A sexy superhero comedy (except when it isn't) about the never-ending struggles of a plucky but very unlucky young superheroine.
Nerf Now!!
Josué Pereira
A cute webcomic about fanservice, video games, and... love. Mostly video games, though.
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.
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.
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?
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.
Namesake
Isa, Meg
There's ghosts at your heels and fairy tale worlds ahead. What do you do? Jump down the rabbit hole!
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.
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.
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
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.
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?
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.
Sister Claire
Yamino
In the troubled aftermath of a great war between Witches and her fellow Nuns, novice Sister Claire just wants a purpose.
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.
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.
Edison Rex
Chris Roberson
The adventures of the world’s greatest villain who, after defeating his superheroic nemesis, decides that he’s the only one left to defend the world.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Three Panel Soul
Matt Boyd, Ian McConville
It's a pretty rigid format but we keep the content loose, you know?
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...
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.
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.
Heroes of Thantopolis
Izzy Strontium Hall
A living boy fights to save the City of the Dead.
Cyanide & Happiness
Explosm
Satire, dark humor and surreal humor.
Peritale
Mari Costa
A fairy godmother with no magic tries her best to successfully fulfill a Fairytale and win the respect of her peers.
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.
Saint for Rent
Ru Xu
Saint Halliday runs an inn for Time Travelers. Unfortunately, he seems to attract other supernatural "guests," too.
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My real name is actually Christopher but with a K like “Kris” but anyway since I find both Sarah and Liz pretty attractive I feel really called out right now.
It’s not a _happy_ smile, but it is most definitely a smile. Revenge, spite, and schadenfreude all have very good reasons for existing. Like a check on psychopathy. Unfortunately that doesn’t mesh well with modern systems, so the psychos presently have an edge. That never lasts forever though.
I really want to see what Liz is trying to run/hide from. My current guess is that she’s known as a christian girl at her current school. So she wants to flee it so that people see her as more than just a girl who folllws the bible and wouldn’t do anything improper.
I personally don’t see why she doesn’t just stop acting like that, myself. She clearly doesn’t actually give a shit about any of these ‘friends’ if she’s willing to leave them forever on a whim and possibly scare them into thinking she’s dead somewhere by disappearing and leaving almost all of her stuff. So, since she doesn’t actually care, there’s no downside to just acting like herself, whoever she decides that is.
She could just stop. She could pull a reverse-Jennifer and change up her social circle by stopping pretending who she is. But instead, somehow, it’s better to just take off and couch-surf forever with the one person in her life she can be absolutely sure will NOT be on the side of ‘eternal truancy is the answer!!’
I don’t necessarily not like Liz, but I’ve completely run out of patience for the level of childish she’s performing.
Emotionally turbulent 18 year olds tend not to come up with the most immediately rational and perfect solution to a problem, let alone ones involving struggles regarding social groups.
Liz’s friends want her to stay a Silly Jesus Girl and would also resent her not being such anymore, which is not at all apropos to a certain other character.
Drama runs in the family, apparently. Sarah’s flamboyant level of morose does compare to Liz’s free spirit crap that she’s been doing so far…
But yes, Liz is showing a bad case of ‘College Freshman Who Acts Like They Think They’re Still in High School’ and her Brady Bunch-assed attempts at dissing her party-pooper big sister make her come off like Billie at the beginning of the series, sans the toxic ‘Alpha bongo’ persona and crazy levels of alcoholism.
I dunno as someone who hates driving, I’d probably appreciate this running soap opera in the back seat to take my mind off the misery that is being on the freeway.
The freeway (interstate) isn’t misery anywhere nearly as much as US highways in Indiana. That state needs to learn how to use overpasses instead of putting a stoplight in every podunk town with a bar, church, and/or McDonald’s.
Our roads horrible, Route 9 can’t decide what it wants to be, we cram I-95 down a single lane 20 MPH offramp, and the Lowell Connector is an expressway just ends at a T intersection with a light.
All of New England can be pretty bad with the “you can’t get there from here”, and good luck if there is a road closure, but I think all east coast cities tend to be horrible. Boston just has a special place in the “you really don’t want to drive here” list. The only thing going for Boston and the east coast cities are the subways and other public transportation. West coast cities are still pretty behind on that front, which makes it more of a requirement to drive (like Seattle, Vancouver BC, etc.).
Most of the bad stuff that I have found out west is just that they haven’t kept up with the increase in traffic (like the north/south connection for Spokane that they haven’t finished in like 20 years). New England and east coast cities all have the issue of old roads formally being cow paths or some such nonsense, and now everything is so built up that putting in any good roads is difficult.
Indiana is probably the worst state to drive through on the interstate. You get endless corn, then endless construction in Indianapolis, then more corn. At night it’s worse, it’s so flat that it’s disorienting, it feels like going uphill when it’s just flat.
Oh, and of course these days you get weird looks from strangers in gas stations because you’re the only one with a mask, and you just want to get out as quickly as possible, because you’re the only one with a mask.
I just remember southern Ontario being hell, especially in the Toronto area. All the construction didn’t help, especially if you didn’t know that they had the east half of a town’s roads all closed due to rail work on labor day weekend. The people were really helpful, except for all their alternatives were also blocked off starting that week. It didn’t get any better the time I was living there.
US 30 across Indiana is one of the most annoying drives I’ve taken in recent memory. Hitting the Ohio line was a genuine pleasure. I’ll pay the I-90 tolls anytime if it means I don’t have to do that again.
That’s right, if Sarah is happy that means Joyce is miserable. Willis’ first Law of Conservation of Joy. We have seen it happen this way before.
And how far have they gotten in laboratory?
I’ll never understand why city planners (or whoever’s responsible) always decide to build sidewalks in the deepest ditches possible, for maximum flooding.
Huh. Sidewalks aren’t really in ditches around here, but I do know that a) roads often have ditches on the sides for drainage purposes and b) sidewalks are frequently a complete afterthought to road construction. Because people on foot aren’t the huge economic factor that drivers are.
Also, no one is responsible, as you will quickly find out if anything goes wrong. Source: I work in what I would describe to a layperson as “construction quality control”. It is *amazing* how many different directions fingers can point in.
Mom! Can I keep her? She followed me home.
I mentioned that I had some etchings by Yotomo in my room, and she just followed right along, nattering about Renaissance nudes and Greek Kouros art and digital advancements in pixel density.
oh i don’t know if scruples is the word. it’s more of a sense that it might as easily not have happened, so i can afford to be extravagantly generous? i dunno.
but sure, if i ever actually needed the cash i would keep it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I’ve been in situation, skipping one meal on two at the time and found a pretty sum in cash lying on the floor, just under the classifieds board.
I was so shocked that my mind only went to: gosh people lost it, they must be in the dire right now, let’s get it where they can find it.
So I went to a close counter and explained that I found cash out of nowhere.
Pretty sure the guy enjoyed the involuntary tip.
Not living in a city, both random cash and panhandlers are pretty rare – beyond the occasional quarter.
Way back when, working a summer job for the town I was mowing a park when I found a couple of plastic baggies with $200 rolled up tight in one and a needle in the other. Figured I needed that more than whoever lost it.
For the record this is entirely sincere, I enjoy Dina and Becky but I’ve been waiting to cut back to this impending shitshow.
Incidentally, the last time I saw Willis tweet vaguely about doing something terrible I checked when the queue was up to and put a preemptive DAMN YOU on the calendar that week and it’s coming up in the next few weeks, so I’m just gonna buy a ticket for the express line Fear Train now.
Oh no, if it’s breaking up Becky and Dina the collective tears of the readers will make Willis too powerful to ever be stopped! His reign will be eternal!
Well, it actually involving sex apparently isn’t routine.
And kind of, but not in the same way. At least as I read it, she was attempting to imitate the life Joyce was pretending she was living as a cool atheist, not trying to steal Joe from her.
If Liz’s justification for dating/cheating with her sister’s boyfriend is ‘you act so mean and angry’…mayyyybe don’t be a whiny punk when that person cuts back at you?
Honestly, what Liz did with Sarah’s boyfriend was still wrong. That’s not to say Sarah “owned” him or something, but that if Liz caught feelings, at minimum she should have waited until he was available, preferably after talking it over with her sister so that she wouldn’t get blindsided while healing. Bonus points for discussing feelings, concerns, and boundries (like could Sarah be in the same room/house as him currently). BUT just because that’s what they SHOULD have done doesn’t mean that they had the maturity, skills, or mental state to do it. It’s a mistake they can both learn from and come out the side as better people if they let it.
that really doesn’t make sense, since we know Sarah was actually seeing this guy and both of them knew. The other, more logical interpretation is that Liz pulled this shit a SECOND time with another boyfriend that Sarah lied about because of this first incident.
Also, can we stop making excuses for Liz yet? Trying to salvage her behavior here is engaging in Faux news levels of spin doctoring, and it’s kinda gross.
I read it more as this having been a pattern where Liz goes after things Sarah had, including boyfriends. Sarah knew this, so told Liz she wasn’t seeing him in hopes of heading it off, but Liz knew she was, but acted on it anyway – possibly according to this strip at Christopher’s prompting. Which really makes him even more of a jerk if he started it, but still doesn’t let Liz off the hook.
Sarah explicitly says that she told Liz that “so you wouldn’t want to see him,” which implies to me previous tension over the issue.
Ohhh so Liz is a Sae Kashiwagi. I haven’t been following this storyline closely so it just clicked (if you’ve never read or seen Peach Girl, the sae character is a copycat who wants everything that makes her “bestie” happy – clothes, men, mainly men.)
Words matter as do actions. I’m not saying that 100% of the fault lies squarely on Liz’s shoulders, but she’s still in the wrong. Could something come to light later that puts her in the right partially or totally in some aspects? Yes. But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t need to communicate with her sister, recognize where she was wrong, and try to make it right by learning from the experience so she can grow to become a better person.
Real life isn’t simple. Sometimes even completely contradictory things can exist at the same time, neither being lessened nor diluted by the presence of the other. It’s like a delicious meal that was poisoned; the good parts don’t always negate the bad and the bad parts don’t always negate the good.
as someone with chronic RBF I am running out of shits to give about liz. “you don’t smile enough so it was okay to date your boyfriend” girl fuck off please
Willis answered this in the comments several days ago; Liz is in the middle seat (per word of Willis, so Sarah could stop Liz from trying to dive out the car door like she threatened to) and apparently this is an older car model, without a full seatbelt for the middle seat.
Honestly though in all the stories I hear about cheating on the internet it really bugs me when the affair partner turns out to be a best friend or sibling of the one getting cheated on the most. Double betrayal. At least if it was a stranger moving on would be easier. Between the two I have to wonder if sibling is worse because the family has a choice to make sometimes as a result and there is often no clean outcome.
Granted, at least they aren’t still together and it was just some high school drama and not happening between adults/married people. I’ve read far too many horror stories of like the cheater and awful sibling getting married and the one cheated on expected to simply suck it up. (Particularly because the parents want grandkids not giving a shit about their abused kid’s feelings as a result.) So at least they aren’t still together? At least they were young and stupid when it happened? It could always be worse.
Have to wonder if Liz is being deliberately needling to get an opening tbh. To do what? To get Sarah to bail of course so she can run away again. But Sarah is probably on to it.
There’s no escape out of that car, so I think the needling is mostly in service to getting angry and barbed at Sarah for dragging her back to BSU. Now it’s just about picking a fight with her since she’s taking control of Liz’s problems without Liz’s input.
@Willis I’m getting really invasive full page ads and video on here today, and none of the ‘report ad’ options are showing up, and I turned ad block on with no results.
Thing that gets me is… Liz looked scared when she tried to sleep with Joe. Maybe it was just a chance to show Joe respecting consent, but I don’t think Liz is just trying to skip on college. She’s scared.
Liz doesn’t want to go back to college because she’s afraid and resentful over how she’s treated there, which is that she’s expected to remain the Jesus Freak that everyone there laughs at.
I’m sure they’re not exactly the same, but it feels to me like Liz is probably afraid her friends and fellow students at her college will treat her similarly to how Joyce’s friends and fellow students have been treating her now that she’s no longer the Jesus Freak everyone laughs at.
But I don’t think her being scared trying to sleep with Joe is the same as her feelings about going back to school.
She wants to break away from being the good Christian girl she’s been playing there and thinks that needs to involve drugs and sex, but has no real idea about drugs (“edibles”) and isn’t nearly as ready for sex as she thought she should be. That’s where the scared came from with Joe.
She’s also apparently scared of how her friends will treat her there if she changes who she is. Sick of pretending to be the good Christian girl, but also with really messed up ideas about what changing from that would mean.
Unless there’s something more than we’ve seen though, Sarah’s basically right. She’s got to go back. Sarah is of course being a jerk about it, but she’s not wrong. This is something Liz is going to have to deal with – sort things out with her friends, find new friends, whatever.
Hopefully realize pretty quickly that she doesn’t have to proposition strangers for drugs and sex to not be the good Christian girl, because that can lead to really ugly places really fast.
Okay, as someone who thought Sarah’s demeanor and expression came about from the Dana incident, this is fascinating. I wonder how far back that Eternal Frown goes.
Yeah I used to like Sarah, but I’ve really started to get tired of how she treats people who clearly could some support and understanding with their issues. Like Joyce recently now that most of her friends know that she’s an atheist, and Liz who seems like she might be in a similar situation to Joyce at her own college.
Y’know, this was a fair description of Sarah at the beginning of the comic, but I find it strange she gets no credit for her character growth or leeway for the terrible situations that have pushed her further in that direction, in the way other characters would. I guess everybody just has (a) character(s) they hate.
I mean fair but you can’t blame people for thinking you hate her when every strip she appears you mention what a miserable person and awful character she is
I dunno what it means to hate a fictional character other than in the context of that character failing to meaningfully connect with me, and so I don’t get immersed into their story and start seeing all the pulleys and levers that go into writing about them.
I don’t “blame” people for thinking I hate her, mostly I’m just confused as to why someone can think I hate characters that I routinely drop 4000 word essays on what’s motivating them to do things.
I’ve been a big mark for the theory that this is gonna backfire (and now I’ve started hoping Dana’s at Ball State and we’ll have a big dramatic hootnanny), but it’s worth remembering Sarah didn’t do that lightly.
Part of it is that Dana was, genuinely, getting really bad, and no one but Sarah saw it, thinking Dana was just getting better even as she isolated herself further.
The other part is that, putting this harshly, Dana was destroying Sarah’s grades and her scholarship. There’s a cutthroat pragmatism here, but the fact of the matter is that Sarah’s future would have been ruined if Dana kept going the way she was.
Even if this went full drama bomb and we learn that Sarah returned Dana to an unsafe home, she did the most sensible action when isolated from getting her any support.
Very curious what the hell she was supposed to do in that situation. Talk to her? Sarah’s not a therapist she was a college freshman, Dana spiraling into addiction due to crippling grief isn’t something you can fix by just being a good roommate. Tell a school counselor or other authority figure? Probably would have had the same result as just calling her dad. Please explain what this 18 year old who’s scholarship was about to be ripped away from her was supposed to do in this very serious, complex situation
And that’s my biggest problem with the idea that Sarah’s going to be shown to be have sent Dana back to some horrible abusive situation. In reality, that would certainly be possible, but in fiction it changes her entire backstory into a no-win scenario where she will certainly be blamed (and blame herself) despite there not being a better option.
Narratively, I don’t see what purpose it would serve or where you’d go from there. Maybe Willis could pull something out of his hat, but I can’t see.
I mean, you’re saying this like Blame Sarah is the only outcome. Shit happens sometimes and you do the best awith what you’ve got. Finding out it wasn’t a miracle solution doesn’t make Sarah a villain, it means maybe I’d she and Raidah have been fighting over nothing and they’re both egotistical jerks.
If I were writing it, I’d use it as an opportunity to start dismantling her “I care in a crisis” thinking. I get what you mean bit given how Sarah is acting now, it’d feel way weirder if she took control of Liz’s problem without attempting to understand her, like she just throws Liz back into a scenario that Liz is clearly suffering in, and that just works peachy keen no consequence. Like it should be a problem that Sarah tries to unilaterally force a problem to her solution, or how she wants Joyce to shut up and go back to status quo.
That line is still relevant and it’s interesting to me that Sarah is still saying that Liz stole the “boyfriend” from her. We don’t know, yet, if Chris had said that he and Sarah were dating at all. Maybe we’ll find out, maybe we won’t.
True, and I’m chalking that up to the trope of “Sibling Rivalry”. Little sister taking things that older sister likes. Do we know if Liz had a habit of taking Sarah’s friends from her or anything like that? Liz clearly likes doing things to buck the system (and possibly annoy Sarah) but going so far as to “steal” Chris from Sarah? I honestly doubt that. I’ve been wrong before when it comes to character assessments and I can admit that.
I’m curious as to what Chris said to Liz in the first place. If he copped to being in a relationship with Sarah or not.
We don’t know much, so we’re extrapolating from the few clues we do have.
I guess that line could be extrapolating from smaller sibling rivalry things and not from previous relationships, but I think the most straightforward reading is that Sarah was right to think Liz was motivated by Sarah’s interest in Christopher and had previous reasons to think that.
This is a very-well written family-car-argument, in the sense that I can practically feel the soul-suffocating uncomfortable tension from beyond the screen. Man, I hope that this driver gets a decent pay or at least a tip.
Man, I feel SO BAD for the driver: overhearing family arguments in public is bad enough, not being able to get away because you’re driving them is the WORST. Hope they get one HELL of a tip.
I know Sarah is single, happy single, doesn’t need to pair up. Yet, now I wonder who she could be shipped with? This Christopher fella didn’t deal with it well, but other people might have the same issue with how she expresses emotion. Or has resting bongo face. Mike’s out, because she wouldn’t put up with his crap. (Same reason I can’t ship Booster with Mike.) Malaya I think might like her on a surface level, but eventually notice sometimes her grumpiness is performative, therefore FAKEY!!! Amber might be able to use a new friend who specializes in calling out bs, and she can understand when someone needs their own space. But then they don’t have a lot in common otherwise. What’s Sarah’s degree in? Does she have a whole support network of classmates that we’ve just never met?
Man. I know she’s 18 and all, plus the whole naivety thing born of being a “Jesus Freak” (though she…clearly wasn’t raised Fundie in the way Joyce was, I still get it).
But jesus christ, she is being such an insufferable little brat, holy crap. I understand more why Sarah has little interest in being more compassionate towards Liz’s dilemma. It still sucks for Liz, of course, the whole conversion thing, and she’s going through it, but like…this dynamic sucks, y’all.
If my siblings were like Liz I wouldn’t be super eager to put up with their shit either, tbh, no matter how reasonable–since whatever you do, you get the short end of the stick just by being involved at all. It’s not like Sarah is her parent, there are limits on the things you can expect an older sibling to just put up with and “be the responsible one” just because they’re older.
It doesn’t give Sarah an excuse to put in zero effort and treat her friends like trash, of course, but I’m starting to see that Sarah’s attitude might come from a whole lifetime of being tossed unceremoniously into shitty no-win scenarios. If I were her, I’d probably end up jaded and crotchety too.
I also wonder how much of this dynamic has been enforced–or at least reinforced–by their various parental figures. Being eternally pigeonholed into “the grumpy one” and “the smiley one”. This whole thing stinks to me of two children being rewarded or punished based on how well they’re able to capitulate to the desires and feelings of the adults in their life.
Your parents/authority figures will shower you with love and attention and gifts and money and won’t give you grief so long as you smile and are friendly and fun and never have any inconvenient problems or emotions. If you fail to do that, then you deserve any retribution or consequences you get. Sarah just can’t get with the program and perform properly, so the fact that her parents wont pay for her college or her boyfriends cheat on her or whatever is clearly her own fault.
And, extrapolating further–Liz must perform in the same way for all of her friends at school, and the moment she doesn’t, she will be treated in the same way Sarah gets treated, and she’ll DESERVE IT. And that belief is ingrained so deeply, she can’t see any way around it. So tbh, it make sense to me why her first instinct was to immediately run away specifically to Sarah, who is presumably the person she first thinks of when it comes to being the ‘rebellious one’ who doesn’t play nice like she’s supposed to.
And Sarah has never been able to properly perform and dance along to the whims of the adults or authority figures in her life, (possibly because the goal posts purposefully kept getting moved, but not necessarily) and she kept getting the short end of the stick, so she eventually learned that there really was just no point in even trying to anymore. Which Liz literally cannot compute, and can only understand it as a personal failing on Sarah’s part.
And like, to a certain degree it is, in that Sarah does end up self-sabotaging an awful lot! But that doesn’t give you license to contribute to the sabotage, and then act like it has nothing to do with you at all. :/
I don’t disagree that this is both a real thing that happens all the time, and is a pretty sensible reasoning for how Sarah ended up like this (Walky and Sal have a lot of the same dynamic), but I dunno if it’d factor into the story itself.
Like, Sarah The Person I could definitely see go through this, but Sarah The Fictional Character has had a lot of her struggles with social interaction drawn from within. It’s definitely an undercurrent to her relationships vis-a-vis Liz (who even says as much when it comes to their peer groups) but I think Sarah dealing with her hangups is less “where they came from” and more “how they’re impacting her ability to form connections.”
Like Sarah is more This Is What I Am Doing, and then Sal had a lot of focus on This Is How My Past Affects Me In The Now, if that makes sense.
I can definitely see that being the case! Although I think there’s a chance that Sarah’s role in the story might be shifting a little, with the introduction of Liz? Especially if Liz is meant to a bit more of a permanent addition to the cast, at least as a recurring minor character.
And even if that isn’t the case, to ME, it seems like the point of even introducing Liz–specifically Sarah’s sister!–as a focal point of Sarah’s character development just within the confines of these few storylines would be TO delve a bit further into the Whys and origins of Sarah’s issues? Like, instead of encountering Liz we could have had a story that involed Sarah being particularly misanthropic within a new situation that included flashbacks to what happened with Dana, or had more conflict with Raidah, or some other thing where Sarah is confronted with a NEW situation, rather than specifically with her sister and touching on past conflicts.
I’ve been too preoccupied by Liz’s sexual hangups and Joe arc to remember this boyfriend stealing arc. I wonder how all of this fits into Liz’s character
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btw if you're one of those rando bluesky weirdos who doesn't know me but sees me in the wild being sarcastic and don't know i'm being sarcastic because you haven't taken like 30 seconds to, like, maybe look at my user profile or something, keep walking, you're not going to score internet points here
Here's an entertaining cite at the bottom of the first page
Josh Gerstein@joshgerstein.bsky.social ⋅ 1d
JUST IN: Milwaukee Judge Hannah Dugan moves to dismiss federal criminal case against her for allegedly helping immigrant hide from ICE. Her lawyers say she's protected by official acts & judicial immunity and 10th Amendment. Doc: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
Where did Hollywood go so wrong? I thought movies were supposed to be an escape from reality, a chance to put your worries aside and not have to think about any underlying ideas or concepts. Well, not anymore.
theonion.com/you-can...
It's not a new argument, of course, but Chesterton dismissed it effectively in 1908.
"You will hear everlastingly... this argument that the rich man cannot be bribed. The fact is, of course, that the rich man is bribed; he has been bribed already. That is why he is a rich man."
Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com ⋅ 1d
Hawley dismisses Trump lining his pockets with his memecoin: "Listen, I think nobody believes that Donald Trump can be bought. I mean, what does Donald Trump need more money for?"
wilbur, savvy enough to know he's in a comic strip but still not a great actor, awkwardly lifts a muffin up into frame so that we, the audience, understand that he has a muffin right now, which is very important narratively, but he's not really selling it well as an organic, human action
confirming that the reason there's been no Galaxy Version female characters in Blokees until now is that they felt they needed to make Round Lady Thighs For Ladies
preternia @preternia.com ⋅ 5h
Josh Gerstein @joshgerstein.bsky.social ⋅ 1d
Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com ⋅ 1d
Pavel
@spavel.bsky.social ⋅ 10d
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but did he come ON…
That was Eileen.
This is my new favorite comment.
Tu-ra lu-ra tu-ra lu-rye ay
Aargh, don’t put that in my head again!
That’s what Eileen said.
It’s fine – we’re putting the Save Ferris version in your head this time.
My real name is actually Christopher but with a K like “Kris” but anyway since I find both Sarah and Liz pretty attractive I feel really called out right now.
Does Liz know that now you’re cheating on her with your Sarah avatar?
He betrayed Sarah, but kept her on the bottom of his heart..
Ahhhh, the sweet sound of sisters bonding.
I mean, not this, but I’m sure it’s here somewhere. XD
I hate to be the one to tell you this, Sarah, but THAT is not a smile… xD
It’s not a _happy_ smile, but it is most definitely a smile. Revenge, spite, and schadenfreude all have very good reasons for existing. Like a check on psychopathy. Unfortunately that doesn’t mesh well with modern systems, so the psychos presently have an edge. That never lasts forever though.
fluid bonding the same guy more like
Well that sure is a mood whispash
i’m always a big fan of the stupidly abrupt changes in mood
Liz: You should not be doing that with your eyebrows if you want to look happy.
Sarah: Shut up. This isn’t natural for me, I’m gonna tackle it one facial feature at a time.
Right now she’s reminding me of Lucy Van Pelt when Lucy would forget how to smile.
I really want to see what Liz is trying to run/hide from. My current guess is that she’s known as a christian girl at her current school. So she wants to flee it so that people see her as more than just a girl who folllws the bible and wouldn’t do anything improper.
Good Christian girls can be even more attractive.
I prefer good Christian bad girls (not to be confused with bad Christians who happen to be girls).
This comment is doubleplus good.
I mean yeah that’s the stated text. It’s how she put it to Joe and then to Sarah before she was tackled.
I personally don’t see why she doesn’t just stop acting like that, myself. She clearly doesn’t actually give a shit about any of these ‘friends’ if she’s willing to leave them forever on a whim and possibly scare them into thinking she’s dead somewhere by disappearing and leaving almost all of her stuff. So, since she doesn’t actually care, there’s no downside to just acting like herself, whoever she decides that is.
She could just stop. She could pull a reverse-Jennifer and change up her social circle by stopping pretending who she is. But instead, somehow, it’s better to just take off and couch-surf forever with the one person in her life she can be absolutely sure will NOT be on the side of ‘eternal truancy is the answer!!’
I don’t necessarily not like Liz, but I’ve completely run out of patience for the level of childish she’s performing.
Emotionally turbulent 18 year olds tend not to come up with the most immediately rational and perfect solution to a problem, let alone ones involving struggles regarding social groups.
Liz’s friends want her to stay a Silly Jesus Girl and would also resent her not being such anymore, which is not at all apropos to a certain other character.
Drama runs in the family, apparently. Sarah’s flamboyant level of morose does compare to Liz’s free spirit crap that she’s been doing so far…
But yes, Liz is showing a bad case of ‘College Freshman Who Acts Like They Think They’re Still in High School’ and her Brady Bunch-assed attempts at dissing her party-pooper big sister make her come off like Billie at the beginning of the series, sans the toxic ‘Alpha bongo’ persona and crazy levels of alcoholism.
…well, I think that might be the most terrifying facial expression Sarah’s ever made.
Top five, anyway.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/01-to-those-whod-ground-me/goodmorning-2/
Really hope they pay their driver extra for making them listen to this
I dunno as someone who hates driving, I’d probably appreciate this running soap opera in the back seat to take my mind off the misery that is being on the freeway.
The freeway (interstate) isn’t misery anywhere nearly as much as US highways in Indiana. That state needs to learn how to use overpasses instead of putting a stoplight in every podunk town with a bar, church, and/or McDonald’s.
[Laughs in Masshole]
Our roads horrible, Route 9 can’t decide what it wants to be, we cram I-95 down a single lane 20 MPH offramp, and the Lowell Connector is an expressway just ends at a T intersection with a light.
And then there’s Boston.
…yeah, I remember being parked at the Chinatown gate, with my bumper on the sidewalk, talking to the driver of the fire truck that took it off.
All of New England can be pretty bad with the “you can’t get there from here”, and good luck if there is a road closure, but I think all east coast cities tend to be horrible. Boston just has a special place in the “you really don’t want to drive here” list. The only thing going for Boston and the east coast cities are the subways and other public transportation. West coast cities are still pretty behind on that front, which makes it more of a requirement to drive (like Seattle, Vancouver BC, etc.).
Most of the bad stuff that I have found out west is just that they haven’t kept up with the increase in traffic (like the north/south connection for Spokane that they haven’t finished in like 20 years). New England and east coast cities all have the issue of old roads formally being cow paths or some such nonsense, and now everything is so built up that putting in any good roads is difficult.
Yeah, driving in Boston is easy. You find a place to park as soon as possible and take the T everywhere.
Indiana is probably the worst state to drive through on the interstate. You get endless corn, then endless construction in Indianapolis, then more corn. At night it’s worse, it’s so flat that it’s disorienting, it feels like going uphill when it’s just flat.
Oh, and of course these days you get weird looks from strangers in gas stations because you’re the only one with a mask, and you just want to get out as quickly as possible, because you’re the only one with a mask.
I just remember southern Ontario being hell, especially in the Toronto area. All the construction didn’t help, especially if you didn’t know that they had the east half of a town’s roads all closed due to rail work on labor day weekend. The people were really helpful, except for all their alternatives were also blocked off starting that week. It didn’t get any better the time I was living there.
US 30 across Indiana is one of the most annoying drives I’ve taken in recent memory. Hitting the Ohio line was a genuine pleasure. I’ll pay the I-90 tolls anytime if it means I don’t have to do that again.
Plot twist: The driver is Christopher.
Uh, wearing a hat and muffler.
It would be very funny if they were named Chris or something.
I think the go-to maneuver would be slowly turning up the radio volume until they cannot be heard. I am shocked it hasn’t already happened.
Also, this is through Carla’s corporate account, so the driver is probably being paid the absolute bare minimum rate the company has.
As someone who used to drive hack, I can say those long round trips pay great, even if the tip is rubbish.
People these days listen to podcasts and streaming music on noise-cancelling earbuds.
Audiobooks, too.
I bet you can get audiobook bibles and books of Mormon.
Isn’t wearing earbuds/headphones while driving ridiculously dangerous and therefore illegal? Can’t hear honking horns, can’t hear police/ambulence sirens, etc.
What’re you talking about? This is more entertaining than talk radio
Honestly, I hope the drivers of this service are unionized, and have actual benefits, proper enough for the work they’re doing, in this universe.
One would hope, but I really doubt it
HOLY CRAP SARAH THAT SMILE IS MENACING!
On that note, am I the only one who thinks she’d look SUPER cool as Lil’ Slugger from Paranoia Agent?
She already has the bat.
She’s a reverse smile vampire. She’s got all the bats.
That’s right, if Sarah is happy that means Joyce is miserable. Willis’ first Law of Conservation of Joy. We have seen it happen this way before.
And how far have they gotten in laboratory?
Well, Liz is miserable, so that might be enough.
If I found a boyfriend on the sidewalk, I’d probably keep him, too. A $20 bill would be equally nice.
This time of year where I live, I’d settle for finding a sidewalk that wasn’t iced over into a death trap.
I’ll never understand why city planners (or whoever’s responsible) always decide to build sidewalks in the deepest ditches possible, for maximum flooding.
Huh. Sidewalks aren’t really in ditches around here, but I do know that a) roads often have ditches on the sides for drainage purposes and b) sidewalks are frequently a complete afterthought to road construction. Because people on foot aren’t the huge economic factor that drivers are.
Also, no one is responsible, as you will quickly find out if anything goes wrong. Source: I work in what I would describe to a layperson as “construction quality control”. It is *amazing* how many different directions fingers can point in.
Fuck drivers anyway. I need to get around town and can’t afford a car, so I guess I get to play with my life if I wanna leave the house.
What about finding a future squeeze on the sidewalk lying stunned on their ass and getting them out of the cold?
Mom! Can I keep her? She followed me home.
I mentioned that I had some etchings by Yotomo in my room, and she just followed right along, nattering about Renaissance nudes and Greek Kouros art and digital advancements in pixel density.
yeah i feel like any cash i find on the ground doesn’t really belong to me. i just hand it to the first panhandler i run across.
I’m too broke for that kinda scruples. I see a bill on the sidewalk, that thing’s goin’ in my wallet so I don’t get arrested for vagrancy.
oh i don’t know if scruples is the word. it’s more of a sense that it might as easily not have happened, so i can afford to be extravagantly generous? i dunno.
but sure, if i ever actually needed the cash i would keep it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I’ve been in situation, skipping one meal on two at the time and found a pretty sum in cash lying on the floor, just under the classifieds board.
I was so shocked that my mind only went to: gosh people lost it, they must be in the dire right now, let’s get it where they can find it.
So I went to a close counter and explained that I found cash out of nowhere.
Pretty sure the guy enjoyed the involuntary tip.
Not living in a city, both random cash and panhandlers are pretty rare – beyond the occasional quarter.
Way back when, working a summer job for the town I was mowing a park when I found a couple of plastic baggies with $200 rolled up tight in one and a needle in the other. Figured I needed that more than whoever lost it.
Stooooooory time!
Oi! No Christopher robbin‘ on my watch!
So this is a request for Kenny Loggins?
Winnie The Pooh doesn’t know what to do…
(I could have pulled out some Kathie Lee Gifford.)
I had no idea the sets of Kenny Loggins and Pooh intersected.
House On Pooh Corner has been covered 15 times since the first release was a cover by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.
Not bad, but I think I prefer the Winnie the Pooh Saturday morning cartoon theme song.
Liz says pooh to that.
🫡 Let us not forget to cease the means of Pooh-duction, comrades!!!
*plays “Propaganda” by Taku Iwasaka on Hacked Muzak*
Oh boy… more Liz
Liz is making me miss Mary. *Shudder*
That also happened to Christopher. He was Mary’s boyfriend before she met Peter Paul.
Yeah these are the bickering of a pair of siblings alright.
Oh good, back to the *FUN* plot this storyline.
SIBLING FIGHTS.
For the record this is entirely sincere, I enjoy Dina and Becky but I’ve been waiting to cut back to this impending shitshow.
Incidentally, the last time I saw Willis tweet vaguely about doing something terrible I checked when the queue was up to and put a preemptive DAMN YOU on the calendar that week and it’s coming up in the next few weeks, so I’m just gonna buy a ticket for the express line Fear Train now.
Stay tuned tho!
If you’re here for the GOOD part of the storyline (you know the one), then I have something VERY special in the works. 🦕🦖
STAY TUNED!!!
Oh no, if it’s breaking up Becky and Dina the collective tears of the readers will make Willis too powerful to ever be stopped! His reign will be eternal!
Eternity would be just long enough for everyone to graduate in story and maybe have epilogues.
Yes, he’ll be, as you earthlings say, “a living god”.
And of course, what would be a god without a Leviathan?
I think they’re good for another chapter at least
I love Becky and Dinah but I admit Liz and Sarah were my jam.
Got a link? I’d like to see it.
This was months ago and on Twitter, so, sadly no. I usually don’t think to bookmark random Tweets.
That’s alright. I tried searching for it myself but gave up after a bit.
(my guess is Dana)
Ah, the meat of the Sarah v Liz conflict. I hope the driver gets a nice tip for this trip. Or at least writing material.
Sooooo did Liz try to sleep with Joe because Joyce said that she had slept with him? Is this a routine thing with Liz?
A girl who finishes your left overs.
Well, it actually involving sex apparently isn’t routine.
And kind of, but not in the same way. At least as I read it, she was attempting to imitate the life Joyce was pretending she was living as a cool atheist, not trying to steal Joe from her.
If Liz’s justification for dating/cheating with her sister’s boyfriend is ‘you act so mean and angry’…mayyyybe don’t be a whiny punk when that person cuts back at you?
Let the pettiness flow through you, Sarah!
o3o I mean yeah, I’d probably have more fun dating Liz than Sarah. Though it’s a dick move to date your GFs sister.
And I’m suddenly reminded that Sarah is indeed nineteen.
Sarah’s 20. She’s a year older than Dina.
Dina’s 25, so that would make Sarah 48.
Wait, when the hell was it said that Dina was 25?
The same comic where it was revealed that Joe’s actually 69.
Liz literally can’t comprehend Sarah thinks college is important. Their perspectives over what is important are totally different.
I love the pettiness of that last panel.
Sarah is being petty. Tom Petty. Probably shouldn’t have flipped off Danny McBride.
I mean, What is Sarah trying to tell Liz?
Give it up! Hey! Dumpah-dumpah, Dumpah-dumpah, Dumpah-dumpah, Dumpah-dumpah. Give it up! Hey!
Don’t come around here no more!
Honestly, what Liz did with Sarah’s boyfriend was still wrong. That’s not to say Sarah “owned” him or something, but that if Liz caught feelings, at minimum she should have waited until he was available, preferably after talking it over with her sister so that she wouldn’t get blindsided while healing. Bonus points for discussing feelings, concerns, and boundries (like could Sarah be in the same room/house as him currently). BUT just because that’s what they SHOULD have done doesn’t mean that they had the maturity, skills, or mental state to do it. It’s a mistake they can both learn from and come out the side as better people if they let it.
“It’s a mistake they can both learn from and come out the side as better people if they let it.”
I’m not sure you’ve met Sarah or Liz.
Yes
I think people are being too hard on Liz. Sarah admits to being untruthful about the relationship between her and Christopher.
That’s an interpretation of Sarah’s line here
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2021/comic/book-12/01-sister-christian/pickyeater/
that really doesn’t make sense, since we know Sarah was actually seeing this guy and both of them knew. The other, more logical interpretation is that Liz pulled this shit a SECOND time with another boyfriend that Sarah lied about because of this first incident.
Also, can we stop making excuses for Liz yet? Trying to salvage her behavior here is engaging in Faux news levels of spin doctoring, and it’s kinda gross.
I read it more as this having been a pattern where Liz goes after things Sarah had, including boyfriends. Sarah knew this, so told Liz she wasn’t seeing him in hopes of heading it off, but Liz knew she was, but acted on it anyway – possibly according to this strip at Christopher’s prompting. Which really makes him even more of a jerk if he started it, but still doesn’t let Liz off the hook.
Sarah explicitly says that she told Liz that “so you wouldn’t want to see him,” which implies to me previous tension over the issue.
Ohhh so Liz is a Sae Kashiwagi. I haven’t been following this storyline closely so it just clicked (if you’ve never read or seen Peach Girl, the sae character is a copycat who wants everything that makes her “bestie” happy – clothes, men, mainly men.)
I’m scared about my JoeJo ship D:
Words matter as do actions. I’m not saying that 100% of the fault lies squarely on Liz’s shoulders, but she’s still in the wrong. Could something come to light later that puts her in the right partially or totally in some aspects? Yes. But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t need to communicate with her sister, recognize where she was wrong, and try to make it right by learning from the experience so she can grow to become a better person.
Real life isn’t simple. Sometimes even completely contradictory things can exist at the same time, neither being lessened nor diluted by the presence of the other. It’s like a delicious meal that was poisoned; the good parts don’t always negate the bad and the bad parts don’t always negate the good.
as someone with chronic RBF I am running out of shits to give about liz. “you don’t smile enough so it was okay to date your boyfriend” girl fuck off please
This wound’s clearly been festering for a while and seeing the worst versions of Sarah and Liz as a result
Yeah, and the fact that she brought it up freakin’ out of nowhere is not helping her.
Liz is honestly terrible to Sarah. I don’t think there’s been anything she’s done that’s nice to her sis.
Is Liz wearing a seatbelt she should be wearing a seatbelt even if it’s in the back.
Willis answered this in the comments several days ago; Liz is in the middle seat (per word of Willis, so Sarah could stop Liz from trying to dive out the car door like she threatened to) and apparently this is an older car model, without a full seatbelt for the middle seat.
That could have been Motomaster in the first panel
The Liz strips seem like a bit of a time loop right now. Maybe that’s just accurate to a long car journey and leaving a campus.
This reminds me of Taxicab Confessions. They weren’t even born when the show started in 1995. Now I feel old.
Still not cool Liz?
Honestly though in all the stories I hear about cheating on the internet it really bugs me when the affair partner turns out to be a best friend or sibling of the one getting cheated on the most. Double betrayal. At least if it was a stranger moving on would be easier. Between the two I have to wonder if sibling is worse because the family has a choice to make sometimes as a result and there is often no clean outcome.
Granted, at least they aren’t still together and it was just some high school drama and not happening between adults/married people. I’ve read far too many horror stories of like the cheater and awful sibling getting married and the one cheated on expected to simply suck it up. (Particularly because the parents want grandkids not giving a shit about their abused kid’s feelings as a result.) So at least they aren’t still together? At least they were young and stupid when it happened? It could always be worse.
Have to wonder if Liz is being deliberately needling to get an opening tbh. To do what? To get Sarah to bail of course so she can run away again. But Sarah is probably on to it.
There’s no escape out of that car, so I think the needling is mostly in service to getting angry and barbed at Sarah for dragging her back to BSU. Now it’s just about picking a fight with her since she’s taking control of Liz’s problems without Liz’s input.
Liz: am I the bad guy? ….DUH
(i like her actually)
(don’t @ me)
The baddest guy in this story is Cheating Christopher.
That goes without saying, but it doesn’t hurt to say it
Ha! This one made me almost laugh out loud. More a grimly satisfied smile, I guess.
@Willis I’m getting really invasive full page ads and video on here today, and none of the ‘report ad’ options are showing up, and I turned ad block on with no results.
It is normal again today.
That’s probably the creepiest smile Sarah has ever done. I would like to see her do it more often.
Thing that gets me is… Liz looked scared when she tried to sleep with Joe. Maybe it was just a chance to show Joe respecting consent, but I don’t think Liz is just trying to skip on college. She’s scared.
Liz doesn’t want to go back to college because she’s afraid and resentful over how she’s treated there, which is that she’s expected to remain the Jesus Freak that everyone there laughs at.
I’m sure they’re not exactly the same, but it feels to me like Liz is probably afraid her friends and fellow students at her college will treat her similarly to how Joyce’s friends and fellow students have been treating her now that she’s no longer the Jesus Freak everyone laughs at.
I mean, the comparisons between the two have not been subtle.
Like, Joe’s whole reasoning for going for it with Liz was that he thought it’d help him get over Joyce.
The subtext is text and many readers are mad it’s no longer a hymn.
But I don’t think her being scared trying to sleep with Joe is the same as her feelings about going back to school.
She wants to break away from being the good Christian girl she’s been playing there and thinks that needs to involve drugs and sex, but has no real idea about drugs (“edibles”) and isn’t nearly as ready for sex as she thought she should be. That’s where the scared came from with Joe.
She’s also apparently scared of how her friends will treat her there if she changes who she is. Sick of pretending to be the good Christian girl, but also with really messed up ideas about what changing from that would mean.
Unless there’s something more than we’ve seen though, Sarah’s basically right. She’s got to go back. Sarah is of course being a jerk about it, but she’s not wrong. This is something Liz is going to have to deal with – sort things out with her friends, find new friends, whatever.
Hopefully realize pretty quickly that she doesn’t have to proposition strangers for drugs and sex to not be the good Christian girl, because that can lead to really ugly places really fast.
Okay, as someone who thought Sarah’s demeanor and expression came about from the Dana incident, this is fascinating. I wonder how far back that Eternal Frown goes.
dang I wonder if my impression of Sarah has been too negative and untrue to her character
Sarah: smiles because someone is miserable for the second time this chapter
Yeah I used to like Sarah, but I’ve really started to get tired of how she treats people who clearly could some support and understanding with their issues. Like Joyce recently now that most of her friends know that she’s an atheist, and Liz who seems like she might be in a similar situation to Joyce at her own college.
It’s cool, Sarah’s “bad with people.”
That means it’s fine for her to not express the slightest positive emotion in anyone’s direction, as they should just know she cares about them.
Y’know, this was a fair description of Sarah at the beginning of the comic, but I find it strange she gets no credit for her character growth or leeway for the terrible situations that have pushed her further in that direction, in the way other characters would. I guess everybody just has (a) character(s) they hate.
Critically analyzing a fictional character probably means I like them, since it means I care enough to think about why they do things.
I mean fair but you can’t blame people for thinking you hate her when every strip she appears you mention what a miserable person and awful character she is
I dunno what it means to hate a fictional character other than in the context of that character failing to meaningfully connect with me, and so I don’t get immersed into their story and start seeing all the pulleys and levers that go into writing about them.
I don’t “blame” people for thinking I hate her, mostly I’m just confused as to why someone can think I hate characters that I routinely drop 4000 word essays on what’s motivating them to do things.
You underestimate the power of the dark side.
Or: you don’t spend much time around fandom forums.
I just checked and the last update to Willis’ Slipshine was last spring. So no DinaxBecky action (darnit).
That just means we’re due but he’s still setting it up and doesn’t want to spoil the surprise.
Am I the only person here who finds Sarah more annoying than Liz at this point?
I’m quite fed up with her, but then I’ve never been a big fan since calling in the parents was the solution to her roommate’s depression and drug use.
I’ve been a big mark for the theory that this is gonna backfire (and now I’ve started hoping Dana’s at Ball State and we’ll have a big dramatic hootnanny), but it’s worth remembering Sarah didn’t do that lightly.
Part of it is that Dana was, genuinely, getting really bad, and no one but Sarah saw it, thinking Dana was just getting better even as she isolated herself further.
The other part is that, putting this harshly, Dana was destroying Sarah’s grades and her scholarship. There’s a cutthroat pragmatism here, but the fact of the matter is that Sarah’s future would have been ruined if Dana kept going the way she was.
Even if this went full drama bomb and we learn that Sarah returned Dana to an unsafe home, she did the most sensible action when isolated from getting her any support.
Very curious what the hell she was supposed to do in that situation. Talk to her? Sarah’s not a therapist she was a college freshman, Dana spiraling into addiction due to crippling grief isn’t something you can fix by just being a good roommate. Tell a school counselor or other authority figure? Probably would have had the same result as just calling her dad. Please explain what this 18 year old who’s scholarship was about to be ripped away from her was supposed to do in this very serious, complex situation
And that’s my biggest problem with the idea that Sarah’s going to be shown to be have sent Dana back to some horrible abusive situation. In reality, that would certainly be possible, but in fiction it changes her entire backstory into a no-win scenario where she will certainly be blamed (and blame herself) despite there not being a better option.
Narratively, I don’t see what purpose it would serve or where you’d go from there. Maybe Willis could pull something out of his hat, but I can’t see.
I mean, you’re saying this like Blame Sarah is the only outcome. Shit happens sometimes and you do the best awith what you’ve got. Finding out it wasn’t a miracle solution doesn’t make Sarah a villain, it means maybe I’d she and Raidah have been fighting over nothing and they’re both egotistical jerks.
If I were writing it, I’d use it as an opportunity to start dismantling her “I care in a crisis” thinking. I get what you mean bit given how Sarah is acting now, it’d feel way weirder if she took control of Liz’s problem without attempting to understand her, like she just throws Liz back into a scenario that Liz is clearly suffering in, and that just works peachy keen no consequence. Like it should be a problem that Sarah tries to unilaterally force a problem to her solution, or how she wants Joyce to shut up and go back to status quo.
Personally? No, I find Liz absolutely insufferable.
I am pretty sick of Liz. She reminds me far to much of people I have known in real life that are just terrible to spend any length of time around.
This doesn’t seem like the kind of thing Sarah would care about, or at the very least act this way because of.
Liz: You told me you weren’t seeing him!
That line is still relevant and it’s interesting to me that Sarah is still saying that Liz stole the “boyfriend” from her. We don’t know, yet, if Chris had said that he and Sarah were dating at all. Maybe we’ll find out, maybe we won’t.
But the other part of that conversation, Sarah’s “so you wouldn’t want to see him” is also relevant.
That didn’t come out of nowhere.
True, and I’m chalking that up to the trope of “Sibling Rivalry”. Little sister taking things that older sister likes. Do we know if Liz had a habit of taking Sarah’s friends from her or anything like that? Liz clearly likes doing things to buck the system (and possibly annoy Sarah) but going so far as to “steal” Chris from Sarah? I honestly doubt that. I’ve been wrong before when it comes to character assessments and I can admit that.
I’m curious as to what Chris said to Liz in the first place. If he copped to being in a relationship with Sarah or not.
We don’t know much, so we’re extrapolating from the few clues we do have.
I guess that line could be extrapolating from smaller sibling rivalry things and not from previous relationships, but I think the most straightforward reading is that Sarah was right to think Liz was motivated by Sarah’s interest in Christopher and had previous reasons to think that.
This is a very-well written family-car-argument, in the sense that I can practically feel the soul-suffocating uncomfortable tension from beyond the screen. Man, I hope that this driver gets a decent pay or at least a tip.
Sarah’s not going to give him a tip. & certainly not Liz.
Man, I feel SO BAD for the driver: overhearing family arguments in public is bad enough, not being able to get away because you’re driving them is the WORST. Hope they get one HELL of a tip.
I know Sarah is single, happy single, doesn’t need to pair up. Yet, now I wonder who she could be shipped with? This Christopher fella didn’t deal with it well, but other people might have the same issue with how she expresses emotion. Or has resting bongo face. Mike’s out, because she wouldn’t put up with his crap. (Same reason I can’t ship Booster with Mike.) Malaya I think might like her on a surface level, but eventually notice sometimes her grumpiness is performative, therefore FAKEY!!! Amber might be able to use a new friend who specializes in calling out bs, and she can understand when someone needs their own space. But then they don’t have a lot in common otherwise. What’s Sarah’s degree in? Does she have a whole support network of classmates that we’ve just never met?
I think Mike’s also out because none of the cast are into guys six feet under, just saying
That stops no one in the realm of fanships : ).
if I’m the driver I’m doing my best to just tune them out and focus on the road lmao
wait, I thought she was a virgin? Or did she just make out with her boyfriend or something like that?
Man. I know she’s 18 and all, plus the whole naivety thing born of being a “Jesus Freak” (though she…clearly wasn’t raised Fundie in the way Joyce was, I still get it).
But jesus christ, she is being such an insufferable little brat, holy crap. I understand more why Sarah has little interest in being more compassionate towards Liz’s dilemma. It still sucks for Liz, of course, the whole conversion thing, and she’s going through it, but like…this dynamic sucks, y’all.
If my siblings were like Liz I wouldn’t be super eager to put up with their shit either, tbh, no matter how reasonable–since whatever you do, you get the short end of the stick just by being involved at all. It’s not like Sarah is her parent, there are limits on the things you can expect an older sibling to just put up with and “be the responsible one” just because they’re older.
It doesn’t give Sarah an excuse to put in zero effort and treat her friends like trash, of course, but I’m starting to see that Sarah’s attitude might come from a whole lifetime of being tossed unceremoniously into shitty no-win scenarios. If I were her, I’d probably end up jaded and crotchety too.
I also wonder how much of this dynamic has been enforced–or at least reinforced–by their various parental figures. Being eternally pigeonholed into “the grumpy one” and “the smiley one”. This whole thing stinks to me of two children being rewarded or punished based on how well they’re able to capitulate to the desires and feelings of the adults in their life.
Your parents/authority figures will shower you with love and attention and gifts and money and won’t give you grief so long as you smile and are friendly and fun and never have any inconvenient problems or emotions. If you fail to do that, then you deserve any retribution or consequences you get. Sarah just can’t get with the program and perform properly, so the fact that her parents wont pay for her college or her boyfriends cheat on her or whatever is clearly her own fault.
And, extrapolating further–Liz must perform in the same way for all of her friends at school, and the moment she doesn’t, she will be treated in the same way Sarah gets treated, and she’ll DESERVE IT. And that belief is ingrained so deeply, she can’t see any way around it. So tbh, it make sense to me why her first instinct was to immediately run away specifically to Sarah, who is presumably the person she first thinks of when it comes to being the ‘rebellious one’ who doesn’t play nice like she’s supposed to.
And Sarah has never been able to properly perform and dance along to the whims of the adults or authority figures in her life, (possibly because the goal posts purposefully kept getting moved, but not necessarily) and she kept getting the short end of the stick, so she eventually learned that there really was just no point in even trying to anymore. Which Liz literally cannot compute, and can only understand it as a personal failing on Sarah’s part.
And like, to a certain degree it is, in that Sarah does end up self-sabotaging an awful lot! But that doesn’t give you license to contribute to the sabotage, and then act like it has nothing to do with you at all. :/
I don’t disagree that this is both a real thing that happens all the time, and is a pretty sensible reasoning for how Sarah ended up like this (Walky and Sal have a lot of the same dynamic), but I dunno if it’d factor into the story itself.
Like, Sarah The Person I could definitely see go through this, but Sarah The Fictional Character has had a lot of her struggles with social interaction drawn from within. It’s definitely an undercurrent to her relationships vis-a-vis Liz (who even says as much when it comes to their peer groups) but I think Sarah dealing with her hangups is less “where they came from” and more “how they’re impacting her ability to form connections.”
Like Sarah is more This Is What I Am Doing, and then Sal had a lot of focus on This Is How My Past Affects Me In The Now, if that makes sense.
I can definitely see that being the case! Although I think there’s a chance that Sarah’s role in the story might be shifting a little, with the introduction of Liz? Especially if Liz is meant to a bit more of a permanent addition to the cast, at least as a recurring minor character.
And even if that isn’t the case, to ME, it seems like the point of even introducing Liz–specifically Sarah’s sister!–as a focal point of Sarah’s character development just within the confines of these few storylines would be TO delve a bit further into the Whys and origins of Sarah’s issues? Like, instead of encountering Liz we could have had a story that involed Sarah being particularly misanthropic within a new situation that included flashbacks to what happened with Dana, or had more conflict with Raidah, or some other thing where Sarah is confronted with a NEW situation, rather than specifically with her sister and touching on past conflicts.
They appear to be taking an exit. Does this mean they’re almost there?
Well spotted! They’re getting off the Indianapolis ring road and onto I-69 (nice). That means they’re a little over halfway there.
Thank you.
Heh. Sarah still can’t REALLY smile, and not without effort, for revenge that gives her pleasure.
I’ve been too preoccupied by Liz’s sexual hangups and Joe arc to remember this boyfriend stealing arc. I wonder how all of this fits into Liz’s character
WOW WHAT AN INTERESTING CUT TO A DIFFERENT SCENE
This is really interesting. It’s actually a pretty similar dynamic as Walky and Sal. The performer and the rebel.
Shit, Sarah . . . is this some drama from 4+ years ago?! That’s like 1/5 of your ENTIRE LIFE!