Joyce has been homeschooled her entire life until now, when she's suddenly a freshman in college! Things don't go well.
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Maybe, but I’ve lived in two of the largest metropolitan areas in the U.S. my whole life and I can only recall actually getting to know two English people in that entire time. And one of them is a guy I saw at work maybe a dozen times ever.
I’ve mostly lived in fairly large metropolitan areas, and met several English people… when I attended a large state university in a college town! Scousers and Geordies and the occasional Public School Accent types, even
Might be two years in Becky’s case? Dina’s 19 now, and I think the rest of the freshmen are 18 unless they’ve had a birthday in the timeskip. So depending on birthdays, Carla might be 20/21.
I am trying to remember the dialog… But did the strip say “Carla had a fake I’d” or just that someone in Sal’s regular group had an id that looked like it was “generated on a laser printer”. That means either Carla’s Id could be real.
Man, “Ruth is 21”. When I started reading Dumbing of Age I was younger than her and now I’m so much older lol
BTW criticizing Carla because she used the work “kids” seems like a useless exaggeration. It’s not like she said “stupid fucks” or true insults like those.
To be fair to Carla as well, damn near every major character in this comic is a child. It’s pretty much just Leslie and Robin (depending on whether one considers her major) that aren’t.
I assume her choice to call Dian a kid comes from either
1) As a sort of self-absorbed sophomore, everyone younger than her is a “kid.” You remember how high school is right?
or 2) Carla, obviously not having a great grasp on who is who, just does heuristics and correlates height with age. I mean that’s how I know Tom Cruze is 14 and Michael Jordan is roughly 2 million years old.
Aknowledging the point about Dina’s justified anger over being infantilized, if we’re going to call out Carla here, it needs to be for generic ageism. She’s calling them both kids because they’re younger than her, not because of Dina’s stature or appearance.
Secondly, to the alt-text, obviously youtag them both, A-Doy(ce)
My (American) experience with the English is a first impression of unusual intelligence. Eventually I figure out they’re no smarter than anyone else, they’re just better educated. Why can’t we have that here?
She’s calling both Becky and Dina kids I assume it’s because she’s a couple years older, or that they’re freshman while she’s a sophomore or junior. She’s being a jerk, but I don’t think she’s being ableist.
Even if you’ve never met an actual English person in your life, you should still not be a complete fucking asshole and assume that someone acting English is being a fake English person.
I’ve been accused of “faking being English” because my “accent” didn’t sound “convincing.”
Reader, I have a speech impediment.
(As for why one would fake it…well, there could be a number of reasons, but when I was accused of this was at that time when Doctor Who and Sherlock were really popular, so…maybe I was trying to be trendy? idk. Again, speech impediment.)
I promise this is in no way meant to diminish the seriousness, but “I’m sorry you got accused of liking tea” is an excellent and hilarious thing to say out of context.
Until you’re somewhere in your early/mid 20s, and especially when you’re an undergrad, your peers are “kids.” Or at least that was the case ten years ago.
Also, I suspect having met actual English people – probably, given her parents, actual posh English people – is what’s behind her assessment of Jason as “fake English guy.” Even though he is English, it’s pretty obvious he’s putting on airs.
I’m thinkin she’ll be standing there like a t. rex and umping when she sees Dotty, Joyce and friends coming back to deliver the crushing news.
Unfortunately either nothing will happen wrt to Joyce’s reaction OR Joyce will feel funny that they told everyone but tried to hide it from her specifically.
The absolute sass on this woman. She really isn’t making this easy for Walky, and I dig it like nobody’s business.
I have absolutely done exactly the same thing though, full-on arms behind the head, kick back and relax-type pose, just to see what happens. (Usually funny things, YMMV)
Flexible, more so in the left leg than the right though, which, after looking at past strips, went over my head that it’s probably because of the car accident.
o3o haha If you mean in my comic that was just my attempt to depict her actively moving her legs into that position. And y’know, keeping the pose from being too symmetrical and therefore boring.
I mention it cuz of you mentioned she’s flexible in your comment, but she actually tells Agatha (I think it’s her), during the stuck trash chute deal, that her right leg doesn’t lift as high as her left leg anymore, the left leg being the one she used to stomp the trash down the chute.
And it was only looking at it again recently that it occurred to me that it’s probably from injury during the accident and not simply from being a little heavier than she used to be.
Ah, my bad then. I remembered the kick but forgot her mentioning her lack of flexibility. That’s a pretty neat correlation honestly. I wouldn’t have thought of that either, I just assumed she was out of practice.
My first guess is that we forge a golden ring into which we would pour his resentment, dreams, nightmares and ADHDemon powers, then wait for some creature to take it into misty mountains and become possessed by it
Sorry I’ve been watching Lord of Rings, did you want a serious answer?
Most, if not all, neurodivergents have unique blends of neurodivergent stripes, and some of those stripes can be categorized as ADHDemon, just ’cause “demon” is so much better than “disorder” — not “incorrect” functioning, just different, and also strange and wonderful powers.
Not what I asked, though. I’m ADHD, so I do understand how neurodivergency works.
I was asking because, if he’s not (or if you don’t know that he is), it’s not okay to just diagnose him because you think he might be.
I also don’t super appreciate the mention of “strange and wonderful powers” since that kind of thinking, in part, made it difficult for me to get help for most of my life. I think it’s worth considering all directions of possible fall out from mentioning neurodivergency only in positive terms when it really does have a severe effect on some people’s lives.
I know you’re ND as well, so I’m not going to police how you talk about your own experiences, but the application of it to people with ADHD as a whole is the part I’m a little shakier on.
To answer your first question, Willis himself said he suspects a really high likelihood of being neurodivergent of some kind, ADHD referring to the feedback he got from fans with it who pointed it out in Walky, a character modeled after himself.
But towards your main point, I do appreciate your sensitivity about it, very much so.
I was called “autistic” for much of my life, and that label ’caused me decades of abuse and infantilization and dehumanization from friends, family, teachers and so-called professionals who acted like what they were doing was compassion.
Knowing the pain of having hurtful assumptions made about me all the time, I definitely don’t want to do that to others.
In fact I really don’t say I’m ADHDemon anywhere but in the comments section, and I guess I really only do it because something that makes me so assured knowing people here who can relate to my experiences.
We have our powers, and we have our shortcomings. Our functioning isn’t more or less “correct” than any other. We’re just different, and we’re trying our best to thrive in a world that’s really badly structured for us.
If anything, I just wish that people would be more compelled to ask us about what our individual powers actually are and what we need help with.
To my knowledge, Willis is not currently IDing as ADHD, and while I try not to actively use my weird selective memory powers to memorize tidbits of a creator whose work I follow’s personal life when I spot them on Twitter, I have seen fairly recently that he seems to be vaguely self-identifying as autistic, specifically. (I’m also trying to avoid Twitter when I can but the 9CL hatethreads are as ever captivating.)
Wellerman, I recognize you have trauma towards autism as a term specifically, but ADHD’s a clinical term too and there are plenty of people for whom ‘autistic’ is a term of community or pride – hi! – and some people might have trauma related to ADHD. (I claim it for myself as well, but it’s not uncommon for kids to get misdiagnosed with it rather than something else and medicated in ways that are… not great, in hindsight. Or at least it wasn’t uncommon when I was in elementary school.) Self-identification is important, especially when you are dealing with terms that are pathologized. If Willis wants to use autism for himself right now, that’s one definite term to be using. He could have ADHD in addition, I dunno, again I try not to ACTUALLY collect this knowledge, but it is a specific clinical term with a specific clinical meaning and ALL of them can be used as both a community-finder and a source of trauma depending on the individual person’s circumstances.
Our having so very very few terms for ourselves that aren’t pathologized is a different conversation, but honestly a neurodivergence can be a totally valid way of existing and STILL be a disability that’d make your life just that little bit harder even on a deserted island. Disability’s not a dirty word. We shouldn’t be defined exclusively by the medical model, but ultimately if my brain can’t make enough serotonin that’s a problem for me and medication is merited. If I can’t make myself get up to do something necessary like eat or go to the bathroom, or start doing something fun, because changing gears is oddly daunting, then yeah, it’s a disability. Doesn’t mean I want it gone, does mean I have to accommodate it somehow and would have to do so even in an ideal world. And I don’t like generic ‘neurodiversity’s tendency towards being used ONLY for the sensory/executive function/social cluster that contains ADHD, autism, and maybe a couple other subgroups. Schizophrenia and intellectual disabilities coincide with autism, too, but they frequently get left out of the conversation because they’re deemed even LESS palatable. That’s an issue on all fronts. But anyway, trying not to make it a rant, really don’t want to get drawn into a conversation here.
Very thorough, I feel relieved seeing you write all this.
On one hand, is it just me, or does ADHD just not seem to have the same kind of cultural baggage and pathologizing that happens to the “autism” label, at least in America?
ADHD doesn’t have it’s own equivalent of very offensive cultural stereotypes like Sheldon Cooper or Rain Man.
ADHD doesn’t have the equivalent of people on the internet going “autism screech” or “mildy autistic”.
ADHD doesn’t have an extremely powerful hategroup that claims to act on their behalf while using children as leverage in viciously manipulative ads and campaigns.
Personally, I like ADHDemon because for me it entails with it a sense of belonging and relating with others who have struggled in a world that’s not made for us anyway — kinda like a culture, within which I have an identity that’s finally my own, and where I’m not judged by the standards used to deem us “failures”.
Looking back, maybe I would have said “neurodivergent stripes” when referring to Willis, but I just jumped to ADHDemon it sounded cool to me at the moment (which ironically I can attribute to my ADHD)
Re: neurodivergent categories, I guess I coined ADHDemon ’cause I also wanted a way to make at least that kind of neurodivergence more palatable? Besides that, we definitely need better ways of describing ourselves other than an oligopoly of categories we currently have.
Being ADHD is both under and over diagnosed – by which I mean studies have found that about 38% of boys with ADHD and almost half of girls with it aren’t correctly diagnosed, while about 1/3 of those with an ADHD label don’t show a symptom pattern consistent with ADHD: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8385721/
It’s more commonly missed in girls because there’s still the myth that girls don’t get ADHD.
On the ADHD as disability front: I would love to be able to just… Decide I’m going to get ready for the day like non ADHD people do, rather than needing to get up 3.5 hours before I need to leave to get anywhere on time. That’d be great.
Or like, be able to notice and address mess before I have doom piles all over my place.
Or generally not have so much baggage around cleaning I probably should be in therapy just for cleaning trauma.
Or be able to get boring work tasks done even if the stars don’t align.
Or be able to judge my capacity and how long tasks will take as well as curb my novelty drive so I’m not CONSTANTLY loaded up with like 3 full time jobs worth of responsibility and then blamed for it because my boss takes advantage of my tendency to impulsively say yes and then blames me if I end up overloaded. But also doesn’t respond well if I point out I’m already overloaded.
I’d love to not have RSD so mild criticism doesn’t send me into a shame spiral for days.
I could go on.
Also, as someone who has both autism and ADHD, it’s not true that ADHD doesn’t have stigma. Yes the equivalent of A$ doesn’t exist but ppl with ADHD are about 30x more likely to be suicidal than the general population for a reason. That reason is stigma.
I’d love for people to not assume I’m lazy, dishonest or a drama llama for how my brain is configured. I’d like to be able to disclose at work without immediately having my responsibilities cut and basically lose the equivalent of 5 years of experience in the boss’s eyes (every time I have disclosed that’s happened so I don’t anymore) and seeing my wage get frozen for a few years and my reviews instantly drop from the date of disclosure. I’d love for people to stop acting like I can just willpower past how my brain works with sticker charts and organizational apps (FUCK sticker charts). I’d love to have the ability to put all my limited EF to work on my work and not also looking normal. I’d love not to rack up hundreds in late fees and tickets every year because I forget to pay shit that isn’t automatic. And when I do remember, I’d love to dispense with the condescending lecture from city hall on paying fines on time. I can go on here as well.
Like yes hyperfocus is cool, but ADHD is a disability, not a superpower, IMO.
I personally prefer to use the label autistic to describe myself. Lots of people and organizations have negative views and misconceptions about autism, but the term is what I’ve been diagnosed with. I like the term neurodivergent, but it’s an umbrella term for a whole bunch of ways your brain can be different from typical. Autistic describes how my brain works.
I’m answering here because Regalli did an excellent job of summing up most of my thoughts on the matter, particularly with regard to some people (like myself) not viewing ADHD as some magical power-bestowing force, but a source of trauma as well as a label that is being thrown around FAR too much at the moment by people not qualified or in a position to make that kind of diagnosis.
As for my own “stripes” I have no interest in further discussing them. I don’t know you, and as I’ve said I don’t see it as a magic power. It’s a thing that my brain does, for better or worse. I only mentioned it at all to point out that this complaint was coming from someone within the community rather than a white-knight with peripheral knowledge.
You didn’t ask me specifically, but I was reading replies and saw that the last thread was super long, so I’ll post this here!
I relate to a lot of what @ischemgeek said, but as for dealing with the ADHD label, I think “attention regulation disorder” might be more accurate than “attention deficit (hyperactivity) disorder” (I don’t *lack* attention, I’m just not great at organizing it). Brain-related sciences are relatively new, too, and the labeling may change.
You wrote that you prefer not to call it a “disorder” and that makes sense. For me, I like some things that come with my particular mental configuration, but a lot of the times my ADHD is a pain in the ass.
Never mind, it IS today’s comic. Gah. This is what I mean. (Also, why is my first comment in moderation? I wrote about having ADHD and how some things about it are a pain in the ass, but “swear” words aren’t filtered except for the “bongo” thing, afaik.)
@ischemgeek, @epitome, thank you both so much for sharing your experiences.
Even if this world is very poorly structured for us and I may never be able to disclose my ADHD anywhere but here, at least I’ll have a whole community of ADHDemons here that I can relate to.
I really hope we can see a day that we will be able to show all our unique combinations of neurodivergent stripes for all the world to see.
All of what Needfuldoer said, also I’d like to apologize for my rant earlier. Feeling pressured to be hyper-positive about stuff that sucks is a real trauma trigger for me as I grew up in a household which was abusive as a chronically ill kid with undiagnosed disabilities, and hyperpositivity was, to borrow phrase from Becky, the danged extent of my allowed emotions.
So I apologize for blasting you – it was a reaction in response to my past, not to you or to your actions as you weren’t pressuring me at all (just some of your phrasing – specifically the superpowers talk – was a trigger for me, not at all your fault). Which is an explanation not an excuse but I feel an explanation for the heat of my reply is owed along with the apology. It’s my baggage to carry, and I don’t expect you to tiptoe around it moving forward. For my part, now that I understand that’s a trigger for me, I’ll be more mindful about whether I’m reacting to the present or to shades of the past and taking time to sort it out in the future.
I would also like to add that, while this hyperpositive attitude might work for you, you need to accept that others do not feel that way about their diagnoses. Toxic positivity can be harmful too, as can refusing to acknowledge the fact that some people do experience this as a disorder.
Ah, I understand. I guess I got so caught up in the ADHDemon and how cool it sounded that I forgot that not what’s true for on ADHD haver may not be true of the other.
Do you think it would be better for both those who experience their neurodivergence as a disorder and those who experience it otherwise, if we had better ways of describing and categorizing ourselves?
I agree. It’s great that boisterous hyper-positivity works for you. Really! But for some of us, it can be a lot.
I was diagnosed with AS and ADHD over 20 years ago. (Yes, I know the whole situation surrounding that specific title and how it’s not in the DSM anymore.) This has always been a source of shame for me, I’ve never been comfortable with the label “Autistic”. I’ve put years and years of effort into coping strategies and masking, now I can usually pass as just introverted. Even after all this time I still sometimes struggle with nonverbal communication, unexpected changes, and time management, and I can get incredibly self-conscious and rejection-sensitive dysphoric when I start feeling like things are getting away from me. These problems are something I’ll never shake, grow out of, or “get over”. They get in my way and will hold me back if I just embrace them. I take pride in overcoming them.
Again, I’m not trying to dictate how you deal. You do you! Just be mindful that not everyone is in the same situation, or feels comfortable confronting theirs the same way you do yours.
Personally, no. I don’t think slapping a label and category on it helps or hinders my experience with it. The issue (for me) isn’t what it’s called, it’s people’s willingness to just call any talented person ADHD and talk about ADHD like it’s a pack of superpowers with no downsides.
For some people it is a daily, difficult, facet of their lives. And, as Needfuldoer says, I’m genuinely happy for you that the super-positive approach works for you, but for me I don’t like the pressure to relate positively to something I feel neutral about.
I don’t like the idea that there’s something wrong with feeling neutral about a fact of my brain/body, and when you suggest that viewing it as a disorder is somehow wrong/incorrect you’re just putting unnecessary stress on people who don’t agree with you, but are otherwise in your community. If it’s a positive thing for you, then AWESOME! Seriously. But, as Needfuldoer suggests, it’s just not a great thing to try and push on other people.
Also, and this is the last I’ll say on it (despite this having been a more productive talk than I was expecting!) because I just feel like I’m blabbing too much – On the original topic of suggesting that Willis is ADHD because you think he displays signs of it. That kind of thing can actually be very harmful to a lot of ND people. If Willis ID’s as Autistic/AS, then you’re mislabeling him. If you only suspect someone is ND at all, then you’re playing armchair therapist (very intrusive) and also alienating people with ADHD if they don’t have the symptoms you’ve decided are definite signs. People have mentioned RSD, and I think that’s important to consider when speaking publicly about this kind of thing. Even just online.
Either way, I hope you’re well and have had a really good day.
Are imaginary health concerns like imaginary numbers & only exist on the complex plane?
(Y’know, I joke but that’s actually a decent metaphor for having a health issue that medical professionals are determined to ascribe to malingering or psychological issues)
So if Joyce is 5’4”, and she comes up to about Joe/Ethan’s chest? That makes those guys… 6’? 6’2”? I don’t know, I’m bad at judging height in relation to body parts.
If I had to guess, and I guess I do here, I’d say Joe’s got an inch or two on Ethan, and that Jacob’s a hair taller than Joe, but I am not sure. I do think Joe and Jacob are at least like 6’0-6’1, though.
Flipping through tags, there’s no real strip with Joe and Ethan next to each other, but I think Jacob is taller than Ethan, and Joe actually has an inch or so over Jacob.
I’d guess their heights are in the 6’0″-6’3″ range. 6’4″ is usually the tallest you can get without someone for sure feeling the need to comment on it.
Rachel will write an interesting book about her college dorm days someday. It will presented as fiction, and the names will be changed, but Dorothy at least will recognise who it’s about. Carla won’t, because it won’t have enough Carla with a different name it it for her taste.
I for one would love to live in the United States of Ameica. Hode Island will be an awesome new state name. Also it is shockingly difficult to build an intelligible sentence without using a single “R” in it.
challenge accepted.
…i don’t find it all that tough? obviously specific things cannot be mentionned. i dont believe one of the women in today’s comic would validate such a spelling game. she would, in fact, find it offensive. not to be allowed to speak the name she goes by? Unacceptable! Odious! Lamentable! She is, she might insist, a goddess and all else is but entomology. I don’t know that i would mind, myself. But ok, it does make the typing of comments slightly less swift and sentences somewhat odd. (Oh, and i think the use of a synonyms-listing website would have to be outlawed, lest the amusement become all too easy.)
It’s obvious that Carla’s rich, because nobody without obscene levels of wealth would be allowed to be this much of a narcissist without getting their teeth kicked in otherwise.
Yeah, I really struggle to find what everyone seem to like about Carla other than her overwhelming confidence in herself. Every interaction I’ve seen her in comes off as her being a tremendous asshole and everyone around her is just like “Well, she’s not an asshole DIRECTLY to me so it’s ok”.
I get a sneaking feeling that Carla knows perfectly well who Joyce is, and is pretending not to because knowing someone’s name would imply that she cares about them enough to remember that.
I bet if you asked her to draw any one of the freshmen, she’d give you a composite sketch with Dorothy’s head shape, Joyce’s hair, Becky’s face, and Dina’s complexion.
This is not true. There are only 2 people. Carla takes whatever name her brain throws at her and uses it for the Not Carla in front of her. She doesn’t worry if the name is correct because she is always right, and any offense or indignation taken due to her actions is unwarranted.
Well, Carla can recognize Dorothy, and she’s not really any more interesting than Joyce. Carla doesn’t know Dorothy’s name, mind you, but she is at least vaguely aware of her existence.
My theory was that Carla knew very well who Joyce was, but was pretending not to as an excuse to not tell her about Becky & Dina without dropping her asshole facade. I’m less sure of that after this strip.
Yeah, maybe. I’m actually a bit surprised she’s still committed to telling Joyce. I really thought she’d just forget about it. This is bordering jerk territory.
Nah, I disagree. Telling Joyce about Becky & Dina is more like ripping off a bandaid than an actual injury. Their plan to tell everyone but keep it from Joyce was so mind-numbingly stupid I’m surprised no one has called them on it yet.
It’s s dumb plan, doomed to fail, yes, but that doesn’t actually excuse Carla’s motivation. She’s not doing this cause she actually cares if Joyce knows, or for that matter even the news of Becks and Dina sexual achievement itself probably means nothing to her. She’s specifically trying to annoy and upset people for her personal amusement. That’s what a jerk would do. This feels a little like a Mike move.
Personally I’m not big on defining morality via motivations rather than results, since we can’t actually know motivations. It’s a little less bad to do so in in fiction but in real life it is (I think) an incredibly toxic and nasty practice that enables people to yell past each other ad infinitum.
In this case I’m not going to blame whoever eventually tells Joyce for the fallout, because it could have been anyone for just about any reason and it was always going to be *someone*.
Carla is literally doing this because she wants to see Joyce point and laugh at Becky for 16 minutes straight. She said so herself. We know her motivation. This isn’t really a ends vs means thing. The “secret” will get out whether Carla blabs or not but she’s doing this because she wants to see someone else suffer or be embarrassed in some capacity. How is that not a jerk move?
Carla is trying to give away a pointless secret that everyone knows is going to come out anyway – I’m sure even Becky knows what will happen when they try to tell it everyone in the world “except for Joyce” – and she’s doing it very ineffectively. If that level of malevolence was the worst an adversary did to me, I’d be pretty happy with it.
I really don’t know how to interpret this any other way. Are people clued into some subtext I’m not aware of? Sincerely asking. I know Carla has some history of snitching for the greater good but this doesn’t seem like ripping the band aid off.
People don’t always tell the truth.
My working theory at that point was that the whole “which one’s Joyce” was to give an excuse for not actually doing it, while still playing her performative asshole role.
I’m less confident of that after this strip though.
Good intentions don’t give you a pass if you cause catastrophes, but bad intentions are a different ballpark. You don’t get praise if your bad intentions lead to a fortuitous end.
And this *is* fiction, where we know about intentions, so we can and should use that knowledge in thinking about a situation.
In real life, intentions are much harder to determine, but you quite often can tell if someone is acting out of anger, or because they like to stir up people, or if they actually have an aim in mind that has any actual relation to what they are doing.
This conversation is a bit inane and I can’t believe anyone’s trying to justify Carla going out of her way to give up someone’s sex secret that they expressly asked her NOT to tell anyone as a good thing in disguise. She doesn’t even know WHY they want to keep it a secret. She didn’t ask. Not only is it rude as hell, for all she knows it could actually be dangerous.
Like I can’t FATHOM how people can bend over backwards to justify this, when I’m sure if Mike or Joe or Mary insisted on the same thing, I’m sure we’d all be against it.
Speaking strictly for myself and making no assumptions about others, I want Carla’s behavior to be acceptable because she’s very very sexy and I don’t wanna get the stink eye for Liking when she does this sort of thing. Again, that’s just me, and maybe I’ve overreacted just a bit.
I mean if that’s all it takes I too find her hot and also prefer assholes to nice people. I mean my other hottest characters are Jennifer and Malaya. I’ve got a type for sure. So you ain’t alone.
Morality isn’t like…some defined idea. It is modular because Morality itself is manmade. I’m not using this as an excuse to be immoral but even our current day system of morality will probably be vastly different in 50 years. I don’t think me brushing my teeth is a moral one. It’s an Oral one.
I think of morality more as examination and comparison of the consequences of actions, rather than a set of principles. It’s the method, not the end result. Like the difference between the scientific method and an individual hypothesis. So yeah, hypotheses (morality) will definitely be different in 50 years! And brushing your teeth is a moral decision, it’s just one where the consequences are primarily your own to keep.
(I do appreciate the pun though. And apologies for rolling so deep on this one, this kind of thing is my jam.)
I mean, this boils down to 2 people saying “Please don’t tell this person that we had sex” and the person they’re talking to saying “Hey, y’know what, I think I’ll just ignore your right to choose who knows intimate details about you.”
Carla’s a fun character, but I feel like she would be very difficult to get along with in real life.
Is it? Carla has no situational awareness of any of this. She met some randos in the hall declaring WE BONED BUT DON’T YOU DARE TELL ON US; she told them that them saying that made her want to tell on them, and then promptly forgot most of the details. Carla is self-absorbed, but she’s not malicious. She would have absolutely moved on from this if the “we just had SEX and it felt so good that we have spent hours announcing it to everyone while futilely plotting to hide it from Becky’s best friend Just Because” duo hadn’t roped Jason into this.
I don’t even know where anyone is getting the idea that Carla’s remotely beholden to random gay kids running past her in the hallway. In the abstract, maybe she “should” care if they don’t want Joyce to know because of [nebulous reason], but in the specific, who are they to put a “””secret””” on her out of the blue and just expect her to keep it?
OMG Taffy i can’t believe you’re defending Carla’s right to indulge in victimless shenanigans, when she canonically invaded Poland in 1939 and shot JFK from the porthole in her time-travelling capsule while cackling maniacally. We’re still waiting on that flashback of that time she went back to the 16th century but it’s anyone’s guess whether she was torching Mayan villages with napalm or torturing old women for practicing herbal abortions. That makes you a terrible person apologist, and you should probably commit seppuku.
Not fond of the sentence “you should probably commit seppuku”, whether it was meant as a joke or not. My last attempt was kick-started by a similar remark here on this site and while I’d possibly be fine with a suicide joke if we were (very close) friends offline… Well, we’re not. I’d rather not relive that experience without warning, at the end of what I thought was a silly gag comment. It’s just not on, and I don’t know why you thought it would be.
oh shit you’re right, i’m very sorry. that was in incredibly poor taste and had actual potential to endanger you or other people reading it. yeah it was not ok, and i won’t do it again. thanks for setting me straight.
Thanks for walking it back @milu and pointing it out @Taffy!
I’m also a person for whom the risk to my mental health is non theoretical (I can end up losing a few days or weeks to flashbacks of abuse that involved that sort of thing only not a joke) so I appreciate both of you on that. Seriously, thanks.
i’m lowercase-b back in between one and another spell of being kept busy irl and re this incident, i want to add that i also have a history with crippling depression involving suicidal ideation, and i’ve also been triggered by this sort of humour in the past. i can’t speak for Taffy or you obviously because every experience is different, but while it’s never been to the point of putting me in literal danger of acting out, it’s nevertheless felt pointed and personal and dismissive and just not funny. i dunno, i was trying to fit in with the cool kids and their edgy jokes. shoulda known better.
(i realize it’s unlikely anyone will read this, but, this works out: i’m writing it here where only someone (likely one of you two) actually choosing to go back to this specific conversation would be likely to read it. that is all)
If you really want someone to keep a secret, it’s wise to establish up front that they’ll be willing to do that BEFORE you tell them the secret.
Also, hard to blame them for not being inclined to keep secrets for you when what you told them was none of their business and probably something they didn’t really want to know in the first place.
There’s a difference between not feeling inclined to keep a secret and feeling inclined to DIRECTLY find the person you’re supposed to be keeping it from and blow the whistle.
Like if Joyce walked up to Carla and said “hey, has becky been doing anything salacious today?” then yeah I probably wouldn’t harp on Carla too much. I mean I’d still argue she shouldn’t tell Joyce but yeah she’d be lying if she said otherwise and it’s not Carla’s job to lie.
But that’s not what’s happening. Her goal is to find Joyce and expressly tell her information Becky asked her not to. This isn’t failing to keep a secret. This is actively working to not keep a secret. Which is very rude.
Maybe? But given what a couple of assholes Becky and Dina are being about all this, I guess I just can’t find it in me to care. Like, when you go around very literally loudly announcing your sex life to people whether or not they asked or would ever want to know, you’ve forfeited any expectation of privacy about the stuff you’re loudly announcing.
True, but I can relate more to “Holy shit I just tried this new thing that was amazing and don’t know what to do with all of this emotion” than “Oh I just heard something Juicy, let me tell the exact wrong person”.
Like when I got my first animation job I legit told everyone I could, even strangers. I was just really happy about it, even though I doubt anyone cared. But if someone tells me something in confidence I take that shit with me to the grave. It’s not my place.
You know, I get that! I am not immune to wanting to announce exciting personal news to everyone I meet, up to and including people I very barely know. I’ve developed impulse control about that over the years, so I mostly don’t, but I have had that same reaction as well.
Funnily enough, I actually also get wanting to tell EVERY SINGLE PERSON except *that one person*. Not going into detail on that here, but…uh, I guess it’s nice to not be 18 years old. Having impulse control is great. (This is a great opportunity for Becky to learn some, in the relatively low-stakes environment of her friend finding out Becky had the sex that Joyce has previously told her she should have if she wanted to have it.) When there is even one person you really, really, REALLY do not want to know the thing, you need to learn to be genuinely careful how you talk about the thing. It’s unsafe to you to spread it widely while asking other people to stay silent on your behalf, and it’s an unreasonable burden to put on them, too.
Also, personally? I’m a vault of secrets. I have personal confidences that probably don’t even matter anymore that I won’t talk about. I have a ton that do matter, and I won’t talk about them, either. When someone gives me a secret, it stays a secret with me. But those secrets are secrets from people I love or care about, and they asked for confidence when they shared them with me. Some of those secrets are heavy, and staying quiet on them requires emotional effort on my behalf. I’m reflexively honest, and every time I have to either lie or even just carefully word my way around a truth to protect a secret takes actual work, for me.
I don’t think anything like that is at play between Carla and Becky—Becky’s not asking for emotional labor (not like Jennifer was when she tried to make Carla her go-between with Ruth) and there’s no history of trust between Becky and Carla. Mostly this is wacky hijinks. But also, ehhh—to me, secret-keeping is not a neutral thing? If it’s something you want to keep controlled enough that you need me to *lie* about it, or you’re concerned I’ll carry it onwards, and it wasn’t my business to begin with—don’t tell me about it! Do not tell me a secret I didn’t want, and then demand I respect the secret.
Carla’s being a jerk about insisting she’ll tell the one person she was told not to tell, but there’s a life lesson for Becky about all this, if Carla follows through.
The other day, people were saying it was shitty if Becky to specifically and deliberately tell everybody except Joyce about the Big Fuck. Now we’re saying it’s a bad thing if Carla tells her? This place is impenetrable sometimes.
That sort of remark is a symptom of a larger problem of “Well it’s the Internet, so it’s bound to happen, which makes it fine.” I don’t expect better in the predictive sense, of course, but there’s no harm in expressing the mildest of exasperation.
welcome to the internet!
hold on to your socks
cos a random guy just kindly sent you
photos of his cock
they are grainy and offputing,
he just sent you more
don’t act surprised,
you know you like it you whore!
see a man beheaded,
get offended,
see a shrink.
show us pictures of your children,
tell us every thought you think.
start a rumor,
buy a broom or
send a death threat to a boomer!
or DM a girl and groom her,
do a zoom or
find a tumor in your—
here’s a healthy breakfast option!
you should kill your mom!
here’s why women never fuck you!
here’s how you can build a bomb!
which power ranger are you?
take this quirky quizz!
Obama sent the immigrants to vaccinate your kids!
Could i interest you in everything all of the time?
a little bit of everything, all of the time?
apathy’s a tragedy and boredom is a crime!
a little bit of everything, all of the time!
You can’t understand why it would be bad if Becky would tell her everyone except her long time friend personally, but why it would ALSO be bad if Carla told Joyce with the express reason of causing discomfort for Becky?
It’s bad for them to hide it from Joyce specifically because of the reasons mentionned in the previous strips and it’s bad for carla to seek out Joyce and tell her specificially because, in so doing, she’s being A Dick.
Honestly I just wanted to say Carla’s a jerk because I think she’s being a jerk right now. It wasn’t a condemnation if her character and her actions will likely result in something harmless or be virtually irrelevant because of the factors most people defending her in this thread have mentioned. It’s fine as far as I’m concerned. I difn’t plan on sparking a debate on the morality of her actions. I feel like I shouldn’t have bothered with the original comment.
There’s 2 separate things going on here, and I think it helps to abstract them a bit:
First, Becky and Dina are working to explicitly exclude someone they know and like. I don’t know if I’d say that’s shitty per se, but it definitely is hurtful and I can see where people claiming it’s shitty are coming from.
Second, Becky and Dina have the right to decide who knows the ins and outs of their relationship and what they get up to (or don’t get up to) in the bedroom. Carla does not have the right to decide that for them or to override their wishes. Doing so is shitty.
What do you expect? She was born into fabulous wealth and power to which people are attracted, displacing the need for her to earn authentic respect and forgiveness from her peers. And predictably, she has learned to take them for granted.
Mike’s assholishness works fine in the likes of shortpacked since while there are drama tag moments, it was way less grounded in reality, with resurrecting Reagan, actual jesus sentient cars turned robots and making Ethan a cult leader, a dude just being a dick was easily ignored as just being funny
In the slightly more grounded DoA (minus the amazi-girl stuff) his behaviour comes across as less acceptable. Alot of the time it was played for laughs like in shortpacked but the characters didnt see it like that
They remembered when he was being a dick and most (correctly) call him an asshole that wanted nothing to do with him.
Carla is similar to me. In shortpacked she started of as Ultra car before gaining a robot body and her whole thing was messing with people (usually with pies)
Carla is frequently and consistently rude, bit of an asshole and generally the type of person I would nevermind a millions years want to be near in real life
I think Mike being a dick worked fine in Early DOA before DOA started taking itself too seriously. I honestly think the tone shift caused a bit of dissonance with the later stuff being recontextualized. I would never say Mike ISN’T an asshole in the same way I wouldn’t say Carla isn’t one and it’s weird seeing everyone bend over backwards to defend her, honestly.
To me, the difference is that until just before the end we never saw Mike not being an asshole, while we saw lots of signs that Carla had a non-asshole side that she liked to keep hidden, but she would still do things to help others – even people she had no close connection to.
She’d just cover it all up by claiming she didn’t care and was just doing it to show her superiority or something. It’s performative.
That doesn’t mean it’s not obnoxious, but the level of damage she causes is far below Mike’s. If she actually goes through with telling Joyce, that’ll be the worst thing I can remember her doing.
Yes but…signs that there’s more to you than being an asshole isn’t the same as not being an asshole. And being an asshole isn’t a 0-sum game. There’s a spectrum of being an asshole. Carla is absolutely an asshole more often than she’s not, even if she’s merely pretending to be an asshole, it doesn’t make her not an asshole.
Just checking the Carla tag and doing a quick flip through the archives: she has helped or otherwise had positive interactions with Joyce, Malaya, Amber, Sarah, Lucy, Ruth, Joyce again, and then the whole thing with Billie & Ruth which was kind of a no win situation.
She SAYS annoying things but what she actually does is generally nice. Proving once again people care way more about what is said than what is actually done.
When Willis invented Carla, back when he was in 5th grade, she had four wheels and an engine. Then she was a robot with no use for the human race. Now Willis is using the character as a college student yet still recognizable as Ultra Car. Being a jerk or not is sort of beside the point.
I’m like, 70% sure that Carla has more or less explicitly said that, about herself, multiple times. The idea that many people – let alone a majority of readers – have chosen not to believe her on this point is rather amusing to me!
…But seriously, if I was going to judge Carla’s actions and behavior like she was a real person, yeah, I’d definitely say she’s an asshole. That’s true for a LOT of characters in this comic, actually, including some of the “nice” ones. Wacky Sitcom Antics that would be horrifying if introduced into the real world are kind of a staple of DOA – in fact, that and the queerness/diversity factor of everything are two of the comic’s main selling points for me. Carla combines both of those very well, and so tends to come across as sort of a Trans Pride power fantasy where you can mess with all the cis folks and rub your physicality in their faces as much as you want without facing any consequences. It’s fun! So, I guess I can see why people are willing to forgive a lot coming from her. Maaaaaybe not the healthiest attitude to have, I suppose, but whattya gonna do.
She’s doing a genuine smugly self-satisfied for her own benefit, rather than the performative smugly self-satisfied she does for establishing dominance over others. It’s an unusual look for her.
Yep! Blond refers to a range of hair colors ranging from platinum white to not-quite-brown. Joyce’s current natural hair color is frequently described as “dishwater blond” or “dirty blond”.
I went through a similar transition over the course of about two years back when I was about four. The pictures from that time are kind of wild to look at, because my hair was noticeably darker in each and every one.
Now I’m on my way back to white, but it’s going much more slowly.
Red hair can do that with becoming a dark shade of Auburn that looks brown, too!
I was an intensely red headed ginger as a kid, then it went strawberry blonde in middle school and eventually Auburn but dark enough you can only see the red in it on a sunny day. Now people usually think my hair is brown.
Too bad my hair turning brown wasn’t accompanied by gaining functional skin melanin. I buuuuurn.
Carla continues to be awful…sometimes I wonder why I read this comic when I despise a goodly chunk of the characters, but, eh, it’s not like I liked most people I went to college with either
There was a period in early DOA where I had trouble remembering that Joyce, Dorothy, and Amber existed simultaneously. Like, I could remember any two of them at a time but would blank on the third. I feel called out.
I agree. Joyce’s hair color, at least to me, is ‘light-brown’.
But then again, I’m a guy, and never had to check out Clairol, Revlon, Jhirmak (are they even around any more?), or one of the others to try to differentiate between the color palette that they use.
Everybody in-comic would describe Joyce as blonde, though, so this might just be a case of the pallette not coming through. For example, she has the same hair colour as her siblings, and Becky once described them as “the Aryan youth”.
Huh, I had forgotten that. And Dorothy was out front when they showed up. So ironically Carla actually did a pretty good job with the information Rachel gave her.
It is good that Carla has remembered not to misplace the plot. Which seems to be to get the whole cast in one room and have them all know that Becky and Dina had sex and that they’re not supposed to tell Joyce. At which point Joyce will guess it herself.
“Hey gang, what’re you all whispering about over here?” “NOTHING!” “…Becky and Dina had sex, didn’t they.” “…Yup.” “And they told everyone except me.” “Yeah…sorry.” “Ugh, whatever. I’m leaving now.”
The inevitable end point is that Joyce learns the secret and reacts well or doesn’t. The suspense is what kind of contorted Rube Goldberg sequence of events leads to this, with red herrings, twists, turns, popcorn, and waiting for the other shoe to drop. Right now, Carla is carrying the ball, but she isn’t necessarily end game.
As someone who isn’t exactly blonde but always is described as “kinda blonde” I feel this
am strawberry blonde. Joyce is like. Sandy hair? it isn’t brunette but technically falls into the blonde realm (like if you google sandy hair or brownish blonde hair I can see that)
There are slight chance that Carla just make sure who not to tell hot hat night event revelation and now she will avoid Dotty and meet Joyce. Slight chance but hey we had batman wannabe in this comic
The only time I’ve ever seen the word abscond used at all was in a webcomic written by an American. I’m certain most people reading this know what I’m talking about. I’m also certain that Willis has never met a British person in their life. Because no one would justify talking like Jason does with “I’m British.”
We really are at the point where any character at all can be on-screen and no matter what they’re doing it’s a fucking apocalypse, and it doesn’t seem facetious anymore. Carla is literally doing not a single thing wrong, and even Rachel is just providing requested information. Are we gonna #cancel her for giving away personal information and essentially doxxing Joyce, or is it gonna be selective today?
I absolutely think Carla’s doing something wrong. Not in any way comparable to stuff like what the adults in this comic get up to, but explicitly doing something just because someone told you not to is childish and obnoxious behavior that deserves to be called out.
Carla is an obnoxious narcissist who I would find incredibly trying to know in real life. She has many other positive qualities, but I find her behavior most of the time to be tiresome and antagonist-coded.
I’m more worried about Rachel feeling entitled to giving out Joyce’s exact geographic coordinates along with a physical description and also volunteering information on a traumatic event in her life. If Carla were actually harmful, Rachel would have just delivered Joyce to her on a silver platter, and since this comments section operates on a today-only window of context, she as good as did.
Carla isn’t some stranger. Rachel knows her. Joyce knows her. Carla knows them. It’s only Carla’s struggle to pay attention to non-Carla people that even has her even asking the question.
They’ve lived on the same floor for more than a semester. They’ve had regular floor meetings. They both hang out with Sal.
And the kidnapping is public information that occurred on campus to multiple other people on their floor.
Unless she’s working under the possibility of someone disguised as Carla is asking this question, and you are as well, there’s no reason to associate anything wrong with what Rachel has said as it is all stuff Carla has in fact known, but has failed to bring up from the “not Carla related” section of her memory.
Conversely, we also get these posts which basically compare criticism of a characters actions and calling them an asshole as basically a court trial. No, we are calling out actions we have experienced from assholes as asshole behavior. To say that Carla is doing “not a single thing wrong” is pretty near-sighted but other people have said it better than me.
Look, if I say the word “asshole” about 50 times and make vaguely agree-with-you noises, will you drop the “court trial” angle? I said nothing if the kind and haven’t got nearly enough energy in this life to try unrolling that in an articulate way.
Yes, I did. And then you mentioned the legal system. Is this a Bible thing I wouldn’t know about, is that version of the End Times a formal trial? Work with me here, what’s the through line?
yeah my flabbers are seriously gasted at today’s takes.
oh well! the world sucks, people need to blow off steam somehow. wish they would find an actual villain to dump on somewhere instead of pouring unwarranted negativity on an objectively kickass character but at the end of the day it’s their loss for not stanning Carla like (closeted queer) schoolgirls ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
So, If I told you a secret about myself in confidence you’d think it’d be really badass and cool to tell the person I explicityly asked you politely not to? That’s…that’s a cool and ok thing to do? That’s just…an alright and justified action towards someone?
Yeah it’s pretty weird that this comic with so many characters that are pointedly written as trash mammals of various kinds to present a strong theme of “minorities shouldn’t have to be flawless humans to be treated with respect” has attracted so many readers with nothing better to talk about than picking apart those characters in the most minute detail to judge them for every flawed thing they do and say.
I’m going to try and make more positive and fun comments myself. Might even stop giving Joyce crap (seeing as she has possibly grown out of reflexively denigrating everything that reminds her of a church).
Personally I like when all the character suck. Casts of assholes are much more entertaining than casts of pure and virtuous people. To a point anyway. It’s why a show like Always Sunny can work so well. Every single one of the characters in that show would be the worst person I ever met, if I met them.
But they just hang out with each other and there’s no risk of them meeting me so it’s enjoyable.
Yeah, I like many characters in fiction that I’d find annoying in real life. Carla here – exactly. If someone really said how awesome they were ALL THE TIME, joking or not, that would get old quick.
Also, I’m not sure I’d leap to the conclusion that Carla is going to run and tell “Joyce” (Dorothy) a secret that she was told not to? Seems more likely to me that she’ll tell actual Joyce by accident.
Honestly, I find the bit about her blabbing about Becky and Dina fucking to be fairly meh. It’s shitty, but garden variety shitty, even if she should be better than this. Her rewriting the kidnapping arc is a whole lot more annoying, because… look, when it’s a situation where people were fucking murdered and created a lot of trauma, using it as a reason to promote yourself as a superhero when you did basically jack shit in reality is just exhausting.
As for the overall point? Yeah, I like that the comic is more than willing to allow people in historically oppressed groups to be shitty assholes in mundane ways, that they don’t feel like they need to live up to some idealized standard in order to be valuable people.
But… going along with that is that when they’re being shitty people, we should be free to say “they’re being a shitty person”. Carla deserves to be treated like a human being, full stop, absolutely, but if she’s being an asshole, then she’s being an asshole, and it’s fair to call an asshole an asshole.
It’s… like with the Ruth/Billie relationship. That was a toxic, unhealthy relationship that exacerbated the issues both of them were having with substance abuse and depression. We shouldn’t be afraid to recognize it as being incredibly unhealthy just because it’s also a queer romance, right?
Anyway, Carla’s exquisite in this strip and deserves her own spin-off. By which I mean everyone else can spin off into their own strip and let her have this one to herself.
She’s Cool!
She’s Awesome!
She’s Rad!
She’s Loud!
She’s Actively pissing people off for shits and giggles which i guess i can see how that in fact pisses people off instead of ingratiating them to her but i still think she rules because her pranks are extremely harmless and actually she cares, but she’s keeping up a facade of unflappable superiority and fabulous aloofness because the world isn’t easy on trans girls, and sometimes, this is how you deal, you make your socially-imposed freak status into a comedy routine, you own your anomaly like a tacky glitter tiara that you insist makes you an actual princess, and anyone who says different is just noise, because the alternative is being crushed into constantly begging cisheteronormativity for a shred of forgiveness it will never extend.
She’s Cool!
She’s Awesome!
She’s Rad!
She’s Loud!
She’s Actively pissing people off for shits and giggles which i guess i can see how that in fact pisses people off instead of ingratiating them to her but i still think she rules because her pranks are extremely harmless and actually she cares, but she’s keeping up a facade of unflappable superiority and fabulous aloofness because the world isn’t easy on trans girls, and sometimes, this is how you deal, you make your socially-imposed freak status into a comedy routine, you own your anomaly like a tacky glitter tiara that you insist makes you an actual princess, and anyone who says different is just noise, because the alternative is being crushed into constantly begging cisheteronormativity for a shred of forgiveness it will never extend!
It’s sad understand to be like Carla in being unable to consider others at the point to don’t remember their names and faces. The worst is that she’s a 19/20 years old and can still learn. I’m ruined forever.
Hey-o, off-topic for the comic, but my despair-o-meter is pretty high these days, so I thought I’d ask:
What are some good things happening in your lives?
1. I got better from COVID and so far I don’t have any long-term symptoms.
2. I’m super lucky to have a spot to plant a vegetable garden, which I’m working on.
3. Yesterday I was excited to find radish plants growing from seeds that fell last year! (If you let a couple of radish plants go to seed, the green seed pods are also good in salads – provided you like the flavour.)
What’s the brand, are they regional, etc.? Around here, all the “spicy” snack suff is just that cheap crap with a flavor that can only be described as “red”.
In about 3 weeks my partner and I are gonna have our anniversary? Uh, I’m getting better at Yu-Gi-Oh cards thanks to the Master Duel game remembering card effects for me in a way that makes it easier to remember overall? I recently bought the Earthsea trilogy in paperback, which as a children’s series might just be written simply enough to penetrate my long-standing aversion to reading books in adult life, despite reading a new book almost daily as a kid? Miscellanea and low stakes at that, but good things all.
I wish Carla would learn that doing someone just because someone told you not to is just as boring and predictable as doing whatever you’re told.
When the chips are down, Carla’s a good person. But I generally don’t enjoy her presence when the stakes are low. I just don’t find her antics amusing. But then, I’m weird in that one of the reasons Dorothy is one of my favorites is that she’s generally competent, rational, and tries to be considerate of others.
Yeah, sometimes describing a particular person is like describing a particular mountain. It’s like, really tall? And pretty wide, but it gets narrow at the top. Oh and it’s by like three other mountains.
i love how carla’s little speech about how everyone on this floor gets to be a jerk and she should be allowed to get in on it way back when resulted not in a comments section that realized everything doesn’t need to be a federal fucking issue, but in a comments section that decided literally every single character needs to be held to the same high standard as carla at every possible moment, to the point where the handwringing about if she’s too much of a jerk or doing something dangerous has become indistinguishable from how we react to cis characters here constantly
maybe the most common lens through which to interpret media shouldn’t be determining which character’s the Worst Person
I never claimed Carla’s “the worst”. She just is an asshole. Jennifer’s an asshole, Mike was an asshole, a lot of the cast are assholes. But I feel like if I point out she’s being an asshole people assume I mean “she’s worse than everyone else”. No, she’s just…being an asshole. If Carla the fictional character is allowed to say “I choose to tell someone else’s secret they explicitly told me not to” I feel equally as justified to say “you’re an asshole for doing that.”
If anything my sin is far lesser because she doesn’t exist and will never hear my criticisms, not that she’d care, while her actions in her own reality will have consequences for all involved.
I also don’t even think she rises ro the level of “asshole”, rather than just being an obnoxious young adult. But she’s realistically flawed, and that’s fine IMO.
right and what i’m saying is that when literally the entire comments section is talking about what an asshole someone is, all the time, every time, forever, to the exclusion of not just realistic assessment of someone’s flaws but literally any other possible consideration of what’s going on in the comic, it’s friggin exhausting
like yes. you can say carla’s an asshole. it’s factually true. my concern is whether that’s necessary or interesting. the perspective of the comic is not that carla’s being a good person, and the perspective of her defenders is not that she’s saintly or beyond reproach. same with joyce, or becky, or dorothy, or whoever else. it doesn’t even rise to the level of criticism, it’s just “the intended interpretation is that this behavior is not great, and i’m mad about this behavior anyway”
the problem isn’t even you, specifically, it’s the chorus, it’s the mass, it’s that it’s everyone, all the time, forever. if just, like, five or six people went “you know what? today, i’m not going to write a callout post for a fictional character,” it’d at least be manageable
like, can you imagine if every single time you posted one of your fun dumbing of age fanporns, the overwhelming majority of the reactions were people pointing out that walky and jennifer, or whoever, are traipsing some social norm, or being mean, or whatever? wouldn’t that be exhausting?
re: The entire comment section is talking about what an asshole someone is.
I think there’s just as much people praising Carla and saying she’s great. I think it’s just easier to hone into the negativity. Carla’s doing an asshole thing, it should be reasonable to call her an asshole. It’s not an indictment on her as a character or that we all hate her or something. She’s an asshole. There probably wouldn’t have been quite so much discussion of it if everyone didn’t bend over backwards to describe why revealing a secret that people asked you not to is based, actually.
I said Carla was an asshole, but I also go on record saying I LIKE assholes. Asshole characters are more engaging than nice ones to me. But if someone’s gonna try to justify to me why an asshole isn’t an asshole I’m gonna disagree cuz I want to at least establish what I think is…y’know…rude behavior.
I know not everything is about me but I dunno. Personally I think there’s not as much Carla hate as you’re making it seem, especially while she’s doing something that’s rude and doubling down on it, right?
Let the record show that Yotomoe, quote, “likes assholes”. This definitely isn’t funny taken out of context and I’m definitely not cackling like a cartoon witch about it.
Oh. I got rid of Discord for a while. I was in a lot of really toxic channels and needed to get rid of the temptation to join in. Did the same with most apps.
To be entirely honest, this is more or less the only website or app I can vaguely tolerate lately, and it’s not especially the place for that sort of back-and-forth collaborative thing. I appreciate that you’re really excited about this game, I just can’t bring myself to be any more online than the occasional comment here and maybe doing my dailies in Final Fantasy XIV. For now, I think it’s best to consider me “on hiatus” for at least a few weeks.
Without spilling too much of my guts here, where it’s already more public than I’d prefer, I’ve gotta stay firm on the limited online presence. It’s not exactly a matter of life or death just yet, but it’s also not far enough away from that for me to give myself any leeway. Again, without giving too much detail or trauma-dumping in semi-public, I’ll see how I feel in a few weeks, but this is an important boundary I need to enforce on myself.
Also don’t blame the comment section, blame the direction we’ve evolved as a society. Most people try to figure out who’s good or bad, draw a line in the sand, Assume the worst, Give no benefit of the doubt, be suspicious, cut people out of their lives, Take the most uncharitable reads of someone’s statements and do the same to anyone who doesn’t agree.
I can’t explain it but online discourse is so constant and foul that we’re always just waiting for the next thing so we’ve just got our guards up and just treat people like enemies in wait. And it’s not like I don’t get WHY they do that but it ain’t good for my sanity to really live like that.
I don’t think Carla’s transness has anything to do with it, but I also get tired of the constant criticism because a nineteen-year-old person didn’t handle something with perfect grace. Characters have flaws and they put themselves first sometimes and that’s what makes them realistic and the comic entertaining.
Does Carla really not remember what Joyce looks like? It’s possible I suppose, but she did go to all that effort to make shower shoes for her that one time. I would’ve thought she’d remember someone she did that for.
She only remembers owning a freshman who was a bug. If someone reminds her of this incident she may remember Joyce, but unfortunately no one else was there.
Too be fair Joyce seems to have a hair color that whether whether its blond or brown depends on who you are asking, the glasses are a recent change and I believe she’s started dressing slightly less conservatively lately.
Y’know, this kind of “annoy-o-tron” behaviour is a bit charming online or in a comic, but IRL I’d probably avoid carla like the plague because I can’t stand people who find joy in annoying people.
Oh, moderation for the comments? Guessing either I triggered it with a word, or Willis is expecting things to go to heck soon. I am excited for the coming updates!
Everyone is going on about what a jerk Carla is being; meanwhile, Rachel: “Oh, you want to share personal information with someone when you were explicitly asked not to? Here is their exact description.”
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While Carla should chill with referring to Dina as a child,
It looks like we don’t have to worry about her telling Joyce, at least for now.
Also the possibility of her probably having seldom known a genuine English person in her life might tell us a lot about her upbringing.
Maybe, but I’ve lived in two of the largest metropolitan areas in the U.S. my whole life and I can only recall actually getting to know two English people in that entire time. And one of them is a guy I saw at work maybe a dozen times ever.
I’ve mostly lived in fairly large metropolitan areas, and met several English people… when I attended a large state university in a college town! Scousers and Geordies and the occasional Public School Accent types, even
Carla feels like she’s the female Walky as both she and he seem to default to only knowing about England through CS Lewis.
Walky making his “Turkish Delight” reference.
Come on now, their knowledge of the UK isn’t that narrow.
I’m sure Carla’s seen every episode of Top Gear and Walky has the Mr. Bean box set.
He is also aware of a certain person with a doctorate, a screwdriver, and a telephone booth.
Eh, she’s calling them both kids, and she is older than them both by like a year at least.
Might be two years in Becky’s case? Dina’s 19 now, and I think the rest of the freshmen are 18 unless they’ve had a birthday in the timeskip. So depending on birthdays, Carla might be 20/21.
It might be two years on both. I think she’s Ruth’s age and Ruth is 21.
Carla was still using a fake ID to buy beer early on in the strip, so it would just depend on if she’s had her birthday since.
I am trying to remember the dialog… But did the strip say “Carla had a fake I’d” or just that someone in Sal’s regular group had an id that looked like it was “generated on a laser printer”. That means either Carla’s Id could be real.
My fake ID doesn’t look like it was printed in the computer lab.
Man, “Ruth is 21”. When I started reading Dumbing of Age I was younger than her and now I’m so much older lol
BTW criticizing Carla because she used the work “kids” seems like a useless exaggeration. It’s not like she said “stupid fucks” or true insults like those.
To be fair to Carla as well, damn near every major character in this comic is a child. It’s pretty much just Leslie and Robin (depending on whether one considers her major) that aren’t.
I assume her choice to call Dian a kid comes from either
1) As a sort of self-absorbed sophomore, everyone younger than her is a “kid.” You remember how high school is right?
or 2) Carla, obviously not having a great grasp on who is who, just does heuristics and correlates height with age. I mean that’s how I know Tom Cruze is 14 and Michael Jordan is roughly 2 million years old.
Inferring her age from her height like that is still just as bad in some ways, but whatever.
Re: High School — *shudder* I’m STILL trying to erase those god-awful memories from my host body. Bongo and a half.
Yes, everyone knows that you calculate age by cutting them in half and counting the rings.
If I recall correctly:
“The police didn’t think it was funny either.”
As someone who’s 67, anyone who’s 66 or under is a kid. Unless they’re under 30, then they’re toddlers.
Aknowledging the point about Dina’s justified anger over being infantilized, if we’re going to call out Carla here, it needs to be for generic ageism. She’s calling them both kids because they’re younger than her, not because of Dina’s stature or appearance.
Secondly, to the alt-text, obviously youtag them both, A-Doy(ce)
My (American) experience with the English is a first impression of unusual intelligence. Eventually I figure out they’re no smarter than anyone else, they’re just better educated. Why can’t we have that here?
The British education system is often quite uneven as a postcode lottery and riddled with class inequality.
You sort of already do have that in the US.
Oh yes, because something about this arc says that Carla is considerate. It’s only the calling Dina a child bit that suggests she’s a jackass.
She’s calling both Becky and Dina kids I assume it’s because she’s a couple years older, or that they’re freshman while she’s a sophomore or junior. She’s being a jerk, but I don’t think she’s being ableist.
I agree she’s not being ablist, because if nothing else that would involve Carla remembering details about Dina.
What? Where did she call Dina a child?
Never mind. I see that you’re referring to kids. It’s a slangy colloquialism that doesn’t necessarily refer to age. All the cool kids use it.
Even if you’ve never met an actual English person in your life, you should still not be a complete fucking asshole and assume that someone acting English is being a fake English person.
Why would you fake being english also? I mean it’s not like it’d had the best rep out there or would sound adventurous?
I’ve been accused of “faking being English” because my “accent” didn’t sound “convincing.”
Reader, I have a speech impediment.
(As for why one would fake it…well, there could be a number of reasons, but when I was accused of this was at that time when Doctor Who and Sherlock were really popular, so…maybe I was trying to be trendy? idk. Again, speech impediment.)
I’m sorry you got accused of liking tea, and even more sorry you got mocked for a speech impediment. These people were decidedly wrong on many levels.
I promise this is in no way meant to diminish the seriousness, but “I’m sorry you got accused of liking tea” is an excellent and hilarious thing to say out of context.
Until you’re somewhere in your early/mid 20s, and especially when you’re an undergrad, your peers are “kids.” Or at least that was the case ten years ago.
Also, I suspect having met actual English people – probably, given her parents, actual posh English people – is what’s behind her assessment of Jason as “fake English guy.” Even though he is English, it’s pretty obvious he’s putting on airs.
Living in Florida, I think I’ve only encountered one genuine british person… my own father lmao
Carla: YOU THERE! I MUST INFORM YOU THAT THE HATTED ONES HAVE FUCKED!
Dotty: yeah, I know
Carla: …I’VE BEEN ROBBED OF HILARITY D=<
Carla: AS YOU HAVE DEPRIVED ME, YOU MUST NOW PAY RESTITUTION. I DEMAND ONE LAUGH.
Dotty: That’s not how that wo-
Carla: TOO LATE!
(PIE!)
I thought it was inevitable that she consult the triangular smile girl on the best way to let Joyce (Dorothy) know without actually telling her.
Pies are simpler though.
I mean on one hand Jason totally failed as expected, but on the other that doesn’t even seem to matter, especially seeing as Joyce is off campus.
and on yet another hand the entire premise of this subplot is exquisitely low-stakes anyway, so
I’m thinkin she’ll be standing there like a t. rex and umping when she sees Dotty, Joyce and friends coming back to deliver the crushing news.
Unfortunately either nothing will happen wrt to Joyce’s reaction OR Joyce will feel funny that they told everyone but tried to hide it from her specifically.
The health clinic seems to be just barely on campus (and currently has a 2.1/5 star rating)
https://i.imgur.com/j8uSFQj.png (NSFW)
I took a suggestion from Rose for this pose. Accidental Rhyme.
Sometimes it’s fun to remember Billie’s also kinda flexible.
https://imgur.com/a/9Ob1cy3(NSFW)
https://imgur.com/a/9Ob1cy3 (NSFW)
Forgot the space.
Love it Yoto! Specially that tongue bit in the second panel!
Also, those last two panels seem like authentic Dummiverse canon! 🤩
**Squee!!**
I hear if getting it in deep is your thing (there’s a hockey joke in there), that’s a good way to do it
hahaha so snarky
love it!
The absolute sass on this woman. She really isn’t making this easy for Walky, and I dig it like nobody’s business.
I have absolutely done exactly the same thing though, full-on arms behind the head, kick back and relax-type pose, just to see what happens. (Usually funny things, YMMV)
Flexible, more so in the left leg than the right though, which, after looking at past strips, went over my head that it’s probably because of the car accident.
o3o haha If you mean in my comic that was just my attempt to depict her actively moving her legs into that position. And y’know, keeping the pose from being too symmetrical and therefore boring.
I mention it cuz of you mentioned she’s flexible in your comment, but she actually tells Agatha (I think it’s her), during the stuck trash chute deal, that her right leg doesn’t lift as high as her left leg anymore, the left leg being the one she used to stomp the trash down the chute.
And it was only looking at it again recently that it occurred to me that it’s probably from injury during the accident and not simply from being a little heavier than she used to be.
Ah, my bad then. I remembered the kick but forgot her mentioning her lack of flexibility. That’s a pretty neat correlation honestly. I wouldn’t have thought of that either, I just assumed she was out of practice.
There is no way this will end well.
It will end gloriously.
in a hail of Carla.
Well, I mean, Dorothy already knows.
I wish Rachel was a bigger part of this strip. How do we clone Willis and get him to do more comic strips?
My first guess is that we forge a golden ring into which we would pour his resentment, dreams, nightmares and ADHDemon powers, then wait for some creature to take it into misty mountains and become possessed by it
Sorry I’ve been watching Lord of Rings, did you want a serious answer?
Does Willis have ADHD?
Most, if not all, neurodivergents have unique blends of neurodivergent stripes, and some of those stripes can be categorized as ADHDemon, just ’cause “demon” is so much better than “disorder” — not “incorrect” functioning, just different, and also strange and wonderful powers.
Not what I asked, though. I’m ADHD, so I do understand how neurodivergency works.
I was asking because, if he’s not (or if you don’t know that he is), it’s not okay to just diagnose him because you think he might be.
I also don’t super appreciate the mention of “strange and wonderful powers” since that kind of thinking, in part, made it difficult for me to get help for most of my life. I think it’s worth considering all directions of possible fall out from mentioning neurodivergency only in positive terms when it really does have a severe effect on some people’s lives.
I know you’re ND as well, so I’m not going to police how you talk about your own experiences, but the application of it to people with ADHD as a whole is the part I’m a little shakier on.
To answer your first question, Willis himself said he suspects a really high likelihood of being neurodivergent of some kind, ADHD referring to the feedback he got from fans with it who pointed it out in Walky, a character modeled after himself.
But towards your main point, I do appreciate your sensitivity about it, very much so.
I was called “autistic” for much of my life, and that label ’caused me decades of abuse and infantilization and dehumanization from friends, family, teachers and so-called professionals who acted like what they were doing was compassion.
Knowing the pain of having hurtful assumptions made about me all the time, I definitely don’t want to do that to others.
In fact I really don’t say I’m ADHDemon anywhere but in the comments section, and I guess I really only do it because something that makes me so assured knowing people here who can relate to my experiences.
We have our powers, and we have our shortcomings. Our functioning isn’t more or less “correct” than any other. We’re just different, and we’re trying our best to thrive in a world that’s really badly structured for us.
If anything, I just wish that people would be more compelled to ask us about what our individual powers actually are and what we need help with.
To my knowledge, Willis is not currently IDing as ADHD, and while I try not to actively use my weird selective memory powers to memorize tidbits of a creator whose work I follow’s personal life when I spot them on Twitter, I have seen fairly recently that he seems to be vaguely self-identifying as autistic, specifically. (I’m also trying to avoid Twitter when I can but the 9CL hatethreads are as ever captivating.)
https://mobile.twitter.com/damnyouwillis/status/1525965623032946688
Wellerman, I recognize you have trauma towards autism as a term specifically, but ADHD’s a clinical term too and there are plenty of people for whom ‘autistic’ is a term of community or pride – hi! – and some people might have trauma related to ADHD. (I claim it for myself as well, but it’s not uncommon for kids to get misdiagnosed with it rather than something else and medicated in ways that are… not great, in hindsight. Or at least it wasn’t uncommon when I was in elementary school.) Self-identification is important, especially when you are dealing with terms that are pathologized. If Willis wants to use autism for himself right now, that’s one definite term to be using. He could have ADHD in addition, I dunno, again I try not to ACTUALLY collect this knowledge, but it is a specific clinical term with a specific clinical meaning and ALL of them can be used as both a community-finder and a source of trauma depending on the individual person’s circumstances.
Our having so very very few terms for ourselves that aren’t pathologized is a different conversation, but honestly a neurodivergence can be a totally valid way of existing and STILL be a disability that’d make your life just that little bit harder even on a deserted island. Disability’s not a dirty word. We shouldn’t be defined exclusively by the medical model, but ultimately if my brain can’t make enough serotonin that’s a problem for me and medication is merited. If I can’t make myself get up to do something necessary like eat or go to the bathroom, or start doing something fun, because changing gears is oddly daunting, then yeah, it’s a disability. Doesn’t mean I want it gone, does mean I have to accommodate it somehow and would have to do so even in an ideal world. And I don’t like generic ‘neurodiversity’s tendency towards being used ONLY for the sensory/executive function/social cluster that contains ADHD, autism, and maybe a couple other subgroups. Schizophrenia and intellectual disabilities coincide with autism, too, but they frequently get left out of the conversation because they’re deemed even LESS palatable. That’s an issue on all fronts. But anyway, trying not to make it a rant, really don’t want to get drawn into a conversation here.
Very thorough, I feel relieved seeing you write all this.
On one hand, is it just me, or does ADHD just not seem to have the same kind of cultural baggage and pathologizing that happens to the “autism” label, at least in America?
ADHD doesn’t have it’s own equivalent of very offensive cultural stereotypes like Sheldon Cooper or Rain Man.
ADHD doesn’t have the equivalent of people on the internet going “autism screech” or “mildy autistic”.
ADHD doesn’t have an extremely powerful hategroup that claims to act on their behalf while using children as leverage in viciously manipulative ads and campaigns.
Personally, I like ADHDemon because for me it entails with it a sense of belonging and relating with others who have struggled in a world that’s not made for us anyway — kinda like a culture, within which I have an identity that’s finally my own, and where I’m not judged by the standards used to deem us “failures”.
Looking back, maybe I would have said “neurodivergent stripes” when referring to Willis, but I just jumped to ADHDemon it sounded cool to me at the moment (which ironically I can attribute to my ADHD)
Re: neurodivergent categories, I guess I coined ADHDemon ’cause I also wanted a way to make at least that kind of neurodivergence more palatable? Besides that, we definitely need better ways of describing ourselves other than an oligopoly of categories we currently have.
Being ADHD is both under and over diagnosed – by which I mean studies have found that about 38% of boys with ADHD and almost half of girls with it aren’t correctly diagnosed, while about 1/3 of those with an ADHD label don’t show a symptom pattern consistent with ADHD: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8385721/
It’s more commonly missed in girls because there’s still the myth that girls don’t get ADHD.
THIS was definitely my point. Thank you for being a great deal more articulate today than I could be, and for laying it out well.
On the ADHD as disability front: I would love to be able to just… Decide I’m going to get ready for the day like non ADHD people do, rather than needing to get up 3.5 hours before I need to leave to get anywhere on time. That’d be great.
Or like, be able to notice and address mess before I have doom piles all over my place.
Or generally not have so much baggage around cleaning I probably should be in therapy just for cleaning trauma.
Or be able to get boring work tasks done even if the stars don’t align.
Or be able to judge my capacity and how long tasks will take as well as curb my novelty drive so I’m not CONSTANTLY loaded up with like 3 full time jobs worth of responsibility and then blamed for it because my boss takes advantage of my tendency to impulsively say yes and then blames me if I end up overloaded. But also doesn’t respond well if I point out I’m already overloaded.
I’d love to not have RSD so mild criticism doesn’t send me into a shame spiral for days.
I could go on.
Also, as someone who has both autism and ADHD, it’s not true that ADHD doesn’t have stigma. Yes the equivalent of A$ doesn’t exist but ppl with ADHD are about 30x more likely to be suicidal than the general population for a reason. That reason is stigma.
I’d love for people to not assume I’m lazy, dishonest or a drama llama for how my brain is configured. I’d like to be able to disclose at work without immediately having my responsibilities cut and basically lose the equivalent of 5 years of experience in the boss’s eyes (every time I have disclosed that’s happened so I don’t anymore) and seeing my wage get frozen for a few years and my reviews instantly drop from the date of disclosure. I’d love for people to stop acting like I can just willpower past how my brain works with sticker charts and organizational apps (FUCK sticker charts). I’d love to have the ability to put all my limited EF to work on my work and not also looking normal. I’d love not to rack up hundreds in late fees and tickets every year because I forget to pay shit that isn’t automatic. And when I do remember, I’d love to dispense with the condescending lecture from city hall on paying fines on time. I can go on here as well.
Like yes hyperfocus is cool, but ADHD is a disability, not a superpower, IMO.
I personally prefer to use the label autistic to describe myself. Lots of people and organizations have negative views and misconceptions about autism, but the term is what I’ve been diagnosed with. I like the term neurodivergent, but it’s an umbrella term for a whole bunch of ways your brain can be different from typical. Autistic describes how my brain works.
In fact, I want to take this opportunity to get to know your unique stripes if you don’t mind me asking!!!
Can you tell me a bit more about your experiences with it, your hobbies and goals?
I’m answering here because Regalli did an excellent job of summing up most of my thoughts on the matter, particularly with regard to some people (like myself) not viewing ADHD as some magical power-bestowing force, but a source of trauma as well as a label that is being thrown around FAR too much at the moment by people not qualified or in a position to make that kind of diagnosis.
As for my own “stripes” I have no interest in further discussing them. I don’t know you, and as I’ve said I don’t see it as a magic power. It’s a thing that my brain does, for better or worse. I only mentioned it at all to point out that this complaint was coming from someone within the community rather than a white-knight with peripheral knowledge.
You didn’t ask me specifically, but I was reading replies and saw that the last thread was super long, so I’ll post this here!
I relate to a lot of what @ischemgeek said, but as for dealing with the ADHD label, I think “attention regulation disorder” might be more accurate than “attention deficit (hyperactivity) disorder” (I don’t *lack* attention, I’m just not great at organizing it). Brain-related sciences are relatively new, too, and the labeling may change.
You wrote that you prefer not to call it a “disorder” and that makes sense. For me, I like some things that come with my particular mental configuration, but a lot of the times my ADHD is a pain in the ass.
Oh, and I just saw this was yesterday’s comic instead of today’s, so you probably won’t see this.
I just got interested in the discussion.
Never mind, it IS today’s comic. Gah. This is what I mean. (Also, why is my first comment in moderation? I wrote about having ADHD and how some things about it are a pain in the ass, but “swear” words aren’t filtered except for the “bongo” thing, afaik.)
@ischemgeek, @epitome, thank you both so much for sharing your experiences.
Even if this world is very poorly structured for us and I may never be able to disclose my ADHD anywhere but here, at least I’ll have a whole community of ADHDemons here that I can relate to.
I really hope we can see a day that we will be able to show all our unique combinations of neurodivergent stripes for all the world to see.
All of what Needfuldoer said, also I’d like to apologize for my rant earlier. Feeling pressured to be hyper-positive about stuff that sucks is a real trauma trigger for me as I grew up in a household which was abusive as a chronically ill kid with undiagnosed disabilities, and hyperpositivity was, to borrow phrase from Becky, the danged extent of my allowed emotions.
So I apologize for blasting you – it was a reaction in response to my past, not to you or to your actions as you weren’t pressuring me at all (just some of your phrasing – specifically the superpowers talk – was a trigger for me, not at all your fault). Which is an explanation not an excuse but I feel an explanation for the heat of my reply is owed along with the apology. It’s my baggage to carry, and I don’t expect you to tiptoe around it moving forward. For my part, now that I understand that’s a trigger for me, I’ll be more mindful about whether I’m reacting to the present or to shades of the past and taking time to sort it out in the future.
I would also like to add that, while this hyperpositive attitude might work for you, you need to accept that others do not feel that way about their diagnoses. Toxic positivity can be harmful too, as can refusing to acknowledge the fact that some people do experience this as a disorder.
Ah, I understand. I guess I got so caught up in the ADHDemon and how cool it sounded that I forgot that not what’s true for on ADHD haver may not be true of the other.
Do you think it would be better for both those who experience their neurodivergence as a disorder and those who experience it otherwise, if we had better ways of describing and categorizing ourselves?
I agree. It’s great that boisterous hyper-positivity works for you. Really! But for some of us, it can be a lot.
I was diagnosed with AS and ADHD over 20 years ago. (Yes, I know the whole situation surrounding that specific title and how it’s not in the DSM anymore.) This has always been a source of shame for me, I’ve never been comfortable with the label “Autistic”. I’ve put years and years of effort into coping strategies and masking, now I can usually pass as just introverted. Even after all this time I still sometimes struggle with nonverbal communication, unexpected changes, and time management, and I can get incredibly self-conscious and rejection-sensitive dysphoric when I start feeling like things are getting away from me. These problems are something I’ll never shake, grow out of, or “get over”. They get in my way and will hold me back if I just embrace them. I take pride in overcoming them.
Again, I’m not trying to dictate how you deal. You do you! Just be mindful that not everyone is in the same situation, or feels comfortable confronting theirs the same way you do yours.
Personally, no. I don’t think slapping a label and category on it helps or hinders my experience with it. The issue (for me) isn’t what it’s called, it’s people’s willingness to just call any talented person ADHD and talk about ADHD like it’s a pack of superpowers with no downsides.
For some people it is a daily, difficult, facet of their lives. And, as Needfuldoer says, I’m genuinely happy for you that the super-positive approach works for you, but for me I don’t like the pressure to relate positively to something I feel neutral about.
I don’t like the idea that there’s something wrong with feeling neutral about a fact of my brain/body, and when you suggest that viewing it as a disorder is somehow wrong/incorrect you’re just putting unnecessary stress on people who don’t agree with you, but are otherwise in your community. If it’s a positive thing for you, then AWESOME! Seriously. But, as Needfuldoer suggests, it’s just not a great thing to try and push on other people.
Also, and this is the last I’ll say on it (despite this having been a more productive talk than I was expecting!) because I just feel like I’m blabbing too much – On the original topic of suggesting that Willis is ADHD because you think he displays signs of it. That kind of thing can actually be very harmful to a lot of ND people. If Willis ID’s as Autistic/AS, then you’re mislabeling him. If you only suspect someone is ND at all, then you’re playing armchair therapist (very intrusive) and also alienating people with ADHD if they don’t have the symptoms you’ve decided are definite signs. People have mentioned RSD, and I think that’s important to consider when speaking publicly about this kind of thing. Even just online.
Either way, I hope you’re well and have had a really good day.
Uh… I never suggested that I wanted to gatekeep definite signs, I definitely know ADHD looks different for different people.
But thank you for sharing!
While I doubt she’ll ever be in the main cast, I wouldn’t be surprised if she had a part to play in whatever went down on Halloween.
I think we’re hoping for some sort of cyborg-Willis AI mind upload so the comic ever has a chance of getting to second year.
Backup plan, we feed all of Willis’ comics to a machine learning program and hope it learns how to keep updating.
I’m not sure the training data sample size will be anywhere near big enough for that.
I know, but it’s still one of the largest sample sizes around when it comes to comics.
At some point, though, we ourselves will die, which sucks for anyone older or with an unhealthier lifestyle* than Willis
*includes fast cars and dangerous work environment, besides actual health concerns
idk why I said actual, as though there are imaginary health concerns
Are imaginary health concerns like imaginary numbers & only exist on the complex plane?
(Y’know, I joke but that’s actually a decent metaphor for having a health issue that medical professionals are determined to ascribe to malingering or psychological issues)
god i love Carla
So if Joyce is 5’4”, and she comes up to about Joe/Ethan’s chest? That makes those guys… 6’? 6’2”? I don’t know, I’m bad at judging height in relation to body parts.
If I had to guess, and I guess I do here, I’d say Joe’s got an inch or two on Ethan, and that Jacob’s a hair taller than Joe, but I am not sure. I do think Joe and Jacob are at least like 6’0-6’1, though.
Flipping through tags, there’s no real strip with Joe and Ethan next to each other, but I think Jacob is taller than Ethan, and Joe actually has an inch or so over Jacob.
I’d guess their heights are in the 6’0″-6’3″ range. 6’4″ is usually the tallest you can get without someone for sure feeling the need to comment on it.
Rachel will write an interesting book about her college dorm days someday. It will presented as fiction, and the names will be changed, but Dorothy at least will recognise who it’s about. Carla won’t, because it won’t have enough Carla with a different name it it for her taste.
joyothy
Doyce
I approve of both these names, as they have both removed the r. Which is what all America NEEDS to do this November. REMOVE ALL R’S.
(apologies for hijacking your harmless fun, but I had to release some steam SOMEwhere.)
I for one would love to live in the United States of Ameica. Hode Island will be an awesome new state name. Also it is shockingly difficult to build an intelligible sentence without using a single “R” in it.
challenge accepted.
…i don’t find it all that tough? obviously specific things cannot be mentionned. i dont believe one of the women in today’s comic would validate such a spelling game. she would, in fact, find it offensive. not to be allowed to speak the name she goes by? Unacceptable! Odious! Lamentable! She is, she might insist, a goddess and all else is but entomology. I don’t know that i would mind, myself. But ok, it does make the typing of comments slightly less swift and sentences somewhat odd. (Oh, and i think the use of a synonyms-listing website would have to be outlawed, lest the amusement become all too easy.)
I was about to fix your “entomology” typo, but then I died laughing instead.
It’s obvious that Carla’s rich, because nobody without obscene levels of wealth would be allowed to be this much of a narcissist without getting their teeth kicked in otherwise.
Now, now Malaya exists.
Also, Joyce is unable to perceive Whatshisname with the HatTM.
Let alone that he’s Sal’s boyfriend.
To be fair to Joyce I’m pretty sure you can count the amount of times she interacted with Danny on 1 hand
Yeah, I really struggle to find what everyone seem to like about Carla other than her overwhelming confidence in herself. Every interaction I’ve seen her in comes off as her being a tremendous asshole and everyone around her is just like “Well, she’s not an asshole DIRECTLY to me so it’s ok”.
She’s a performative asshole and she’s not really very good at it. She keeps doing things like helping out, with only token asshole cover.
We haven’t seen a lot of focus on her lately, so it’s easy to see just the performance.
I like her little outfits and that she roller skates
I mean it’s not Rachel’s fault that now a days the only thing that tears them apart is that Joyce is the one with blue eyes.
Eh, Dorothy’s hair isn’t really shoulder length. Carla missed out on that part.
Plus, I’d say Dorothy’s hair is definitely blonde, not just sorta.
nah, i think she just heard “sort of” as modifying “shoulder length” instead of “blonde”
Dorothy’s could “actually” be blue for all we know, but she gets dot eyes because of the comic’s art style.
I get a sneaking feeling that Carla knows perfectly well who Joyce is, and is pretending not to because knowing someone’s name would imply that she cares about them enough to remember that.
I, by contrast, fully believe Joyce is not interesting enough to qualify as a person to Carla.
There are two kinds of people in her world:
– Carla
– Not Carla
I bet if you asked her to draw any one of the freshmen, she’d give you a composite sketch with Dorothy’s head shape, Joyce’s hair, Becky’s face, and Dina’s complexion.
Sorry, but it seems there are at least three kind of people in Carla’s world:
-Carla
-Not Carla
-Rachel
This is not true. There are only 2 people. Carla takes whatever name her brain throws at her and uses it for the Not Carla in front of her. She doesn’t worry if the name is correct because she is always right, and any offense or indignation taken due to her actions is unwarranted.
At least for a while, Carla definitely made space in her brain for Mary. And not in a good way. … For Mary.
So, actually a good way.
Well, Carla can recognize Dorothy, and she’s not really any more interesting than Joyce. Carla doesn’t know Dorothy’s name, mind you, but she is at least vaguely aware of her existence.
My theory was that Carla knew very well who Joyce was, but was pretending not to as an excuse to not tell her about Becky & Dina without dropping her asshole facade. I’m less sure of that after this strip.
might know her by face but not by name
as we all know there’s only 2 kids who wear hats at college
Danny had sex with Dina? When did that happen? Does Sal know?
Y’know what I’ll say it.
Carla’s an asshole.
Yeah, maybe. I’m actually a bit surprised she’s still committed to telling Joyce. I really thought she’d just forget about it. This is bordering jerk territory.
Nah, I disagree. Telling Joyce about Becky & Dina is more like ripping off a bandaid than an actual injury. Their plan to tell everyone but keep it from Joyce was so mind-numbingly stupid I’m surprised no one has called them on it yet.
It’s s dumb plan, doomed to fail, yes, but that doesn’t actually excuse Carla’s motivation. She’s not doing this cause she actually cares if Joyce knows, or for that matter even the news of Becks and Dina sexual achievement itself probably means nothing to her. She’s specifically trying to annoy and upset people for her personal amusement. That’s what a jerk would do. This feels a little like a Mike move.
Personally I’m not big on defining morality via motivations rather than results, since we can’t actually know motivations. It’s a little less bad to do so in in fiction but in real life it is (I think) an incredibly toxic and nasty practice that enables people to yell past each other ad infinitum.
In this case I’m not going to blame whoever eventually tells Joyce for the fallout, because it could have been anyone for just about any reason and it was always going to be *someone*.
Carla is literally doing this because she wants to see Joyce point and laugh at Becky for 16 minutes straight. She said so herself. We know her motivation. This isn’t really a ends vs means thing. The “secret” will get out whether Carla blabs or not but she’s doing this because she wants to see someone else suffer or be embarrassed in some capacity. How is that not a jerk move?
Carla is trying to give away a pointless secret that everyone knows is going to come out anyway – I’m sure even Becky knows what will happen when they try to tell it everyone in the world “except for Joyce” – and she’s doing it very ineffectively. If that level of malevolence was the worst an adversary did to me, I’d be pretty happy with it.
Not everything a character says is their actual motivation. Or their actual intention, for that matter.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2022/comic/book-12/04-dont-stop-billie-ving/personalsexualinfo/
I really don’t know how to interpret this any other way. Are people clued into some subtext I’m not aware of? Sincerely asking. I know Carla has some history of snitching for the greater good but this doesn’t seem like ripping the band aid off.
People don’t always tell the truth.
My working theory at that point was that the whole “which one’s Joyce” was to give an excuse for not actually doing it, while still playing her performative asshole role.
I’m less confident of that after this strip though.
Good intentions don’t give you a pass if you cause catastrophes, but bad intentions are a different ballpark. You don’t get praise if your bad intentions lead to a fortuitous end.
And this *is* fiction, where we know about intentions, so we can and should use that knowledge in thinking about a situation.
In real life, intentions are much harder to determine, but you quite often can tell if someone is acting out of anger, or because they like to stir up people, or if they actually have an aim in mind that has any actual relation to what they are doing.
This conversation is a bit inane and I can’t believe anyone’s trying to justify Carla going out of her way to give up someone’s sex secret that they expressly asked her NOT to tell anyone as a good thing in disguise. She doesn’t even know WHY they want to keep it a secret. She didn’t ask. Not only is it rude as hell, for all she knows it could actually be dangerous.
Like I can’t FATHOM how people can bend over backwards to justify this, when I’m sure if Mike or Joe or Mary insisted on the same thing, I’m sure we’d all be against it.
Speaking strictly for myself and making no assumptions about others, I want Carla’s behavior to be acceptable because she’s very very sexy and I don’t wanna get the stink eye for Liking when she does this sort of thing. Again, that’s just me, and maybe I’ve overreacted just a bit.
I mean if that’s all it takes I too find her hot and also prefer assholes to nice people. I mean my other hottest characters are Jennifer and Malaya. I’ve got a type for sure. So you ain’t alone.
Morality isn’t even the issue here! It’s fucking rude. Not every choice is a moral choice. Sometimes you just have to be….y’know…polite.
All choices are moral choices.
That said, I’m rolling it back, Carla is being a jerk. Maybe like, 0.25 Mikes, or 1 nano-Blaine, but still a jerk.
Morality isn’t like…some defined idea. It is modular because Morality itself is manmade. I’m not using this as an excuse to be immoral but even our current day system of morality will probably be vastly different in 50 years. I don’t think me brushing my teeth is a moral one. It’s an Oral one.
I think of morality more as examination and comparison of the consequences of actions, rather than a set of principles. It’s the method, not the end result. Like the difference between the scientific method and an individual hypothesis. So yeah, hypotheses (morality) will definitely be different in 50 years! And brushing your teeth is a moral decision, it’s just one where the consequences are primarily your own to keep.
(I do appreciate the pun though. And apologies for rolling so deep on this one, this kind of thing is my jam.)
I mean, this boils down to 2 people saying “Please don’t tell this person that we had sex” and the person they’re talking to saying “Hey, y’know what, I think I’ll just ignore your right to choose who knows intimate details about you.”
Carla’s a fun character, but I feel like she would be very difficult to get along with in real life.
She’ll rip off those band-aids for free, but she prefers to do it for cookies.
Is it? Carla has no situational awareness of any of this. She met some randos in the hall declaring WE BONED BUT DON’T YOU DARE TELL ON US; she told them that them saying that made her want to tell on them, and then promptly forgot most of the details. Carla is self-absorbed, but she’s not malicious. She would have absolutely moved on from this if the “we just had SEX and it felt so good that we have spent hours announcing it to everyone while futilely plotting to hide it from Becky’s best friend Just Because” duo hadn’t roped Jason into this.
I don’t even know where anyone is getting the idea that Carla’s remotely beholden to random gay kids running past her in the hallway. In the abstract, maybe she “should” care if they don’t want Joyce to know because of [nebulous reason], but in the specific, who are they to put a “””secret””” on her out of the blue and just expect her to keep it?
OMG Taffy i can’t believe you’re defending Carla’s right to indulge in victimless shenanigans, when she canonically invaded Poland in 1939 and shot JFK from the porthole in her time-travelling capsule while cackling maniacally. We’re still waiting on that flashback of that time she went back to the 16th century but it’s anyone’s guess whether she was torching Mayan villages with napalm or torturing old women for practicing herbal abortions. That makes you a terrible person apologist, and you should probably commit seppuku.
Not fond of the sentence “you should probably commit seppuku”, whether it was meant as a joke or not. My last attempt was kick-started by a similar remark here on this site and while I’d possibly be fine with a suicide joke if we were (very close) friends offline… Well, we’re not. I’d rather not relive that experience without warning, at the end of what I thought was a silly gag comment. It’s just not on, and I don’t know why you thought it would be.
oh shit you’re right, i’m very sorry. that was in incredibly poor taste and had actual potential to endanger you or other people reading it. yeah it was not ok, and i won’t do it again. thanks for setting me straight.
Thanks for walking it back @milu and pointing it out @Taffy!
I’m also a person for whom the risk to my mental health is non theoretical (I can end up losing a few days or weeks to flashbacks of abuse that involved that sort of thing only not a joke) so I appreciate both of you on that. Seriously, thanks.
i’m lowercase-b back in between one and another spell of being kept busy irl and re this incident, i want to add that i also have a history with crippling depression involving suicidal ideation, and i’ve also been triggered by this sort of humour in the past. i can’t speak for Taffy or you obviously because every experience is different, but while it’s never been to the point of putting me in literal danger of acting out, it’s nevertheless felt pointed and personal and dismissive and just not funny. i dunno, i was trying to fit in with the cool kids and their edgy jokes. shoulda known better.
(i realize it’s unlikely anyone will read this, but, this works out: i’m writing it here where only someone (likely one of you two) actually choosing to go back to this specific conversation would be likely to read it. that is all)
If you really want someone to keep a secret, it’s wise to establish up front that they’ll be willing to do that BEFORE you tell them the secret.
Also, hard to blame them for not being inclined to keep secrets for you when what you told them was none of their business and probably something they didn’t really want to know in the first place.
There’s a difference between not feeling inclined to keep a secret and feeling inclined to DIRECTLY find the person you’re supposed to be keeping it from and blow the whistle.
Like if Joyce walked up to Carla and said “hey, has becky been doing anything salacious today?” then yeah I probably wouldn’t harp on Carla too much. I mean I’d still argue she shouldn’t tell Joyce but yeah she’d be lying if she said otherwise and it’s not Carla’s job to lie.
But that’s not what’s happening. Her goal is to find Joyce and expressly tell her information Becky asked her not to. This isn’t failing to keep a secret. This is actively working to not keep a secret. Which is very rude.
Maybe? But given what a couple of assholes Becky and Dina are being about all this, I guess I just can’t find it in me to care. Like, when you go around very literally loudly announcing your sex life to people whether or not they asked or would ever want to know, you’ve forfeited any expectation of privacy about the stuff you’re loudly announcing.
True, but I can relate more to “Holy shit I just tried this new thing that was amazing and don’t know what to do with all of this emotion” than “Oh I just heard something Juicy, let me tell the exact wrong person”.
Like when I got my first animation job I legit told everyone I could, even strangers. I was just really happy about it, even though I doubt anyone cared. But if someone tells me something in confidence I take that shit with me to the grave. It’s not my place.
You know, I get that! I am not immune to wanting to announce exciting personal news to everyone I meet, up to and including people I very barely know. I’ve developed impulse control about that over the years, so I mostly don’t, but I have had that same reaction as well.
Funnily enough, I actually also get wanting to tell EVERY SINGLE PERSON except *that one person*. Not going into detail on that here, but…uh, I guess it’s nice to not be 18 years old. Having impulse control is great. (This is a great opportunity for Becky to learn some, in the relatively low-stakes environment of her friend finding out Becky had the sex that Joyce has previously told her she should have if she wanted to have it.) When there is even one person you really, really, REALLY do not want to know the thing, you need to learn to be genuinely careful how you talk about the thing. It’s unsafe to you to spread it widely while asking other people to stay silent on your behalf, and it’s an unreasonable burden to put on them, too.
Also, personally? I’m a vault of secrets. I have personal confidences that probably don’t even matter anymore that I won’t talk about. I have a ton that do matter, and I won’t talk about them, either. When someone gives me a secret, it stays a secret with me. But those secrets are secrets from people I love or care about, and they asked for confidence when they shared them with me. Some of those secrets are heavy, and staying quiet on them requires emotional effort on my behalf. I’m reflexively honest, and every time I have to either lie or even just carefully word my way around a truth to protect a secret takes actual work, for me.
I don’t think anything like that is at play between Carla and Becky—Becky’s not asking for emotional labor (not like Jennifer was when she tried to make Carla her go-between with Ruth) and there’s no history of trust between Becky and Carla. Mostly this is wacky hijinks. But also, ehhh—to me, secret-keeping is not a neutral thing? If it’s something you want to keep controlled enough that you need me to *lie* about it, or you’re concerned I’ll carry it onwards, and it wasn’t my business to begin with—don’t tell me about it! Do not tell me a secret I didn’t want, and then demand I respect the secret.
Carla’s being a jerk about insisting she’ll tell the one person she was told not to tell, but there’s a life lesson for Becky about all this, if Carla follows through.
Carla’s not all that attentive to the details, but she remembers the important point:
Someone told her not to do something.
And she’s never going to let THAT stand.
The other day, people were saying it was shitty if Becky to specifically and deliberately tell everybody except Joyce about the Big Fuck. Now we’re saying it’s a bad thing if Carla tells her? This place is impenetrable sometimes.
Eh, humans. Go figure. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
who wants to make Joyce kill toys and barf everywhere instead?
https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/830313
Both things are shitty
Meh. Everything’s shitty. The small stuff doesn’t matter.
As always, Sarah Andersen expressed it best.
Welcome to the Internet.
That sort of remark is a symptom of a larger problem of “Well it’s the Internet, so it’s bound to happen, which makes it fine.” I don’t expect better in the predictive sense, of course, but there’s no harm in expressing the mildest of exasperation.
welcome to the internet!
hold on to your socks
cos a random guy just kindly sent you
photos of his cock
they are grainy and offputing,
he just sent you more
don’t act surprised,
you know you like it you whore!
see a man beheaded,
get offended,
see a shrink.
show us pictures of your children,
tell us every thought you think.
start a rumor,
buy a broom or
send a death threat to a boomer!
or DM a girl and groom her,
do a zoom or
find a tumor in your—
here’s a healthy breakfast option!
you should kill your mom!
here’s why women never fuck you!
here’s how you can build a bomb!
which power ranger are you?
take this quirky quizz!
Obama sent the immigrants to vaccinate your kids!
Could i interest you in everything all of the time?
a little bit of everything, all of the time?
apathy’s a tragedy and boredom is a crime!
a little bit of everything, all of the time!
Seriously Milu, you can make a book with this song!
Like, the Dr. Suess of the new generation: Dr. SUS 🤪
The good news is, that song is catchy.
https://youtu.be/k1BneeJTDcU
You can’t understand why it would be bad if Becky would tell her everyone except her long time friend personally, but why it would ALSO be bad if Carla told Joyce with the express reason of causing discomfort for Becky?
It’s bad for them to hide it from Joyce specifically because of the reasons mentionned in the previous strips and it’s bad for carla to seek out Joyce and tell her specificially because, in so doing, she’s being A Dick.
Honestly I just wanted to say Carla’s a jerk because I think she’s being a jerk right now. It wasn’t a condemnation if her character and her actions will likely result in something harmless or be virtually irrelevant because of the factors most people defending her in this thread have mentioned. It’s fine as far as I’m concerned. I difn’t plan on sparking a debate on the morality of her actions. I feel like I shouldn’t have bothered with the original comment.
There’s 2 separate things going on here, and I think it helps to abstract them a bit:
First, Becky and Dina are working to explicitly exclude someone they know and like. I don’t know if I’d say that’s shitty per se, but it definitely is hurtful and I can see where people claiming it’s shitty are coming from.
Second, Becky and Dina have the right to decide who knows the ins and outs of their relationship and what they get up to (or don’t get up to) in the bedroom. Carla does not have the right to decide that for them or to override their wishes. Doing so is shitty.
What do you expect? She was born into fabulous wealth and power to which people are attracted, displacing the need for her to earn authentic respect and forgiveness from her peers. And predictably, she has learned to take them for granted.
TRUE! The characterisation is very consistent
People give Carla a pass probably too frequently because of Shortpacked! carryover and because her usual adversary is, well, Mary.
It’s similar to Mike’s early days before people soured on him when his assholishness just came off as mean in the pseudo-realistic setting of DoA.
Thats basically it.
Mike’s assholishness works fine in the likes of shortpacked since while there are drama tag moments, it was way less grounded in reality, with resurrecting Reagan, actual jesus sentient cars turned robots and making Ethan a cult leader, a dude just being a dick was easily ignored as just being funny
In the slightly more grounded DoA (minus the amazi-girl stuff) his behaviour comes across as less acceptable. Alot of the time it was played for laughs like in shortpacked but the characters didnt see it like that
They remembered when he was being a dick and most (correctly) call him an asshole that wanted nothing to do with him.
Carla is similar to me. In shortpacked she started of as Ultra car before gaining a robot body and her whole thing was messing with people (usually with pies)
Carla is frequently and consistently rude, bit of an asshole and generally the type of person I would nevermind a millions years want to be near in real life
I think Mike being a dick worked fine in Early DOA before DOA started taking itself too seriously. I honestly think the tone shift caused a bit of dissonance with the later stuff being recontextualized. I would never say Mike ISN’T an asshole in the same way I wouldn’t say Carla isn’t one and it’s weird seeing everyone bend over backwards to defend her, honestly.
To me, the difference is that until just before the end we never saw Mike not being an asshole, while we saw lots of signs that Carla had a non-asshole side that she liked to keep hidden, but she would still do things to help others – even people she had no close connection to.
She’d just cover it all up by claiming she didn’t care and was just doing it to show her superiority or something. It’s performative.
That doesn’t mean it’s not obnoxious, but the level of damage she causes is far below Mike’s. If she actually goes through with telling Joyce, that’ll be the worst thing I can remember her doing.
Yes but…signs that there’s more to you than being an asshole isn’t the same as not being an asshole. And being an asshole isn’t a 0-sum game. There’s a spectrum of being an asshole. Carla is absolutely an asshole more often than she’s not, even if she’s merely pretending to be an asshole, it doesn’t make her not an asshole.
Fair enough, but she’s not a monster like Mike was. That’s really all I’m saying. She’s more obnoxious than actually mean and hurtful.
As I said, if she goes ahead with this, I think it’ll be the worse thing she’s done.
Just checking the Carla tag and doing a quick flip through the archives: she has helped or otherwise had positive interactions with Joyce, Malaya, Amber, Sarah, Lucy, Ruth, Joyce again, and then the whole thing with Billie & Ruth which was kind of a no win situation.
She SAYS annoying things but what she actually does is generally nice. Proving once again people care way more about what is said than what is actually done.
Exactly. She plays the asshole, but she’s not really very good at it.
Yes! She is! Thank you! I’m glad I’m not the only one who thinks so.
When Willis invented Carla, back when he was in 5th grade, she had four wheels and an engine. Then she was a robot with no use for the human race. Now Willis is using the character as a college student yet still recognizable as Ultra Car. Being a jerk or not is sort of beside the point.
I’m like, 70% sure that Carla has more or less explicitly said that, about herself, multiple times. The idea that many people – let alone a majority of readers – have chosen not to believe her on this point is rather amusing to me!
…But seriously, if I was going to judge Carla’s actions and behavior like she was a real person, yeah, I’d definitely say she’s an asshole. That’s true for a LOT of characters in this comic, actually, including some of the “nice” ones. Wacky Sitcom Antics that would be horrifying if introduced into the real world are kind of a staple of DOA – in fact, that and the queerness/diversity factor of everything are two of the comic’s main selling points for me. Carla combines both of those very well, and so tends to come across as sort of a Trans Pride power fantasy where you can mess with all the cis folks and rub your physicality in their faces as much as you want without facing any consequences. It’s fun! So, I guess I can see why people are willing to forgive a lot coming from her. Maaaaaybe not the healthiest attitude to have, I suppose, but whattya gonna do.
I dunno what it is about the last 2 panels, but Carla kinda looks off.
She’s doing a genuine smugly self-satisfied for her own benefit, rather than the performative smugly self-satisfied she does for establishing dominance over others. It’s an unusual look for her.
I guess Joyce is blonde, huh?
Yep! Blond refers to a range of hair colors ranging from platinum white to not-quite-brown. Joyce’s current natural hair color is frequently described as “dishwater blond” or “dirty blond”.
For now.
Blonde hair color has this nasty habit of transforming into a light brunette over time.
My hair used to be bleach-white. Now I practically look like I’ve had brown hair my entire life…
I really need to stop thinking people look just like their gravatar it’s messing with my head.
No no, please do more of that. Assume I’m a green space alien or a collection of god-spheres gathered around the pillar of creation if it helps.
I went through a similar transition over the course of about two years back when I was about four. The pictures from that time are kind of wild to look at, because my hair was noticeably darker in each and every one.
Now I’m on my way back to white, but it’s going much more slowly.
Red hair can do that with becoming a dark shade of Auburn that looks brown, too!
I was an intensely red headed ginger as a kid, then it went strawberry blonde in middle school and eventually Auburn but dark enough you can only see the red in it on a sunny day. Now people usually think my hair is brown.
Too bad my hair turning brown wasn’t accompanied by gaining functional skin melanin. I buuuuurn.
I guess so. Weird, huh?
Yes? The comic is in color.
Did you know humans are the only mammals with more hair colors than ginger, blonde or brown? (Because we have hair dye.)
Haha yeah! Nature is fascinating.
Or, you know, black. Some of us also have black hair.
I’ve always wondered if black hair is actually technically black, or just really really really rally really really really really really dark brown.
I mean, not enough to check…
(Also, don’t some animals have white hair?)
Bats come in white though
Revlon’s “dark ash blonde” is pretty close to what a photorealistic Joyce rendering’s hair color would look like.
Carla continues to be awful…sometimes I wonder why I read this comic when I despise a goodly chunk of the characters, but, eh, it’s not like I liked most people I went to college with either
Some people have trouble associating names and faces.
Carla’s just self-absorbed, and cranks that to 11 as a defense mechanism.
To be clear, Carla confusing Dorothy for Joyce is ranked like 8th on the “shitty things done in this comic” list.
Just as good as it was on Patreon.
I think my neighbours probably damn Willis more than we do, for how often I’ve woken them laughing, squeeing, crying or screaming at this comic.
Regarding the alt text: it would be funnier to tag Joyce
Agreed
There was a period in early DOA where I had trouble remembering that Joyce, Dorothy, and Amber existed simultaneously. Like, I could remember any two of them at a time but would blank on the third. I feel called out.
In Carla’s defense, I wouldn’t describe Joyce as blonde. Light-brunette, maybe, but “blonde” was a little bit misleading.
“Mousy”?
Per word of Willis in the past, Joyce is indeed blond. Ash-blonde, yes, but that still counts.
I agree. Joyce’s hair color, at least to me, is ‘light-brown’.
But then again, I’m a guy, and never had to check out Clairol, Revlon, Jhirmak (are they even around any more?), or one of the others to try to differentiate between the color palette that they use.
Everybody in-comic would describe Joyce as blonde, though, so this might just be a case of the pallette not coming through. For example, she has the same hair colour as her siblings, and Becky once described them as “the Aryan youth”.
In Carla’s defense, she didn’t show up to the kidnapping until after Joyce had been kidnapped a second time.
Huh, I had forgotten that. And Dorothy was out front when they showed up. So ironically Carla actually did a pretty good job with the information Rachel gave her.
Oh yeah, the one with the glasses. I remember now.
It is good that Carla has remembered not to misplace the plot. Which seems to be to get the whole cast in one room and have them all know that Becky and Dina had sex and that they’re not supposed to tell Joyce. At which point Joyce will guess it herself.
“Hey gang, what’re you all whispering about over here?” “NOTHING!” “…Becky and Dina had sex, didn’t they.” “…Yup.” “And they told everyone except me.” “Yeah…sorry.” “Ugh, whatever. I’m leaving now.”
To be fair to Carla, Dorothy’s been wearing glasses this whole time; Joyce’s glasses are a new development.
I mean, I WANT to be all there for how this comedy of errors is going from bad to worse, but I don’t see this as going to worse.
The inevitable end point is that Joyce learns the secret and reacts well or doesn’t. The suspense is what kind of contorted Rube Goldberg sequence of events leads to this, with red herrings, twists, turns, popcorn, and waiting for the other shoe to drop. Right now, Carla is carrying the ball, but she isn’t necessarily end game.
I choose to believe this will finally allow Joyce and Dorothy to hook up.
As someone who isn’t exactly blonde but always is described as “kinda blonde” I feel this
am strawberry blonde. Joyce is like. Sandy hair? it isn’t brunette but technically falls into the blonde realm (like if you google sandy hair or brownish blonde hair I can see that)
There are slight chance that Carla just make sure who not to tell hot hat night event revelation and now she will avoid Dotty and meet Joyce. Slight chance but hey we had batman wannabe in this comic
The only time I’ve ever seen the word abscond used at all was in a webcomic written by an American. I’m certain most people reading this know what I’m talking about. I’m also certain that Willis has never met a British person in their life. Because no one would justify talking like Jason does with “I’m British.”
Is it Homestuck? Is that what the refrance?
You can just say homestuck, its name is not forbidden
I like vaguely hinting at Homestuck without actually saying its name. It’s fun.
Fwiw I’m still a massive Homestuck fan. I’m not someone who regards it as a cringy interest from my teens.
I mean I was a cringe teen, but that’s not Homestuck’s fault.
This will end well!
Can’t believe Dorothy has been the real Joyce this whole time
Eh, close enough
And once again the day is saved thanks to Carla being kind of a dumbass!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQeezCdF4mk&ab_channel=GamingSoundFX
You should tag Jorothy. Or Doyce.
Panel 4: Where Carla’s obsessive need to be the center of attention goes from “annoying but still kinda charming” to “just fucking obnoxious”.
Oh, good, I was going to say it, but you beat me to the punch
Dotty : “what have I done to desserve this”
We really are at the point where any character at all can be on-screen and no matter what they’re doing it’s a fucking apocalypse, and it doesn’t seem facetious anymore. Carla is literally doing not a single thing wrong, and even Rachel is just providing requested information. Are we gonna #cancel her for giving away personal information and essentially doxxing Joyce, or is it gonna be selective today?
I absolutely think Carla’s doing something wrong. Not in any way comparable to stuff like what the adults in this comic get up to, but explicitly doing something just because someone told you not to is childish and obnoxious behavior that deserves to be called out.
Carla is an obnoxious narcissist who I would find incredibly trying to know in real life. She has many other positive qualities, but I find her behavior most of the time to be tiresome and antagonist-coded.
I’m more worried about Rachel feeling entitled to giving out Joyce’s exact geographic coordinates along with a physical description and also volunteering information on a traumatic event in her life. If Carla were actually harmful, Rachel would have just delivered Joyce to her on a silver platter, and since this comments section operates on a today-only window of context, she as good as did.
Carla isn’t some stranger. Rachel knows her. Joyce knows her. Carla knows them. It’s only Carla’s struggle to pay attention to non-Carla people that even has her even asking the question.
They’ve lived on the same floor for more than a semester. They’ve had regular floor meetings. They both hang out with Sal.
And the kidnapping is public information that occurred on campus to multiple other people on their floor.
Unless she’s working under the possibility of someone disguised as Carla is asking this question, and you are as well, there’s no reason to associate anything wrong with what Rachel has said as it is all stuff Carla has in fact known, but has failed to bring up from the “not Carla related” section of her memory.
She’s fulfilling her role as a character in a comic strip.
Oi. We’ll have none of that talk around here. These are Real People with Real Consequences.
Conversely, we also get these posts which basically compare criticism of a characters actions and calling them an asshole as basically a court trial. No, we are calling out actions we have experienced from assholes as asshole behavior. To say that Carla is doing “not a single thing wrong” is pretty near-sighted but other people have said it better than me.
Look, if I say the word “asshole” about 50 times and make vaguely agree-with-you noises, will you drop the “court trial” angle? I said nothing if the kind and haven’t got nearly enough energy in this life to try unrolling that in an articulate way.
You called it an “apocalypse”.
Yes, I did. And then you mentioned the legal system. Is this a Bible thing I wouldn’t know about, is that version of the End Times a formal trial? Work with me here, what’s the through line?
yeah my flabbers are seriously gasted at today’s takes.
oh well! the world sucks, people need to blow off steam somehow. wish they would find an actual villain to dump on somewhere instead of pouring unwarranted negativity on an objectively kickass character but at the end of the day it’s their loss for not stanning Carla like (closeted queer) schoolgirls ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
So, If I told you a secret about myself in confidence you’d think it’d be really badass and cool to tell the person I explicityly asked you politely not to? That’s…that’s a cool and ok thing to do? That’s just…an alright and justified action towards someone?
okie dokie, won’t tell you nuthin’.
Yeah it’s pretty weird that this comic with so many characters that are pointedly written as trash mammals of various kinds to present a strong theme of “minorities shouldn’t have to be flawless humans to be treated with respect” has attracted so many readers with nothing better to talk about than picking apart those characters in the most minute detail to judge them for every flawed thing they do and say.
I’m going to try and make more positive and fun comments myself. Might even stop giving Joyce crap (seeing as she has possibly grown out of reflexively denigrating everything that reminds her of a church).
Personally I like when all the character suck. Casts of assholes are much more entertaining than casts of pure and virtuous people. To a point anyway. It’s why a show like Always Sunny can work so well. Every single one of the characters in that show would be the worst person I ever met, if I met them.
But they just hang out with each other and there’s no risk of them meeting me so it’s enjoyable.
Yeah, I like many characters in fiction that I’d find annoying in real life. Carla here – exactly. If someone really said how awesome they were ALL THE TIME, joking or not, that would get old quick.
Also, I’m not sure I’d leap to the conclusion that Carla is going to run and tell “Joyce” (Dorothy) a secret that she was told not to? Seems more likely to me that she’ll tell actual Joyce by accident.
But we’ll have to wait and see!
Honestly, I find the bit about her blabbing about Becky and Dina fucking to be fairly meh. It’s shitty, but garden variety shitty, even if she should be better than this. Her rewriting the kidnapping arc is a whole lot more annoying, because… look, when it’s a situation where people were fucking murdered and created a lot of trauma, using it as a reason to promote yourself as a superhero when you did basically jack shit in reality is just exhausting.
As for the overall point? Yeah, I like that the comic is more than willing to allow people in historically oppressed groups to be shitty assholes in mundane ways, that they don’t feel like they need to live up to some idealized standard in order to be valuable people.
But… going along with that is that when they’re being shitty people, we should be free to say “they’re being a shitty person”. Carla deserves to be treated like a human being, full stop, absolutely, but if she’s being an asshole, then she’s being an asshole, and it’s fair to call an asshole an asshole.
It’s… like with the Ruth/Billie relationship. That was a toxic, unhealthy relationship that exacerbated the issues both of them were having with substance abuse and depression. We shouldn’t be afraid to recognize it as being incredibly unhealthy just because it’s also a queer romance, right?
Anyway, Carla’s exquisite in this strip and deserves her own spin-off. By which I mean everyone else can spin off into their own strip and let her have this one to herself.
She’s Cool!
She’s Awesome!
She’s Rad!
She’s Loud!
She’s Actively pissing people off for shits and giggles which i guess i can see how that in fact pisses people off instead of ingratiating them to her but i still think she rules because her pranks are extremely harmless and actually she cares, but she’s keeping up a facade of unflappable superiority and fabulous aloofness because the world isn’t easy on trans girls, and sometimes, this is how you deal, you make your socially-imposed freak status into a comedy routine, you own your anomaly like a tacky glitter tiara that you insist makes you an actual princess, and anyone who says different is just noise, because the alternative is being crushed into constantly begging cisheteronormativity for a shred of forgiveness it will never extend.
She’s Cool!
She’s Awesome!
She’s Rad!
She’s Loud!
She’s Actively pissing people off for shits and giggles which i guess i can see how that in fact pisses people off instead of ingratiating them to her but i still think she rules because her pranks are extremely harmless and actually she cares, but she’s keeping up a facade of unflappable superiority and fabulous aloofness because the world isn’t easy on trans girls, and sometimes, this is how you deal, you make your socially-imposed freak status into a comedy routine, you own your anomaly like a tacky glitter tiara that you insist makes you an actual princess, and anyone who says different is just noise, because the alternative is being crushed into constantly begging cisheteronormativity for a shred of forgiveness it will never extend!
Carla’s arrogance continues to save the day!
It’s sad understand to be like Carla in being unable to consider others at the point to don’t remember their names and faces. The worst is that she’s a 19/20 years old and can still learn. I’m ruined forever.
I know I’ve said this before, but as a trans woman, I love that Carla is my representation in this comic. 10/10, no notes.
I hit “random” instead of “comments” by mistake and I ended up on another extremely Carla strip.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-8/01-face-the-strange/assignments-2/
Reading the today update, I kind of expected to see an amalgamation of Joyce/Dorothy on the think baloon of Carla…
and then my thoughts were of : How a Joyce/Dorothy child would be like. heehehehehe
(but oh well, it’s just Dorothy :P)
I know Carla is supposed to be a quirky and fun character, but this page just leads me to think she’s annoying and arrogant.
Nobody is SERIOUSLY like this, but she’s def fakin it till she makes it.
my comments are being held for moderation today, maybe i’ve been banned for making a suicide joke, which, fair.
let’s see if this down here works though
@taffy: so unbelievably sorry. you’re right that was not ok, and i will not do anything like it again. thanks for setting me straight.
no, akismet is just having A Day
ok thanks Willis.
that’ll be my cue to keep my ass offline for the rest of today though.
And here I was all worried I accidentally set off the jackass alarm somehow…
Thanks!
Ok cool. So it’s not just me.
Hey-o, off-topic for the comic, but my despair-o-meter is pretty high these days, so I thought I’d ask:
What are some good things happening in your lives?
1. I’m seeing a chiropractor twice a week and I only hurt sometimes now.
2. I went to a baseball game.
3. Grilled pork steaks!
Congrats on your lessening pain!
1. I got better from COVID and so far I don’t have any long-term symptoms.
2. I’m super lucky to have a spot to plant a vegetable garden, which I’m working on.
3. Yesterday I was excited to find radish plants growing from seeds that fell last year! (If you let a couple of radish plants go to seed, the green seed pods are also good in salads – provided you like the flavour.)
I also recently (earlier this month) had COVID, and yeah, so far I haven’t noticed any lasting effects! Fingers crossed for both of us on that.
I love spicy food and recently found cheese puffs that both have a good amount of spiciness while still tasting like cheese puffs
What’s the brand, are they regional, etc.? Around here, all the “spicy” snack suff is just that cheap crap with a flavor that can only be described as “red”.
Theyre Herr’s brand Carolina Reaper cheese curls
I’ll be sure to keep an eye out for ’em. Thanks for the info.
Good things, good things, uuuhhhhh…..
In about 3 weeks my partner and I are gonna have our anniversary? Uh, I’m getting better at Yu-Gi-Oh cards thanks to the Master Duel game remembering card effects for me in a way that makes it easier to remember overall? I recently bought the Earthsea trilogy in paperback, which as a children’s series might just be written simply enough to penetrate my long-standing aversion to reading books in adult life, despite reading a new book almost daily as a kid? Miscellanea and low stakes at that, but good things all.
Um…
I bought replacement windows?
Carla being the Carla you love to hate. You love to hate to see it!
How bad is it that we have to ask which kidnapping?
I wish Carla would learn that doing someone just because someone told you not to is just as boring and predictable as doing whatever you’re told.
When the chips are down, Carla’s a good person. But I generally don’t enjoy her presence when the stakes are low. I just don’t find her antics amusing. But then, I’m weird in that one of the reasons Dorothy is one of my favorites is that she’s generally competent, rational, and tries to be considerate of others.
It’s a bad sign when your hall’s biggest pot head has a better memory than you.
Are you somehow confusing Rachel with Meredith orrrrr…?
Carla also drinks weed. Maybe not as much as Meredith.
I suppose it’s better than having to ask which alien invasion?
Actually, I’d like to see more alien invasions.
At least those come with laser beams!
You should tag Joyathy.
Annnnnd, back to not liking Carla.
has carla seen joyce’s new glasses?
oh, she has. shoulda checked before posting XD
Rachel has pretty lips! ♥
Yeah, sometimes describing a particular person is like describing a particular mountain. It’s like, really tall? And pretty wide, but it gets narrow at the top. Oh and it’s by like three other mountains.
i love how carla’s little speech about how everyone on this floor gets to be a jerk and she should be allowed to get in on it way back when resulted not in a comments section that realized everything doesn’t need to be a federal fucking issue, but in a comments section that decided literally every single character needs to be held to the same high standard as carla at every possible moment, to the point where the handwringing about if she’s too much of a jerk or doing something dangerous has become indistinguishable from how we react to cis characters here constantly
maybe the most common lens through which to interpret media shouldn’t be determining which character’s the Worst Person
I never claimed Carla’s “the worst”. She just is an asshole. Jennifer’s an asshole, Mike was an asshole, a lot of the cast are assholes. But I feel like if I point out she’s being an asshole people assume I mean “she’s worse than everyone else”. No, she’s just…being an asshole. If Carla the fictional character is allowed to say “I choose to tell someone else’s secret they explicitly told me not to” I feel equally as justified to say “you’re an asshole for doing that.”
If anything my sin is far lesser because she doesn’t exist and will never hear my criticisms, not that she’d care, while her actions in her own reality will have consequences for all involved.
Well said.
I also don’t even think she rises ro the level of “asshole”, rather than just being an obnoxious young adult. But she’s realistically flawed, and that’s fine IMO.
right and what i’m saying is that when literally the entire comments section is talking about what an asshole someone is, all the time, every time, forever, to the exclusion of not just realistic assessment of someone’s flaws but literally any other possible consideration of what’s going on in the comic, it’s friggin exhausting
like yes. you can say carla’s an asshole. it’s factually true. my concern is whether that’s necessary or interesting. the perspective of the comic is not that carla’s being a good person, and the perspective of her defenders is not that she’s saintly or beyond reproach. same with joyce, or becky, or dorothy, or whoever else. it doesn’t even rise to the level of criticism, it’s just “the intended interpretation is that this behavior is not great, and i’m mad about this behavior anyway”
the problem isn’t even you, specifically, it’s the chorus, it’s the mass, it’s that it’s everyone, all the time, forever. if just, like, five or six people went “you know what? today, i’m not going to write a callout post for a fictional character,” it’d at least be manageable
like, can you imagine if every single time you posted one of your fun dumbing of age fanporns, the overwhelming majority of the reactions were people pointing out that walky and jennifer, or whoever, are traipsing some social norm, or being mean, or whatever? wouldn’t that be exhausting?
re: The entire comment section is talking about what an asshole someone is.
I think there’s just as much people praising Carla and saying she’s great. I think it’s just easier to hone into the negativity. Carla’s doing an asshole thing, it should be reasonable to call her an asshole. It’s not an indictment on her as a character or that we all hate her or something. She’s an asshole. There probably wouldn’t have been quite so much discussion of it if everyone didn’t bend over backwards to describe why revealing a secret that people asked you not to is based, actually.
I said Carla was an asshole, but I also go on record saying I LIKE assholes. Asshole characters are more engaging than nice ones to me. But if someone’s gonna try to justify to me why an asshole isn’t an asshole I’m gonna disagree cuz I want to at least establish what I think is…y’know…rude behavior.
I know not everything is about me but I dunno. Personally I think there’s not as much Carla hate as you’re making it seem, especially while she’s doing something that’s rude and doubling down on it, right?
Let the record show that Yotomoe, quote, “likes assholes”. This definitely isn’t funny taken out of context and I’m definitely not cackling like a cartoon witch about it.
Hey Taffy, I haven’t heard from you on Discord, is everything alright?
🥺
Oh. I got rid of Discord for a while. I was in a lot of really toxic channels and needed to get rid of the temptation to join in. Did the same with most apps.
🥺🥺🥺
Oh I’m sorry to hear that friend!!!! But I really still wanna work on the game with you!
Can you think of some other way we can communicate and brainstorm?
To be entirely honest, this is more or less the only website or app I can vaguely tolerate lately, and it’s not especially the place for that sort of back-and-forth collaborative thing. I appreciate that you’re really excited about this game, I just can’t bring myself to be any more online than the occasional comment here and maybe doing my dailies in Final Fantasy XIV. For now, I think it’s best to consider me “on hiatus” for at least a few weeks.
But the model and map are almost ready!
Maybe something like Newgrounds or email, if only once daily?
I understand the need to get away from toxicity, but it’s just not the same working on the game without you!
Without spilling too much of my guts here, where it’s already more public than I’d prefer, I’ve gotta stay firm on the limited online presence. It’s not exactly a matter of life or death just yet, but it’s also not far enough away from that for me to give myself any leeway. Again, without giving too much detail or trauma-dumping in semi-public, I’ll see how I feel in a few weeks, but this is an important boundary I need to enforce on myself.
Okie
I sure will miss talking to you thou while you’re gone. Take care, Taffy.
*plays “Together With the Wind” from Pokemon Movie CD on hacked muzak*
(my favorite song to listen to while I’m on long walks, hopefully you’ll like it too) 🥹
Okie
I sure will miss talking to you though while you’re gone. Take care, Taffy.
*plays “Together With the Wind” from Pokemon Movie CD on hacked muzak*
(my favorite song to listen to while I’m on long walks, hopefully you’ll like it too) 🥹
To be fair, in Carla’s case she identifies as an asshole and would be happy to know she’s built up her mind share among the audience.
Also don’t blame the comment section, blame the direction we’ve evolved as a society. Most people try to figure out who’s good or bad, draw a line in the sand, Assume the worst, Give no benefit of the doubt, be suspicious, cut people out of their lives, Take the most uncharitable reads of someone’s statements and do the same to anyone who doesn’t agree.
I can’t explain it but online discourse is so constant and foul that we’re always just waiting for the next thing so we’ve just got our guards up and just treat people like enemies in wait. And it’s not like I don’t get WHY they do that but it ain’t good for my sanity to really live like that.
I don’t think Carla’s transness has anything to do with it, but I also get tired of the constant criticism because a nineteen-year-old person didn’t handle something with perfect grace. Characters have flaws and they put themselves first sometimes and that’s what makes them realistic and the comic entertaining.
Very well described by Rachel.
Does Carla really not remember what Joyce looks like? It’s possible I suppose, but she did go to all that effort to make shower shoes for her that one time. I would’ve thought she’d remember someone she did that for.
She only remembers owning a freshman who was a bug. If someone reminds her of this incident she may remember Joyce, but unfortunately no one else was there.
Too be fair Joyce seems to have a hair color that whether whether its blond or brown depends on who you are asking, the glasses are a recent change and I believe she’s started dressing slightly less conservatively lately.
Carla’s easily going to confuse Joyce for a plain hot dog in the commissary in about half a minute.
Y’know, this kind of “annoy-o-tron” behaviour is a bit charming online or in a comic, but IRL I’d probably avoid carla like the plague because I can’t stand people who find joy in annoying people.
Is nobody going to talk about the cute mouth shape Carla is making in the first panel? CMON GUYS focus on the matters that matter!
Anyone else think it’s odd that Rachel refers to Joyce as a “new” freshman in the second semester?
Carla has some narcissism
Oh, moderation for the comments? Guessing either I triggered it with a word, or Willis is expecting things to go to heck soon. I am excited for the coming updates!
Naw, I think he said the site’s just glitchin’.
I had a mild heart attack, last time my comments got “awaiting moderation” it took like 6 months before I could post again.
that first panel is a really good carla face
Everyone is going on about what a jerk Carla is being; meanwhile, Rachel: “Oh, you want to share personal information with someone when you were explicitly asked not to? Here is their exact description.”
That’s what I’m on about, yeah. I’m not saying people’s physical appearance should be treated like a state secret, but dang.
If you want to parse it closely, she might think Carla just wants to be sure who not to tell.
It’s a good thing she at least remembered that Rachel is one of the ones who aren’t Joyce.
Easily the least likeable character, and gets worse with every appearance.
Damn, she’s just in another character’s thought bubble this time, leave Dorothy alone.
No, there’s other characters less likable.
I think Carla might be faceblind
Why does she think Dorothy has a moustache ?
Maybe Carla has ?