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A cute webcomic about fanservice, video games, and... love. Mostly video games, though.
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In a world where magical girls and their battles are commonplace, loss has become all too common as well.
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Heather Vodihn is on a simple mission: find her father. However she becomes entangled with two strangers with mysterious powers being stalked by a group with bizarre demands. Heather must learn to trust her new traveling companions, even if she is untrustworthy herself.
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In a ruin-abound town cursed with bad luck, Kai and Kalla--a young boy and a fledgling dragonbird spirit--take on a quest in hopes the reward will solve all of their problems.
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In the troubled aftermath of a great war between Witches and her fellow Nuns, novice Sister Claire just wants a purpose.
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Welcome to the saga of the working-class adventurer! Enjoy the complete story with new annotations daily!
Augustine
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August and her ragtag group are just like everyone else, simply surviving in the treacherous Crater... When they stumble into what may be an artifact of the ancient past, their lives are thrown into a much bigger loop as they trifle with bounty hunters, monsters and gods.
Three Panel Soul
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It's a pretty rigid format but we keep the content loose, you know?
Blindsprings
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Champion pit fighter Kilo Monster was content to spend the rest of his days tending to his quiet garden alone... until he met a curious robot girl and her human family.
Saint for Rent
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Saint Halliday runs an inn for Time Travelers. Unfortunately, he seems to attract other supernatural "guests," too.
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What are the little things that move us? The simple joys that warm our bodies and hearts? The micro life of insects that influence our world more than we think? The tiny steps we make everyday to have a happier tomorrow?
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A living boy fights to save the City of the Dead.
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Kieran Bright is a college student home for the summer and roped into an online reunion with his old neighborhood friends in the most recent update of their favorite childhood MMORPG.
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Join Kieran and his friends as they are pulled into another reality that may or may not be real and are forced to confront their own identities, the nature of simulated universes and reality itself.
ARISE, YE SKELETON KING
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A troupe of wandering "adventurers" down to their last silver "acquire" a map only to find the real treasure was the fiend they dug up along the way.
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Our heroes must navigate a hazardous dating scene, overcome personal anxieties, and wrangle unruly seafood in order to find love, peace of mind, and a paycheck.
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Empowered
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Dumbing of Age
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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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Lysander's aimless and carefree life is turned upside down when he accidentally discovers that the cute boy next door, Simon, is a literal monster
Ozzie the Vampire
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After the events in Demon's Mirror, Gerda has accepted her role as a Demon Hunter, and Cezar has traveled back to the Demon City. Demons have existed alongside humans for millennia, so things begin to return to normal. But an impossibly powerful Relic has been taken by one of the Demon Masters, and a silent war enters its final stages.
Edison Rex
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The adventures of the world’s greatest villain who, after defeating his superheroic nemesis, decides that he’s the only one left to defend the world.
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Booster is not white by American standards of whiteness. As Benjamin Franklin famously said, “the Number of purely white People in the World is proportionably very small. All Africa is black or tawny. Asia chiefly tawny. America (exclusive of the new Comers) wholly so. And in Europe, the Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes, are generally of what we call a swarthy Complexion; as are the Germans also, the Saxons only excepted, who with the English, make the principal Body of White People on the Face of the Earth. I could wish their Numbers were increased.”
So if you ask a Black African, a Tawny Asian, or a Swarthy European, they’d say that Booster is white; but the real whites, the Anglo-Saxon Americans, know that Booster is, in fact, swarthy at best. But he might actually be black if he has even a single great-great-great-great-great-grandparent from Africa due to the one-drop rule. America!
note that even the Irish – the Irish – were not considered “white” in America for a very long time, quite amply demonstrating IMO that the label has little to do with color (and/or albedo).
Yeah, I get rather confused when some people I know of latinx descent claim they aren’t white and talk about how they get racially profiled, and I’m like “if I didn’t know your last name I never would have known you were descended from people from mexico/central america/south america” because some of them are paler than ME, I’m not super pale or anything, but nobody has ever mistaken me for anything other than white, even on some occasions where I was kinda tan due to walking everywhere in college, and I as far as I can tell these guys are more or less as dark as I am. Heck, I’ve known people who were of italian and greek descent that were WAY darker in complexion than one girl who was half-black but looked about as white as I am, and those people never complain about getting profiled the way some of these other people do.
I am utterly baffled by racism, not only in how people can still be racist in this day and age, but also in how so much of society reacts to it, people are far more interested in identifying as victims than they are in just living their lives as best they can. Like, yeah if racists actually are causing problems for you that’s a problem that needs to be addressed, but a lot of times I see them walk into a situation with the expectation that there will be conflict due to their heritage (not skin color, because as stated the specific individuals I’m talking about are NOT visibly distinguishable from white people) and low and behold a conflict arises. But naturally if I suggest that the difference in how I and they are treated might be in our respective attitudes (which, again, is based on observations of the individual people in question, not a generalized statement about people I don’t know) I’m victim blaming and/or defending racists.
To be fair, they could be “racially profiled” based on their last (or first) name, physical attributes other than skin colour, or being associated with other Latinx people whose ethnicity is more visible.
a lot of times I see them walk into a situation with the expectation that there will be conflict due to their heritage …and low and behold a conflict arises.
… You do realise people will eventually come to expect racism after they have experienced a lot of racism in similar situations throughout their lives?
There are attributes other than literal color that are characteristic of race. These variations are slight, and some people are much better at perceiving them than others. It’s possible that many people readily perceive your friends as latine even if you don’t.
I suppose that depends what you mean by white and what you mean by Irish. I am a white American of mostly Irish ancestry. My Irish ancestors came to the US in colonial times, right before the American Revolution. These Irish were predominantly Protestant and predominantly from Ulster (what is today Northern Ireland). Today, we in the US largely call these people Scots-Irish, but that label is a later invention. At the time, these people called themselves Irish, and they were unquestionably considered white. There were a lot of this group to immigrate to the Americas in the mid-18th century. They mostly became farmers in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and the Carolinas. When they later wave of Irish-Catholic immigrants hit, during the potato famine, those new immigrants largely settled in the big cities of New York and Boston, and as happened with many new immigrant groups, were stereotyped and discriminated against. The earlier group of Irish immigrants, many of whom had similar names to the older group, wanted to distinguish themselves and began to say, “Oh, we’re not those Irish. We’re Scots-Irish (or sometimes Presbyterian-Irish).” The newer group of Irish were unquestionably discriminated against. However, there’s not much evidence they weren’t considered “white”. They just weren’t the good whites. I mean, in physical appearance, they weren’t any different than the earlier Scots-Irish.
Straight up religious prejudice played a big role in it too. The early US was overwhelmingly Protestant who inherited anti-Catholic prejudice from the European religious conflicts and that get reinforced as it was the religion both of new strange immigrants and of Hispanics from the south and west.
I mean that’s also how they identified themselves in Ireland (Scots-Irish or just Scots even though they’ve been there for centuries). My grandparents generation still do. I’ve no idea what they first called themselves in America but given how careful the Anglo and Scots Irish were to distinguish themselves from the Catholic Irish I find it unlikely they just went by Irish. I’ve always heard Scots-Irish in America as an Appalachian thing indicating a mix of ancestry from both countries, there’s been some talking at cross purposes because of it because I thought they meant what you did at first.
From my understanding, “hate crime” did not refer to Walky’s suspicions but to Mike actually disguising himself as Booster. Not the case with Sal unless Amazi-girl had darker complexion than her (might need confirmation from someone more versed in the American racial code of ethics).
No, but some people like to pretend we do, the issue is those same people never agree on what the code actually IS. It’s actually pretty hilarious to watch the arguments happen if one ignores how sad it is that it’s happening in the world we live in.
The REAL code is just try not to be a dick and remember to treat people like people at all times. But that has nothing to do with race so obviously it has to be more complicated than that.
Yes, the trick is to make a lot of fuss about racial issues so as to distract from class issues. The desired result is to have poor whites fighting against poor blacks while the 0.01% laugh in their gated communities.
Wait are you literally saying all of antiracism is a ploy by the 0.01% to divide the working class???
Dude. No.
Does capitalism try to co-opt antiracism, and sometimes succeed? Sure. Do we need more offensive class struggle? Definitely. Are you connecting dots completely at random, unwittingly propagating batshit conspiracy theories that throw antiracism under the bus?? …Maybe not, could be you’re just a troll tbh
I don’t have the energy to deal with this guy and Psychie’s “racism only happens to you if you believe in it” bullshit, so thank you a BUNCH for shouldering this burden today.
You’re doing great and I am so grateful you got here first so I didn’t have to take on their tired old talking points.
I mean, someone’s not really wrong about the trick, but it’s not antiracism that’s the ploy, it’s racism. Owners use racism to divide the working classes and to get poor whites to back rich whites.
Yes, that. A lot of effort is spent on making sure people remain divided. That’s largely done by inciting racism. These ideologies are actively promoted, cf. the rise of the so-called “alt right”.
That is also my understanding. White people putting putting on makeup to look Black is a really bad thing to do both because of the history of minstrel entertainment in the US and other countries and because it’s just not cool to treat a race as a costume. (There’s similar histories for Asian, Native American, and Hispanic imitation, particularly in early Hollywood.). Booster is Hispanic and Mike is not, and while Mike was a jerk he wasn’t a racist.
Would that be a hate crime or just sorta frowned upon? I guess I never considered Booster not just being a tanned white person. Like if Mike was disguised as jacob or even walky, then maybe but I guess I’m curious now.
Yeah, white people darkening their skin for that kind of thing is pretty charged. I’ve got a lot of friends in cosplay, and unfortunately often, people have to be told to please not fake-bake to cosplay Katara, Korra, etc, like it’s a major no-no.
Geisha don’t whiten their skin to look white. But people do darken their skin to look other races. You could make an argument that geisha whitening their skin to accomplish some standard of beauty is colorist (I don’t know if it is, I have no idea why they do it), it isn’t racist. Geisha aren’t trying to look like white people. People are always saying skin color is not a costume, but people who face less difficulty because of their skin color don’t really see how harmful it is to color their skin darker just for a day or two to look “authentic”.
It was mostly an aesthetic thing. White color is a pretty sought after symbol of beauty or purity across the world. It wasn’t to imitate white people but to mimic the appearance of smooth porcelain and flawlessness as well as youth. I’m far from an expert on this though.
That’s just a form of colorism tbh. It’s the very idea that lighter/fairer skin is more desirable/beautiful/pure etc. It doesn’t necessarily have to do with whiteness or European imperialism (although that has played a MAJOR role in it), but a cultural disdain for darker skin tones.
To your point, though, I can’t speak to the art of Geisha and its motives, but the association of white with purity and beauty frequently manifests as colorism
I don’t really have an answer for it. Let me know when someone can logically explain racism or colorism origins. You’d have to explain why humans associate emotions and ideas with colors to begin with.
Humans associate colors differently depending on the culture. Whiter skin was valued as a beauty standard in Asia because it denoted a woman who spent less time in the sun (I.e. wealthy, not a field laborer), similarly, tanned skin became popular on white people for a time in the US because only the wealthy could afford vacations to sunny places, and so tanning beds became popular. Colorism is real and pervasive, and the association of white with purity/beauty varies depending on the culture. It’s been made more wide-spread by colonialism and racism though- as white people had stolen, plundered, and genocides all the wealth for themselves, and white skin again became a sign of wealth.
yup, they definitely went the clown-makeup route, not the cultural appropriation route.
And throwing my two cents into why the color white seems so highly regarded in so many places: I always assumed it was because it was so frickin’ hard to maintain anything’s whiteness. You need good cleaners or paints or bleaches, and you need them applied regularly. And that stuff’s bound to get expensive.
Not really comparable since oshiroi was a makeup technique around highlighting and enhancing visibility not an attempt at appearing or pretending to be Caucasian.
That wouldn’t be a hate crime. Many cultures have a history of using makeup or altering their skin tone for numerous cultural reasons. It depends entirely on the context and history of the practice.
The makeup Geishas were is based on centuries old court makeup that was meant for the face to be recognizable with very limited light as of course electricity was not yet invented and people saw the emperor, the shogun or whoever important on interiors for the most part.
It was a thing way before those persons even saw a white person.
That’s called tanning, and the purpose is not to present yourself as a member of a different ethnic group, but to show that you can afford to go somewhere with good sunlight and do nothing for a week.
“Hate crime” isn’t really the right term for it, since it’s not breaking any laws (unless we’re talking about enrolling in university under false pretenses or stealing someone’s identity but nvm) and it’s not (necessarily) fueled by malice towards a marginalized group. “Insensitive,” “appropriative,” “(potentially) harmful,” and “in poor taste” are all more accurate ways to describe it. However, I think the joke itself – as developed by the readers – is largely harmless, but I can’t speak for others and I’m not in a position to make an executive declaration on that beyond my own opinion
Yeah, it was just a joke since hate crimes typically involve bodily harm (think of that one university case where a girl was poisoning her black roommate). However, since it is a university it would be more than frowned down upon since it would violate the anti-discrimination policies that most if not all schools have, and “Mike” would almost surely be expelled.
Not necessarily. Those get the press, but a lot of hate-criming is more stuff that would be little more than petty vandalism if it wasn’t for the hate – leaving nooses, painting slogans or swastikas.
Ethan and Booster just kind of shooting the shit like this is interesting to me.
On the complexion topic, I’ll be honest, I really have no idea what ethnicity Booster is, but I will concur that I don’t think Mike would have done something racist for a lark. Not his brand of assholery.
I really really thought Mike’s death was supposed to be ambiguous so that he could return at some point. But, Willis sez on the cast page that Mike is dead so he must be dead. You can’t get more official than that.
I’ve been assuming that Mike’s death was written with enough wiggle room to walk it back if necessary but also that there is absolutely no intention of doing so
Literally every single character who knew about Mike, post-timeskip: “my roommate died, Ethan was by his side when it happened, we attended his funeral, he’s gone, pushing up daisies, pining for the fjords, he is an ex-Mike”
Certain commenters in denial: “he’s just hiding!”
(side note: my phone wanted to autocorrect “hiding” above to “Jennifer”, which I find hilarious)
Yeah this is a bafflingly bad take and my only defense for it is that I was very tired last night and must have forgotten the entire Halloween flashback
I mean, in his Twitter account didn’t mike make it pretty clear he’s hiding in like Walkys wardrobe or someplace like that? There’s still hope that he’s just within the walls of the dorm!
Ethan was canonically working out like All The Time. I guess he doesn’t have the energy to hit the gym the requisite 6 days a week it would take now to keep up that physique.
Ehhhhh watched some people over the pandemic, and whilst they fell slightly short of atrophying this fast, they were also probably more fit than Ethan at the start. So… It does feel at least within spitting distance of realistic
Also, if you break a limb they atrophy faster than this on that limb, so there’s that as an example too
It does look like Ethan has lost some of his muscle mass. Many people noticed when his updated look debuted. Running theory is he’s not eating a much from the depression. Probably not working out either if he did that with any regularity. It’s kind of sad honestly.
As I recall, there was talk about “emaciated Ethan” and Amber being accused/admitting that she found the new look rather hot (especially combined with all the dark broodiness), in a nod to both a certain old Shortpacked strip and to Robert Pattinson’s portrayal of (the) Batman.
oof neither is good but i have the opposite problem after my dog passed (although it’s a combination of that and not going on walks the same way [tho idk if i can deal with ppl/larger dogs enough to do any kinda dog walking app, fresh air aside])
My dad lived on only a little cup of orange juice for meals for days after his mom died, until we realized he was losing weight and made him eat. It was a mix of he forgot to eat, and he wasn’t hungry so he didn’t want to, and he was so sad all food tasted awful/eating was just a chore.
that’s awful, hopefully things are fine now/you can help out but yeah i imagine it’d be hard to get help, or potential greedy ‘doctors’ swooping in on top of funeral expenses or so (at the very least you could probably mash up vitamins/iron pills into a drink or so even if you can’t stomach a full meal [i can see the appeal of those protein/diet shakes ppl drink but other than subsisting of only those because of new allergies/restrictions i don’t think there’ d be enough nutrition in it])
i really enjoy this interaction! Nice to see Ethan having an interaction that isn’t super stressful (yet). so far i would rate Amber’s plan as Working Pretty Well, honestly
A look of remorse, Mr. Siegal? It will be interesting to see if Ethan continues to lash out at somebody who won’t immediately buckle. Kinda wish it had been with Joyce or Jacob or somebody else he has an established relationship with, but whatever.
I wonder if that remorseful look is a realization that Amber was likely putting Booster through that “replacement Mike” bullshit, too (say what you will about Booster, but it must be hella uncomfortable and frustrating to escape an unsafe situation only to find yourself repeatedly reduced to a replacement for someone else who died rather than another person). I also can’t help but wonder if the reaction is due to his present contempt for Amber (i.e. “heck, I’m acting like Amber and Amber sucks”) or just a moment of self-awareness (i.e. “all right, emo boy, that’s a bit much; reel it in”)
Speaking of Shortpacked!, I just checked it for the first time in months to look up Ken’s name (double lol), and lo and behold, there’s a new comic posted just yesterday!
OTOH it’s a chaotic shape. As a radiator it would induce a mess of delays and various beam-forming effects. The waveform at distance should be an ugly hash.
I was never any good at electromagnetic theory so I’m not sure whether the fairly low frequency of neural signals would make these factors less or more significant. The random features of the hat are rather small-scale, but if they’re close to harmonic, well, it would be a really interesting problem to analyze.
it’s easier to talk about some parts of it with a stranger though not sure how much of their past he’d share of his attraction (wonder how snarky Walky would’ve been back then if he knew their relationship, tho it ended up being more ‘friends with benefits’ than publicly dating)
For some reason when Ethan said that I imagined Kilmer’s Doc Holiday saying “My hypocrisy only goes so far.” and I don’t know why. At all. Mike was many many things but a hypocrite wasn’t one of them. Odd how the brain works.
I sincerely hope that Booster can become friends with Ethan and help him recover from losing Mike. Maybe be around Ethan will help Booster to understand to be more tactful with other people’s privacy. Maybe they will be able to help Amber too, some day.
Oh, but we can all suddenly remember the pronouns of any single-appearance character from half a panel seven years ago, since they probably confirmed to the binary.
I wish there was a way to signal to people (like through email) that someone had replied to their comment, but not, like, all the time. I think some people just post their comment and then don’t look back at replies they might get, like those correcting their pronoun usage.
Booster’s pronouns are evident in the comic, and I do think that should be enough, but I can understand that some people might forget or not understand what’s being said. And then if those people don’t see the corrections to their comment, they might keep doing it but still unintentionally.
That might be too much benefit of the doubt for some, though, and if Willis moved in the direction of removing such comments, I wouldn’t really mind.
Here's an entertaining cite at the bottom of the first page
Josh Gerstein@joshgerstein.bsky.social ⋅ 16h
JUST IN: Milwaukee Judge Hannah Dugan moves to dismiss federal criminal case against her for allegedly helping immigrant hide from ICE. Her lawyers say she's protected by official acts & judicial immunity and 10th Amendment. Doc: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
Where did Hollywood go so wrong? I thought movies were supposed to be an escape from reality, a chance to put your worries aside and not have to think about any underlying ideas or concepts. Well, not anymore.
theonion.com/you-can...
It's not a new argument, of course, but Chesterton dismissed it effectively in 1908.
"You will hear everlastingly... this argument that the rich man cannot be bribed. The fact is, of course, that the rich man is bribed; he has been bribed already. That is why he is a rich man."
Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com ⋅ 21h
Hawley dismisses Trump lining his pockets with his memecoin: "Listen, I think nobody believes that Donald Trump can be bought. I mean, what does Donald Trump need more money for?"
wilbur, savvy enough to know he's in a comic strip but still not a great actor, awkwardly lifts a muffin up into frame so that we, the audience, understand that he has a muffin right now, which is very important narratively, but he's not really selling it well as an organic, human action
confirming that the reason there's been no Galaxy Version female characters in Blokees until now is that they felt they needed to make Round Lady Thighs For Ladies
It's #webcomicday? We have a special day???
Well, my name is Pat McHoarney and I draw 69 Mouse-Ear Blvd, a multigenerational story about women who all have sexy legs and probably other features. There was a grandmother, but she wasn't hot and so she died off-panel.
Elizabeth Holmes is in prison for defrauding investors through her blood-testing company, Theranos. Her partner, Billy Evans, is now trying to raise money for a company that describes itself as “the future of diagnostics.” nyti.ms/3FbtZm9
Josh Gerstein @joshgerstein.bsky.social ⋅ 16h
Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com ⋅ 21h
Pavel
@spavel.bsky.social ⋅ 10d
The New York Times @nytimes.com ⋅ 5d
preternia @preternia.com ⋅ 3d
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MIKE was a hate crime
…
inal
idkmerryshitscram
He did it all for the nickles.
Gotta love those green woodpeckers
Mike was no common asshole. Dude had a brand to maintain, you don’t dilute quality assholery with plebeian racism like a common Twitter Troll.
Even evil has its standards.
(enjoy your trip through the rabbit hole)
TV Tropes, on the other hand, does not.
God Rest Ye Merry A$$#0l3men…
At this point Willis is intentionally teasing us by keeping us away from the Joyce/Joe/Dorathy fight spotlight.
Though I must admit that I don’t understand what Ethan means by complexion.
Aren’t/Weren’t both Mike and Booster white?
with the name Booster Sanchez, i’m assuming booster is of a latin american persuasion
I honestly hadn’t even thought about that.
Mostly because I had forgotten that Booster had a last name.
It was literally in the last strip.
I think that entire time my eyes just glazed over the first panel yesterday.
I really want his last name to be something like “Rhod”.
Well the last name Sanchez now implies some possible Spanish origin.
I assume he meant his Filipino Asian akin
Booster is not white by American standards of whiteness. As Benjamin Franklin famously said, “the Number of purely white People in the World is proportionably very small. All Africa is black or tawny. Asia chiefly tawny. America (exclusive of the new Comers) wholly so. And in Europe, the Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes, are generally of what we call a swarthy Complexion; as are the Germans also, the Saxons only excepted, who with the English, make the principal Body of White People on the Face of the Earth. I could wish their Numbers were increased.”
So if you ask a Black African, a Tawny Asian, or a Swarthy European, they’d say that Booster is white; but the real whites, the Anglo-Saxon Americans, know that Booster is, in fact, swarthy at best. But he might actually be black if he has even a single great-great-great-great-great-grandparent from Africa due to the one-drop rule. America!
note that even the Irish – the Irish – were not considered “white” in America for a very long time, quite amply demonstrating IMO that the label has little to do with color (and/or albedo).
Yeah, I get rather confused when some people I know of latinx descent claim they aren’t white and talk about how they get racially profiled, and I’m like “if I didn’t know your last name I never would have known you were descended from people from mexico/central america/south america” because some of them are paler than ME, I’m not super pale or anything, but nobody has ever mistaken me for anything other than white, even on some occasions where I was kinda tan due to walking everywhere in college, and I as far as I can tell these guys are more or less as dark as I am. Heck, I’ve known people who were of italian and greek descent that were WAY darker in complexion than one girl who was half-black but looked about as white as I am, and those people never complain about getting profiled the way some of these other people do.
I am utterly baffled by racism, not only in how people can still be racist in this day and age, but also in how so much of society reacts to it, people are far more interested in identifying as victims than they are in just living their lives as best they can. Like, yeah if racists actually are causing problems for you that’s a problem that needs to be addressed, but a lot of times I see them walk into a situation with the expectation that there will be conflict due to their heritage (not skin color, because as stated the specific individuals I’m talking about are NOT visibly distinguishable from white people) and low and behold a conflict arises. But naturally if I suggest that the difference in how I and they are treated might be in our respective attitudes (which, again, is based on observations of the individual people in question, not a generalized statement about people I don’t know) I’m victim blaming and/or defending racists.
To be fair, they could be “racially profiled” based on their last (or first) name, physical attributes other than skin colour, or being associated with other Latinx people whose ethnicity is more visible.
a lot of times I see them walk into a situation with the expectation that there will be conflict due to their heritage …and low and behold a conflict arises.
… You do realise people will eventually come to expect racism after they have experienced a lot of racism in similar situations throughout their lives?
“If you didn’t want people to be racist toward you, maybe you shouldn’t have been subjected to racism beforehand!”
Just a truly baffling take.
There are attributes other than literal color that are characteristic of race. These variations are slight, and some people are much better at perceiving them than others. It’s possible that many people readily perceive your friends as latine even if you don’t.
Witness every time in this comic someone says “but Sal and Walky have the same skin tone”.
I suppose that depends what you mean by white and what you mean by Irish. I am a white American of mostly Irish ancestry. My Irish ancestors came to the US in colonial times, right before the American Revolution. These Irish were predominantly Protestant and predominantly from Ulster (what is today Northern Ireland). Today, we in the US largely call these people Scots-Irish, but that label is a later invention. At the time, these people called themselves Irish, and they were unquestionably considered white. There were a lot of this group to immigrate to the Americas in the mid-18th century. They mostly became farmers in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and the Carolinas. When they later wave of Irish-Catholic immigrants hit, during the potato famine, those new immigrants largely settled in the big cities of New York and Boston, and as happened with many new immigrant groups, were stereotyped and discriminated against. The earlier group of Irish immigrants, many of whom had similar names to the older group, wanted to distinguish themselves and began to say, “Oh, we’re not those Irish. We’re Scots-Irish (or sometimes Presbyterian-Irish).” The newer group of Irish were unquestionably discriminated against. However, there’s not much evidence they weren’t considered “white”. They just weren’t the good whites. I mean, in physical appearance, they weren’t any different than the earlier Scots-Irish.
Straight up religious prejudice played a big role in it too. The early US was overwhelmingly Protestant who inherited anti-Catholic prejudice from the European religious conflicts and that get reinforced as it was the religion both of new strange immigrants and of Hispanics from the south and west.
I mean that’s also how they identified themselves in Ireland (Scots-Irish or just Scots even though they’ve been there for centuries). My grandparents generation still do. I’ve no idea what they first called themselves in America but given how careful the Anglo and Scots Irish were to distinguish themselves from the Catholic Irish I find it unlikely they just went by Irish. I’ve always heard Scots-Irish in America as an Appalachian thing indicating a mix of ancestry from both countries, there’s been some talking at cross purposes because of it because I thought they meant what you did at first.
Booster’s pronouns are THEY/THEM not HE/HIM <3 thanks.
Booster is probably slightly brown, unlike Mike who was white — that is to say, slightly brown.
Booster’s last name is Sanchez and combined with the skin tone and this comment, I’m taking it as confirmation Booster is not, in fact, white.
Wait….have all Booster is Mike in disguise comments been hate crimes?! Have all Sal is Amazi-girl comments also been hate crimes?!…Uh oh!
Regardless, the strip is hilarious if you can read it pretending Booster is Mike.
From my understanding, “hate crime” did not refer to Walky’s suspicions but to Mike actually disguising himself as Booster. Not the case with Sal unless Amazi-girl had darker complexion than her (might need confirmation from someone more versed in the American racial code of ethics).
We have a racial code of ethics?
No, but some people like to pretend we do, the issue is those same people never agree on what the code actually IS. It’s actually pretty hilarious to watch the arguments happen if one ignores how sad it is that it’s happening in the world we live in.
The REAL code is just try not to be a dick and remember to treat people like people at all times. But that has nothing to do with race so obviously it has to be more complicated than that.
remember to treat people like people at all times.
Omg, i can’t believe you found the solution to racism and no one is even listening to you /s
Yes, the trick is to make a lot of fuss about racial issues so as to distract from class issues. The desired result is to have poor whites fighting against poor blacks while the 0.01% laugh in their gated communities.
Wait are you literally saying all of antiracism is a ploy by the 0.01% to divide the working class???
Dude. No.
Does capitalism try to co-opt antiracism, and sometimes succeed? Sure. Do we need more offensive class struggle? Definitely. Are you connecting dots completely at random, unwittingly propagating batshit conspiracy theories that throw antiracism under the bus?? …Maybe not, could be you’re just a troll tbh
I don’t have the energy to deal with this guy and Psychie’s “racism only happens to you if you believe in it” bullshit, so thank you a BUNCH for shouldering this burden today.
You’re doing great and I am so grateful you got here first so I didn’t have to take on their tired old talking points.
Aww thank you. Take care <3
I mean, someone’s not really wrong about the trick, but it’s not antiracism that’s the ploy, it’s racism. Owners use racism to divide the working classes and to get poor whites to back rich whites.
Yes, that. A lot of effort is spent on making sure people remain divided. That’s largely done by inciting racism. These ideologies are actively promoted, cf. the rise of the so-called “alt right”.
There’s a lot of money involved in this.
Wouldn’t be Christmas without a completely clueless remark about inequality.
That is also my understanding. White people putting putting on makeup to look Black is a really bad thing to do both because of the history of minstrel entertainment in the US and other countries and because it’s just not cool to treat a race as a costume. (There’s similar histories for Asian, Native American, and Hispanic imitation, particularly in early Hollywood.). Booster is Hispanic and Mike is not, and while Mike was a jerk he wasn’t a racist.
Happy Holidays, Happy Saturnalia, Merry Christmas to you all!!!!
I’m totes available if you wanna chat BTW, keeping it simple this year:)
Would that be a hate crime or just sorta frowned upon? I guess I never considered Booster not just being a tanned white person. Like if Mike was disguised as jacob or even walky, then maybe but I guess I’m curious now.
Yeah, white people darkening their skin for that kind of thing is pretty charged. I’ve got a lot of friends in cosplay, and unfortunately often, people have to be told to please not fake-bake to cosplay Katara, Korra, etc, like it’s a major no-no.
That’s actually a thing people do?!?! WTF?!?!
So, geishas whitening their skin is a hate crime? Just how fucked up is this world?
Geisha don’t whiten their skin to look white. But people do darken their skin to look other races. You could make an argument that geisha whitening their skin to accomplish some standard of beauty is colorist (I don’t know if it is, I have no idea why they do it), it isn’t racist. Geisha aren’t trying to look like white people. People are always saying skin color is not a costume, but people who face less difficulty because of their skin color don’t really see how harmful it is to color their skin darker just for a day or two to look “authentic”.
It was mostly an aesthetic thing. White color is a pretty sought after symbol of beauty or purity across the world. It wasn’t to imitate white people but to mimic the appearance of smooth porcelain and flawlessness as well as youth. I’m far from an expert on this though.
That’s just a form of colorism tbh. It’s the very idea that lighter/fairer skin is more desirable/beautiful/pure etc. It doesn’t necessarily have to do with whiteness or European imperialism (although that has played a MAJOR role in it), but a cultural disdain for darker skin tones.
To your point, though, I can’t speak to the art of Geisha and its motives, but the association of white with purity and beauty frequently manifests as colorism
I don’t really have an answer for it. Let me know when someone can logically explain racism or colorism origins. You’d have to explain why humans associate emotions and ideas with colors to begin with.
Humans associate colors differently depending on the culture. Whiter skin was valued as a beauty standard in Asia because it denoted a woman who spent less time in the sun (I.e. wealthy, not a field laborer), similarly, tanned skin became popular on white people for a time in the US because only the wealthy could afford vacations to sunny places, and so tanning beds became popular. Colorism is real and pervasive, and the association of white with purity/beauty varies depending on the culture. It’s been made more wide-spread by colonialism and racism though- as white people had stolen, plundered, and genocides all the wealth for themselves, and white skin again became a sign of wealth.
I’d have to check, but don’t (didn’t) geisha literally go for white, like chalk (or the Joker), not Caucasian peachy-tan?
yup, they definitely went the clown-makeup route, not the cultural appropriation route.
And throwing my two cents into why the color white seems so highly regarded in so many places: I always assumed it was because it was so frickin’ hard to maintain anything’s whiteness. You need good cleaners or paints or bleaches, and you need them applied regularly. And that stuff’s bound to get expensive.
To be fair (pun intended), so did Europeans for a few centuries there, but especially the 18th, and for rather similar reasons.
And also fat. Don’t forget fat, by today’s standards, anyway.
Not really comparable since oshiroi was a makeup technique around highlighting and enhancing visibility not an attempt at appearing or pretending to be Caucasian.
That wouldn’t be a hate crime. Many cultures have a history of using makeup or altering their skin tone for numerous cultural reasons. It depends entirely on the context and history of the practice.
THANK YOU. and happy holidays!
Geishas aren’t trying to look like a white person. It’s not the same.
The makeup Geishas were is based on centuries old court makeup that was meant for the face to be recognizable with very limited light as of course electricity was not yet invented and people saw the emperor, the shogun or whoever important on interiors for the most part.
It was a thing way before those persons even saw a white person.
What about darkening your skin the *old fashioned* way? AKA, spend a week in the beach toasting yourself.
That’s called tanning, and the purpose is not to present yourself as a member of a different ethnic group, but to show that you can afford to go somewhere with good sunlight and do nothing for a week.
“Hate crime” isn’t really the right term for it, since it’s not breaking any laws (unless we’re talking about enrolling in university under false pretenses or stealing someone’s identity but nvm) and it’s not (necessarily) fueled by malice towards a marginalized group. “Insensitive,” “appropriative,” “(potentially) harmful,” and “in poor taste” are all more accurate ways to describe it. However, I think the joke itself – as developed by the readers – is largely harmless, but I can’t speak for others and I’m not in a position to make an executive declaration on that beyond my own opinion
Yeah, it was just a joke since hate crimes typically involve bodily harm (think of that one university case where a girl was poisoning her black roommate). However, since it is a university it would be more than frowned down upon since it would violate the anti-discrimination policies that most if not all schools have, and “Mike” would almost surely be expelled.
Not necessarily. Those get the press, but a lot of hate-criming is more stuff that would be little more than petty vandalism if it wasn’t for the hate – leaving nooses, painting slogans or swastikas.
Oh wait. I thought Booster was just tan. Turns out they aren’t white.
Ethan and Booster just kind of shooting the shit like this is interesting to me.
On the complexion topic, I’ll be honest, I really have no idea what ethnicity Booster is, but I will concur that I don’t think Mike would have done something racist for a lark. Not his brand of assholery.
Ohhh, I forgot we knew Booster’s last name, yeah, makes total sense.
I really really thought Mike’s death was supposed to be ambiguous so that he could return at some point. But, Willis sez on the cast page that Mike is dead so he must be dead. You can’t get more official than that.
Yeah, but I don’t think Walky has access to that page.
I’ve been assuming that Mike’s death was written with enough wiggle room to walk it back if necessary but also that there is absolutely no intention of doing so
On the Something Positive comic, you saw a glimpse of Mike’s funeral when it happened
Literally every single character who knew about Mike, post-timeskip: “my roommate died, Ethan was by his side when it happened, we attended his funeral, he’s gone, pushing up daisies, pining for the fjords, he is an ex-Mike”
Certain commenters in denial: “he’s just hiding!”
(side note: my phone wanted to autocorrect “hiding” above to “Jennifer”, which I find hilarious)
Your phone is in denial
Yeah this is a bafflingly bad take and my only defense for it is that I was very tired last night and must have forgotten the entire Halloween flashback
Honestly, that was the biggest thing that convinced me that Booster wasn’t Mike in disguise.
Just love Booster’s third panel face…
Yeah, that wasn’t typically Mike’s style, not for a very long time, since like early Shortpacked!
And god I hope that’s the death of Mike being Booster as a serious theory and not a joke.
I hope so too, but fear it won’t be. Some commenters are, IMO, in more denial than Walky.
Speaking of denial, you know what Booster doesn’t do in this strip?
(I’m kidding!)
I mean, in his Twitter account didn’t mike make it pretty clear he’s hiding in like Walkys wardrobe or someplace like that? There’s still hope that he’s just within the walls of the dorm!
Was anyone taking it seriously in the first place?
It seemed to me that some either did or were very much into the kayfabe.
I always assumed it was the later, because the former just seems too … Shortpacked! for this comic.
This comic had Amazi-girl and the League of Evil Dads.
Dunno, some of them seemed VERY sure in their theorizing. So on the chance they were, that is my hope.
I didn’t think people were taking it seriously. Willis might like to surprise us with shocking revelations but I doubt he would do anything like that.
My reasonable half is sure you’re right but my half who’s seen stubborn fandoms a lot and knows how loved Mike was I’m not 100% sure! XD
how did Ethan’s shoulders lose half their width? did depression compress him?
Ethan was canonically working out like All The Time. I guess he doesn’t have the energy to hit the gym the requisite 6 days a week it would take now to keep up that physique.
I don’t think we’d ever seen Ethan work out, you’re thinking of Jacob/Joe.
Still, muscles don’t atrophy **that** fast. I think this is more of a posture thing.
It’s been about 3 months since The Incident and if he hasn’t been eating much of anything his muscles would definitely disappear in that time.
They do if you have a severe eating disorder.
Ehhhhh watched some people over the pandemic, and whilst they fell slightly short of atrophying this fast, they were also probably more fit than Ethan at the start. So… It does feel at least within spitting distance of realistic
Also, if you break a limb they atrophy faster than this on that limb, so there’s that as an example too
I think he’s just slumped inwards?
It does look like Ethan has lost some of his muscle mass. Many people noticed when his updated look debuted. Running theory is he’s not eating a much from the depression. Probably not working out either if he did that with any regularity. It’s kind of sad honestly.
As I recall, there was talk about “emaciated Ethan” and Amber being accused/admitting that she found the new look rather hot (especially combined with all the dark broodiness), in a nod to both a certain old Shortpacked strip and to Robert Pattinson’s portrayal of (the) Batman.
I think it’s a combination of factors. The way you carry yourself makes all the difference.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtrXDq5OTn4
Here’s the one I go to, but yeah, same.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIaF0QKtY0c
(he was so damn good, he really made you believe it)
And that shot framing! *Pacha “just right” meme*
Huh. You’re right, that is weird.
It’s called depression-related weight loss. Very much a thing.
Ah. Yes that would explain it. If he’s ignoring food and starving as a result, that could burn up muscle and fat quickly.
oof neither is good but i have the opposite problem after my dog passed (although it’s a combination of that and not going on walks the same way [tho idk if i can deal with ppl/larger dogs enough to do any kinda dog walking app, fresh air aside])
My dad lived on only a little cup of orange juice for meals for days after his mom died, until we realized he was losing weight and made him eat. It was a mix of he forgot to eat, and he wasn’t hungry so he didn’t want to, and he was so sad all food tasted awful/eating was just a chore.
that’s awful, hopefully things are fine now/you can help out but yeah i imagine it’d be hard to get help, or potential greedy ‘doctors’ swooping in on top of funeral expenses or so (at the very least you could probably mash up vitamins/iron pills into a drink or so even if you can’t stomach a full meal [i can see the appeal of those protein/diet shakes ppl drink but other than subsisting of only those because of new allergies/restrictions i don’t think there’ d be enough nutrition in it])
Worse posture and I don’t think he’s eating well
i really enjoy this interaction! Nice to see Ethan having an interaction that isn’t super stressful (yet). so far i would rate Amber’s plan as Working Pretty Well, honestly
A look of remorse, Mr. Siegal? It will be interesting to see if Ethan continues to lash out at somebody who won’t immediately buckle. Kinda wish it had been with Joyce or Jacob or somebody else he has an established relationship with, but whatever.
I wonder if that remorseful look is a realization that Amber was likely putting Booster through that “replacement Mike” bullshit, too (say what you will about Booster, but it must be hella uncomfortable and frustrating to escape an unsafe situation only to find yourself repeatedly reduced to a replacement for someone else who died rather than another person). I also can’t help but wonder if the reaction is due to his present contempt for Amber (i.e. “heck, I’m acting like Amber and Amber sucks”) or just a moment of self-awareness (i.e. “all right, emo boy, that’s a bit much; reel it in”)
Is this like the first time we met Ken in Shortpacked! and I thought he was actually Ethan in disguise, for some dumb reason? lol
Speaking of Shortpacked!, I just checked it for the first time in months to look up Ken’s name (double lol), and lo and behold, there’s a new comic posted just yesterday!
I feel so seen right now. *Shines my tinfoil hat all up*
Funny part is, if the mind reading actually DOES work through electromagnetic means, a foil hat would only act like an antenna and make it worse!
How do you know that?
The short version is you want more of a foil Faraday cage instead of a solid construct that comes to a peak and possibly even a bit of a point.
Gotcha. Like the RFID blocking fabric stuff. If you were a mind reader, that would block thoughts out too. Sounds peaceful.
Listen, if *I* have to deal with this infernal internal monologue, I’m taking all of you down with me.
OTOH it’s a chaotic shape. As a radiator it would induce a mess of delays and various beam-forming effects. The waveform at distance should be an ugly hash.
I was never any good at electromagnetic theory so I’m not sure whether the fairly low frequency of neural signals would make these factors less or more significant. The random features of the hat are rather small-scale, but if they’re close to harmonic, well, it would be a really interesting problem to analyze.
Mike hiding behind the chairs here with spray-on tan-in-a-bottle, just cursing under his breath and retreating into the shadows.
I like the vibe of Ethan and Booster’s conversation so far.
Mike is literally gonna be in the final panel of the final strip, isn’t he?
All this does is further confirm the hypothesis that he’s Mike.
He’s gonna be like Bugs at the end of Duck Amuck.
I doubt any praise heaped on Mike, especially coming from those he considered his friends or considered him a friend.
Poking a little fun at the theorists in your comments in that last panel, Willis?
Booster may finally have a chance to properly ask what kind of person exactly Mike was, because it doesn’t look like anyone else wanted to say ùmuch
Merry Chrismahanukwanzakah Everybody!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0unZw4PWsdk
I thought you were going to link to the fake Modest Mouse / Tom Waitts crossover song.
I like how Ethan is getting a chance to talk about Mike. That could be good for his mourning
it’s easier to talk about some parts of it with a stranger though not sure how much of their past he’d share of his attraction (wonder how snarky Walky would’ve been back then if he knew their relationship, tho it ended up being more ‘friends with benefits’ than publicly dating)
Replacement Mike or Analysing Annoying Asshole, which one is better
I prefer the second because then we can nickname him “AAA”
*them
Now I’m curious what Booster’s ethnicity is as I seem to have missed it.
They have the surname Sanchez, so I guess Latinx.
well their last name is sanchez, so…
Most likely Latino given their last name
I’m in this comic and I don’t like it.
Complexion?
Wait what is their Ethnicity..??
Latino, their last name is Sanchez
Nice try Willis. Just because Booster isn’t Mike in disguise doesn’t mean Mike isn’t talking to him through an earpiece while in witness protection!
How sad to be remembered in death as an asshole. May that never happen to any of us.
He would have wanted it that way
Mike had no boundaries, ethan, but we shouldnt speak ill of the dead, so….
Mike: A Specific Kind of Asshole!
(A hilariously random strip for Xmas day!)
Mike knew how to punch up or sideways.
Racism was easy mode and not worth his time.
Your mom was easy mode and was worth a nickel.
But she still was a good time
Booster is growing on me.
And it’s nice to see Dark Ethan responding to someone with not-hostility, even if for a glancing moment.
In seriousness, I do feel really bad for him.
So Walky is probably conviced Mike was that kind of asshole.
For some reason when Ethan said that I imagined Kilmer’s Doc Holiday saying “My hypocrisy only goes so far.” and I don’t know why. At all. Mike was many many things but a hypocrite wasn’t one of them. Odd how the brain works.
I sincerely hope that Booster can become friends with Ethan and help him recover from losing Mike. Maybe be around Ethan will help Booster to understand to be more tactful with other people’s privacy. Maybe they will be able to help Amber too, some day.
There are probably people in the dorms who’d be thrilled if you didn’t analyse them ever again
I outright laughed out loud at the hate crime comment.
Oh gosh and golly, Booster is on panel. Time for me to forget what pronouns they use.
Taylor Tomlinson abputr messing up pronouns: “Be kind to yourself! You’re trying! You’re just a fucking moron!”
Literally every single time they’re on panel. It’s just tiring.
Oh, but we can all suddenly remember the pronouns of any single-appearance character from half a panel seven years ago, since they probably confirmed to the binary.
Sincerely wondering if we can start making a habit of reporting people.
I wish there was a way to signal to people (like through email) that someone had replied to their comment, but not, like, all the time. I think some people just post their comment and then don’t look back at replies they might get, like those correcting their pronoun usage.
Booster’s pronouns are evident in the comic, and I do think that should be enough, but I can understand that some people might forget or not understand what’s being said. And then if those people don’t see the corrections to their comment, they might keep doing it but still unintentionally.
That might be too much benefit of the doubt for some, though, and if Willis moved in the direction of removing such comments, I wouldn’t really mind.
Booster looks so adorable in Panel 1 just looking at their phone.
Emo Ethan ruuuuuuuules