though it could’ve been Mike. Most of the cast getting new hairstyles shakes things up and coming out of a coma is more reason to have new hair than not. Boost also has a similar head shape and build to Mike. Only now that they’re revealed do they look completely different.
Also just speaking about silhouettes this actually makes me distrust the other ones more. The one we think is Billie could be someone else now! The one next to Becky that is most likely Dina could be another girl entirely. Maybe wearing a big fluffy coat or something. That’s the nature of silhouettes and part of the fun of theorizing to me.
Although I admit that the Mike/Booster discourse has kind of ruined it now.
Willis has said outright they didn’t think people would mistake Booster for Mike, and none of the silhouettes are intentional fakeouts. The haircut could have theoretically been explained by those bandages on Mike’s head, but height is different. (Head shape’s subtly a bit wider for Mike than Booster, I think, but that’s also only noticeable once the full jawlines are shown. I totally get the confusion, though – if you’re only looking at the below-comic resolution, I can see missing the glasses, and from there haircut seemed much more reasonable.) So I’m pretty sure our Billie guess is a correct one. Booster was an unfortunate coincidence in being JUST similar enough in silhouette to have questions.
The little chip in the back of the hair was what made it really look like Mike for me, and the front hair seemed like it could reasonably be a shorter version of Mike’s
I still look at the silhouette version and don’t think glasses. It looks like an ear on each side, with one smaller since they’re turned partly away. Turned less so than they actually are when you see the real image.
Is Joe wearing glasses too? He’s got a bump on each side of his head.
The hair’s got the same chip and the front sticks out like Mike’s though not as impossibly.
Part of it of course is that we were looking for cast members to match the silhouettes too and there was no one existing closer than Mike.
I feel like the guy closest to the right is closer to Mike but I guess that’s just me. I thought Booster might have been Danny with a new haircut but it looked nothing like Mike to me.
It’s possible, but would get kind of redundant after doing it (unintentionally) with Mike.
I think it would help if you focused on the core issue you seem to be having, that the confirmed death of a main character was one that was one of three queer men in the cast.
Which, Mike for the longest time (since Shortpacked) was “I sleep with men because it’ll make reader laugh” and that cartoony antipathy carried over into DoA. Then we found out he had caught genuine feels for Ethan, and suddenly Mike was a real character. Now, unfortunately, we are stuck with the death of a queer male character in a cast not exactly bursting with them.
Booster appears to communicate entirely in making observations about other people.
They’ve only been in 3 strips.
I’m telling you they represent the Comment Section.
Either that or drunk Mike. Or maybe Joyce’s missing brother that her parents don’t talk about.
For three strips, they’ve made quite a lot of observations.
So Booster is going to point out the main characteristics of each character? Like Becky using comedy to deal with pain, Joyce being repressed, Joe being an ethical hedonist, etc.
I am getting Dr. Maruji vibes from them.
Maruki*
This was supposed to be a reply for my previous text. Stupid commenting system.
Booster seems like they’ll bring a breath of fresh air and be good for
the cast. It will be nice having one character who isn’t emotionally scarred and traumatized, and doesn’t know the whole tragic story.
Well, who isn’t emotionally scarred and traumatized that we know of.
I, for one, am looking forward to learning Booster’s tragic story and how they were exiled to this planet. That and welcoming our new Martian overlords.
A character that the rest of the cast can explain to what happened in the past months?
Slightly less contrived than “As you know,…”, but only slightly…
Booster is very direct and explicit in their social interactions. I wonder how they would get along with Dina.
That would be a very straight conversation, which is ironic.
Booster and Carla are going to kill each other.
I’m more interested in a Booster/Malaya interaction.
That depends entirely on how willing Booster is to talk about dinosaurs.
Booster seems nice. Pretty stable and well adjusted so far too but if their main cast I assume that won’t last.
I give them a week, strip-time, before their Tragic Backstory catches up with them.
Or they meet Dina, and bond instantly by virtue of only being crushed under the weight of societal pressures trying to force square pegs into round holes, and not terrible parents or year-long ostracization campaigns or the like. We could use some more of those!
The other possibility is that being stable and well adjusted
will just be a real bad time for them in this dorm.
Now I *really* hear Booster sounding like Double Trouble.
That seems TROUBLEsome… That was a bad pun.
GOD DAMMIT YOU’VE RUINED BOOSTER FOR ME NOW.
This is Boosters canon voice
Aww, DT. I wish they had more to do in the last season. But alas the MC’s had to be prioritized and the crew were pressed for time.
I wish there’d been even half a season more. I liked all the plot developments of Season 5 but they could’ve used a bit more time to breathe.
Yay I’m not the only one!
It was the “you *are* a friend line for me
analyzing people you just met out loud like that is kinda…
like drunk Mike?
like the comment section?
a way to ingratiate yourself by failing to mention the elephant?
Well it’s answering snark with snark, so….
Oh, you ARE a friend:
An acquaintance will help you
A friend will help you move
A best friend will help you move bodies.
It’s probably not what they meant, but something about the wording of the last couple lines in the first panel makes it sound like Booster is trying to use reverse psychology or something. Something along the lines of “wow that sounds like you just accidentally told me something you weren’t supposed to tell anybody about and so now you’re definitely NOT going to proceed to give me all the juicy juicy details.”
This comment section doesn’t have all the facts.
The fact is I love Booster already and will die for them.
Gotta say, it’s so NICE to see fresh blood in a major role. Not that I don’t love Joyce and Amber, not that I consider Dorothy or Becky or even Dina all that similar to their Walkyverse counterparts, but Lucy was the last really major new character to join the Willis roster (Carla being a human UC) in 2012. If you want to go out to significant supporting cast, Jocelyne’s first strip is 2013.
It will be interesting to see what Willis does with them as a character!
It will be interesting to see how Willis finally decides to kill them off.
When the time comes, of course.
Willis will build the plot, flesh out the characters to a mind-boggling degree, show their development into flawed but lovable adults who are struggling to overcome life’s hurdles, then just as we’re reaching the inevitable dramatic climax of their lives’ major conflicts… Willis will DIE, and his will shall stipulate that his notes be burned and that no entity shall ever be allowed to acquire the copyrights to his storyline until they expire. Thus we shall effectively be denied ever knowing the fates of our beloved cast. muwahahahahhAHHAAAAA
Yeah I’m definitely on board for Booster. I super hope they’re a theatre/drama kid.
Yesterday there was a comment about how we only accept “normalized” queer characters, who angst about the weight of their sexuality and gender identity, and that really him me hard because I’ve never thought about that.
Booster coming into the cast and being openly, unambiguously queer in a visual way that no one can turn their eyes from, I think that’s huge. It helped me realize my own shortchanging of queer characters if they “look too queer.”
Booster is probably ok, but the mixing of their introduction with the 2020 saga of is Mike dead?? kind of pollutes the atmosphere. I’ll still be checking the comic from force of habit, but this is an uncomfortable resolution to Schrodinger’s Mike.
Yeah I like booster I don’t like booster introduction
I’d bet that Willis spent some considerable time trying to figure out how to handle this without either annoying some readers or hurting the story or both. I doubt there was a way so he decided to do what was best for the story and just take the heat from the upset readers
Dotty and Welky forever.
Agreed.
(Pouts)
Booster and Lucy are nice.
I love Booster already!
#TeamBoosterBoosters
mmmmm I’m getting very Lucy vibes from Booster.
Stop being so nice! Your smile is off putting!
So I assume we all believe Danny finished off Mike with a pillow to clear the way for him and Ethan, right?
Shhh!
Ugh, I mean I hope my feelings go away and I come to like the character. But, I’m having a surprisingly strong reaction to Mike being gone and I feel like Poochie, I mean Booster is interloping, which they aren’t but still…
I uh, I think the comparison between Booster and Poochie is generally being heavily frowned upon, given that I distinctly remember there being a thread talking about it in yesterday’s comments which has now mysteriously disappeared. So yeah you probably wanna not do that.
You actually reread all of yesterdays massive comments to see what disappeared?
I am impressed and appalled.
control F my guy
But that’s cheating.
Booster catches on very fast
Booster, stop psychoanalyzing your new friends out loud; it’s not polite
(Do all the psychoanalysis in your head you like. This cast is a psych student’s goldmine.)
Hypothesis I just saw elsewhere: Booster is Drunk Mike with Witness Protection reconstructive surgery and a commitment to turning over a new leaf.
Too contrived, or just contrived enough?
Both too contrived and implausible. Witness Protection never sends you back to your origin community.
Impossible, but true. Whether it’s true or not.
Actually it’s the superman thing with the glasses all over again. They keep us from realizing that without them Booster and Mike look exactly alike.
If so, Booster’s lying about their old roommate not adhering to their chosen name.
Also, if Booster that transferred from another dorm would, in theory, should have someone somewhere (friends, classmates, teachers, administrators) on campus who knew who they were. A Booster who’s a complete stranger to everyone would stick out like a sore thumb.
Booster’s not lying if there last roommate called them Mike.
Well they’d be lying about that being the REASON for getting a new roomma-…
… wait, Walky isn’t a new roommate…
….
*brainplosion*
Booster is clearly a highly experienced dorm roomie if they know the difference between someone being a friend and being a “friend”. That they had a degree of uncertainty about Lucy and Walky’s status augers for a situation where everyone will assume that they are in a relationship based on their behaviour.
Walky: “I’ve never had to process death or a traumatic situation like this before, and I am established to be pretty bad at dealing with social situations and just sort of blurting things out in order to address them. Hence my repeated invocation of the dead roommate I’m sort of grieving.”
Comments: “when will Walky stop literally peeing into Mike’s dead mouth. the disrespect???? Willis cancelled????”
Srsly either these folks have never personally dealt with trauma, or don’t understand that different people process trauma and grief very differently and if we’re gonna get mad about disrespecting a dead fictional character then I’d argue it’s also disrespectful to complain about how those close to him are processing their potent grief.
1.) you are extremely correct
2.) I would understand the ire if it was, like, Danny waltzing around cracking wise, because we last saw Danny going “maybe Mike SHOULD be dead”, and there is an established antagonism there, it would be gross
But Walky? Walky and Mike were practically friends. Sure, Mike gave him shit over the breakup with Dorothy, but that was Mike’s whole fucking…brand, he was the Troll Friend. Walky knew how to deal with him.
Now he’s just…gone. Forever. And Walky doesn’t know how you deal with that, yet.
Yeah, Walky’s blunt attitude about it seems true to his character as well as a fairly realistic way to deal in general.
When my mother died (don’t smoke, kids!) I informed my friends with a group message announcing I was halfway to Batman. Talking about hard subjects in a blunt, kinda jokey way is normal for lots of folk.
I’m sorry for your loss and that’s hilarious.
Did one of your friends reply with “I thought your mom had cancer! Who shot her?”
(reply to drs)
Ha, sadly no. Everyone was very respectable and offered condolences. If someone had sent something like that I would have probably burst out laughing. Then cried a touch before spending way too much time trying to write a clever reply.
Yeah I am also a person for whom bloke 80% of how I cope with heavy shit is through snark and sarcasm.
I just don’t attend funerals. Not because I don’t want to commemorate the dead, but because it’s not fair to the ppl who will interpret my gallows humor as making fun of their pain.
“Practically friends” is a weird way to describe the asshole roommate you’ve kind of learned to put up with, but who sabotages you at every turn.
It’s still hard because death is always rough. And it being someone you didn’t like but who was still close to you adds a different layer of awkward guilt.
Mike gaslighted Walky and tried to sabotage his relationships. They weren’t friends.
I’d argue that likely makes his feelings about the whole thing even *more* complicated, and it is 100% in character for Walky to deflect from complicated feelings using humor.
Yup! As someone who has experienced prolonged ongoing trauma and uses humor as a primary coping mechanism it really rubs me the wrong way how people are talking about how disrespectful Walky’s statements are here. They are 100% in character for him and he seems like he is having a tough time processing and trying hard to pretend he’s okay when he’s not (that sort of deflection is usually why people use this kind of humor), NOT just being rudely cavalier about someone’s tragic death.
No, it’s just this irritating modern social media phenomenon that demands that primary characters in modern entertainment be morally, behaviourally, emotionally and politically perfect at all times or they should be removed and, ideally, the creator ruined and shunned for life.
this is a weird thing to say after several days’ worth of people lamenting that mike, the character whose main purpose was to be an asshole to everyone around him, has not been treated well enough by the narrative.
Once we start getting the Slipshines of Mike in the afterlife, all will be forgiven.
There have also been plenty of commentators who made it clear that they hated Mike and that their only problem with his sudden off-screen death is that it means he never got his social comeuppance for his behaviour.
So it’s literally, dying is too good for him?
I haven’t seen that – though I come close to it if you squint weirdly.
I didn’t want Mike to git his “social comeuppance”, I wanted to see Mike deal with his own realization of how badly he’d screwed up his friends.
And I do in general dislike the “redemption through death” arc. Narratively, it’s an easy out. I’m more interested in character growth and change. Death precludes that.
I’m closer, I think – I’ve said both ‘lets him off easy’ and the discussion of how Amber and Ethan deserved better, and I wanted them to tell him off rather than martyr him – but I’m not sure I’d describe the latter as ‘social comeuppance’, that kind of implies something more widespread. Also, because Mike is fictional, and so it is narratively letting him off easy. At its core my objections are much like yours – death cuts potential off.
To be fair to BenRG, back before Mike’s life was in danger, you couldn’t express any fondness for the character in the comment section without a bunch of people dogpiling you telling you that you must be a horrible person who supports toxic abusive behavior because of fondness for a *fictional* asshole In a totally fictional context, which has no bearing on what sorts of behavior one might approve or disapprove of in real life.
Maybe newer readers or newer Mike fans aren’t aware of or don’t realize that, but it’s definitely been bizarre suddenly seeing the comments go from “Mike is horrible and so is anyone who enjoys him being in this comic” to “his death was treated terribly and he should not have been killed.” I would *assume* those two sentiments are not being made by the same groups of people, maybe readership has shifted, but definitely seems like he can’t win here.
I don’t know if he got rid of Mike because of reader complaints or because he just personally didn’t have anywhere else he wanted to go with the character, either is possible.
I’ve been a pretty harsh critic of Mike here, but I mostly objected to the commenters who claimed Mike was REALLY doing good. The “asshole sage” approach. Nothing wrong with enjoying a fictional asshole as long as you’re enjoying him as an asshole.
You can’t deny there was also always a bunch of people dogpiling on to explain how Mike was helping out by making characters face truths about themselves or some such bullshit.
I’m not fond of the way his death was handled, largely because I’ve never liked the “redemptive death” arc – it’s too simple and easy narratively. Trying to change and find a way to live with the shit you’ve done is much harder – and more of a realistic problem.
I’d been getting more interested in Mike since he showed real signs of actual feelings over Ethan and was never more so than after his realization during the fight with Blaine and Ross that he’d been behaving like Blaine to Amber. I really wanted to see where he could go from there.
That’s fair enough! I definitely wasn’t one of the people defending his behavior as actually good, I just enjoy assholes in fiction. I would hate knowing someone like that in real life, but have always been fond of kind of sympathetic villains (Spike in Buffy, Team Rocket in Pokemon, Baltar in Battlestar, etc). Not really sure why.
I also agree I definitely would’ve preferred to see a living redemptive arc, I love bad guys get truly redemptive arcs in fiction where they change and try to do better. But I can also understand why Willis may not have wanted to go that direction or spend as much time focusing on the redemption of an often problematic character in a strip that’s heavily about calling out and showing the consequences of harmful behavior.
And yeah it was specifically him showing that other side beyond being just a jerk that originally made me like him in SP! And made me excited to see where his character was going in this because that is one of my favorite types of character arcs. So it was definitely a bummer his story ended riiiiight as we were getting that.
But ah well. I respect Willis’ right to write the story he wants to write and will likely still enjoy whatever comes next.
While I understand that Walky’s way of coping is that, I feel like. This was just an insensitive way narratively to go ‘Mike died off-screen, here’s a new character, here’s Walky repeatedly bringing up that Mike died, rubbing salt in the readers’ wounds for three strips’.
It kind of further soured Booster’s introduction for me and for some others because it’s not about Walky himself but the way it comes across as mocking the reader for actually giving a damn about Mike and not feeling particularly up for Walky’s casual referencing of it or shoving a new character in everyone’s face immediately afterwards as if it doesn’t matter.
Mike’s death is a sensitive spot for the readers that expected he would live, possibly with a disability, carer or other support or wanted to see his character grow into an actually good person. Some of the readers are prickly about it because they are hurt and they are real people whose feelings actually matter, and casually dropping in the death, then new character, with constant ‘Mike’s dead’ being dropped, is a very narratively insensitive way to approach both changes for the readers that DID care about Mike and it can feel very mocking, especially with it being the punchline of the previous strip, and it being the second to last remark of this one.
I find myself in agreement. I don’t think this was the best way to introduce the death of a character because even if the immediate mourning is gone in the cast, the readers just found out and have little time to process it.
We’ll see where it goes but for now I don’t know what how much better to the narrative it is that Mike is dead than Mike living with a disability, staying in his coma until dramatically convenient, trying to actually change as a person, and more.
This is about where I’m at with this whole thing too. I wasn’t even a big fan of Mike, but after dragging out the question of whether or not Mike’s dead for months and months, and ending the last chapter on an overall optimistic note, it’s really jarring to have his death suddenly confirmed in an off-hand way and used as a punchline repeatedly.
If Willis was gonna kill Mike off anyway, I just don’t understand why they bothered leaving it an open question for so long. Resolving it quicker would’ve allowed the characters and fans of Mike a chance to mourn, and given the reveal some gravity. I get not wanting to dwell on something as heavy as grief, but even one scene addressing it before heading into the time skip would’ve, I think, made the narrative run smoother.
That’s basically it.
This doesn’t read like “Walky is having issues processing Mike’s death.” It reads like “Willis is intentionally rubbing Mike’s death in the face of people who were hoping his story would take another turn.”
Mike was an asshole. But I liked him at the end, because I identified with him after he saved Amber. I emotionally hurt someone who was very important to me when I was younger, and it took me several years to fully understand what I had done – and seriously considered suicide over it. It’s taken me close to ten years to not feel like an absolute monster all the time, every day of my life.
I understood the realization Mike had in the moments before the fall.
But no, apparently I’m overreacting.
I saw some other comments about TV Tropes and a “killing your gays” page (sorry, too worked up to look for it) and while I may not agree 100% with it, I understand where they’re coming from.
I got sick and tired of Marvel and DC comics killing off characters for drama years ago. It’s part of why I stopped reading comics for years. I had hoped Willis wouldn’t fall under that same trap. I guess I was wrong.
… and sorry for the bold text there, I’m not sure what I did and it wasn’t intentional.
I think it was a waste to kill him, but I also think given the number of people in the comments who genuinely believed Mike was an ‘asshole sage’ that Mike genuinely repenting and not being an asshole at all (which is what he would’ve would’ve needed to make up for the shit he pulled on Ethan, Amber and Walky) would have gotten a lot of pushback, too. So I get WHY it happened, as little as I like it.
Honestly I’d go back and give Ethan or Amber a line last storyline about ‘the Warners asked to be alone so they can discuss options with the doctors’ or something to more clearly indicate how bad it’d gotten. (Probably not to Danny, even though it’s the easiest point – his discussion’s salvageable because Ethan’s not saying outright ‘it’s very possible he dies’ – but between each other could’ve worked.) Give the readers time to brace ourselves, and then Walky’s the blunt confirmation because we’ve had Amber and Ethan start coming to terms with it and they’re both less likely to say it outright, at least at first.
We do at least have Ruth for redemption arcs – that storyline with Rachel is definitely long game. But, sigh. Nine months of waiting was definitely too long.
Again, based on my life: Sometimes the best thing you can do for someone you’ve hurt is walk away from their lives completely and pray they can heal.. and you try to make amends for all the damage you did to them by helping others not make the same mistakes you did.
But all of this is falling on deaf ears now. (Not you specifically.)
Yeah, best case I think would have been writing Mike out – would have made sense with him spending time comatose and severely injured to be in physical therapy for well more than a semester and/or adjusting to a traumatic brain injury. But since that would also write him out, the narrative choice between ‘alive somewhere but never coming back’ and ‘dead, in a very traumatic fashion’ has one offer way more dramatic options for the castmembers close to him. (Ethan can’t hold a torch for someone who’s dead, for one thing, Walky gets confronted with 18-year-old mortality, and Amber guilt is the gift that keeps on giving. Plus Danny guilt.)
Unfortunately, it also sandbags the readers with the way it was drawn out, and basically implies the best thing Mike could do was commit suicide. Which I’ve gotta say, is terrible. I hadn’t quite connected that one until today, at least not at the top of my mind, but it is a consistent issue with the Redemption Equals Death trope and made all the worse by Mike being 18.
Yeahhhhh no. Writing him out because he is now disabled and implying that means he can no longer participate in the regular cast activities would *not* have been a better solution. That would have made me extremely uncomfortable.
People who require physical therapy don’t spend every waking moment doing said physical therapy. It’d made sense for someone with traumatic injuries to be unable to return to school right away but I don’t think just deciding that’s enough to mean his story isn’t worth focusing on anymore would send very much the wrong message.
I was one of those people who hoped he might remain in the cast with a redemption story and now as a disabled character. I am literally a disabled person, and Mike was my favorite character.
And for what it’s worth, I read this entirely as just how I would expect Walky to deal with this situation because he makes jokes in response to every serious situation (he did it when his life was in danger while kidnapped) rather than Willis trying to dismiss his readers’ feelings.
If disabled readers are frustrated by the missed representation opportunity, I can absolutely understand, but if able-bodied readers are trying to say this writing is inherently insensitive to disabled people, I would *prefer* they not speak for us, please. We are not a hive mind and I fee, uncomfortable being used as a shield to criticize a writer/artist for storytelling choices that are fairly subjective and don’t seem to have any ill-intent.
(If you are disabled and simply speaking for yourself, then my apologies, I just wasn’t sure how to read that)
*feel
And for the record, I wish Mike hadn’t been killed off, but it is worth remembering he is not a real person, he is a fictional character who exists inside Willis’ head and if he genuinely didn’t know what direction to go with his character (possibly because his brand of humor doesn’t fit as well in today’s discourse as it did back when he was created, as evidenced by the frequency with which people hated him in the comments) then I get why he killed him off.
Sure he could’ve just left him alive but rarely included him in the story but I’m not sure that’s an inherently better direction to go.
Not just “in today’s discourse”, but in a much more grounded strip, with much more focus on the psychological lives of the characters. When we’re dissecting their problems on a moment by moment basis, you just can’t have this battering ram of an asshole wander through unexamined like you could in SP! or even IW!. And once you start critically examining him, it gets ugly.
Yeah that’s basically what I meant. He doesn’t fit the tone of this comic as well as the previous ones because of the amount of careful self-reflection present in this one, and I imagine that became increasingly awkward to write.
So much as I enjoyed him, I get it.
Also it’s possible I’m taking this so well because for some reason my favorite characters always die in everything I watch/read for whatever reason so I’m used to it if not outright expecting it at this point.
In terms of meta-narrative justification: I think that kind of response is why we’re getting Walky consistently bringing it up. That or he was expecting waaaay more “He’s Just Hiding” being a serious take than he got.
Ultimately, like. I expect when Amber’s reintroduced there’s going to be issues too.
Odds are I’m probably wrong but my Spidey senses are tingling about Booster. Wolf in sheep’s clothing type vibes.
Almost certainly a ‘dark horse’ surprise romantic foil for one of the main characters as well as being someone who, by their very nature, challenge others’ tolerance and understanding.
No no, Spidermans Marvel, Boosters Dc
Who is Dark Horse.
Or at least the Weta Doctor Who Cybercontroller statue is. I would have sworn the Doctor was Dark Horse for awhile. Maybe that was another timeline.
is booster a psych major
do these kids finALLY HAVE A THERAPIST
He IS replacing Mike! (Who was only tormenting and abusing Amber to make her strong.)
Booster the anti-Mike?
If he’s competent, qualified, and works with informed consent.
Booster goes by They/Them pronouns.
Booster reads as enby to me, too, but has the character specified a perfered set of pronouns?
Their character page uses they/them, and they were confirmed NB on Patreon.
Dear god, no. Booster’s a freshman, a kid; you really want them to take someone like Amber’s mental health into their hands?
Oh hey, maybe that’s how Booster snaps and goes crazy? They try to help the cast then eventually just… Completely lose it
…Look, I’m now assuming anybody who becomes Walky’s roommate is cursed
VS no one?
Hard call.
Not… not really? No therapy is harmful to Amber. “Therapy” from an entirely unqualified kid is harmful to both Amber and Booster.
And bad therapy can actually be worse than no therapy at all, because now a PROFESSIONAL is telling you brain garbage to internalize! Booster’s not a professional, of course, but if they seem informed enough for Amber to try then they’re informed enough for Amber’s confirmation bias.
Booster’s way of talking is kinda weird to me.
Possibly English is not their first language.
Many Martians do not have English as a first language.
Also I understand that landing on your head from a height can affect your linguistic skills.
A linguist and a cultural anthropologist are in a bar. The linguist says “conjugation is very complicated in Sanskrit.”
The cultural anthropologist says “I know. I’ve read the Kama Sutra.”
I love it, but… why are they in a bar?
25% off all drinks if you work or study at the local university? Pretty much every bar, pub, and discotheque does that on wednesdays here. Or at least they used to.
Ironic people are mad at Walky for joking about Mike dying as if that’s not what Mike would do if the situation was reversed (I say with fondness.)
Also it’s exactly what half the comments have been doing since he fell, so it sorta rings hollow.
Well, like I said yesterday wrt Danny; the context of the conversation he had with Ethan is now *significantly* worse if Mike actually died.
I don’t think too many of us wanted Mike to die. I think, more or less, we all wanted him to either fuck off with his edgelord trash and be a better person.
I’m not discounting the possibility Mike is in witness protection.
This came up yesterday too and I don’t get it. What’s Poochie about them?
Not a huge fan of Booster so far, honestly. I feel like it’s being laid on a little thick to make them seem likable and it doesn’t quite feel naturalistic to me.
Perhaps like people often do when meeting a new roommate?
Anybody else mentally “read” Booster in DoubleTrouble’s voice? You *are* a friend. Just clicked for me.
If I were Walky, I’d be all “Ding dong, the asshole’s gone” and dancing a jig of grief. But he’s had time to get over that. Now Mike is just an unpleasant memory. We are now seeing Walky being tactful and nuanced.
And then Amber walks in.
Even without that, there’s likely a conflict there that makes it even more awkward, since I’m sure there is a part of Walky that’s relieved – not coming back to the room everyday wondering what new knife Mike is going to twist. And then feeling guilty because he’s dead, not just gone away somewhere.
Booster is the Sherlock Holmes of the college or Walky is just easy to understand?
Lucy is helping Booster move in, and if I don’t see Box being carried upside-down within the next few days I will be disappointed.
While I think Booster will fit in nicely (he really gets Sally) I’m a still gonna miss Mike…
Were Mike and Walky even close? Or aquaintenced?
Roommates, which is kind of a forced intimate relationship, even if you don’t like each other. It certainly would have messed me up if one of my roommates in college had died – even the ones I was quite happy to never see again after that semester.
Wonder where Booster’s parents are. Would kind of expect them to be helping move the stuff/check out the new dorm/room situation.
It depends; college is a time when a lot of people realise things about themselves that break parental relationships. I hope not because there’s already too much of that in the cast list.
On the other hand, Mike’s parents are nice people. Maybe Booster’s parents are not so great, if their family is all equal-but-opposite bizarro Warner counterparts .
Maybe George and Harriet can adopt Booster.
(Also, since they’re designed as idealized ’40s-’50s sitcom nuclear family parents, I’m going to assume they’re named after old-timey radio show stars George Burns and Harriet Nelson.)
They likely didn’t come because it’s second semester. You know, if it’s not because they’re assholes.
Honestly, the parents of nearly every kid I knew in college showed up for second semester. Someone had to drop them off and at that point there was usually stuff to haul up to the room.
In this case, even more since none of Booster’s stuff was already in the dorm. Is it all just sitting in a pile by the side of the road? I guess they could have driven themselves or all their stuff could still be in their old room. Still seems odd that the parents wouldn’t have come up to meet the new roomie.
Parents rarely came to my college. But I went to Caltech, where most students were flying in, vs. IU where most people are driving in. OTOH in grad school I did know undergrads at IU who weren’t from the Midwest, usually for a specific major was good at like Classics, Theater, Music, and maybe Library Science (not sure there was an undergrad program for that.)
Booster might be from afar. Or might have their own car. Or the parents are downstairs with the stuff and Booster went ahead to find the room.
I’m not sure how IU handled semester breaks; I think students had to leave the dorms, or camp out in lounges if they couldn’t leave, but I doubt stuff was removed entirely, so “their stuff is in their old room” seems fairly plausible. Don’t know how IU handled room changes either.
Some of Walky’s stuff seemed to be in his room already. So
possibly Booster’s stuff (that which they didn’t take home with them) was in their old room. And that they’ll move it themselves, or maybe with Walky and Lucy’s help.
Themself, not themselves.
Gallows humor I can take. Especially when it comes from someone who was close to the deceased and is probably dealing with stuff in their way. Well, provided they aren’t using it around someone who was even closer to the situation than themselves anyway.
Calling someone you just met out on their “blurted self-protected response” though…
I really don’t like this person.
Depends – they immediately respected Walky’s apparent desire not to go into it and switched to another subject. I like this a lot better than a sudden plunge into “Oh, that’s terrible, if there’s anything I can do, blah, blah, blah…”
That’s twice in two strips, I get the feeling Booster will respect your space
Booster doesn’t know Mike, and could be making an erroneous assumption. Also, the word “late” is not perfectly unambiguous. From Thank You, Jeeves by PG Wodehouse:
“‘You did what? Where do you pick up these expressions?’
‘Well, I suppose from Jeeves, mostly. My late man. He had a fine vocabulary.’
‘When you say “late”, do you mean he’s dead? Or just un-punctual?’
‘He’s left me. He didn’t like me playing the banjolele. Words passed, and he is now with Chuffy.’”
Okay, Booster.
I think Walky graduated from snark to pitch black remarks that mostly involve mike’s death.
He may have gone full doomer, idk.
At this point, I’m assuming Mike’s dead unless we literally see him in a non-flashback non-Amber/AG scene.
Seems like Booster is the type of guy who prefers to phrase all of his questions as statements? Ugh…that is going to get real annoying, real fast.
*Type of person. Booster is nonbinary.
Boosters done that like, once so far, given they’ve only been in 2 strips, so I’m not too sure where you got that from. They also literally ask A Normal Question in the panel before the one youre referencing.
Sorry if I seem annoyed, it was probably just an offhand comment, it just seems to me that some people in the comments are grasping at straws to dislike a character thats been in, again, two whole strips, which I think is silly.
^ Upvote in the form of a comment.
Booster’s lips are giving me uncanny valley shivers still, don’t think those are going away >_<
Oh goodness, the Shock of a male-at-birth wearing Lipstick, truly a stuff of nightmares. Like an overanimate android or a lifelike doll. Just putting visible makeup on your face as a male, you should expect to strike terror into the hearts of all honest men.
Or it could be that their lips take up 98% of their face.
s’funny
booster’s lips are no different than the ones i draw on conquest, rachel, other rachel, grace, and others, and you’ve never said anything, but suddenly on booster they’re “98% of their face”
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-5/01-when-somebody-loved-me/orders/
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2019/comic/book-9-comic/04-vote-for-robin/statehood/
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2019/comic/book-9-comic/04-vote-for-robin/voterapathy/
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2019/comic/book-9-comic/03-sometimes-the-sky-was-so-far-away/bawling/
very odd
just extremely odd
wonder what’s different about booster
Interesting that you’ve taken such time and effort to respond to the conversation. All of those examples are women. Interesting. It’s all SO interesting!!
That’s a slam dunk right there
Maybe for other commenters, that might be the case, but I can promise I was just havin’ a bit of a joke. It would be really weird if I had something against a they/them individual.
And you put their likeness on as your avatar since the site’s owner made a barely veiled comment on said joke! Absolutely nothing to see here. Not the most literal case of saving face at all.
Without the glasses, their lips look just like Mikes.
The lips don’t take up nearly as much of their face as Joyce’s teeth take up of her’s.
But then the triangle smile is literally the stuff of nightmares, so …
I don’t think he’s wearing lip stick he just has really huge lips.
They.
Not moving stuff, getting A’s for his semester… Walky sure is pragmatic about Mike’s death!
Today, in the news, I read the words: “At one point, David Willis, a felon currently being sued for his alleged role in an earlier episode of political violence, joins a discussion about the use of paintballs.”
Very disorienting for a moment, before I remembered multiple people can share a name.
I just saw that too! But I don’t think our Willis is a pro-Trump terrorist.
Some people in this comment section seem to forget they’re a few months behind on Walky in processing their grief.
I also think some of them have forgotten that Willis has a huge buffer and they are unlikely to change anything with their complaining.
I’m viewing the time skip as a move to a new season. Looks like we have a new showrunner too. We ended last season on a real downer with death and damage. This seasons going to be different and more like the earlier seasons.
Some writers keep the same tone throughout a series (Evanovich) but others mix it up (Louise Penny, Laurie King). DYW is giving us something fresh this book and if you don’t like it you can ask for your money back. (Yes, the comic is free).
Oooooh, god, no no no, not a Psych Major!
Gonna say “Sarcasm” rather than “snark”.
Snark is a bit more mean-spririted.
$20 says Booster is trans. Their bio uses “They” as a pronoun. Let the confusion begin! Looking at you, Joyce. Avoiding you, Mary.