The adventures of the world’s greatest villain who, after defeating his superheroic nemesis, decides that he’s the only one left to defend the world.
Guilded Age
T Campbell, John Waltrip, Florence Machina
Welcome to the saga of the working-class adventurer! Enjoy the complete story with new annotations daily!
Not Drunk Enough
Tess Stone
Logan Ibarra is possibly the unluckiest repairman in the world. A late night job should not have landed him in the middle of a mad scientist's squabble, but he soon finds himself surrounded by monsters and further madness with little tools to get out.
Monster's Garden
Ash G.
Champion pit fighter Kilo Monster was content to spend the rest of his days tending to his quiet garden alone... until he met a curious robot girl and her human family.
Freakshow
Scotty
A festival of broken people, blood flows in the center ring. Come one and come all, to the greatest show in all of Paris.
The Golden Boar
Magnolia Porter Siddell
A young woman joins a group of summoners who call forth Guardian Beasts to protect their isolated magical island. Unfortunately, her Guardian Beast is nothing like she'd imagined, and he's about to change her life, and everything she thought she knew about herself...
Heroes of Thantopolis
Izzy Strontium Hall
A living boy fights to save the City of the Dead.
The Messenger
indui
In a ruin-abound town cursed with bad luck, Kai and Kalla--a young boy and a fledgling dragonbird spirit--take on a quest in hopes the reward will solve all of their problems.
Sakana
Mad Rupert
Our heroes must navigate a hazardous dating scene, overcome personal anxieties, and wrangle unruly seafood in order to find love, peace of mind, and a paycheck.
Stand Still, Stay Silent
Minna Sundberg
A few generations after the end of the world, a small, poorly financed research crew is sent out to rediscover whatever is left of the forbidden old world in the south.
Blindsprings
Kadi Fedoruk
Tamaura, wrested into a world 300 years in the future, must find a way to save the magic fading from her country.
Three Panel Soul
Matt Boyd, Ian McConville
It's a pretty rigid format but we keep the content loose, you know?
Barbarous
Ananth Hirsh, Yuko Ota
A crummy wizard and an anxious monster have to get over themselves and bring order to an apartment building full of misfits.
ARISE, YE SKELETON KING
Brian Clevinger, Escher Cattle, Lee Black
A troupe of wandering "adventurers" down to their last silver "acquire" a map only to find the real treasure was the fiend they dug up along the way.
Nerf Now!!
Josué Pereira
A cute webcomic about fanservice, video games, and... love. Mostly video games, though.
Ozzie the Vampire
Eric Lide
Ozzie and her best friend Kimmy are your average everyday normal art students – except one is an immortal vampire with superpowers and the other possesses a magic talking grimoire. Also they have to save their town from a demonic invasion.
Dumbing of Age
David M Willis
Joyce has been homeschooled her entire life until now, when she's suddenly a freshman in college! Things don't go well.
Empowered
Adam Warren
A sexy superhero comedy (except when it isn't) about the never-ending struggles of a plucky but very unlucky young superheroine.
Sister Claire
Yamino
In the troubled aftermath of a great war between Witches and her fellow Nuns, novice Sister Claire just wants a purpose.
Saint for Rent
Ru Xu
Saint Halliday runs an inn for Time Travelers. Unfortunately, he seems to attract other supernatural "guests," too.
Little Tiny Things
Clover
What are the little things that move us? The simple joys that warm our bodies and hearts? The micro life of insects that influence our world more than we think? The tiny steps we make everyday to have a happier tomorrow?
Cyanide & Happiness
Explosm
Satire, dark humor and surreal humor.
Namesake
Isa, Meg
There's ghosts at your heels and fairy tale worlds ahead. What do you do? Jump down the rabbit hole!
Augustine
Winter Jay Kiakas, Windy
August and her ragtag group are just like everyone else, simply surviving in the treacherous Crater... When they stumble into what may be an artifact of the ancient past, their lives are thrown into a much bigger loop as they trifle with bounty hunters, monsters and gods.
Angel's Orchard
Harry Bogosian
After the events in Demon's Mirror, Gerda has accepted her role as a Demon Hunter, and Cezar has traveled back to the Demon City. Demons have existed alongside humans for millennia, so things begin to return to normal. But an impossibly powerful Relic has been taken by one of the Demon Masters, and a silent war enters its final stages.
The Weave
Rennie Kingsley
A young woman pursued by bad luck is witness to the murder of the Fairy Queen of Summer. Can she get to the bottom of this mystery?
Sleepless Domain
Mary Cagle (Cube Watermelon)
In a world where magical girls and their battles are commonplace, loss has become all too common as well.
Nigh Heaven & Hell
Scotty
Heather Vodihn is on a simple mission: find her father. However she becomes entangled with two strangers with mysterious powers being stalked by a group with bizarre demands. Heather must learn to trust her new traveling companions, even if she is untrustworthy herself.
Novae
KaiJu
A historical romance with a touch magic and a dash of astronomy. It chronicles the romantic adventures of Sulvain, a sweet tempered necromancer and Raziol, a passionate 17th century astronomer.
Darkling Bright
Chris Hazelton
Kieran Bright is a college student home for the summer and roped into an online reunion with his old neighborhood friends in the most recent update of their favorite childhood MMORPG.
At least, he was, and that was the idea...
Join Kieran and his friends as they are pulled into another reality that may or may not be real and are forced to confront their own identities, the nature of simulated universes and reality itself.
Peritale
Mari Costa
A fairy godmother with no magic tries her best to successfully fulfill a Fairytale and win the respect of her peers.
Lies Within
Lacey
Lysander's aimless and carefree life is turned upside down when he accidentally discovers that the cute boy next door, Simon, is a literal monster
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Could someone explain to this old guy why plural pronouns would be used to identify an individual? I understand that the language changes over time, but this seems an odd variant to me… us?
This is a very odd thing to be completely in the dark about for someone who is able to use a computer and reads this particular strip. Really? You’ve never heard anything about the genderless pronoun issue? It’s been a discussion in American culture for decades, and is quite big on the internet.
We should remember that not everyone happens to learn all the same things we do, and the things they do learn might take a different amount of time than they took us. I forget what the term for that concept is, though.
Singular they has a longer pedigree than singular you. (And has always been for when the other three options were inappropriate, rather than starting as a sign of respect.)
Certainly I’ve heard of people using gender neutral pronouns, usually as part of a mockingly negative joke. I recall something about new pronouns starting with ‘x’. Despite using a computer (for quite literally decades) and following a humorous webcomic, I am not clear on the topic. This is why I asked for an explanation of the idea behind it. Perhaps this is unusual, but I was interested in learning new things.
As I said, I’m old, and even when I wasn’t I didn’t really care about popular culture and rarely followed, or was even aware of, trends.
I really don’t care who other adults find attractive, or who they exchange bodily fluids with.
I apologize to anyone I offended with the question, even though I find myself wondering why asking an honest question would offend.
Others answered the question pretty well, but I felt I should mention something else; complaining about “singular they” may cause people to assume things about you. The majority of pushback against it comes from people who are are anti-trans or anti-queer, not just protective of the english language. So it’s good to ask questions on that subject with care, to avoid people assuming you’re just another jerk
Ryan may or may not still be in the hospital. If he is out, I suspect his parents who cared enough to sue also care enough not to send him back to the school where he got stabbed (oh and also accused of serial drugging and sexually assaulting women, but you know how those bongoes lie.)*
* I am, at best, 50% on Ryan’s parents believing the women and him facing consequences there. Since he is DEFINITELY off the board, we’ll never know.
I’m wondering why she’s back to being Ruthless after all this time. A lot of her “grr femurs” stuff as time went on was performative if it even happened at all.
She seems to be doing it in a rather tongue-in-cheek way, or at least more cheerfully than before. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s just doing it to keep up appearances/have some feeling of normalcy.
That she goes from Angry Ruthless to “oh I’m doing okay, I changed my meds” in casual conservation with Becky at the drop of a hat does suggest to me that it’s probably a front she’s putting up in lieu of legitimately still trying to terrorize her dorm like she did.
There was DEFINITELY some leaning in the ‘You can’t axe Axel!’ scene, but Xemnas mocking his keyblade started it. (Frankly I think it started – beyond the clear joke at the audience that was II.9 – around Toy Story world. Woody roasts a Nort and the Versus XIII stuff with Yozora.)
It doesn’t take much for me to dislike Walky. It doesn’t take anything actually, but I do feel a need to point out that “She’s actually much cheerier than she used to be” line.
Like….does Walky know about Ruth’s depression? Cause that’s borderline inappropriate to snark about if he does. I feel like he doesn’t but also that news did go really public so it’s up in the air for me. You’re playing a dangerous game Walky. Maybe.
See, I don’t find that nearly as inappropriate as “She’s a little too hands-on, if you get my drift.” I honestly didn’t read it as snarky at all, he seems pretty sincere about it to me.
Today I learned that accurately stating that someone is, as evidenced by their behavior compared to when you first met them, more cheerful, is actually outing(??) their mental illness (which they were cracking wise about in public like five strips ago???) and also making light of their depression
That’s kind of what we do here actually. The nature of having 24 hours for thousands of people to overanalyze a strip that’s just a brief moment in a conversation.
Was Danny’s “Your real mom” comment just innocuous clarification of which mom was on the phone or a shot at Stacy being Joe’s step mom and not a real parental figure to him?
When Becky said “I’ve never been under the top” was that just her way of saying she’s got a big personality or an innuendo implying that she’s a bottom in her sexual relationships?
Is it all just innocent dialogue showing off character conversational quirks? Who knows???? I don’t know why Walky should get a free pass on it.
I think Danny’s comment was just him not thinking through what he says before he said it, like he always does. Poor kid’s got a chronic case of foot-in-mouth.
I belong to a radical, some would even say heretical, creed that finds that shit to be absolutely obnoxious no matter what character it’s applied to.
Though I guess if one MUST, equal opportunity minutiae obsession is the way to go
In that spirit:
-Is Ruth’s comment that she’ll drag in Walky’s corpse an indication that she’s actively regressed to bullying and violence and she’s secretly blackmailed Rachel so all opposition to her is silenced??? You can’t PROVE it isn’t
-Booster has clearly agreed to this tour in order to drop a dime on all of Walky’s acquaintances to Linda, who secretly employs him and is going to expel everyone in Reed Hall through magical helicopter parent powers. Booster is clearly amoral and loves rolling in Linda cash, hence his FLIPPANT DISMISSAL of Ruth’s SINISTER THREATS
Thank you Sirksome for demonstrating some self awareness of the absurdity of the level of judgement and analysis the characters are subject to. I wonder if most of the commenters have that? I don’t.
S ince we only tend to see Willis respond in the first hour or so, I kinda wonder if he avoids the chat beyond that so he doesn’t get influenced by the over-analysis. Or if he has a mallards ability to just let it run off.
We could take into account that he might be angry at Ruth for either being Billies girlfriend or breaking up with her.
But yes, basically he again comes across as a mindless asshole which no consideration. If this were my roommate, I’d already apply for a switch.
For pretty decent reasons. Ones similar to every one here calling it out as a toxic relationship, but without all the information we have that shows it in a better light.
I wasn’t around when it came out, but that strip where Walky says he wanted Ruth to be better for Billie than she is and when Ruth says she can be better all he can muster is “neat”, that was probably the most brutal strip in the whole series and it came from friggin’ Walky.
I adored it. I’ve really changed my tune on Ruth over the years but I’m still consistently all for DoA continuing with holding its protagonists accountable for their actions.
I think we’re too used to Ruthless. It’s not funny when she threatens to murder people otherwise a lot of agitated Gamers would be successful as comedians.
I want to know what’s going on with Ruth that she’s back to being Ruthless or at least acting as such as a front. Makes me wonder if Billie’s similarly backslid into being the Alpha Bongo of her dorm.
For me specifically, yeah. I think that’s common knowledge by now though. In general Walky’s comments this morning have had a slight edge to them. Probably in a bad mood from the break and his roommate being dead. That’s not really an excuse though.
Ruth’s murder threat is also problematic and Walky didn’t explain to Booster that she never follows through on them which is something Ruth has even stated more than once.
Honestly this is just kind of a jaded tour from his perspective in general.
Are colleges really that micro into their students’ lives these days? Even not taking the Cursed Virus into account?
I saw my RA maybe twice a semester, unless business could be conducted by sliding forms under doors, which it usually was. One year I lived right next door to the RA and if we traded two words, I don’t remember.
Wound up spending very little time in my dorm rooms; the school paper was where I lived and spent time between classes.
Some are. Ruth seems to do floor meetings on the first days of semesters and then whenever her bosses tell her to (ex. prank fire alarm, school shooting).
I rarely saw my RAs in my four years of college, mostly because I avoided the floor meetings and the RAs I had couldn’t really do anything to force us to attend them.
When I was in college 15 or so years ago I would see my RA fairly regularly. They always had the room closest to the bathroom and kept their door open when they were “on call” and not asleep (one of the 8 or so RAs in each building was always on call at any given time).
“Hands-on” meaning “Hands wrapped around our throats”. That’s our Ruthless!
Seriously, though, Ruth has to be the one to tell Walky about the meeting. As he said, the men’s wing RA probably can’t be bothered! Booster will soon realise that threats of violence from her are a bizarre kind of friendship ritual. Most of the time. Unless she really doesn’t like you at all.
I thought hands on meant she started dating someone she was in charge of. Seems the right amount of rudeness he could toss in in a couple words as he’s been doing.
yeah, I think that was also implied (though he could get away with saying she’s taking her job to serious and does a lot more than their RA, if asked).
When Joyce messed up with Jacob, his role in the story evidently ended. Apparently, Ethan is also no longer required after telling Danny off and making him realise that he’s not the nice guy everyone assumes after all.
Yeah, Jacob hasn’t really been seen since the Harrison visit because that night was the birthday party, and from there it was Evil Dads O’Clock. No space.
You can tell she’s grown a lot because at the beginning of last year there’s no way anybody would be so casual toward her and there’s no way she’d put up with that if there were
Wait. No introduction of Ethen and Jacob? Ethen was kidnapped too, so the discription of ‘don’t end up in high-stakes adventures’ doesn’t count for him. What happened to those two?
tbqh, I’m pretty sure he’s dropped out or at least taking an extended holiday because he lost one of his closest childhood friends, and went through a lot of trauma and sudden change that his school friends are entirely unequipped to support him through (danny & amber specifically).
Still, only time and Willis will tell if my hunch is accurate.
Also, Ethan has had to get back to the “openly gay” bandwagon, and because of that, his family (well, his mother) probably was awful to live with during the break.
Last we heard, he didn’t plan to mention that to his parents. That was the point of doing no strings attached hook ups and not getting a serious boyfriend.
The last word on Ethan was that Amber needed to stop hovering around him turning his problems into fuel for her guilt, so he’s probably on a bus for a storyline or two.
Walk is at least more willing to admit to his “not knowing anyone on the boys’ floor” thing, compared to when he was dragging the teaching assistant around. That might be more signs of personal growth!
In real life, if I was introduced to a person of authority and warned that they were rather “hands on”, I’d actually be rather alarmed. :/ Especially given the recent #MeToo movement and the downfall of people like Harvey Weinstein.
And then if you got the outside perspective on Ruth and Billie’s relationship, you’d be even more alarmed. Ruth abused her, they fought a lot and are having sex. Along with depression and alcohol abuse.
We know there’s more to it than that, but damn does it look bad.
I find Booster’s lips to be so jarring. Reminds me of a former coworker who had blonde hair, blue eyes, pale pinkish-white skin, and wore really dark red matte lipstick – the colour combination just didn’t work. It might have, if she’d also done dramatic makeup otherwise, but no, it was just the lips. Same sort of thing with Booster…the colouring just doesn’t work for me.
Oooh, that coworker would’ve been really offended by the suggestion – she was a very white-collar, slightly judgey person, in an office environment. Makes me laugh. No, I think it was just poor colour choices and possibly lack of self-awareness.
Can you imagine those introductions:
“These are Students A through F. Over there is Boy A In Conversation. That’s Boy B In Conversation. And this is Girl Being Introduced.”
He made the right choice.
Walky used to have a girlfriend that dressed him (his mom commented on it), but she split with him. Most of the other male cast generally handle dressing themselves with varying (danny) degrees of success.
“I’m just going to say it, shame on any of us who throws a trans child under the bus for thinking they’re going to get elected. That child deserves our support. Don’t worry about the pollsters calling it distractions, because we need to be the party of human dignity.”
Minnesota Star Tribune@startribune.com ⋅ 21h
Gov. Tim Walz is doubling down on trans rights — and criticizing members of his party who are retreating — at a time when the issue has become a political lightning rod nationally and back home in Minnesota.
they managed to get the arms and thighs to be different grays, which I wasn't sure they'd be able to do, the way the mold's set up
though maybe they're just producing a lot of extra thighs and/or arms in the wrong colors and throwing those away, i dunno
Cops are overgrown children cosplaying War, with all the rest of us forced into their stupid, childish game without our consent, consuming vast funds from the public treasury and ruining lives by the hundreds of thousands.
unknown@collie.bsky.social ⋅ 2d
I cannot get over these cops wearing night vision to arrest a dude on a Southwest Airlines flight in broad daylight.
Minnesota Star Tribune @startribune.com ⋅ 21h
preternia @preternia.com ⋅ 21h
unknown @collie.bsky.social ⋅ 2d
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“I’m not actually invested in finding out, nor do I really need to be”
I’m pretty sure she won’t kill a fellow student….
But there’s no guarantee of that; it’s what keeps the audience coming back for more!
Yeah, gotta keep ’em in suspense.
…or, in traction.
You can live without femurs, right?
According to Joyce, we need our femurs to live.
She’s murdered almost nobody!
THIS year. It’s not even a month in.
Booster will probably be disappointed, because they were hoping for an excuse to demonstrate their Brazilian Jiu Jitsu skills.
Characterising Booster as a violent person, are we? I don’t think they’ll be busting out the Grammaton Gun Kata any time soon.
To the contrary, as a true master, Booster knows that the most powerful technique in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is not to fight.
The second most powerful technique is the locoplata variant foot hold.
Your icon is very fitting here
Indeed. I could hear Uncle Iroh loud and clear.
Suddenly I have a craving for tea. Anyone need anything while I’m up?
Could you get me some tea? That’d be wonderful.
Question: Why do people call Booster “they”? Did I miss a comic where it is said that’s Booster’s preferred pronoun or are people just assuming?
Willis does so in Booster’s entry linked from the cast page. https://www.dumbingofage.com/2020castbooster/
Also, I think something was said on Patreon.
Ah, I didn’t check the cast page. Thanks.
Yeah, I noticed that too.
Could someone explain to this old guy why plural pronouns would be used to identify an individual? I understand that the language changes over time, but this seems an odd variant to me… us?
Ohh, is this a modern version of the Royal ‘we’?
Plural pronouns are an indicator that someone doesn’t identify along binary gender identities like being exclusively male or female.
It’s a singular they.
This is a very odd thing to be completely in the dark about for someone who is able to use a computer and reads this particular strip. Really? You’ve never heard anything about the genderless pronoun issue? It’s been a discussion in American culture for decades, and is quite big on the internet.
Yeah, heavy queer fanbase comic, here!
Eh, everyone learns sometime.
One of today’s ten thousand
https://xkcd.com/1053/
We should remember that not everyone happens to learn all the same things we do, and the things they do learn might take a different amount of time than they took us. I forget what the term for that concept is, though.
Singular they has a longer pedigree than singular you. (And has always been for when the other three options were inappropriate, rather than starting as a sign of respect.)
Certainly I’ve heard of people using gender neutral pronouns, usually as part of a mockingly negative joke. I recall something about new pronouns starting with ‘x’. Despite using a computer (for quite literally decades) and following a humorous webcomic, I am not clear on the topic. This is why I asked for an explanation of the idea behind it. Perhaps this is unusual, but I was interested in learning new things.
As I said, I’m old, and even when I wasn’t I didn’t really care about popular culture and rarely followed, or was even aware of, trends.
I really don’t care who other adults find attractive, or who they exchange bodily fluids with.
I apologize to anyone I offended with the question, even though I find myself wondering why asking an honest question would offend.
Others answered the question pretty well, but I felt I should mention something else; complaining about “singular they” may cause people to assume things about you. The majority of pushback against it comes from people who are are anti-trans or anti-queer, not just protective of the english language. So it’s good to ask questions on that subject with care, to avoid people assuming you’re just another jerk
I’m sorry but is Walky trying to give Booster the worst impression of people possible?
Maybe in Walky’s world view [such as it is] he was being accurate. Booster will have to find out for themself what their dormmates are really like.
What’s funny is that Walky hasn’t mentioned any of the genuinely horrifying things of the past year.
If Booster stays after hearing Joyce and Becky’s backstory, they’re here for a life or death struggle.
He basically did the same with Jason.
This in fact seems like a deliberate echo of this strip.
Ah yes, the old
“Sadness will always triumph because love is dumb.”
Yeah, no, this is Walky TRYING.
I’m sorry. This is the best he could do.
It depends, is Mary still possessed of her femurs?
Has Ryan never been seen again?
I’m entirely comfortable for Ruth having become a Dexter-like serial killer to replace Amazi-Girl.
Integrivact didn’t help and she tackled Carol.
Ryan may or may not still be in the hospital. If he is out, I suspect his parents who cared enough to sue also care enough not to send him back to the school where he got stabbed (oh and also accused of serial drugging and sexually assaulting women, but you know how those bongoes lie.)*
* I am, at best, 50% on Ryan’s parents believing the women and him facing consequences there. Since he is DEFINITELY off the board, we’ll never know.
“You will make the most exquisite corpse!”–The Girl Who Was Death on The Prisoner
So tomorrow we should get another silhouette filled in.
I hope it’s not Mary…
Heh, I love how she has expanded the threats of violence to hangarounds
“I will rip out your femurs.”
“Oh, that Ruth!”
*cue laugh track*
I’m wondering why she’s back to being Ruthless after all this time. A lot of her “grr femurs” stuff as time went on was performative if it even happened at all.
She seems to be doing it in a rather tongue-in-cheek way, or at least more cheerfully than before. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s just doing it to keep up appearances/have some feeling of normalcy.
That she goes from Angry Ruthless to “oh I’m doing okay, I changed my meds” in casual conservation with Becky at the drop of a hat does suggest to me that it’s probably a front she’s putting up in lieu of legitimately still trying to terrorize her dorm like she did.
Walky might become some sort of genre-savvy idiot savante.
He’ll slowly reduce the cast by willingly keeping them off panel until it’s just him hunting spiders all the time.
An “idiot-genre-savante” if you will.
That is certainly a thing you can assume.
Walky, stop breaking the fourth wall! Deadpool and Axel have smashed that thing and Hussie shits on it.
Lea never broke the fourth wall. At most, he’s leaned on it a bit.
There was DEFINITELY some leaning in the ‘You can’t axe Axel!’ scene, but Xemnas mocking his keyblade started it. (Frankly I think it started – beyond the clear joke at the audience that was II.9 – around Toy Story world. Woody roasts a Nort and the Versus XIII stuff with Yozora.)
Dang, but Woody is just fantastic in that game. He doesn’t give half a damn about Xehanort or his ridiculous scheme, and he’s not afraid to say so.
I see you’re talking about the KH game that, like Highlander 2, does not actually exist.
(I was very, very, -very- disappointed with KH3)
She showed up this semester with brand spankin’ new femurs and Walky says she’s keeping them guessing? C’mon, son, keep up. xD
I hope they’re Carol’s.
Anyone remember who the men’s RA is?
Whoever it is has less screen time than Bloodrose
Ethan described him as someone who watches Star Trek
Next thing you know, the door will be making the same noise that they do on Star Trek…
Really? Psssht.
“Make it so”, he says to the electronics engineering major rigging up the sound board and magnetic security system sensors.
Better to say that to a repairer of sewing machines.
I don’t think we’ve actually seen them yet.
I’m pretty sure he’s the Trekkie RA from Roomies!, but we’ve never actually seen him.
Wait. I just realized.
Booster looks like the Batman Amber drew in Shortpacked! demonstrating what kind of men she’d actually be in to.
Oh well done.
Kissable lips and all. I noticed it right away
Wow, nice job!
Way to telegraph the plot for the new season.
Booster is the real Amazi-Person!
Booster is the Power Booster Rod! Er… no.
…Oh SHIT how did I miss that
Oh man, they totally do!
https://www.shortpacked.com/comic/false-equivalence
My first thought was “Mike’s player 2 pallet swap but with hair that only exists in three dimensions”. They both have a similar build and head shape.
…oh my gods.
[galaxybrain.jpg]
Walky is poking at the 4th wall some. I had shades of SEMME there for a moment.
It doesn’t take much for me to dislike Walky. It doesn’t take anything actually, but I do feel a need to point out that “She’s actually much cheerier than she used to be” line.
Like….does Walky know about Ruth’s depression? Cause that’s borderline inappropriate to snark about if he does. I feel like he doesn’t but also that news did go really public so it’s up in the air for me. You’re playing a dangerous game Walky. Maybe.
He absolutely knows, but as you can see, that’s sort of his way of dealing with heavy subjects … like Mike’s death.
See especially the strip before that one.
He did know, but with a combination of A Lot Going On Lately and being kinda self absorbed…voila.
Either that or he’s choosing to have gallows humor about other people’s stuff, which isn’t cool unless they’re in on it.
See, I don’t find that nearly as inappropriate as “She’s a little too hands-on, if you get my drift.” I honestly didn’t read it as snarky at all, he seems pretty sincere about it to me.
Today I learned that accurately stating that someone is, as evidenced by their behavior compared to when you first met them, more cheerful, is actually outing(??) their mental illness (which they were cracking wise about in public like five strips ago???) and also making light of their depression
The *wonders* of reading into minutiae
That’s kind of what we do here actually. The nature of having 24 hours for thousands of people to overanalyze a strip that’s just a brief moment in a conversation.
Was Danny’s “Your real mom” comment just innocuous clarification of which mom was on the phone or a shot at Stacy being Joe’s step mom and not a real parental figure to him?
When Becky said “I’ve never been under the top” was that just her way of saying she’s got a big personality or an innuendo implying that she’s a bottom in her sexual relationships?
Is it all just innocent dialogue showing off character conversational quirks? Who knows???? I don’t know why Walky should get a free pass on it.
I think Danny’s comment was just him not thinking through what he says before he said it, like he always does. Poor kid’s got a chronic case of foot-in-mouth.
I belong to a radical, some would even say heretical, creed that finds that shit to be absolutely obnoxious no matter what character it’s applied to.
Though I guess if one MUST, equal opportunity minutiae obsession is the way to go
In that spirit:
-Is Ruth’s comment that she’ll drag in Walky’s corpse an indication that she’s actively regressed to bullying and violence and she’s secretly blackmailed Rachel so all opposition to her is silenced??? You can’t PROVE it isn’t
-Booster has clearly agreed to this tour in order to drop a dime on all of Walky’s acquaintances to Linda, who secretly employs him and is going to expel everyone in Reed Hall through magical helicopter parent powers. Booster is clearly amoral and loves rolling in Linda cash, hence his FLIPPANT DISMISSAL of Ruth’s SINISTER THREATS
*secretly employs them/their flippant dismissal, mea culpa.
Thank you Sirksome for demonstrating some self awareness of the absurdity of the level of judgement and analysis the characters are subject to. I wonder if most of the commenters have that? I don’t.
S ince we only tend to see Willis respond in the first hour or so, I kinda wonder if he avoids the chat beyond that so he doesn’t get influenced by the over-analysis. Or if he has a mallards ability to just let it run off.
Maybe because thinking Walky is anything but fully literal in what he says could easily break your suspension of disbelief.
We could take into account that he might be angry at Ruth for either being Billies girlfriend or breaking up with her.
But yes, basically he again comes across as a mindless asshole which no consideration. If this were my roommate, I’d already apply for a switch.
He wasn’t exactly thrilled at the prospect of them dating at all, it seems.
For pretty decent reasons. Ones similar to every one here calling it out as a toxic relationship, but without all the information we have that shows it in a better light.
I wasn’t around when it came out, but that strip where Walky says he wanted Ruth to be better for Billie than she is and when Ruth says she can be better all he can muster is “neat”, that was probably the most brutal strip in the whole series and it came from friggin’ Walky.
I adored it. I’ve really changed my tune on Ruth over the years but I’m still consistently all for DoA continuing with holding its protagonists accountable for their actions.
Ruth threatens murder, but it’s Walky’s comment about her being cheerier that’s the problem here?
I think we’re too used to Ruthless. It’s not funny when she threatens to murder people otherwise a lot of agitated Gamers would be successful as comedians.
I want to know what’s going on with Ruth that she’s back to being Ruthless or at least acting as such as a front. Makes me wonder if Billie’s similarly backslid into being the Alpha Bongo of her dorm.
“It’s not funny when she threatens to murder people”?
And clearly you haven’t been following the agitated gamer comedy circuit.
For me specifically, yeah. I think that’s common knowledge by now though. In general Walky’s comments this morning have had a slight edge to them. Probably in a bad mood from the break and his roommate being dead. That’s not really an excuse though.
Ruth’s murder threat is also problematic and Walky didn’t explain to Booster that she never follows through on them which is something Ruth has even stated more than once.
Honestly this is just kind of a jaded tour from his perspective in general.
If Ruthless kills Walky and drags his corpse to a meeting he’s not even supposed to be in, he’ll be…
The Walkyng Dead.
Don’t worry, I’ll see myself out.
Not fast enough.
No, at the appropriate speed, actually, Agemengo.
But if you insist, not only have I came back, as I’ll stay.
Better run … the zombie swans will get you.
Is…is that an intentional typo? I’m just imagining a bird breaking my arm and then pecking my brains out.
I took it to be a reference to my gravatar.
Naw, it’ll just like everyday,
he’s shuffling, shuffling.
Are colleges really that micro into their students’ lives these days? Even not taking the Cursed Virus into account?
I saw my RA maybe twice a semester, unless business could be conducted by sliding forms under doors, which it usually was. One year I lived right next door to the RA and if we traded two words, I don’t remember.
Wound up spending very little time in my dorm rooms; the school paper was where I lived and spent time between classes.
Some are. Ruth seems to do floor meetings on the first days of semesters and then whenever her bosses tell her to (ex. prank fire alarm, school shooting).
I rarely saw my RAs in my four years of college, mostly because I avoided the floor meetings and the RAs I had couldn’t really do anything to force us to attend them.
Have you checked your tenure lately?
How did femurs get automutilated to tenure?
Ruthless lives in your autocorrect.
They share a bunch of letters, and all the other letters are right next to each other. One typo can cause weirdness in those cases.
When I was in college 15 or so years ago I would see my RA fairly regularly. They always had the room closest to the bathroom and kept their door open when they were “on call” and not asleep (one of the 8 or so RAs in each building was always on call at any given time).
“Fine. I’ll drag in your corpse for fun.”
Now THAT’S the Ruthless we all remember and love!!
Nothing stokes the urge to kill (or at least de-femurize) quite like the holidays.
“Hands-on” meaning “Hands wrapped around our throats”. That’s our Ruthless!
Seriously, though, Ruth has to be the one to tell Walky about the meeting. As he said, the men’s wing RA probably can’t be bothered! Booster will soon realise that threats of violence from her are a bizarre kind of friendship ritual. Most of the time. Unless she really doesn’t like you at all.
I thought hands on meant she started dating someone she was in charge of. Seems the right amount of rudeness he could toss in in a couple words as he’s been doing.
yeah, I think that was also implied (though he could get away with saying she’s taking her job to serious and does a lot more than their RA, if asked).
Awwww…Ruthless thinks of Walky as part of her floor. That’s kinda sweet. ;p
Sal’s never there, but Walky is at least some of the time. Close enough?
You spend half your time there Walky so you might as well be there when she sets the ground rules.
So, no Ethan or Jacob?
When Joyce messed up with Jacob, his role in the story evidently ended. Apparently, Ethan is also no longer required after telling Danny off and making him realise that he’s not the nice guy everyone assumes after all.
Not in this storyline, it would seem. I doubt they’re gone for good.
Yeah, Jacob hasn’t really been seen since the Harrison visit because that night was the birthday party, and from there it was Evil Dads O’Clock. No space.
Mike’s spirit has possessed Jacob and he and Ethan have eloped.
Hand-in-hand, skipping through the meadow?
You can tell she’s grown a lot because at the beginning of last year there’s no way anybody would be so casual toward her and there’s no way she’d put up with that if there were
You come at the Ruthless, you best not miss (unless you don’t need femurs)
Wait. No introduction of Ethen and Jacob? Ethen was kidnapped too, so the discription of ‘don’t end up in high-stakes adventures’ doesn’t count for him. What happened to those two?
tbqh, I’m pretty sure he’s dropped out or at least taking an extended holiday because he lost one of his closest childhood friends, and went through a lot of trauma and sudden change that his school friends are entirely unequipped to support him through (danny & amber specifically).
Still, only time and Willis will tell if my hunch is accurate.
Also, Ethan has had to get back to the “openly gay” bandwagon, and because of that, his family (well, his mother) probably was awful to live with during the break.
Last we heard, he didn’t plan to mention that to his parents. That was the point of doing no strings attached hook ups and not getting a serious boyfriend.
The last word on Ethan was that Amber needed to stop hovering around him turning his problems into fuel for her guilt, so he’s probably on a bus for a storyline or two.
The guys are secondary characters, not main ones. They’ll probably show up at some point after the last three main ones are reintroduced.
They got in the way of a femur harvesting ritual.
Walk is at least more willing to admit to his “not knowing anyone on the boys’ floor” thing, compared to when he was dragging the teaching assistant around. That might be more signs of personal growth!
Booster seems oddly happy at the prospect
I wouldn’t object if the character introductions in Book 11 are just Walky giving us (the readers) a brief meet-and-greet tour like this.
In real life, if I was introduced to a person of authority and warned that they were rather “hands on”, I’d actually be rather alarmed. :/ Especially given the recent #MeToo movement and the downfall of people like Harvey Weinstein.
And then if you got the outside perspective on Ruth and Billie’s relationship, you’d be even more alarmed. Ruth abused her, they fought a lot and are having sex. Along with depression and alcohol abuse.
We know there’s more to it than that, but damn does it look bad.
Booster seems positively impressed.
I find Booster’s lips to be so jarring. Reminds me of a former coworker who had blonde hair, blue eyes, pale pinkish-white skin, and wore really dark red matte lipstick – the colour combination just didn’t work. It might have, if she’d also done dramatic makeup otherwise, but no, it was just the lips. Same sort of thing with Booster…the colouring just doesn’t work for me.
Maybe they moonlight as a stripper? Most of the ladies where I work do that, if only because the lighting washes out less bold colors.
Oooh, that coworker would’ve been really offended by the suggestion – she was a very white-collar, slightly judgey person, in an office environment. Makes me laugh. No, I think it was just poor colour choices and possibly lack of self-awareness.
I see this as a callback to
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-5/01-when-somebody-loved-me/laundry/
Walky / Joyce taking their queer friend around and being snarky and a bit clueless.
goddamn they’re short
Could be the fact they’re from the Mushroom kingdom. Have you checked?
..who IS Walky’s RA?
I’ve been wondering that, too.
FAAFO, Booster.
Walky got genre-savvy for Christmas.
Aw man
I thought that new preview art was Sayid
Can you imagine those introductions:
“These are Students A through F. Over there is Boy A In Conversation. That’s Boy B In Conversation. And this is Girl Being Introduced.”
He made the right choice.
Doesn’t anyone in this strip tuck in his shirt?
Walky used to have a girlfriend that dressed him (his mom commented on it), but she split with him. Most of the other male cast generally handle dressing themselves with varying (danny) degrees of success.
I could imagine Booster doing the French tuck because they like Tan.
I can also imagine DamnYouWillis trying to draw a French tuck once or twice and then be all “Meh, fuck this shit.”
On a side note, I don’t French tuck. Tried it once or twice, just won’t look good on me.
No. They’re college kids, not middle-aged men.