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David M Willis! @damnyouwillis.bsky.social ⋅ 13h
The Emotion Engine @emotion-engine.bsky.social ⋅ 9d
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| TEAM FOSSILS
Rainbow Friends
Dr. Frizzle
brotha cease this opportunity! this is the BEST!
time to put yo mamma’s newfound “”respect”” to the test! >:D
Seize?
yeah that’s what im sayin, time to watch how Ethan be playin’ this
And dezest
i mean, if i were asher, might be sociopathic but i’d totally be petty and like “i’m kinda dealing with suicidal ideation by hooking up too, if we break up and i kill myself, we already have pics of us together on my social media so your son will def be known throughout the city as my last relationship before my death”
what the fuck? what would that accomplish?
Fucking with Naomi.
anon did lead with “might be sociopathic but…” after all.
Well luckily asher wouldn’t actually do that hopefully , as opposed to someone that would’ve been in an unstable state of mind like Ruth did in the early ruth/jen days
Have you never gone completely overboard and said something so out of pocket that your comment and the pocket were barely even aware of each other’s existence, all to fuck with somebody you could never see yourself getting along with?
*Ethan and Asher go at it*
“I was hoping you would at least have the same amount of shame as you would have fucking a GIRL in front of me”
“No.”
Oh, like she wouldn’t have been down to watch him do Joyce way back when
Guess she needs a heteronormative sickos meme, leaning against the window.
Dr. Heteronormative is a villain on Questionable Content.
https://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1526
“I dunno, my mom showed up unannounced, I’m feeling a little suicidal about that”
Pretty sure she basically told ethan to ‘fuck joyce’s brains out/get her pregnant asap’ as soon as they met during that parental visitation day
yeah but fuck Joyce’s brains out IN HER FACE?
Dumbing of Age Book 15: As of This Very Second, It’s Cool With You for Me to Have Sex With Men
Dumbing of Age Book 15: Your Hypothetical Is Detailed In A Way That I’m Finding Portentous
(Portentous is bolded, underlined, and, quite possibly, WordArt.)
Nice.
I hope it’s the shiny, chrome effect WordArt. That one’s the best.
No, it should be dripping blood Word Art, dripping from bent and welded round tubes.
I’d put it in a PT, Bridgeport-style balloon from Pogo.
I am sure “Your Hypothetical Is Detailed In A Way That I’m Finding Portentous” is related to “Suspiciously Specific Denial”.
Said in a Darth Vader voice:
“I find your lack of faith disturbing.”
“I find your detailed hypothetical portentious.”
I came here to make sure someone had made this joke
Theres so many better words than portentous
momma KNOW our brotha’s hypothesis be ominous
he already be playin’ an’ challenging her dominance
Lepidopterists.
Canticle.
Perspicaciousness.
Astrolabe.
Berma Shave?
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious?
Shibumi
Your Hypothetical Is Detailed In A Way That I’m Finding Astrolabe.
No, not feeling it.
In the closet, Asher is a certified babe.
Check that heavenly body with an astrolabe.
Or to be a bit meta: sesquipedalian.
Says you, I learned a word today.
prognosticatory?
I really love how 110% done with his mom’s shit Ethan is here.
I mean I’ve felt that way about Ethan in general since the time skip, but this conversation in particular brings me joy.
Same. I hate that it’s come at the cost of nihilism but he’s needed, for a long time, the courage to tell toxic people to go fuck themselves.
It would be incredibly funny if his mother’s shit was the push Ethan needed to start living again, just live a happy gay life out of Spite for his shitty mother.
I do hope that the barrenness of Ethan’s field of fucks prompts him to point out that he’s gay whether or not his mom allows it so….
“How hot is he?”
Opens closet door.
“Yes, OK, this time.”
Yep, that’s how homophobia works.
Counterpoint: we know that’s not how homophobia works, but then we also know homophobia _doesn’t work_ so there’s that.
The Homophobia knows what it is because it knows what it isn’t. By subtracting what it isn’t from all things, it can accurately determine what it is.
Twirls hair, pupils dilate.
“… Ok, but how gay is he?”
Naomi isn’t great but she is kind of hilarious in a toxic way.
I agree, at least in this strip. She brings a different flavor than our more standard villain parents.
I’m digging the truckload of genre savvy.
He don’t care and that’s okay
And then they start making out in front of her to test her conviction. And that’s chapter 1 of Amber’s latest fic!
So is this a ‘you can be gay because I don’t want you to end yourself”, thing? Or are there other factors that we don’t know yet?
Because one the one hand baby steps. Maybe she can learn and grow because she does deep down love him and all that.
But my pessimistic side says that she may be reacting to some kind of outside thing that we don’t know yet. And she won’t grow and her bigotry prevents her from actually loving him.
Naomi’s Conditional Love is Conditional.
Let’s not over look that “Until you’re feeling better, anyway.”
“Once you’re not depressed anymore, then we’ll go back to pushing you into heterosexuality again.”
If I were to give Naomi credit she doesn’t deserve the whole “for now” thing is a way of trying to maintain control she knows she doesn’t have over Ethan’s sexuality and that she’s already accepted it, but can’t admit it yet. She doesn’t want him to die and hopefully her conditional acceptance will lift his spirits and maybe there’s a vague hope there he will somehow become straight, but that’s assuming a lot. On face value though it doesn’t need to be more complicated than what she’s said. No ulterior motive or outside factor needed for a parent to not want their child flirting with clinical depression and suicide. Maybe she just read one of many reported sources that lgbt+ youth are more likely to harm or kill themselves.
But that would mean that she’s not irremediably evil. The comment section would never allow that.
Right? I know Naomi is a piece of shit, but I’ve actually found this exchange kind of heartwarming.
She’s STARTING to change, with baby steps. She realized that she’d much rather have a homosexual son who is happy and alive, then a heterosexual son who is dead.
Many parents would rather deny that until the day something awful happens, but she at least was aware enough of the consequences to decide “I’d rather accept a lifestyle I find repulsive then bury my baby.”
Yeah, the bar is a tripping hazard in Hell, but we’ve all got to start some where.
At the very least, Naomi’s behavior is an opening for change, even if she’s not actually moving for that opening right now. It’s an opportunity, whether she takes it or not.
She did say “until you’re feeling better” but i doubt she’d really realize ‘being himself’ would make him happier versus him being in an even worse state if asher breaks up with him, or somehow even dies as well (that would be pretty messed up as a queer curse, “somehow my partners keep dying” in a separate kinda story but i imagine that might not be well received given the ‘bury your gays’ tropes or so)
“You can be gay if it means you don’t kill yourself. We will discuss this further when I’m not worried you’re going to kill yourself” isn’t baby steps. It’s barely facing in the right direction.
Obviously the counter to this is to maintain the appearance of a self-destructive bent even if/when Ethan no longer actually feels that way.
The practical problem with manipulating others is that people are clever and can learn to use your manipulation to further their own ends.
The problem with maintaining a sustained appearance is that over time it becomes frozen in place and it can become difficult to ascertain which is the reality and which is the appearance, even by yourself.
Being a clever manipulative ape who is surrounded by other clever manipulative apes, some of whom are even more clever, is the curse of being human.
“Well,” he chuckles dryly, “I never said it was a hypothetical.” In that instance, Asher pops out of the closet. Before Naomi could say another word, the two were already off. Had Naomi been actually supportive, she’d cheer for her son. Instead, she cursed bitterly under her breathe.
Oof, minor spelling mistake.
Sadly, no edit function for us.
Ghostwriting for Amber?
Maaaaaaaaaaaybe?
I love how Ethan is giving her more pushback than he once could have, being more defiant. So much of his life right now isn’t healthy, but this is at least a good thing.
The thing about depression is that it frees you from a lot of your old concerns.
“Behold the field on which I grow my Fucks and see that it is Barren.”
Amen to that!
htck.github.io/bayeux/#!
knowyourmeme.com/memes/medieval-tapestry-edits/photos
openculture.com/2020/06/construct-your-own-bayeux-tapestry-with-this-free-online-app.html
Original image in question:
https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:850/1*ch7myGwIBQf0yddnhblDbg.jpeg
Ethan is handling this better than I thought he would. Now any hypocracy is going to be much clearer than expected.
my partner….
F-bombs and a sesquipedalian vocabulary are not necessarily mutually exclusive. I was a CPO in the US Navy—a submariner—before I went to college and earned my PhD in English, so I’m comfortable with both forms of communication. I also had a professor who was an excommunicated Jesuit priest. He understood a half-dozen dead languages and could curse in all of them.
“I know a certain Israeli who is very knowledgeable in the Gmara. From time to time he curses in the most exquisite (Talmudic) Aramaic. The Hebrew-speaking listeners turn literally green: they understand they’re being cursed, some get what is said, but none respond in kind!”
Engineering classes in colleges are taught by graduate students, mostly.
Professors have professional obligations regarding the dignity of the proceedings, but grad students do not.
… the typical undergraduate engineering class is simultaneously 70% advanced technical jargon and 40% profanity by volume. And yes, that means that a significant fraction of the technical jargon is technical jargon referencing or consisting of profanity.
Naomi is terrible, but at least she’s not, like, Blaine or Ross terrible. Or even Linda or Clint terrible. Maybe roughly Carol terrible? Then again, she didn’t sell Ethan’s childhood home for the purpose of giving the money to a horrid church (that we know of, anyway), so… no, not even Carol terrible.
I guess in the bucket of turd parents, she managed to float to the top.
Good one.
I have absolutely no idea how one rates terrible parents. Is there, like, some kind of checklist you go through and then add up the ticks? Do some things score more points than others? Does Naomi get points because she’s specifically said she doesn’t want the child she’s prejudiced against to commit suicide, and Linda hasn’t commented on that topic either way?
Wait, in my last sentence I used “get points” as a good thing because that’s how it’s usually used, even though the previous sentences were about “scoring” for every horrible parent thing.
Strike that, reverse it, carry on.
Well, the Davenport Terrible Parenting Inventory has positive and negative elements. It all figures into the scores.
I’d say Carol’s on the Linda tier. That house wasn’t just sold to finance a generic horrible church, but to help cover the money lost over Ross’s bail bond.
We’d thought this appearance was going to be an opportunity for Naomi to move into worse territory, making up for her lack of major plotlines so far, but I’d say she’s basically holding steady, maybe even improving a little.
I’d put Carol below Linda, personally. Carol’s not racist to her own children, but that’s because her children are white, and I’d fully expect her to treat her kids’ partners and children differently based on race. Meanwhile, Linda doesn’t support people who threaten or inflict physical harm on her children.
This is an interesting comparison, if we use what we know about each character. Linda’s shown to be vindictive to people who harm her kids (or even endanger them by implication), whereas Carol directly helped pay to free the guy who pointed a gun at her daughter with full intent to fire if she didn’t comply with his terroristic demands. Both of them have conditional love with limp excuses for it, but I guess at least Linda hasn’t directly contributed to her child being harmed.
I know Sal’s hand getting stabbed is directly related to Linda’s financial and emotional abuse and bigotry, which led to Sal doing something pretty drastic, which led to lots of shit, and then Linda put Sal in a shitty Tennessee school where she was out of sight and mind, of course. But that’s much more of a domino effect than Carol’s funding of a known militant zealot, with full knowledge he’d harm someone, resulting in him harming people even worse than his first offense. Less steps between the first and last domino, anyway.
It’s also interesting to me that both mom characters’ worst parental actions have a strong financial angle. Carol funding a known terrorist, Linda stealing money meant to help heal a disadvantaged person, they both suck and cause harm, both to their own child and others, just in different ways.
Can’t wait for Dina and Charlie to inexplicably be inside the closet with Asher when the door opens, leaving Naomi to think Ethan’s hosting some kind of orgy.
Ethan walks up to the door and Naomi braces herself for 12 Chippendales dudes to march out like a clown car.
Son, why do you have so many details prepared for this hypothetical? Damn teenagers and their increasingly specific sarcasm.
wait, has ethan finally run out of fucks to give? this could be spectacular
Ethan has only run out of metaphorical fucks to give.
And conveniently, Asher’s right there in the literal closet.
Now THERE’S a book title.
Dumbing of age book # 15: I could, without incident retrieve my partner right now from his hiding space in my closet two feet behind you?
Colored my drawings from yesterday.
To reiterate, SFW but egregious Butt’s Disease.
https://i.imgur.com/0cBfQJI.png
TBH not sure if this is really quite the body type Dave had in mind but we’ve barely really seen her so here ya go.
It makes your avatar funnier
may I share it on the FB fan page?
Go fer it
Btw, could I get a link to that? I didn’t even realize there was a fan FB page
She is literally saying it isn’t okay to be both gay and happy.
Careful Ethan, this permission clearly ISN’T retroactive.
Yeah, but what’s she going to say? “He was clearly here already.” “Yeah, but he was in the closet. I thought that’s where you wanted queer people to be.”
“Until you’re feeling better anyway.” then the compulsive heterosexuality is back on the menu!
I will give Naomi this she’s better the Becky’s dad. If Toedad had come to this Epiphany himself maybe he’d still alive and so many wouldn’t be traumatized.
Becky wasn’t suicidal, though. We don’t know how Toedad would have reacted to that. I mean, probably not like this, but we don’t know.
I’m looking forward to the meeting of Naomi and Asher
Yknow, the past couple strips have given her marriage DADT vibes
“Until you’re feeling better, anyway.”
*sighs* And her potential for change is lost.
Can’t lose what was never there. She’s just reterating what she said yesterday.
potential means it hasn’t happened yet. her not changing yet doesn’t mean she doesn’t have that potential.
I can’t believe Naomi is fucking dead.
I think Necrophilia is A Bridge Too Far even for Naomi.
Naomi is welcome to stay as a recurring villain. She maintains the bar for vileness the other antagonists have set, And she gets to have good lines.
I’m not one of those people who think Mary and the like are clownish caricatures. Because I am on the internet and looked around for a minute. But they are less interesting, fictional or not.
I don’t think I’m this context she counts as a villain or antagonist.
OH SHIT MY LEXICAL DAWGS, WE GOT A WILD ****PORTENTIOUS****
…no, we got a wild portentous.
See also: mischievous, which lots of people fantasize an extra i into.
The way I usually hear it, they just move the existing “i”: “mischevious”.
Oh…
She’s fully of the opinion that Ethan is close to ending things.
And she is willing to allow pretty much anything.
The fact that Ethan is just completely skating past that implication… explicit implication? Is also very worrying.
I think he’s just dealing with the least upsetting part of all this first, and taking the chance to mess with her a bit.
Why would Ethan push back against the one thing that’s made his mom even pretend to be in the sam large regional area of supportive or accepting? Naomi has actively de-incentivized arguing with her about how badly-off he is.
(Though of course I hope this strip is the opening to something like “while I do appreciate that you find my existence as a person slightly preferable to my existence as a corpse, I was already gay before you ‘allowed’ it, and I will continue to be gay after you stop doing so. So… thanks for visiting, Mom. Warn me next time. Asher, say goodbye to my mom.” “Bye, Mrs. Siegel.”)
inb4 she’s familiar with asher’s family/’reputation’. tho if she knew he was also involved with sal stabbed by amber that would make me think ethan’s /more/ suicidal if i was her lol
“OK, NOPE. You can be gay, but you can’t date the Mob.”
IDK if asher will officially join his ‘family’ but i’d think some ppl would back down to that like “You’re gonna tell a mobster he can’t be gay?”
But i wouldn’t be surprised if she wanted a more ‘tame’ looking ‘presentable/acceptable’ type of gay or so
Nothing wrong with being ‘boring’ and such but i can totally imagine ppl wanting their kid to be with like, some average joe/everyman “file clerk with a savings account since their teens who considers drinking a cocktail at the end of every month ‘exciting'” or some kinda stereotype
I do not like this woman, I do not thing she is a good role model to emulate, and nevertheless I shall be adding her panel 7 quote to the list of phrases I often repeat.
“I do not loke her said Sam Iam.
I like her less than green eggs and Ham.”
Would be so funny if Asher decided to be dramatic and leapt like a ballerina out of the closet wearing nothing but his underwear.
Ahhh, yesss, one of the best DoA book titles of all time. ALL time!
“Your Hypothetical Is Detailed In A Way That I’m Finding Portentous.”
She doesn’t hear it, Ethan. You’re gonna have to say it plainly.
Ethan, I love. Don’t ever change. I mean, keep getting better, but don’t ever lose that spark, m’man
“Until you’re feeling better.”
Oh well, queue sudden confrontation that can go a lot of ways, awkward being the most positive.
I can’t remember… are there any parents in DoA who AREN’T toxic?
Dina’s parents, Dorothy’s parents, Amber’s mom, and post-development Joyce’s Dad all seem pretty good.
This question is quite funny when asked with Dotty’s avatar XD Aside from hers… I dunno Mike’s were nice I think? And Amber’s mom is cool though kind of a doormat. We haven’t seen Ruth’s but they supported her so we can assume they are good. Joyce Dad is/is starting to be okay?
Do you mean Carla’s parents, Ruth’s parents are dead.
AH! Yeah, yeah Carla’s parents, somehow my brain mixed them up.
I guess it’s hard to be any kind of parent when you’re dead. Besides a dead parent, that is. Like, your parenting quality can’t be bad or good since you’re off the hook entirely.
Come to think of it, could we call a sperm/egg donor a bad/good parent if they’re completely uninvolved and the one(s) raising the kid never tried to involve them beyond the genes? It’s basically the same as being dead at that point, yeah?
We haven’t seen much of Sierra’s parents but what little we did see of them seemed good.
Sierra’s dad ordered Blaine’s execution. He has very indirect mob ties, in that he knows a guy who knows a guy, and the known guy introduced him to the other guy, at which point the dad guy paid the other guy $20 and a Lunchable to have his dirty cop buddy kill Blaine.
Blaine is definitely a guy who’d get a “Hell I’d kill you for half a sandwich and a klondike ice-cream bar.” reaction from someon.
isn’t sierra the one who goes barefoot all the time? either she has supportive parents or they don’t care/gave up on that. (although feels like there’d be a limit, it’s one thing to be comfortable in a dorm room and such but you’d think there’d be a hygiene/risk/injury issue about walking barefoot in public)
I went barefoot a lot in college. Still do sometimes, to a much lesser extent.
It’s just not that big a deal. Your soles toughen up. We evolved barefoot, after all.
I have a feeling Ethan’s dad is probably fine. Just gay and closeted.
Oh my Cheese I love Ethan!
Hooray, conditional tolerance! Should we read that as “Once you feel good I’ll go back to despising who you are” or “Once you feel good I expect you to like girls again”?
But ONLY till you are feeling better! Don’t go getting used to it!
Reality isn’t exactly soaking in; it’s more like very slow leakage
Okay the whole “until you’re feeling better” is gross but…
It strikes me as “I am absolutely terrible at admitting I’m wrong so I’m going to hold one thing in this”
Still shit but I’ve seen many a mother act like this before fully embracing it.
Also in shortpacked she got over it so I’m open to the idea that she will here too
I’ll be darned. I always thought that word was por-tent-yus. I just now noticed it’s por-tent-us. Wait, let me check. Yep, Webster agrees. How did I go so long? I must’ve never heard it pronounced.
Hot damn, she’s back! More nefarious and ne’er-do-wellian than ever. And possibly owning a time machine.
por-ten-chiss
Where’s the CH come from? There’s no I.
Nope. Por-ten-tus. Ask Mr. Webster. No alternate pronunciation given.
Ethan called Asher his partner. ♥
hypothetically
Portentously, even.
“until you are feeling better“ so….. she does not actually encourage him to get better….. would i rather be gay and depressed or straight-acting and …. actually, still depressed. Welll…..
If i were Asher in this situation, not sure if i’d want to come out of the literal closet after overhearing all this, or piss off to Narnia through the back of the closet.
Now I’m imagining Ethan opening the closet door and Aslan jumping out.
She’s bad, but still way better than Joyce’s mother.
let’s be real here, that’s the low fuckin’ bar to hurdle,
this momma still make ya queasy like milk all curdle
puttin up with that bongo ain’t easy
serves her right our brotha gonna get all sleazy
with Asher blowin’ each other like a storm all breezy
or my name ain’t NGPZ
You can be pretty emotionally insensitive and not good at connecting with your kids without hitting the bar set by “literally unwilling to protect your children from actual danger to their physical lives”, yes.
I’m not sure we should be setting the bar there, as unfortunately real as the second group somehow is, in defiance of what I would have considered basic logic (because if that’s how you feel, y’know, why even have kids).
Naomi is one erudite motherfucker
So true alt-text. Didn’t notice until I read you, but so true.