The low stakes adventures of an assorted group of 20 somethings trapped in the declining years of American retail. They are naughty and say lots of swears.
El Goonish Shive
Dan Shive
WARNING: This comic often ignores the Laws of Physics
Goodbye to Halos
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Cuddles, gay flirting, weird feelings, and magic-fueled knife fights - it's an adventure across the queer multiverse!
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!
Monster Pulse
Magnolia Porter Siddell
Four kids run afoul of a creepy secret organization's experiments, which turn their body parts into fighting monsters. Part sentimental coming-of-age story, part monster-training shonen manga, with just a bit of sci-fi body horror.
Sufficiently Remarkable
Maki Naro
Two young women living in Brooklyn discover that you're always coming of age.
Real Science Adventures
Brian Clevinger
Spin off stories and other adventures from the world of Atomic Robo!
Fireweeds Moors
Gato Iberico
A cat-headed man and a girl with a sandwich hankering accidentally end up in a myth-infused country where magic chalices are a really big thing.
Girl Genius
Phil Foglio, Kaja Foglio
In a time when the Industrial Revolution has become an all-out war, Mad Science rules the World...with mixed success.
Nerf Now!!
Josué Pereira
A cute webcomic about fanservice, video games, and... love. Mostly video games, though.
Go Get a Roomie
Clover
Experience the queer journey of an upbeat hippie and the friendships she makes along the way! A tale of self-discovery and love of many forms.
Whomp!
Ronnie
A depressed, portly, hirsute anime fan stumbles through life in the ever-pursuit of chicken nuggets and other life-shortening indulgences.
Demon's Mirror
Harry Bogosian
Based loosely off of "The Snow Queen", a story by Hans Christian Andersen, we see things take a different turn as the demons become central characters, and the side characters stick around. Yup, that's the only differences. Enjoy!
Wilde Life
Pascalle Lepas
Oscar decided to rent an old haunted house, and that's when things got weird...
Wychwood
Varethane
When Tiara's pyrokinesis is finally noticed, she is captured by a magical research organization for study. If she cooperates, she could be helping to save humanity from a dire threat - but can she trust them?
[un]Divine
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A highschool senior thought giving up his soul for a demon was a good idea. It wasn't.
Sam & Fuzzy
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Troubled by gangster rodents, lovesick vampire stalkers, or confused ninja assassins? Don't panic! Sam and Fuzzy are here to help. (For a reasonable fee.)
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.
Tigress Queen
Allison Shaw
A barbarian warlord and a pampered prince try to avoid a marriage alliance that could end decades of violence.
Never Satisfied
Taylor Robin
Lucy Marlowe, a magician's apprentice, competes against other apprentices for an important, magical, Goverment Job.
Cassiopeia Quinn
Gunwild, Psudonym
A cute, pantsless thief is pursued across the stars by a buttoned-up military officer in the spacey, laser-filled future.
Monsterkind
Taylor C
Wallace Foster, a young, bright-eyed human social worker, has his entire world view rocked when he's suddenly relocated into a city primarily inhabited by monsters.
Kiwi Blitz
Mary Cagle (Cube Watermelon)
Steffi thinks she can use her kiwi mech to become a superhero. This idea turns out to be very stupid.
Knights Errant
J.R. Doyle
Wilfrid's humble quest for revenge becomes bigger and bloodier by the day.
Starhammer
J.N. Monk, Harry Bogosian
A teen girl inherits a powerful alien artifact and proceeds to make a series of increasingly poor decisions
Jailbird
Charlie Davis
An all-ages comic about a recently escaped prisoner's struggle to understand the outside world, and vice-versa. Also, a magic cape!
The End
August Brown, Cory Brown
Two aliens crash a sci-fi convention and accidentally take seven nerds on an adventure that spans the galaxy!
Star Trip
Gisele Weaver
Jas is a human taken from her home planet on a trip across the galaxy she will never forget.
Alice and the Nightmare
Misha Krivanek
Alice finally attends University to learn to collect the dreams of humans, meet new friends, and deal with a pesky reflection along the way.
Godslave
Meaghan Carter
Edith has been thrown into the dangerous world of modern-day Egyptian mythology. Fighting monsters and dealing with family drama of godly proportions.
Widdershins
Kate Ashwin
A series of light-hearted Victorian-era adventure stories featuring grumpy bounty hunters, accidental thiefkings, and more, in England's magical capital city Widdershins!
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.
Awaken
Koti Saavedra/Flipfloppery
Superpowers, monsters and conspiracies. Piras, the spoiled Dameschi heir, fights to recover his identity after becoming a terrorist!
Cyanide & Happiness
Explosm
Satire, dark humor and surreal humor.
Lilith's Word
inkPangur
If you had the power to make any wish come true using just one word, what would you say?
Love Not Found
Gina Biggs
Abeille is on a quest to find someone who wants to do it the old-fashioned way in a time when touching has become outdated.
The Lonely Vincent Bellingham
Diana Huh
Vincent is an unkind man looking to disappear, and finds himself in the care of a vampire and her two wicked children.
Cut Time
Juby
Rel and her trusty avian friend Fugue are on a quest to save a world that's lost track of time. Follow them and their new recruits, in a story written with help from the stars.
Paranatural
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Superpowered middle schoolers fight evil spirits in their rural hometown. Come for the jokes, stay for the cast, the creatures, and the mystery that ties them all together!
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.
The Sanity Circus
Windy
Magic, monsters and mysteries await in the odd city of Sanity. It's up to Attley and a colorful group of characters to find out just what is going on.
Hazy London
Scotty
A story about messy relationships. From friendly foes to crazy families. Nothing is black and white, just full of color. But, all colors can get a little hazy...
Devil's Candy
Rem, Bikkuri
A lush fantasy about boy genius Kazu Decker, the girl he constructed for his 9th grade science project, and the world of devils and monsters they live in.
Lighter Than Heir
Melissa Albino
A young Volant woman joins the military in an effort to upstage her war-hero father.
Kochab
Sarah Webb
A YA F/F fantasy comic about Sonya, a lost skier trying to survive a snowy wilderness and find her way back to her village; and Kyra - a fire spirit trying to fix the home that she let fall apart around her.
Atomic Robo
Brian Clevinger, Scott Wegener
The robot punches monsters and bad robots and one time he was a cowboy.
The Automan's Daughter
Mike Stamm
Aisha Osman and her uncle Siddig outwit bikers, spies and kidnappers while gearing up for a showdown with the formidable Widowmaker mecha.
Star Impact
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A young, energetic woman fights her way up in the world of super-powered boxing after discovering the mighty gloves of her missing idol!
Ghost Junk Sickness
Studio CARTRIDGE, Laura Lee
Two hunters try to survive and end up being pushed to pursue a deadly bounty dubbed "The Ghost".
Sister Claire
Yamino
In the troubled aftermath of a great war between Witches and her fellow Nuns, novice Sister Claire just wants a purpose.
Anarchy Dreamers
Emily Ree
Sparkly undead kids fight society's worst Nightmares in this pastel-punk urban fantasy coming-of-age!
Caramel Corn
Potchimew
Sarah is the only human left in a world full of mythical creatures and monsters. All she wants to do is live a quiet life, but everything changes when she meets her guardian angel, Jacob.
The Witch Door
Anni K.
Katariina Lehto discovers her neighbor is a witch called Jousia Muotka. Jousia introduces Katariina to the strange people and places beyond the witch door...
Astral Aves
Moon Cabal
A fantasy coming-of-age following the adventures of Astra The Black and friends, as they navigate the mysterious world around them. It's politics, adventure, and the supernatural; oh, and crazy hair.
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I don’t know. For me them trying to kill each other might be preferable to them making out. I don’t believe in leagues or dating tiers or whatever but this is one situation where I do believe Leslie can do better.
Considering the usual results when Congress just has to “Do something!”, doing nothing would frequently be an improvement. What people don’t seem to understand is that the US government was deliberately designed to move slowly and do nothing much of the time. You can call it gridlock, I call it a feature, not a bug.
Call *me* cynical, but I suspect the viewpoint that the government is supposed to be useless is used by people who don’t even follow politics to excuse the fact that they don’t, or encouraged by predatory politicians to keep people disinterested.
But, y’know, have fun being paid in wooden nickels redeemable at the company store, back in the gilded age when the government did a hell of a lot less. Maybe you can get one of those tiny live-in sweatshop apartments that were all the rage back then, be forced to have your family participate in your 12+ hour days just so you can keep living there.
Or maybe I could go less historically esoteric and just shut off the government provided water and electricity? Would that make my point?
Acknowledging a bitter political reality like “the American government is flawed and deeply unjust by design” is not saying you should not engage in politics.
We’re pretty much in a new gilded age already, especially since almost all the politicians in the government are more than willing to pass bills that give billions to the military and the rich, but dither around and take forever to pass bills that throw a few crumbs to the working people.
Definitely the latter. There’s an element of truth in the “designed to move slowly” aspect, but that was mostly in terms of checks and balances to prevent any one block from controlling the others. The “government is bad” part really only came in with the Reagan Revolution and it’s been the mantra of the GOP ever since. Like most things from that era of politics (and to a slightly lesser extent still”, it was all tied to backlash to the Civil Rights Movement. Things like federal troops used to integrate schools or forced busing – that’s what you were supposed to think of when Reagan said: “The most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”
Politically this attitude is one of the most destructive things to our democracy. In the before times, even conservative voters expected government to help them. They may not have wanted expansion of rights to others or regulations that interfered with them, but they wanted basic competence and they punished politicians who didn’t deliver. This helped things functioning. The parties had different ideologies and they squabbled, but they also all knew that complete obstruction on any but the biggest issues would hurt them.
Now, while individual presidents and governors may still pay a price for failure, governmental failure benefits the GOP as a whole. Full on obstruction when they’re out of power is seen as the natural failing of government which reinforces the GOP’s basic ideology. Democrats on the other hand still need to make government work in order to get support from their voters.
Honestly? I’m not convinced that gridlock is preferable to the government doing bad things. Gridlock lets politicians promise steadily more dangerous things, comfortable in the idea that it’ll never happen anyway, while letting their opponents get complacent with the electorate’s steadily more detached view of reality. Until suddenly, one day that gridlock is finally broken, and the 19th amendment is repealed “suddenly” after decades of the right promising that’s the only way to really fix things.
Or for the right-wingers out there, a sweeping universal healthcare plan that covers a bunch of “expensive” stuff that would never have made it in if we’d had a proper plan decades earlier that didn’t require a supermajority to pass.
And even then… A government in constant gridlock is a government that never compromises – and we live in a bitterly divided country. What incentive is there for incrementalism, or a moderate approach if it’s no easier to pass than a radical bill? Especially when you know you’ll only ever get one shot, because a supermajority is required to pass anything meaningful, and you’re pretty much guaranteed to lose that supermajority in two years?
Frankly, I think that’s one reason we see people getting more radical ideas these days – people see urgent problems on the horizon, and congress seems unable to accomplish even the bare minimum. Though I guess it doesn’t help that so many mistake things for “Congress being too corrupt to do anything”, instead of “Congress is literally too broken to do anything, and Manchin refuses to vote to fix it.”
Yeah, that last.
I’ve seen a lot of people saying that if Democrats don’t change the filibuster rules, it means they’re basically all lying about everything they say they want, when the reality is that it’s Manchin, Sinema and a couple of others who are blocking it while the rest of the party has come around.
Gridlock is only the best case scenario if you think what’s there now is the best of all possible governments for a given country. Just uh…look out the window and tell me if you think that’s true.
(was just reading “A promised land”, Obama’s latest book, and there’s quite a bit in there about struggling against this kind of cynicism, both internally and externally)
The last four years were not nearly as bad as they could’ve been because the last guy couldn’t get out of his way and they were largely incompetent. He more or less wasted the largest Congressional margins in nearly a century.
Had government been a well oiled machine we would be fucked beyond belief right now.
So when I say best case scenario I mean a situation where our options are nothing changes and things get considerably worse.
One person’s personal incompetence is not a built in function of government. A lot of the legal details were sloppy and rushed, which caused a lot of successful legal challenges. Which IS government operating as a well oiled legal machine.
The largest Congressional margins in the recent past were in Obama’s first term, not Trump’s. They had, counting a couple independents 59-60 Senators and 257 Reps. The Republicans responded by filibustering everything and we blamed Democrats for not getting more and better legislation passed, so they lost control.
Trump had 54 Senators and some 240 Reps. Solid control, but nowhere near the largest margins. The largest margins in a century were under FDR with 76 Senator and 333 Reps.
I’m now looking forward to a scene during Office Hours for Robin. She has the biggest desk of anyone in the Social Sciences department but she has to sit ON it because there isn’t enough room in her broom cupboard of a room for anything else!
It just hit me that both “Ross” and “Rebecca” start with an “R,” while both “Bonnie” and “Becky” start with “B.” I can only assume that this was Bonnie’s idea, since Toedad had all the intelligence of a toe and Becky had to get hers from somewhere.
No clue if it was intentional on Willis’ part. Weirder coincidences have happened with names; I don’t think my parents realized my initials were [REDACTED, assume something really obvious] until I pointed it out to them at age five.
Honestly, I’m more bothered by Robin the last two days than I should be. Not for her current position or anything, but her utter and blatant disregard for Leslie’s protests or arguments.
Leslie had an argument yesterday about how they were too familiar. Robin deflected. Leslie said she wasn’t comfortable today, and Robin took it to mean that it was about power disparity (it’s not).
Robin’s basically Semester 1 Jennifer right now, and it’s not gonna be fun retreading that arc.
She’s learned nothing since dropping out of the race. Or, hell, since her entire staff deserted her. I really want and look forward to a rude awakening.
“The fact nothing I proposed or helped promote passed means I totally didn’t still give bigots the emotional/political validation to be even more awful, nor does it mean I helped lay ground work for future/more successful attempts: my nose is totally clean!”
Yeah, my theory that Robin is even remotely thinking she can help future generations fix her mistakes as a professor is looking a little weak: dumbass thinks she’s had no effect. It’ll be fun to see that assumption blow up in her face as it hopefully does.
Unless she’s pulling a Becky and pretending to be a twit?
IU Bloomington has well over 2,000 academic staff; a memo may have been sent, but seeing as Leslie and Robin don’t even work in the same building – which incidentally means that either Robin’s super-duper lost, or she came to this lounge deliberately – it’s not implausible to imagine that the recipients of the memo would’ve been just Robin’s presumably-adjacent coworkers and not every single professor at the university.
It seems even more likely the school only communicated with the relevant department. Hell, even the dean likely handled signing the highering contract but otherwise delegated the majority of the details and may not even remember or realize they highered Rep(Ret’d) DeSantoe.
IU Bloomington’s gender studies department is based in Ballantine Hall, while the political science department is found in Woodburn Hall; it’s a four-minute walk between the two locations, according to Google Maps.
Is that:
Romantic Gesture
Making a Bride
Horror
Hate
or
Love?
It’s all horrifying, but fascinating, like watching someone pinned in a car-wreck slowly bleed out while the car burns knowing that the firemen with the jaws of life won’t get there in time and the person is struggling to utter their last words, so you approach closer trying to hear them. Unfortunately you can’t make out that what they’re saying, and as you approach their face twists into a confusing grimace of pain. They cough and look at you as their eyes widen, then you finally realize their words, “stay away. contaminated.”
it feels like you started out with some sort of metaphor in mind then halfway through forgot where exactly you’d been going with it and just revelled in a gratuitous horror story. Which I totally enjoyed ^^
I wonder how Becky feels about this whole situation. Is she here for ask advices about her romantic problems? Now she can hear the opinion of two important figures in her life. HOORAY!?
Oh cool I guess we’re going with “Robin may have tried to advance agenda that ruins lives, but it’s fine because she got stopped. She didn’t actually do anything wrong and she gets to keep being a goofy nutbar.”
Like, she’s not a dog licking her own butthole. There’s no such thing as a good Republican who advocates for life ruining policies in a nice way. Robin chose to make bank off the lives of the disenfranchised and the people who do that can just go fucking die.
Mike gets to be written as canonically queer for the first time in 20 years and dies a few months later, but we still have to put up with Robin.
Like, I’m being harsh. Robin’s a beloved character from Shortpacked! and of course she’s going to show up here somehow, and shit’s changed so much with Republicans even just in the last decade that Robin as written in 2011 maybe carries different weight than a Robin written after four years of Trumpeters making the entire planet worse for everyone, it’s just, how am I supposed to read a character who’s been depicted as a glad handling sleaze who signed up with the Face Eating Leopards party for a grift and then go “haha classic Robin”?. Who cares if she doesn’t believe in their values and is secretly an ultra nice wacky goofball? You’re telling me an Indiana Republican did no damage? Not one person suffered from the policies Robin threw out at the behest of the Republicans around her? She wasn’t some innocent stooge, you don’t get roped into politics on accident.
I’m not sure we’re supposed to be laughing too much, judging by how she’s tap-dancing all over Leslie’s boundaries here. I mean, she’s making jokes, but they’re jokes about how everything’s totally fine and normal now and pay no attention to the part where Robin’s stalking her, and the punchline is ‘Becky tries to warn Leslie but it occurred to her too late to be helpful.’ That… does not suggest this is supposed to be unconflicted.
But the framing of Robin has been weird for ages. She was an actual antagonist when she was primarily in Roz’s plot, and she’s had flashes of having standards but everyone else trusts her as much as she’s earned (ie, not at all,) but I’m not totally sure what she’s doing back in the plot this semester. Is it going to be a rude awakening to just how much harm she really did? Okay, but we’d need to spend a LOT of time there making Robin feel like shit, she did WAY more harm than Joyce. Is it to give Leslie more screentime? I could see that, but poor Leslie. For Roz? Maybe. By now Robin’s as much a plot device as a character, but it’s hard to tell how much we the audience are supposed to dislike her when she keeps showing up, yeah. The characters are all disliking her, at least.
While not wrong, I believe the course correction here is that Robin trashed her own career out of realization it was an awful thing that made her awful with Ryan being the breaking point.
I *know* she did torpedoed her career over Ryan and then to make a point to Becky, I’m saying how much bullshit did she try to cause before she suddenly had this realization? How many people, realistically, suffered for her to go through this character development?
The thing is, she is moving in more-or-less the good direction now. What she has done in the past is in the past, you can’t change that. But you can ensure that she will never do something like that and that she will atone for some of her actions. Holding past crimes over the head of someone who is trying to improve is what gets you a high recidivism rate. If they have no chance at a better life This way then why should they bother trying? You want to create Allies, not lock them into being enemies.
This is a good line of thought for the Joyces and Ruths of the world and substantially less for Republican politicians who get romanticized like their Han Solo coming in to save the day at the climax.
It’s not like she’s doing anything good now or improving as a person. She just chose to stop being actively horrible to as many people as possible and instead settled on Leslie.
Which is already good enough. You lost an enemy and gained a neutral, she might become good eventually or maybe will stay a neutral. And that’s good enough. You are Winning, don’t let your resentment make you Lose.
I would rather die than stop resenting the bastards ruining our lives.
You know why you can say this shit? Because they wrote the rulebook so they never have to face consequences. A just society would see an entire political base actively working to oppress the downtrodden and start sharpening the fucking guillotines.
They made it clear unity doesn’t work when they voted en masse to keep Trump from being impeached for instigating a deadly riot. There is no peace for tyrants and their cronies.
They are like this, always have and will be, and you are letting them.
[sighs] Trust me, you don’t want to go down that path. I’ve seen it in my own country, in the Soviet Union. All you’ll get is a lot of mass-graves filled with innocent people and a NEW corrupt elite ruling over you with an iron fist.
This is a very interesting exchange and does well to highlight different perspectives. And they’re both valid. Consider the russian/soviet perspective, and indeed it’s easy to see how they view revolution with distrust. Consider the american perspective and you can see how they glorify revolution, since they’re taught that it worked for them, and certainly they proudly celebrate it annually. From a canadian perspective I can see the validity in both points. On the one hand I do look around the world and see that there are times that fewer innocemts will suffer and die under revolution versus remaining in status quo. On the other, I look to my countries own history of transitioning from colony to some success at “peace, order, and good government,” while also being aware of the failure of that same growth for indigenous, marginalized, homeless, poverty, those I am forgetting, and immigrant peoples. Would revolution in our case outweigh the costs of the slow rate of progress we might be making? To those in priviledge no, but to those still suffering under the rules that are failing them, yes. Unfortunately there are enough priviledged here that think, “fuck you, I got mine” that they resent thinking they’ll have to give up even a dollar in order to make the billionaires give up one billion to help those with none.
You can never know that “fewer innocemts will suffer and die under revolution versus remaining in status quo”. Many revolutions fail and solidify the repression. Others succeed, but the new rulers institute even more oppression.
All you can know is that the current conditions are so horrible they can’t be sustained any longer and the gamble is worth it. And we’re nowhere near that in this country – judged by what’s set off popular revolutions historically.
There’s no atoning without accountability. Robin’s had very little of that. Stopping the most egregious harms by not being in office anymore is good, but it’s not the same as atoning.
Geez guys, you’re throwing an awful lot of political weight onto an online comic strip that overall is pretty sweet (at least until Willis shivs you when you’re not looking). Remember, Robin is a female Daffy Duck, who is manic, ADHD and clinically looney. Think “Duck Amuck” and “Duck, Rabbit, Duck.” It’s kind of futile to take her to task for the current Republican party, not least because she DOESN’T EXIST.
Look, if we’re gonna stop taking it seriously because it’s a fictional strip (despite the strip being far more ‘clinically looney’ and having more continuity than Looney Tunes) this comment section’s gonna dry up real fast.
Maybe as time goes on, the GOP will chill out and Robin being an ex-member won’t reflect QUITE so poorly. I can dream.
Actually, that was a question not a correction. Basically, what DO you think is sufficient atonement for Robin aside from giving up all the riches and power she got from her evil deeds? What is needed to make her redeemed?
C’mon people, give Robin a break. She’s just the comic relief. She is written so candid about her motivations and (befuddled) thought process in order to allow us the rare opportunity to laugh at a (former) Republican Congresswoman without losing view of what makes her ilk so obnoxious. With the bonus of lampshading how being (possibly?) well-meaning is not nearly enough.
Optimus Prime broke down and cried on the set of "Transformers" (2007) due to the extensive use of green screen filming. He reportedly said, "This is not why I became an actor."
“I’m just going to say it, shame on any of us who throws a trans child under the bus for thinking they’re going to get elected. That child deserves our support. Don’t worry about the pollsters calling it distractions, because we need to be the party of human dignity.”
Minnesota Star Tribune@startribune.com ⋅ 2d
Gov. Tim Walz is doubling down on trans rights — and criticizing members of his party who are retreating — at a time when the issue has become a political lightning rod nationally and back home in Minnesota.
they managed to get the arms and thighs to be different grays, which I wasn't sure they'd be able to do, the way the mold's set up
though maybe they're just producing a lot of extra thighs and/or arms in the wrong colors and throwing those away, i dunno
Minnesota Star Tribune @startribune.com ⋅ 2d
preternia @preternia.com ⋅ 2d
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⚧️Coming Out
Hailey Piper 
thanks for the heads up
Very prompt Becky. (Ana)
Oooo. Server time has improved. It’s still wrong, but less so I think. Time now is 00:00.
Yeah, otherwise things might have gotten awkward.
Better late than never, I suppose
I’m sure things will workout fine…I mean probably not but it should at least be funny to watch.
They probably won’t kill each other
I don’t know. For me them trying to kill each other might be preferable to them making out. I don’t believe in leagues or dating tiers or whatever but this is one situation where I do believe Leslie can do better.
I have the distinct impression leslie doesn’t really do “better…. she’s a classically tragic saph
They could try to make out and kill each other at the same time.
You know, for the sake of compromise.
That’s a Ruth and Billie thing though
ah yes, That totally makes it all better
I just noticed that Joyce had glasses in that little… favicon, I think it’s called? But now it’s gone back to the old non-glasses one.
It’s still got glasses on my end.
Now, the Patreon banner, OTOH…
I’m pretty sure it’s just random and using an old one. Mine doesn’t have Joyce at all
I – I’m pretty sure that wasn’t the problem, Robin.
I’m not one for cynicism but gridlock being the best case scenario sometimes is a bit of a bummer
Considering the usual results when Congress just has to “Do something!”, doing nothing would frequently be an improvement. What people don’t seem to understand is that the US government was deliberately designed to move slowly and do nothing much of the time. You can call it gridlock, I call it a feature, not a bug.
All those stimulus checks must have been terrible for you.
Do you normally change your mind about someone as soon as they slip you a little cash?
If my opinion was “They never do anything for me”, maybe.
“We should do something!”
“Should we do something?”
“We should do something!”
“Should we do something?”
Doing something is good when your guys are in charge.
Doing something can be fatal when they’re not.
Congratulations, you’ve discovered the fundamental principle of political science.
Bingo.
Ah, I see you are a person of culture as well.
*Puts on 90s Kid’s glasses*
DUUUUDE!
I am a MAN! *punch, fist returns holding a teddy bear* Bear!
Never assume A Man does not have Ninja-Style Dancers at his disposal!
L: We should do something!
C: I agree we should do something!
L: Let’s do THIS!
C: Let’s NOT do that!
A syllogism:
Something must be done.
This is something.
Therefore, this must be done.
Call *me* cynical, but I suspect the viewpoint that the government is supposed to be useless is used by people who don’t even follow politics to excuse the fact that they don’t, or encouraged by predatory politicians to keep people disinterested.
But, y’know, have fun being paid in wooden nickels redeemable at the company store, back in the gilded age when the government did a hell of a lot less. Maybe you can get one of those tiny live-in sweatshop apartments that were all the rage back then, be forced to have your family participate in your 12+ hour days just so you can keep living there.
Or maybe I could go less historically esoteric and just shut off the government provided water and electricity? Would that make my point?
Acknowledging a bitter political reality like “the American government is flawed and deeply unjust by design” is not saying you should not engage in politics.
My point is that, flawed as it is, the government is incrediblly far away from “doing nothing”, and none of us would like it if it did.
We’re pretty much in a new gilded age already, especially since almost all the politicians in the government are more than willing to pass bills that give billions to the military and the rich, but dither around and take forever to pass bills that throw a few crumbs to the working people.
Definitely the latter. There’s an element of truth in the “designed to move slowly” aspect, but that was mostly in terms of checks and balances to prevent any one block from controlling the others. The “government is bad” part really only came in with the Reagan Revolution and it’s been the mantra of the GOP ever since. Like most things from that era of politics (and to a slightly lesser extent still”, it was all tied to backlash to the Civil Rights Movement. Things like federal troops used to integrate schools or forced busing – that’s what you were supposed to think of when Reagan said: “The most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”
Politically this attitude is one of the most destructive things to our democracy. In the before times, even conservative voters expected government to help them. They may not have wanted expansion of rights to others or regulations that interfered with them, but they wanted basic competence and they punished politicians who didn’t deliver. This helped things functioning. The parties had different ideologies and they squabbled, but they also all knew that complete obstruction on any but the biggest issues would hurt them.
Now, while individual presidents and governors may still pay a price for failure, governmental failure benefits the GOP as a whole. Full on obstruction when they’re out of power is seen as the natural failing of government which reinforces the GOP’s basic ideology. Democrats on the other hand still need to make government work in order to get support from their voters.
Honestly? I’m not convinced that gridlock is preferable to the government doing bad things. Gridlock lets politicians promise steadily more dangerous things, comfortable in the idea that it’ll never happen anyway, while letting their opponents get complacent with the electorate’s steadily more detached view of reality. Until suddenly, one day that gridlock is finally broken, and the 19th amendment is repealed “suddenly” after decades of the right promising that’s the only way to really fix things.
Or for the right-wingers out there, a sweeping universal healthcare plan that covers a bunch of “expensive” stuff that would never have made it in if we’d had a proper plan decades earlier that didn’t require a supermajority to pass.
And even then… A government in constant gridlock is a government that never compromises – and we live in a bitterly divided country. What incentive is there for incrementalism, or a moderate approach if it’s no easier to pass than a radical bill? Especially when you know you’ll only ever get one shot, because a supermajority is required to pass anything meaningful, and you’re pretty much guaranteed to lose that supermajority in two years?
Frankly, I think that’s one reason we see people getting more radical ideas these days – people see urgent problems on the horizon, and congress seems unable to accomplish even the bare minimum. Though I guess it doesn’t help that so many mistake things for “Congress being too corrupt to do anything”, instead of “Congress is literally too broken to do anything, and Manchin refuses to vote to fix it.”
We got rid of the 18th amendment.
We can do the same for the 19th!
Yeah, that last.
I’ve seen a lot of people saying that if Democrats don’t change the filibuster rules, it means they’re basically all lying about everything they say they want, when the reality is that it’s Manchin, Sinema and a couple of others who are blocking it while the rest of the party has come around.
Gridlock is only the best case scenario if you think what’s there now is the best of all possible governments for a given country. Just uh…look out the window and tell me if you think that’s true.
(was just reading “A promised land”, Obama’s latest book, and there’s quite a bit in there about struggling against this kind of cynicism, both internally and externally)
The last four years were not nearly as bad as they could’ve been because the last guy couldn’t get out of his way and they were largely incompetent. He more or less wasted the largest Congressional margins in nearly a century.
Had government been a well oiled machine we would be fucked beyond belief right now.
So when I say best case scenario I mean a situation where our options are nothing changes and things get considerably worse.
One person’s personal incompetence is not a built in function of government. A lot of the legal details were sloppy and rushed, which caused a lot of successful legal challenges. Which IS government operating as a well oiled legal machine.
The largest Congressional margins in the recent past were in Obama’s first term, not Trump’s. They had, counting a couple independents 59-60 Senators and 257 Reps. The Republicans responded by filibustering everything and we blamed Democrats for not getting more and better legislation passed, so they lost control.
Trump had 54 Senators and some 240 Reps. Solid control, but nowhere near the largest margins. The largest margins in a century were under FDR with 76 Senator and 333 Reps.
Awww, Becky’s daughter is helping!
I still feel Robin has lots of making up to do, but now that she can’t cause harm in office anymore, I can at least laugh at some of her lines again.
I was really confused by your first sentence before I realized it was just a mistake.
FUCK yes, that should say ‘Leslie’s daughter’.
Times like this, I wish the comment section had an edit button like on Patreon.
During the timeskip, Becky adopted a small child; she just hasn’t been relevant until now.
No good- Becky would never skip a chance to repeat important backstory about herself.
She’s done it every minute of every day… It was just all off panel.
But then we miss out on these lityle humanizing ezchanges.
Out of curiosity, have any fan artists drawn Becky/Dina fankids?
If I were an artist, I would now.
Yeah, it’d be nize to not have miner mistakes and tpyos staring you in the face with no way to correkt them.
We apologise for the fault in the comments. Those responsible have been sacked.
Well done!
No! Llama bites can be very dangerous.
What, wait. The Patreon has an edit button?
Yeah, it’s pretty sweet.
i read “Awww, Becky’s daughter is dating” and i thought, well that’s a very strange thing to say, but it is sort of funny =)
Oh Robin, status isn’t based on class-size, but on office size and location and required hours.
She’s new to this.
I’m now looking forward to a scene during Office Hours for Robin. She has the biggest desk of anyone in the Social Sciences department but she has to sit ON it because there isn’t enough room in her broom cupboard of a room for anything else!
Is this a slipshine?
Status IS based on class size: professors with more prestige get to teach smaller classes!
As I remember it, the largest classes went to the *least* prestigious professors.
*plays Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s “Relax” on the hacked Muzak*
Who do you think needs to… ah… relax?
Don’t do it! Do it do it…
Fashionably late warning from Becky
Becky’s helping!
I hope Becky never finds herself in the position of having to yell “watch out, tiger”.
Little late, Rebecca.
It just hit me that both “Ross” and “Rebecca” start with an “R,” while both “Bonnie” and “Becky” start with “B.” I can only assume that this was Bonnie’s idea, since Toedad had all the intelligence of a toe and Becky had to get hers from somewhere.
No clue if it was intentional on Willis’ part. Weirder coincidences have happened with names; I don’t think my parents realized my initials were [REDACTED, assume something really obvious] until I pointed it out to them at age five.
Damn, how do you live with the initials DDR. Don’t they know that can only stand for Dance Dance Revolution.
Assuming three intials, I can think of only one word a five-year-old would notice.
Dog? Cat? Owl?
Your parents named you All-Star Superman? Nice!
when your two moms dont get along
Ah, the classic “Oops, I should have warned you earlier.” I’ve been there.
Honestly, I’m more bothered by Robin the last two days than I should be. Not for her current position or anything, but her utter and blatant disregard for Leslie’s protests or arguments.
Leslie had an argument yesterday about how they were too familiar. Robin deflected. Leslie said she wasn’t comfortable today, and Robin took it to mean that it was about power disparity (it’s not).
Robin’s basically Semester 1 Jennifer right now, and it’s not gonna be fun retreading that arc.
Semester 2 Jennifer is just Semester 1 Billie with a new haircut tho. As far as I’ve seen anyway.
An excellent point. Robin kind of sticks things other people say through a filter to get a map to what she wants but gets it all wrong.
I was definitely more bothered by Robin when she was a congresswoman than her now as a professor, though she’s still not much better as a person now.
She’s learned nothing since dropping out of the race. Or, hell, since her entire staff deserted her. I really want and look forward to a rude awakening.
Can I stand in the ‘waiting’ line with you?
Thanks, Becky!
Jiminy Jillikers, Radioactive Leslie!
Rats, I should have said:
One sidekick cannot serve two masters.
“The fact nothing I proposed or helped promote passed means I totally didn’t still give bigots the emotional/political validation to be even more awful, nor does it mean I helped lay ground work for future/more successful attempts: my nose is totally clean!”
Yeah, my theory that Robin is even remotely thinking she can help future generations fix her mistakes as a professor is looking a little weak: dumbass thinks she’s had no effect. It’ll be fun to see that assumption blow up in her face as it hopefully does.
Unless she’s pulling a Becky and pretending to be a twit?
Becky really needs to brush up on the meaning of forewarning.
That means I warn them four times, right?
Becky is helping
Becky, I’m glad to say that this is one of the few situations where “It’s the thought that counts” really applies.
It would have been nice if the Dean had sent around a memo letting everyone know about the new faculty this year.
IU Bloomington has well over 2,000 academic staff; a memo may have been sent, but seeing as Leslie and Robin don’t even work in the same building – which incidentally means that either Robin’s super-duper lost, or she came to this lounge deliberately – it’s not implausible to imagine that the recipients of the memo would’ve been just Robin’s presumably-adjacent coworkers and not every single professor at the university.
It seems even more likely the school only communicated with the relevant department. Hell, even the dean likely handled signing the highering contract but otherwise delegated the majority of the details and may not even remember or realize they highered Rep(Ret’d) DeSantoe.
It was also a last minute thing, so even less likely to spread the word.
Though Leslie had warning yesterday (her time).
Both Leslie and Robin teach in Woodburn hall if I’m not mistaken
IU Bloomington’s gender studies department is based in Ballantine Hall, while the political science department is found in Woodburn Hall; it’s a four-minute walk between the two locations, according to Google Maps.
Robin: This is all a grand romantic gesture to make you my bride, Leslie!
Leslie: WHAT? THAT’S HORRIFYING!
Robin: This is where we hate each other then fall in love.
Leslie: huh!
Leslie: “Well it’s working so far. You’ve got the first part done.”
Is that:
Romantic Gesture
Making a Bride
Horror
Hate
or
Love?
It’s all horrifying, but fascinating, like watching someone pinned in a car-wreck slowly bleed out while the car burns knowing that the firemen with the jaws of life won’t get there in time and the person is struggling to utter their last words, so you approach closer trying to hear them. Unfortunately you can’t make out that what they’re saying, and as you approach their face twists into a confusing grimace of pain. They cough and look at you as their eyes widen, then you finally realize their words, “stay away. contaminated.”
it feels like you started out with some sort of metaphor in mind then halfway through forgot where exactly you’d been going with it and just revelled in a gratuitous horror story. Which I totally enjoyed ^^
Yep. Pretty much exactly what happened. Like driving along a dark country road when…
I wonder how Becky feels about this whole situation. Is she here for ask advices about her romantic problems? Now she can hear the opinion of two important figures in her life. HOORAY!?
Oh cool I guess we’re going with “Robin may have tried to advance agenda that ruins lives, but it’s fine because she got stopped. She didn’t actually do anything wrong and she gets to keep being a goofy nutbar.”
Like, she’s not a dog licking her own butthole. There’s no such thing as a good Republican who advocates for life ruining policies in a nice way. Robin chose to make bank off the lives of the disenfranchised and the people who do that can just go fucking die.
Mike gets to be written as canonically queer for the first time in 20 years and dies a few months later, but we still have to put up with Robin.
Like, I’m being harsh. Robin’s a beloved character from Shortpacked! and of course she’s going to show up here somehow, and shit’s changed so much with Republicans even just in the last decade that Robin as written in 2011 maybe carries different weight than a Robin written after four years of Trumpeters making the entire planet worse for everyone, it’s just, how am I supposed to read a character who’s been depicted as a glad handling sleaze who signed up with the Face Eating Leopards party for a grift and then go “haha classic Robin”?. Who cares if she doesn’t believe in their values and is secretly an ultra nice wacky goofball? You’re telling me an Indiana Republican did no damage? Not one person suffered from the policies Robin threw out at the behest of the Republicans around her? She wasn’t some innocent stooge, you don’t get roped into politics on accident.
I’m not sure we’re supposed to be laughing too much, judging by how she’s tap-dancing all over Leslie’s boundaries here. I mean, she’s making jokes, but they’re jokes about how everything’s totally fine and normal now and pay no attention to the part where Robin’s stalking her, and the punchline is ‘Becky tries to warn Leslie but it occurred to her too late to be helpful.’ That… does not suggest this is supposed to be unconflicted.
But the framing of Robin has been weird for ages. She was an actual antagonist when she was primarily in Roz’s plot, and she’s had flashes of having standards but everyone else trusts her as much as she’s earned (ie, not at all,) but I’m not totally sure what she’s doing back in the plot this semester. Is it going to be a rude awakening to just how much harm she really did? Okay, but we’d need to spend a LOT of time there making Robin feel like shit, she did WAY more harm than Joyce. Is it to give Leslie more screentime? I could see that, but poor Leslie. For Roz? Maybe. By now Robin’s as much a plot device as a character, but it’s hard to tell how much we the audience are supposed to dislike her when she keeps showing up, yeah. The characters are all disliking her, at least.
While not wrong, I believe the course correction here is that Robin trashed her own career out of realization it was an awful thing that made her awful with Ryan being the breaking point.
But yes, I think we need a Yellow Fear Demon to fully fix.
I *know* she did torpedoed her career over Ryan and then to make a point to Becky, I’m saying how much bullshit did she try to cause before she suddenly had this realization? How many people, realistically, suffered for her to go through this character development?
The thing is, she is moving in more-or-less the good direction now. What she has done in the past is in the past, you can’t change that. But you can ensure that she will never do something like that and that she will atone for some of her actions. Holding past crimes over the head of someone who is trying to improve is what gets you a high recidivism rate. If they have no chance at a better life This way then why should they bother trying? You want to create Allies, not lock them into being enemies.
This is a good line of thought for the Joyces and Ruths of the world and substantially less for Republican politicians who get romanticized like their Han Solo coming in to save the day at the climax.
It’s not like she’s doing anything good now or improving as a person. She just chose to stop being actively horrible to as many people as possible and instead settled on Leslie.
Which is already good enough. You lost an enemy and gained a neutral, she might become good eventually or maybe will stay a neutral. And that’s good enough. You are Winning, don’t let your resentment make you Lose.
I would rather die than stop resenting the bastards ruining our lives.
You know why you can say this shit? Because they wrote the rulebook so they never have to face consequences. A just society would see an entire political base actively working to oppress the downtrodden and start sharpening the fucking guillotines.
Oh I’m not saying you can’t resent them. Just make sure you don’t shoot yourself in the foot as the result.
Your platitudes suck.
They made it clear unity doesn’t work when they voted en masse to keep Trump from being impeached for instigating a deadly riot. There is no peace for tyrants and their cronies.
They are like this, always have and will be, and you are letting them.
[sighs] Trust me, you don’t want to go down that path. I’ve seen it in my own country, in the Soviet Union. All you’ll get is a lot of mass-graves filled with innocent people and a NEW corrupt elite ruling over you with an iron fist.
Fine
This is a very interesting exchange and does well to highlight different perspectives. And they’re both valid. Consider the russian/soviet perspective, and indeed it’s easy to see how they view revolution with distrust. Consider the american perspective and you can see how they glorify revolution, since they’re taught that it worked for them, and certainly they proudly celebrate it annually. From a canadian perspective I can see the validity in both points. On the one hand I do look around the world and see that there are times that fewer innocemts will suffer and die under revolution versus remaining in status quo. On the other, I look to my countries own history of transitioning from colony to some success at “peace, order, and good government,” while also being aware of the failure of that same growth for indigenous, marginalized, homeless, poverty, those I am forgetting, and immigrant peoples. Would revolution in our case outweigh the costs of the slow rate of progress we might be making? To those in priviledge no, but to those still suffering under the rules that are failing them, yes. Unfortunately there are enough priviledged here that think, “fuck you, I got mine” that they resent thinking they’ll have to give up even a dollar in order to make the billionaires give up one billion to help those with none.
You can never know that “fewer innocemts will suffer and die under revolution versus remaining in status quo”. Many revolutions fail and solidify the repression. Others succeed, but the new rulers institute even more oppression.
All you can know is that the current conditions are so horrible they can’t be sustained any longer and the gamble is worth it. And we’re nowhere near that in this country – judged by what’s set off popular revolutions historically.
There’s no atoning without accountability. Robin’s had very little of that. Stopping the most egregious harms by not being in office anymore is good, but it’s not the same as atoning.
Geez guys, you’re throwing an awful lot of political weight onto an online comic strip that overall is pretty sweet (at least until Willis shivs you when you’re not looking). Remember, Robin is a female Daffy Duck, who is manic, ADHD and clinically looney. Think “Duck Amuck” and “Duck, Rabbit, Duck.” It’s kind of futile to take her to task for the current Republican party, not least because she DOESN’T EXIST.
Well humans went into serious arguments for lesser reasons… like football.
Look, if we’re gonna stop taking it seriously because it’s a fictional strip (despite the strip being far more ‘clinically looney’ and having more continuity than Looney Tunes) this comment section’s gonna dry up real fast.
Maybe as time goes on, the GOP will chill out and Robin being an ex-member won’t reflect QUITE so poorly. I can dream.
Actually, that was a question not a correction. Basically, what DO you think is sufficient atonement for Robin aside from giving up all the riches and power she got from her evil deeds? What is needed to make her redeemed?
Or is that not a thing possible for you?
Not for people like Robin. Never.
Well I don’t think she’s being written out of the comic so you’re out of luck.
If Becky and Robin got into a relationship, would they cancel each other out, or would their combined personalities split the earth in half?
C’mon people, give Robin a break. She’s just the comic relief. She is written so candid about her motivations and (befuddled) thought process in order to allow us the rare opportunity to laugh at a (former) Republican Congresswoman without losing view of what makes her ilk so obnoxious. With the bonus of lampshading how being (possibly?) well-meaning is not nearly enough.
Leslie is bound by sanity, basic common decency, and presumably laws against burglary and trespass.
Robin is not.
That is a power disparity.
Robin haz a cheezburger.
And the day is saved