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Yeah. I don’t think any Mary-redemption-arc could ever stick long-term. Hell, if we count the old continuity, it’s failed once already, and this Mary has done way worse things than that one ever did. If there ever was a chance, it has passed and been forgotten.
Joyce wishing death on a serial predator who drugged and attempted to assaulted her, thereby traumatizing her is absolutely no where near Mary wanting someone to die just because they happen to be queer.
One is a common and(debatably) valid response to a personal trauma, the other one is the basis of a fucking hate crime.
Amber should, indeed, have kept stabbing. For Ryan to be merely a waste of space, he’d need to improve tremendously. He’s a pernicious little shit whose only contribution to the world is to make thigns worse for other people.
I wonder whatever happened to him, and whether we will hear any follow-up to Ryan’s case.
I believe the last we heard was that Ryan was hospitalized and there was a potential lawsuit against Amber over the stabbing. I assume he would have been released by now… would there have been enough time for any lawsuit to have been dismissed during the time skip? Or will we see Amber dragged into court (or arbitration)?
Ryan pulled a knife on two students right in front on the dorm entrance, which is usually a spot with security cameras. IMO it’s an easy self-defense case in a state like Indiana that has stand your ground laws, so I hope that any lawsuit is dead, both for Amber’s and the story’s sake. It would be exhausting if this comic spent weeks covering court proceedings and Ryan’s legal team attempting to spin him as some sort of victim.
I agree… it SHOULD be a slam-dunk case of “dismissed”. But, weird things do happen.
For example they could claim “excessive force”. (A B.S. claim, but they still might make it.) They may find that Amber had stabbed someone before, or that because her dad was evil, that she likewise was evil. Or they may just have a lot of money to spend on lawyers and thus can outspend Amber’s family (even if the lawsuits are meritless).
Like UT says, last we heard of Ryan he had been hospitalised. We don’t know if he has been released yet and, if so, he remains nearby or has been yanked home.
We haven’t heard anything further on the lawsuit, except that Joe’s dad is bankrolling Amber.
if i’ve notived one thing in this comic than it is that the bad characters dont change. Good Characters may become bad but bad characters like Mary or Malaya always stay bad.
Malaya is an obnoxious jerk, but I wouldn’t say she’s a villain or antagonist. It’s the villains that stay rather static, probably because Willis wants to avoid the Very Christian Thing of, “If you just ~forgive~ your enemies, they’ll always end up being good deep down!”
Mary is completely allowed to be other than awful. She could reject death cult evangelicalism, and she could reject fascism, and she could work to oppose those systems and attempt to make amends with those she’s harmed.
She’s not going to do this, of course, because she thinks being Like This is cool and great, and everyone else deserves to suffer. She’s very committed to hee shitty ideology.
Well, Jennifer told corrected Mary about her name like, seconds ago (yesterday’s strip), so I’d assume Mary’s just being an asshole. But maybe she has a condition where the only J-name she can remember is Jesus.
Because I have Japanese as a second language, this line had a special double entendre to me… The Japanese word for hobby (趣味 shumi), also means ‘kink’. So I actually heard her shout “Jesus is my kink!”
Huh, so that’s what RA stands for. I’ve been in college long enough I should know that, but I guess my education is so full of acronyms all ready that my mind just assumed I’d been told what it was and moved on.
I think she’s pretending she doesn’t remember Jennifer’s name, y’know because she cares so little about Jennifer and what she’s doing. I swear if I didn’t know any better this borderline feels like a crush that Mary doesn’t understand or know what to do with.
Knowing Mary I doubt it’s a crush too, but she’s way more emotionally invested in this than what you’d expect. It costs a lot of energy to hold grudges and most people fall back to indifference. Take Rachel for instance. She clearly has something against Ruth but she doesn’t spend her time plotting comeback scenarios and schemes.
Mary obsessively stalked Carla and tried to blackmail Ruth into letting her “have” her. I think she’s not actually just a bigot, she’s an actual hate criminal plotting something serious.
I don’t think Mary has actual plots. She has a lot of people she hates and wants to hurt, and when she saw an opportunity to cause some serious harm she took it, but she’s not particularly clever and she doesn’t have any actual power. I think her blackmail threat was as dangerous as she gets, and she’s not going to be in a position to do something like that again
In the DND campaign that I’m in, I made Jessica a very common male name for people in my character’s background culture. My character’s pre-exile best friend was a boy named Jessica, and there are hints that he’s going to become more relevant to our current story.
All this to say, I’ve gotten so used to associating “Jessica” with “he/him” that at first I thought Mary was implying something along those lines.
I always feel weird when I think about the fact that I’ve played D&D pretty much exclusively online, since we started during the pandemic and my friends are all spread out around the world across four different time zones. I’d love to be able to regularly play in person someday…
Kicking the door seems like a less than ideal way to begin that conversation, but I don’t think Jennifer is in the best headspace, no matter how much she may claim otherwise.
I feel like this strip is more just calling out Jennifer’s hypocrisy where she is ALSO terrible at letting things go and she also needs to get a hobby.
Mary’s been warned repeatedly about religiously harassing the residents and visitors of the hall. She’s on some kind of probation about it after going after Carla.
Yes, because Jennifer (Billie back then) told everyone on the hall that Mary had been extorting Ruth. Jennifer told Mary that if Mary messed with anyone on the hall again, everyone on the hall would tell the Residence Manager about Mary’s prior extortion of Ruth and harassment of Carla. This was right before Jennifer decked Mary.
No. I played VII and VIII and they were both a waste of my time, I’m not going for “third time is the charm” when I can be playing Grim Dawn and imagine the mobs are Republicans.
We’re getting close to “This Was Halloween” (not sure how close exactly? someone recently seemed to indicate “very close,” though). It’s possible that this is going to be a lead up to things revealed then.
She cornered Billie and Ruth outside the dorm and came at them with a mysterious object in her hand, quoting Bible stuff. It was about 5-ish years ago, now.
Maybe Jennifer is frustrated that she’s filling in on things Ruth should be doing (checking in on Joyce, who’s clearly been super rough for several days)?
I’m curious as well tbh.
I think Jennifer is mostly upset about whatever caused her and Ruth to break up, causing Jennifer to be no longer at home or welcome on her former hall.
Yeesh, Mary has absolutely lost any power she once held- to the power around her, and to the readers. I hope she’s supposed to be coming off this utterly lame lmao
Mary exists solely as a temptation for the other characters (the temptation being to beat the shit out of her). And occasionally a mirror to the kind of “Christendom” Joyce and Becky escaped from.
Huh. I remember that Jennifer said she couldn’t lift her right leg as high as she used to (mentioned during the blocked garbage chute incident and what I recently took to be a result of the car accident).
Assuming she’s gone to physical therapy for it/exercised it more often, I wonder if this kick is the highest she can reach with the right one and if it’s better than it was.
I once knew two people who could throw a sidekick straight up. I doubt either of them can now, but both are now in their 40s. Head-high kicks shouldn’t be remarkable at that age and proven athletic ability (except for how they’re a really bad idea; aim for the knees, or the crotch, not the face).
In this case, I don’t know if the one still trains, or even if he’s still in the same area, but I know the other has since had three children, and I’m reasonably certain she can no longer drop into the splits, which was a prerequisite for her kicking straight up.
Haven’t done martial arts in since half a life time ago – I can still kick that high. It’s not the height of the toe but how close you can get to perpendicular to your body with usable force that’s difficult.
Marys really the perfect center point of ‘awful’ and ‘faith’ where she truly, truly thinks that not only are all these things Real Genuine Threats, but also that EVERYONE ELSE around her DEFINITELY, deep down, also believes. Anything contrary to that is Fools pretending to not know god is real and hates them for Spite.
“If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.”
I think Jennifer possibly FORGOT that Mary hates her for her bisexuality/same sex relationship with Ruth.
Mary is just completely off her radar.
Also, that’s school-shooter talk. Remember when Mary asked for Ruth to “give” Carla to her? I think she’s not nearly as harmless a villain as people think. She might end up genuinely dangerous to our cast.
I don’t think she’s that dangerous. At the height of her power she was totally incompetent and only got away with harassing Carla once before it all came crashing down. And frankly her blackmail was only effective to begin with because Ruth’s stressed and depressed mind misinterpreted her blackmail to be her absolute worst case scenario. Mary doesn’t pose much of a threat because if she did she’d be gone. I doubt any girl in the dorm would tolerate someone actively trying to harm them.
“the wages of sin are death” is simultaneously the funniest thing i’ve ever heard and possibly something that might sound cool coming from anybody but mary!
Mary:” I am filled with Christ love!” *chucks Bible at her*
But seriously Mary there’s more to life than being a self-righteous busybody who only cares about what someone else is doing just to he judgemental…Unless she thinks that’s her God given role in life.
And that is enough of Mary. Thank you very much.
I really want to know what happened between Ruth and Jennifer. Right know I am a little annoyed with Jennifer again considering Mary was in the same strip.
I feel like it’s too well-known as a cliché for anyone to seriously take it that way unless they were looking for an excuse (which, given Mary’s personality, someone easily might be).
…Ya know, it suddenly clicks into place that fascists tend to be very loudly into anime. Yeah yeah, it’s a common interest, but y’all know what I mean. Right-wing weeaboos are absolutely A Thing, and Mary sure does smell like one.
This sequence does strangely echo Ruth & Jennifer’s previous conversation, and Ruth’s desire to bully somebody. But I’m wondering if Jennifer is actually trying to find Ruth to tell her that Joyce is having a bit of a crisis…? That’d be kind of unexpected but nice
If Mary’s hobby is the Lord, it means that drawing for her is something really serious that involves her totally day after day and that she can’t sees a future where she is doing something different than drawing… I think there is hope. I can’t wait for Joyce to start going to the drawing class to see what kind of interactions will begin between her, Mary and Malaya. The three are totally different and Mary probably can’t stand both, but the importance that drawing has for her could push her to form a bond with them. It wouldn’t be the first time that people who usually can’t stand each other end up tolerating and collaborating on the things that matter most to them. By the way, that kick was totally unexpected and I hope in an explanation.
My partner was raised nondenominational Christian, and I remember the feeling of disbelief when they told me one of the messages they received growing up was, “If you’re happy as a Christian, you must be doing something wrong [in the moral sense].” I’m still taken aback thinking about how grown adults thought it was right to teach my very favorite person in the whole world to associate happiness with condemnation.
I understand Mary’s role in the narrative and I don’t necessarily think she deserves any panel-time on “redemption,” but knowing that she could represent someone raised in a similar environment as my partner, one that taught her not to trust in the goodness of others… Her behavior is still inexcusable, but I feel a twinge of pity for her, too.
This is the strip of Mary’s that always sticks with me. It makes me wonder if there were originally plans to take Mary in a different direction to how she’s gone. I see her in that middle panel and she looks so burned out and dejected. It was like she was trying to help Joyce in her own way.
She basically thinks that she has all the right answers (she doesn’t, but she thinks she does) but no one is really listening to her, and she’s responded to that by becoming filled with hate. She’s a broken christian that’s responded to the problem by getting angry at it.
A lot of right wingers (not just Xtian extremists) justify being judgmental, mean-spirited assholes by holding firm to a belief that charity & kindness only ever comes with an ulterior motive.
This strip needs more Malaya. Nobody casually takes Mary down a peg as easily as her, and I don’t find Malaya grating when she’s being an ass to one of DoA’s most deserving characters. More Malaya, please!
Yikes. At least Joyce was the kind of naive happy christian who focused on god loving people (and ignoring how terrible the things christianity asks you to do are), while Mary is mostly focused on smiting and damnation.
They’re taking a long time for me, too. Also, the Hiveworks banner that scrolls left and right, under the comic, loaded in as text instead of images. I think that had something to do with the wait-time.
I think I’d enjoy seeing a Patreon strip showing Mary in her mid-40s, just to find out what an unhappy, unfulfilled holier-than-thou itch-bay she had become.
That is, if her dorm mates don’t kill her first.
It’s been a while, but I thought the “wages of sin” thing was a way to explain why everyone dies? Like an “everyone sins and falls short of the glory of God” sort of deal.
Anyway, Mary’s an asshole, but I’m curious about what Jennifer’s going to find.
Generally interpreted as something like that. Or with some kind of “spiritual death” implication.
Likely in the early church when it was written the later concepts of Heaven and Hell weren’t fully developed and it was meant literally – the righteous will be given eternal life and the sinners destroyed come the day of Judgement.
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Careful Mary!
This is likely the setup for some kind of trap! A trap for YOU, most likely!
Better think fast!
*plays “Face First” by the Paranoyds on hacked muzak*
Carnage Bargain – great album title.
Don’t break your femur. There are specialists who handle that.
Looks like Jennifer is about to summon one.
The sign had it coming.
Just some teenagers, coping super well.
Both Jennifer and Ruth are taking out their frustrations on other people.
And doors.
And Mary.
I guess Mary is one of the few characters not to change between semesters.
She may have gotten worse.
Mary actively wants people to die. She’s acted on that. There’s unfortunately no coming back from that.
Yeah. I don’t think any Mary-redemption-arc could ever stick long-term. Hell, if we count the old continuity, it’s failed once already, and this Mary has done way worse things than that one ever did. If there ever was a chance, it has passed and been forgotten.
Not saying she’s as bad as Mary… but Joyce also once said she wished Amber had killed Ryan.
It’s different because Ryan is an unsympathetic buttwipe, of course.
Joyce wishing death on a serial predator who drugged and attempted to assaulted her, thereby traumatizing her is absolutely no where near Mary wanting someone to die just because they happen to be queer.
One is a common and(debatably) valid response to a personal trauma, the other one is the basis of a fucking hate crime.
Amber should, indeed, have kept stabbing. For Ryan to be merely a waste of space, he’d need to improve tremendously. He’s a pernicious little shit whose only contribution to the world is to make thigns worse for other people.
Imagine the good he could do for local worms if he were six feet under!
I wonder whatever happened to him, and whether we will hear any follow-up to Ryan’s case.
I believe the last we heard was that Ryan was hospitalized and there was a potential lawsuit against Amber over the stabbing. I assume he would have been released by now… would there have been enough time for any lawsuit to have been dismissed during the time skip? Or will we see Amber dragged into court (or arbitration)?
Ryan pulled a knife on two students right in front on the dorm entrance, which is usually a spot with security cameras. IMO it’s an easy self-defense case in a state like Indiana that has stand your ground laws, so I hope that any lawsuit is dead, both for Amber’s and the story’s sake. It would be exhausting if this comic spent weeks covering court proceedings and Ryan’s legal team attempting to spin him as some sort of victim.
I agree… it SHOULD be a slam-dunk case of “dismissed”. But, weird things do happen.
For example they could claim “excessive force”. (A B.S. claim, but they still might make it.) They may find that Amber had stabbed someone before, or that because her dad was evil, that she likewise was evil. Or they may just have a lot of money to spend on lawyers and thus can outspend Amber’s family (even if the lawsuits are meritless).
Like UT says, last we heard of Ryan he had been hospitalised. We don’t know if he has been released yet and, if so, he remains nearby or has been yanked home.
We haven’t heard anything further on the lawsuit, except that Joe’s dad is bankrolling Amber.
if i’ve notived one thing in this comic than it is that the bad characters dont change. Good Characters may become bad but bad characters like Mary or Malaya always stay bad.
Hank got a serious redemption arc after his appearance in Freshmen Family Weekend.
I don’t think Mary is getting one, but we have seen turnarounds before.
I never thought of Malaya as bad. Snarky, maybe. But never bad.
Being bad would mean getting invested, and Malaya would roll their eyes at getting invested.
I disagree. At the start of the comic Toedad and Blaine were both alive, but they managed to change.
Malaya is an obnoxious jerk, but I wouldn’t say she’s a villain or antagonist. It’s the villains that stay rather static, probably because Willis wants to avoid the Very Christian Thing of, “If you just ~forgive~ your enemies, they’ll always end up being good deep down!”
That’s because Mary is not allowed to be anything other than awful
Mary is completely allowed to be other than awful. She could reject death cult evangelicalism, and she could reject fascism, and she could work to oppose those systems and attempt to make amends with those she’s harmed.
She’s not going to do this, of course, because she thinks being Like This is cool and great, and everyone else deserves to suffer. She’s very committed to hee shitty ideology.
But she COULD reject it.
That means no one gets shot from a bell tower. Good times.
Not sure if Mary is deliberately getting the name wrong to be a dick, or genuinely doesn’t know.
Well, Jennifer told corrected Mary about her name like, seconds ago (yesterday’s strip), so I’d assume Mary’s just being an asshole. But maybe she has a condition where the only J-name she can remember is Jesus.
“Just being an asshole” is her default state.
Yesterday, it was merely “I don’t give a shit if it’s wrong.” Today, it’s definitely “I’m intentionally being wrong to spite you.”
considering the text is italicized, which is used for emphasis in world bubble dialogue, she is definitely doing it intentionally.
Is that really a hobby? I feel like her real hobby is just making people suffer to temporarily feel the whole she has in her heart.
It’s not, but Mary’s never been great with comebacks.
Because I have Japanese as a second language, this line had a special double entendre to me… The Japanese word for hobby (趣味 shumi), also means ‘kink’. So I actually heard her shout “Jesus is my kink!”
“Bartender! I need a drink!”
Huh, so that’s what RA stands for. I’ve been in college long enough I should know that, but I guess my education is so full of acronyms all ready that my mind just assumed I’d been told what it was and moved on.
Education if full of acronym alphabet soup!
Wondering if Jessica is a reference to something or if it’s just Mary being an asshole and not wanting to use Jennifer’s real name.
Either way, again, Mary, fuck off and die.
I think she’s pretending she doesn’t remember Jennifer’s name, y’know because she cares so little about Jennifer and what she’s doing. I swear if I didn’t know any better this borderline feels like a crush that Mary doesn’t understand or know what to do with.
Last time it seemed like Mary might have had a crush on a girl it turned out that she very much did not, I suspect it’s something similar here.
Knowing Mary I doubt it’s a crush too, but she’s way more emotionally invested in this than what you’d expect. It costs a lot of energy to hold grudges and most people fall back to indifference. Take Rachel for instance. She clearly has something against Ruth but she doesn’t spend her time plotting comeback scenarios and schemes.
Mary obsessively stalked Carla and tried to blackmail Ruth into letting her “have” her. I think she’s not actually just a bigot, she’s an actual hate criminal plotting something serious.
I mean she literally tried to force Ruth and Billie to kill themselves.
I don’t think Mary has actual plots. She has a lot of people she hates and wants to hurt, and when she saw an opportunity to cause some serious harm she took it, but she’s not particularly clever and she doesn’t have any actual power. I think her blackmail threat was as dangerous as she gets, and she’s not going to be in a position to do something like that again
In the DND campaign that I’m in, I made Jessica a very common male name for people in my character’s background culture. My character’s pre-exile best friend was a boy named Jessica, and there are hints that he’s going to become more relevant to our current story.
All this to say, I’ve gotten so used to associating “Jessica” with “he/him” that at first I thought Mary was implying something along those lines.
You play DND too?
Awesome!
Online or in-person?
In-person. We did it over video chat for a while during the pandemic, but we’ve gone back to in-person now.
I definitely prefer to play online between my vocal dysphoria and all else, but yeah that sounds really cool! Also that campaign sounds amazing!
I always feel weird when I think about the fact that I’ve played D&D pretty much exclusively online, since we started during the pandemic and my friends are all spread out around the world across four different time zones. I’d love to be able to regularly play in person someday…
probably the first or she would’ve used a ‘full name’ or so if it was referencing something else
Yes, Jennifer, this is definitely what you should be doing with your time and energy.
I’ve read enough Big Nate to know that Billie is probably setting up some kind of trap involving Ruth.
I just hope this is her aggressively summoning Ruth to deal with Mary, not her taking out her frustration on Ruth.
lol it would either go over well over very badly to tell another christian that the “Lord is my hobby”
But it accurately describes Mary’s relationship to religion.
Ah yes, kicking doors unprompted is perfectly healthy and reasonable behaviour.
I think she’s specifically going to Ruth to complain that Mary is harassing her
didn’t we just see ruth outside the room and down the hall though
wait nvm she went in and chatted with jason ignore me
Kicking the door seems like a less than ideal way to begin that conversation, but I don’t think Jennifer is in the best headspace, no matter how much she may claim otherwise.
I think Jennifer wants to know why Ruth hasn’t taken Mary’s femurs yet.
I feel like this strip is more just calling out Jennifer’s hypocrisy where she is ALSO terrible at letting things go and she also needs to get a hobby.
Her hobby HORSE is the Lord.
“The Lord” is her “hobby”?
I thought religious people, especially zealots like Mary, took “the Lord” way more serious than that.
When you’re a zealot, you don’t need to worry about such things.
She craves the power of damnation and fear.
Yeah, that seemed kinda weird to me too.
Mary’s been warned repeatedly about religiously harassing the residents and visitors of the hall. She’s on some kind of probation about it after going after Carla.
Yes, because Jennifer (Billie back then) told everyone on the hall that Mary had been extorting Ruth. Jennifer told Mary that if Mary messed with anyone on the hall again, everyone on the hall would tell the Residence Manager about Mary’s prior extortion of Ruth and harassment of Carla. This was right before Jennifer decked Mary.
I don’t condone Mary’s judgmental meanness, but it’s not surprising she has a grudge against Jennifer.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-7/01-glower-vacuum/off-limits/
That would explain a lot, yes.
Side note, I think Agatha looks SO pretty in that dress!
And that probation will amount to exactly jackshit, because there’s no greater crime in America than giving christians consequences for anything.
God forbid we make them face the repercussions of their actions! Why, that’s actually WORSE than whatever it is they did!
Anyway play Final Fantasy
Anyway play Final Fantasy
No. I played VII and VIII and they were both a waste of my time, I’m not going for “third time is the charm” when I can be playing Grim Dawn and imagine the mobs are Republicans.
8 is an amazing story. 7 can be quiet for a few minutes. 14 is where it’s at.
Wait, does Mary read Magical Love Gentlemen? Is this canon?
It’s another hidden side gag / reference to QC, like Dina’s Coffee of Doom T-shirt!
Isn’t the comic in QC explicitly BL? How did Mary end up with a t-shirt from a BL manga?
It makes sense when you remember Mary is a raging hypocrite.
She really didn’t want Carla to access her browsing history that time, maybe she’d been R34ing it up.
One way to get us to stop
the discourse is to get us all on the same side: anti-Mary
It was getting too much to stay calm even for her uh
I had forgotten how detestable Mary was.
It’d be super funny to me if this had happened when Jason was handcuffed to Ruth’s door and that was how Jennifer found out.
It feels like I’ve missed some comics or something, I’m not sure what this is about (apart from Mary being her usual pleasent self)
We’re getting close to “This Was Halloween” (not sure how close exactly? someone recently seemed to indicate “very close,” though). It’s possible that this is going to be a lead up to things revealed then.
It’s also possible that Mary just sucks.
Both sound about right
Mary literally tried to kill Billie.
I don’t even want to know what her opinion about the kidnapping is.
I don’t wanna know her opinions in general, tbh. Not likely to be very valuable.
When did that happen, actually? I only remembered as far back as the blackmail.
She cornered Billie and Ruth outside the dorm and came at them with a mysterious object in her hand, quoting Bible stuff. It was about 5-ish years ago, now.
“This Was Halloween” starts this Saturday, July 2nd.
https://twitter.com/damnyouwillis/status/1503516378250330113
Maybe Jennifer is frustrated that she’s filling in on things Ruth should be doing (checking in on Joyce, who’s clearly been super rough for several days)?
I’m curious as well tbh.
I think Jennifer is mostly upset about whatever caused her and Ruth to break up, causing Jennifer to be no longer at home or welcome on her former hall.
Not unwelcome, disgraced by Mary’s standards. She’s ‘“too cool to forget”.
Yeesh, Mary has absolutely lost any power she once held- to the power around her, and to the readers. I hope she’s supposed to be coming off this utterly lame lmao
Mary never had any power to begin witb she has always been lame fail tier villian more annoying then actually threatening.
Mary exists solely as a temptation for the other characters (the temptation being to beat the shit out of her). And occasionally a mirror to the kind of “Christendom” Joyce and Becky escaped from.
I feel like Mary being written this pathetic at this point is not a coincidence.
I bet a he slept with her boyfriend, and he ditched her for being a slut.
I bet she’s acutely aware it’s a taste of her own medicine.
I’ll bet ya 5 copies of Curse of Dragonfire that’s not what happened.
They obviously split and she is not doing well, and we know she’s got sex hang ups but was all over her boyfriend.
What’s your theory?
Ah; its a good thing Mary hasn’t changed at all for the better
Huh. I remember that Jennifer said she couldn’t lift her right leg as high as she used to (mentioned during the blocked garbage chute incident and what I recently took to be a result of the car accident).
Assuming she’s gone to physical therapy for it/exercised it more often, I wonder if this kick is the highest she can reach with the right one and if it’s better than it was.
I once knew two people who could throw a sidekick straight up. I doubt either of them can now, but both are now in their 40s. Head-high kicks shouldn’t be remarkable at that age and proven athletic ability (except for how they’re a really bad idea; aim for the knees, or the crotch, not the face).
I know one 40 people and one 50 people who can kick at head level. Ofc, they train.
In this case, I don’t know if the one still trains, or even if he’s still in the same area, but I know the other has since had three children, and I’m reasonably certain she can no longer drop into the splits, which was a prerequisite for her kicking straight up.
Haven’t done martial arts in since half a life time ago – I can still kick that high. It’s not the height of the toe but how close you can get to perpendicular to your body with usable force that’s difficult.
Marys really the perfect center point of ‘awful’ and ‘faith’ where she truly, truly thinks that not only are all these things Real Genuine Threats, but also that EVERYONE ELSE around her DEFINITELY, deep down, also believes. Anything contrary to that is Fools pretending to not know god is real and hates them for Spite.
“If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.”
Hate apparently functions the same as love to some people neurochemically speaking, which is why so many people are addicted to it.
I think Jennifer possibly FORGOT that Mary hates her for her bisexuality/same sex relationship with Ruth.
Mary is just completely off her radar.
Also, that’s school-shooter talk. Remember when Mary asked for Ruth to “give” Carla to her? I think she’s not nearly as harmless a villain as people think. She might end up genuinely dangerous to our cast.
Do you think there’s something else that have made Mary lose her cool? She got so angry yesterday and now…
I don’t think she’s that dangerous. At the height of her power she was totally incompetent and only got away with harassing Carla once before it all came crashing down. And frankly her blackmail was only effective to begin with because Ruth’s stressed and depressed mind misinterpreted her blackmail to be her absolute worst case scenario. Mary doesn’t pose much of a threat because if she did she’d be gone. I doubt any girl in the dorm would tolerate someone actively trying to harm them.
solid comeback there, Mary
Is “kram” really a hitting sound effect?
DOA is known for it’s rather funky onomatopoeia
“the wages of sin are death” is simultaneously the funniest thing i’ve ever heard and possibly something that might sound cool coming from anybody but mary!
Romans 6:23
Mary:” I am filled with Christ love!” *chucks Bible at her*
But seriously Mary there’s more to life than being a self-righteous busybody who only cares about what someone else is doing just to he judgemental…Unless she thinks that’s her God given role in life.
I’m praying for the day we get a slipshine of Mary. I’m the one who doesnt listen to “dont stick your dick in crazy” advice.
Gross!
She’s in there. Not in a stand-alone chapter, but you can see her boobies.
And Reagan.
Yeah, and Reagan’s boobies.
You know Mary, only God is supposed to judge in the end. Are you saying you know better than God? Because that sounds like the sin of Pride, Mary
And you don’t want to be a sinner, right?
She does the Lord on Sundays.
Actually it’s a picture of Ronald Reagan kneeling at the cross.
It’s a picture of Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan Kenobi, and no-one has bothered to tell her yet that it’s not a painting of Jesus.
And that is enough of Mary. Thank you very much.
I really want to know what happened between Ruth and Jennifer. Right know I am a little annoyed with Jennifer again considering Mary was in the same strip.
Mary really is just the raw id of American fundamentalism.
Ya know, that could easily be construed as a death threat. Mary’s such a dense fucking moron.
I feel like it’s too well-known as a cliché for anyone to seriously take it that way unless they were looking for an excuse (which, given Mary’s personality, someone easily might be).
Like you pointed out, she really does sound like a school shooter. I halfway expect her to print out a manifesto covered in anime faces.
…Ya know, it suddenly clicks into place that fascists tend to be very loudly into anime. Yeah yeah, it’s a common interest, but y’all know what I mean. Right-wing weeaboos are absolutely A Thing, and Mary sure does smell like one.
Also Christian Otaku.
The next time Mary meets her, she won’t call her by any name, just hum the Top Gear theme.
This sequence does strangely echo Ruth & Jennifer’s previous conversation, and Ruth’s desire to bully somebody. But I’m wondering if Jennifer is actually trying to find Ruth to tell her that Joyce is having a bit of a crisis…? That’d be kind of unexpected but nice
” My Hobby is the LORD!!”
Mary, Jesus just called, he said stop that shit, its weird
If Mary’s hobby is the Lord, it means that drawing for her is something really serious that involves her totally day after day and that she can’t sees a future where she is doing something different than drawing… I think there is hope. I can’t wait for Joyce to start going to the drawing class to see what kind of interactions will begin between her, Mary and Malaya. The three are totally different and Mary probably can’t stand both, but the importance that drawing has for her could push her to form a bond with them. It wouldn’t be the first time that people who usually can’t stand each other end up tolerating and collaborating on the things that matter most to them. By the way, that kick was totally unexpected and I hope in an explanation.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2012/comic/book-2/02-choosing-my-religion/avoid/
I was going through the old Mary strips and found this, which helps me understand why she’s okay with being so friggin’ mean. “If evil weren’t nice, nobody’d bother with it.”
My partner was raised nondenominational Christian, and I remember the feeling of disbelief when they told me one of the messages they received growing up was, “If you’re happy as a Christian, you must be doing something wrong [in the moral sense].” I’m still taken aback thinking about how grown adults thought it was right to teach my very favorite person in the whole world to associate happiness with condemnation.
I understand Mary’s role in the narrative and I don’t necessarily think she deserves any panel-time on “redemption,” but knowing that she could represent someone raised in a similar environment as my partner, one that taught her not to trust in the goodness of others… Her behavior is still inexcusable, but I feel a twinge of pity for her, too.
This is the strip of Mary’s that always sticks with me. It makes me wonder if there were originally plans to take Mary in a different direction to how she’s gone. I see her in that middle panel and she looks so burned out and dejected. It was like she was trying to help Joyce in her own way.
She basically thinks that she has all the right answers (she doesn’t, but she thinks she does) but no one is really listening to her, and she’s responded to that by becoming filled with hate. She’s a broken christian that’s responded to the problem by getting angry at it.
A lot of right wingers (not just Xtian extremists) justify being judgmental, mean-spirited assholes by holding firm to a belief that charity & kindness only ever comes with an ulterior motive.
The projection is real.
Something something a special level of Hell for those who bear false witness something, Mary, you piece of Christofascist garbage
Yeah, my hot take is that Mary no longer has a boyfriend. She was still insufferable, but she kept to herself.
I have this morbid idea that maybe Jennifer and Mary hooked up during the time skip. Don’t know how, don’t know why but I find the idea fascinating.
It could be savage, right. At least, someone should have fucked the tottally wrong person…
Saying the quiet part loud: the “Lord” is merely your hobby. Mary is just a creep using “GOD” to justify her own bigotry. Whoa, big surprise there.
Oh yeah, totally over it
everybody dies, you are not special. There was a guy like this in my hall my first year, I still cringe when I think about talking to him.
This strip needs more Malaya. Nobody casually takes Mary down a peg as easily as her, and I don’t find Malaya grating when she’s being an ass to one of DoA’s most deserving characters. More Malaya, please!
Peeking out of doors to spy on her floor mates so she can judge them is her hobby. That’s the door you should give a good kick to.
Why do people misuse religon to inflict pain on other people? are their lives so sad that they need to pick up a religon to bully people?
Yes. You already know that the answer is yes.
Yikes. At least Joyce was the kind of naive happy christian who focused on god loving people (and ignoring how terrible the things christianity asks you to do are), while Mary is mostly focused on smiting and damnation.
…Wait back up a second, “Magical Love Gentleman”?
Fictional anime from Questionable Content. Marigold’s a fan of it.
Is it just me, or are the comments taking a long time to load today?
They’re taking a long time for me, too. Also, the Hiveworks banner that scrolls left and right, under the comic, loaded in as text instead of images. I think that had something to do with the wait-time.
Yeah, it must’ve been a Hiveworks thing. Girls with Slingshots was slow to load this morning, too.
Seems fine now though.
I think I’d enjoy seeing a Patreon strip showing Mary in her mid-40s, just to find out what an unhappy, unfulfilled holier-than-thou itch-bay she had become.
That is, if her dorm mates don’t kill her first.
So… will we get Ruth opening the door while Clearly looking like she just had sex with her tea slurping boytoy?
aw, Jennifer’s enjoying being back in this mess. Look at her. That’s for sure 100% happiness.
Oh good, she stopped yelling. She must be happy again.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-4/01-the-only-dope-for-me-is-you/support/
It’s been a while, but I thought the “wages of sin” thing was a way to explain why everyone dies? Like an “everyone sins and falls short of the glory of God” sort of deal.
Anyway, Mary’s an asshole, but I’m curious about what Jennifer’s going to find.
Generally interpreted as something like that. Or with some kind of “spiritual death” implication.
Likely in the early church when it was written the later concepts of Heaven and Hell weren’t fully developed and it was meant literally – the righteous will be given eternal life and the sinners destroyed come the day of Judgement.
Funny she is still like this after not being a virgin.
Hiiiiiiiiii, could we please refrain from “I bet a dick would fix her” type of comments? Thank youuuuuuuu.
What’s that got to do with anything? Carol is in this comic.