Panel 6: the face of someone who is desperately hoping that their beanie has secretly been replaced by a brain-eating alien parasite in the last five minutes and is ready to pass it the salt.
It depends on whether he knows that’s Dorothy or not. Apparently it’s not always obvious in-universe, even to people who see Dorothy regularly. Otherwise, it’s not totally inappropriate for a professor to use recent news items as a way to facilitate instruction and discussion on the current lecture topic.
Depending on what subject that class is, it’s quite appropriate to show topical items. He’s going on about “leadership”, so I’m guessing Introduction to Political Science (or Principles, or some such) class.
Enlarged like that (and with her currently wearing the same coat), it does seem more identifiable. At the same time, there are many people who were in my college classes that I’m sure I wouldn’t have recognized from an out-of-context picture showing less than half their face.
When I was at school (Year 9, I think), my Biology teacher had no idea who I was. I put my hand up to ask a question in class one day (sometime around April or May, I think), and she demanded to know who I was and why I was in her class. I explained I was one of her students, but she was adamant she’d never seen me before in her life and I’d just snuck into her class as a prank. Everyone else is just grinning like idiots at this point.
I walked calmly up to the front of the class, take the class register from her (which she tried to tell me was not for students to touch, FFS), and opened it in front of her. There was my name. There were a row of ticks showing I had been present in every. Single. Lesson. For the entire school year up to that point.
The class erupted into laughter, and she was utterly mortified.
Poor lady. I hadn’t wanted to embarrass her that badly, but I also didn’t want to get in trouble for being in the class I was meant to be in.
Moral of the story: Teachers can be completely oblivious to the identity of their students. This one didn’t know my face or name but had marked me down as present 3 times a week for nearly 9 months.
I had just been assuming he knew it was Dorothy, given that apparently everyone else (except Daisy) was able to recognize them. But you’re right, it’s possible he doesn’t realize that it’s her in the picture.
Way more than kind of. This is hideously (and hilariously) unprofessional of him. Basic respect for others say that you’d ask permission before doing this.
…ya know, Dorothy, good Leadership would also be calling him out on this. 😀
People are really shocked that the characters, who don’t look at Dorothy’s face literally every day, can’t recognize the 15% of her face visible in the picture, the rest being obscured by being smooshed into Joyce’s face.
I was arguing exactly this in the last storyline, but then it turned out that everyone who saw the photo recognized them, so I just assumed that the same was the case here.
1. Even if he doesn’t recognize that this is one of his students, he should at least be aware of the possibility (and the possibility that someone in class knows the girls in the photo, even if neither of them are)
2. I get that the joke is that he’s interpreting the kiss as an intentional political statement designed to get in the papers, but Dorothy and Joyce were not leading the protest in any way so this is stupid.
3. As far as we can tell. no one was really “leading” the protest and that was part of why it was so easily co-opted. To the extent that the kiss leading the papers was a result of anyone’s “leadership”, it was a FAILURE of protest leadership for doing a big stunt protest and not having any kind of media strategy at all, which is the kind of thing he should actually be talking about, why that happened and how to prevent it.
So he’s ignoring every potentially relevant aspect of the protest to gawk at hot teenage girls making out. That’s super fucking inappropriate, yeah, to the point that maybe an investigation would be warranted, and it makes me wonder if “O’Ryan” being so similar to “Ryan” is intentional or not.
These are all good points, and I particularly agree about number 3. It’s easy to blame Joyce & Dorothy for ruining the protest, but whoever was running the thing should really have had some kind of media strategy, especially given the probably sympathetic student paper.
On the point of Ryan and O’Ryan though, it seems that both characters date back to the Walkyverse where they didn’t really have any relationship, so I think it probably is just a coincidence.
To be fair to the organizers, they thought they were setting up a long term encampment, with no expectation of the board changing the rules and having the police attack on the first day.
Nor were they planning on a superhero going head to head with the cops, which is probably the most newsworthy event from the protest.
Honestly, maybe 3 is the point he’s making. The “leadership” of the protest was supposed to get images of the protesters on the front page, perhaps with some of the police violence that was occurring; instead, the images were dominated by two girls who just happened to kiss in front of a camera they didn’t even know was there. If that had been intentional on the part of the protest leaders, that would have been leadership.
“an intentional political statement”
Oh i disagree.
The kiss was just good luck. But Everything about Dorothy being there was what he described. Taking a stand( politically) planting feet in the ground, not ceding ground.
and Joyce followed and hasnt left.
I dont any of this is leadership.( its martyrdom )
he sounds like a giant Dbag. BUt He nailed her actions to a T.
I think Dorothy understands hes praising her things she actually did ( that were bad for multiple reasons; you described ) . Dorothy understands she acted impulsively out of character and has been rewarded for it.
Her getting undue political credit only makes sense to the narrative , ie criticism that she would get undue credit for something she took over.
“Keener, since you’re the last arrival, tell us what you think these two women are trying to say, what’s their symbolism, with their kissing action at the political protest about Bulmeria.”
goin by Carla’s perception, Dorothy and Joyce are practically indistinguishable from any white blonde women with glasses, so maybe this is lore accurate. lol
I had no clue who this guy was and for the briefest, dumbest of seconds on the second panel my brain thought Dorothy had an unhinged evil relative we hadn’t yet seen and he was here to start trouble. Completely forgot she went to class, dude was intense enough that I think I’d also rather skip than show up late lol.
I uh, am not entirely sure I like the last panel what he’s saying? The framing of the kiss at the protest is something I’ve hated from a meta perspective, but like… I guess he’s maybe an ally? Is that what this is? I feel like he was evil in the other universe maybe but I legit cannot remember him at all.
Either way, awkward af class and I’d definitely report my prof to someone if he blew up a pic of me making out with someone for the class to see. That feels like it breaks some sort of rule, it has to.
Depends on how he frames it. (I’m guessing he doesn’t recognize Dorothy in the photo.) How he ties in the two girls lip-locking to his “leadership” intro.
I suspect it makes a big difference on a scale of literally illegal to ehhh
1) private photo hacked from subject’s icloud
2) friends only photo from subject’s socials
3) public photo on subject’s socials
4) photo of subject on someone elses’s socials
5) photo taken publically but without permission by the professor
6) photo taken from the front page of the student newspaper without confirmation that the subjects consented to being on the front page of the newspaper
7) checking with the subjects if they consent to being used as teaching material…
Damn, I don’t think Bart O’Ryan has shown up a single time (outside of LAWsome) since… since It’s Walky! ended, has he? It’s been a surprisingly long gap for a character who was as prominent as he was.
Professor O’Ryan is the tag for the actual professor, whereas Bart is the tag for the character based on him in Walky’s comic, perhaps. This does not explain why Mike is tagged as Mike in the LAWsome comic. The reason for that is because your mom.
She didn’t even apologize. She asserted that she will not let it happen again. It can be taken as an apology but can also just be her asserting her future goals.
How did he even get a blown up picture? Like the one on the paper was supposedly too indistinct for Daisy to recognize them (Becky could but she knows them).
Either he knows the original source, or there’s an independent second picture with better clarity.
There are various AI-based image upscale software algorithms and packages. The results often look oddly smooth, but there they are.
See WikiP:Image scaling for examples.
I think Daisy only didn’t recognize them because until she found out it was them, she didn’t save space in her brain for what either of them looked like because she doesn’t care to store information in her head that isn’t lesbians
Wouldn’t the online version of the photo be in color? I mean, some photogs do use B&W, or use one of the grayscale modes on their camera, but color is kinda the default.
Or did Willis goof a little and use the grayscale version by mistake?
Holy Shit.
And some of y’all seemed to think that there wouldn’t be consequences outside of their friend group lol. Their kiss is gonna be plastered everywhere and if it makes it to the internet, its gonna be used as an example of MANY things both good and bad. It will be seen as an act of protest when it was really just a moment of pure adrenaline and passion, that just so happened to be in the middle of a protest being shut down.
I can see this causing A LOT of potential problems.
Let me say it because I’m sure they’re all exhausted:
“No consequences” complaints aren’t about NOTHING happening as a result of the kiss, they’re about not enough characters criticizing Joyce and Dorothy for cheating on their boyfriends.
Eh, I think the “NOTHING HAS HAPPENED” refrain is explicitly broader than that, for all that there have been occasional more specific complaints about how consequences from other characters while Joe and Walky continue to be unbothered* are potentially easier for Joyce and Dorothy to dismiss.
* Walky isn’t unbothered, he’s just currently internalizing this as his own fault. With Joe, who can say. But I don’t think this asterisk really undermines anyone’s emotional sense of injustice.
I doubt Walky is going to be upset at them on his own behalf regardless. As was somewhat cluelessly linked to like two months ago, when he thought Dorothy was about to tell him she’d slept with someone else, he said out loud, “oh great, and this is where I realize we never talked about whether or not we were exclusive,” so his gut reaction to what he thought he was hearing back then was to basically blame himself for not asking explicitly.
He had her on more of a pedestal at the time, but I think he’s only more self-loathing these days, so I bet it evens out.
People are going to have to be upset with Joyce/Dorothy on Walky’s behalf in order for any upsetedness to happen.
And I know: Walky’s not a real person, Willis writes them and is in control of all of this, but I think it’s a natural consequence of characterization long set in motion, rather than any conspiring on Willis’s part to spare Joyce and/or Dorothy from consequences.
(Also: I would love to see Walky break this pattern and value himself more.)
The photo will get a Wikipedia entry. A snopes clarification. And a Know Your Meme page. It will appear in both the democratic and republican platforms. DSA too.
Okay, using someone’s picture like this without permission HAS to be some kind of Illegal. Seriously, this is a MASSIVE breach of Dorothy and Joyce’s Privacy.
Didn’t that picture come from the front page of the school’s newspaper? If so, it’s public domain; not a privacy breach. If that’s not the paper’s pic, then, oh, yeah, that’s a privacy breach.
As noted, “public domain” is absolutely the wrong term to use. You might have been thinking of the concept of “fair use”.
(copied from WikiP:Fair use )
17 U.S.C. § 107
Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 17 U.S.C. § 106 and 17 U.S.C. § 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.
Which, interestingly, could be a copyright violation if Daisy knew about this and wanted to pursue it, though there’d be some argument over ‘fair use’. But yeah, photos can be taken (in the US) in public without the consent of the photographed, and there’s no breach of privacy, period.
This goes so far that there’s a paparazzi who, in addition to the usual scummy ‘gotcha’ photos, also likes to take really attractive pics of celebrities, then wait for the celeb to find the photo online and post it to their social media, whereupon he sues them for copyright infringement.
Showing it as an example in class is almost certainly covered by fair use. And I’m entirely too lazy to try to figure out exactly what the IDS’s relationship with IU is, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find that everything they publish is the intellectual property of the university anyway.
Having worked at a college town Kinko’s, I’d think that this would be fair use for course materials. I remember copying off reams of the damnedest stuff for classes.
And then there was the guy with the Higgledy Piggledy double dactyl poetry…
Schools also have clauses and agreements that stuff made/produced by the college can be taken and used for college use. So that image is not only covered by fair use in media, but also college bs.
My kid’s public school district refused to send me lesson plans when they were absent or include that in their IEP because any educational materials created by teachers while working for the dostrict become district property. We were trying to create a homebound education plan and “just look onnthe google classroom” wasn’t good enough for me to home school. So Prof O’Ryan is more than allowed to pull source material from the college paper for the course.
The right to privacy does include the right to not have your picture “published” without consent, it’s an ethical minefield that journalists have to navigate every day and that everyone ignores anyway.
It’s not an invasion of privacy when there’s no expectation of privacy – to whit, Joyce and Dorothy were in public surrounded by people and cops *and cameras taking pictures*.
And they knew this. It’s the whole reason they were there in the first place: To warn Jocelyne that there were photos of her being posted where Hank could see them.
If people still cared about him there’d be an eternally running ai generated bill O’Reilly podcast running soon. But they got new podcast bro propagandists now
okay full disclosure I just assumed bill o’reilly was dead and didn’t bother to fact check before writing that, but let me have this wonderful dream anyway
US is very weird about it, though — we got LGBTQ+ marriage fairly early in the grand scheme of things, both in terms of “the first state-level support of it was near the front of the global pack” and “the whole country was somewhere in the middle of the Western world, ahead of some parts of the EU”.
I rather think it just proves that the left/right dichotomy is a poor predictor of political behavior across political boundaries, given the number of ways it can shake out.
You know, I don’t really like approaching things from this direction.
I think it’s pretty reductive re: the whole rest of the world to say that American left-leaning politicians are still right-wing on a global Overton window (which countries are being counted? Which are being discounted?), and I think it’s actively unhelpful in terms of actually motivating young Americans to get more politically involved.
There are enough people already saying “don’t bother voting, both parties are basically the same”. We don’t need to give them more ammo by adding “and even the most left-leaning American political candidate is still right-wing if compared to some very specific other countries, never mind which ones exactly”.
That seems a bit unlikely to me. Though there are Marxist professors out there, they aren’t nearly as common as most people fearmongering about “leftist professors” want you to think.
I may be missing something, but is there an indication of him being liberal other than him seemingly being fine with two girls kissing? My initial interpretation was that he was the kind of person who doesn’t care one way or the other about social issues beyond how he can use them to argue his viewpoint (and probably still annoyed that that old “alpha wolf” myth was debunked).
Admittedly, I’m not particularly familiar with US liberal professors; I wouldn’t be surprised if other hints are clear to people who aren’t me. Besides, we’ve only one strip to base our ideas of him on (not counting Lawsome).
That was basically my reasoning. This comic is generally (and justifiably) inhospitable to Republicans. I just assumed the fact that he was a college professor (which statistically lean left), in the liberal arts (which statistically lean EXTREMELY left, by American standards), and wasn’t shouting a variety of in-universe slurs for Bulmerians, meant him being an American-style white liberal was a relatively safe bet. But, it turns out that premise may not track for this character, since he’s another multiversal import.
Dorothy: *drives herself to the very edge of burnout meticulously planning and trying to do everything ‘right’, the way she’s been taught things are supposed to work – is ignored and passed over*
Also Dorothy: *impulsively attempts to do everything ‘wrong’ to sabotage herself – receives attention and acclaim*
Instead, I am intrigued by the framing. 3 “class” panels, with defining surrounding line and 3 connected reaction panels, undefined. What are these art choices saying to our subconscious?
Is the the only ginger + green hair combo we’ve seen? Becky doesn’t have green eyes and Ruth is a redhead but her shade isn’t what I’d associate with “ginger”.
also Penny, who is more “unethical” than her “actively, murderously evil” IW! original/counterpart, but still distressingly hot (if you’re into green-eyed gingers with British accents, and why wouldn’t you be?)
Most correct? Sure, SEMME needed oversight, but “we need to watch the watchers” didn’t have to go to “we need to papparazise and slut-shame the watchers and work with Britjas to illegally uncover internal affairs to shut them down in a vendetta sparked by the appeal of fame and money.”
He made some good points and SEMME was dysfunctional as all heck, but he almost doomed the world because he didn’t for one instant stop to think that SEMME was doing something important. And he started as the representative of human victims in the conflict that outed the aliens! He knew they were out there! “Someone is going to take care of it, but I don’t care about the consequences for my actions” mentality.
His position was that combating aliens was something best left to the military rather than a relatively loosely-organized gaggle of headcases, which is a fairly unimpeachable position to hold, even if the narrative ultimately proved him wrong.
That’s the ultimate advantage of fiction over reality. The author determines the narrative, unlike reality where it’s just one thing after another and everyone is putting their oar in just by being alive.
Oh wow I hate this guy so much already. I wasn’t one of the people who hates Dorothy & Joyce now, but even if I was I would be completely distracted by how much more urgently this guy needs to be hated. Was that your clever plan, Willis? You probably could’ve just brought back Rachel for that.
I’m claiming that “never apologize” and “leaders take ground, they don’t cede it” are fucking terrible advice for people in positions of leadership. Good leadership requires being able to balance, manage, and support your people so that you can move in the right direction together, and if that direction turns out to be stupid then goddamnit you’d better be able to explain why you were wrong and get everyone on board with turning the ship. That means knowing where to hold ground and where to give it and how to prioritize and weigh tradeoffs, all while getting and maintaining people’s trust. Never ever back down is advice that is going to produce piss poor leadership.
I am not commenting on the photo. The photo could be interpreted as either leadership or just like people being there depending on viewer interpretation.
My headcanon, right now: it was the wrong photo, as Taffy said, but because admitting he made a mistake would undermine his philosophy, he’s now mentally rewriting the entire lesson in order to make it seem like he’d intended to show this one.
For everyone wondering how this presumably-intelligent guy thinks that the two white women macking it at the protest are inherently the picture of leadership:
He likely has not considered, for even one second, that Dorothy Keener, likely a star student of his freshman PoliSci class, who has likely professed in this very class that she wants to have a future in politics, would have just impulsively been at the protest (which she doesn’t understand or care about) for non-political reasons, and also impulsively kiss a girl at that protest, during an evacuation, for those same non-political reasons.
He’s a white liberal political scientist, who does not immediately recognize that two white women centering the image of the protest on themselves, might be a bad thing; and, he fully attributes reason to Dorothy’s actions, reading it as a deliberate political stunt; because, from his perspective, he would imagine Dorothy as being politically active and engaged, because that’s the image she would deliberately project for herself, when she’s trying to impress a PoliSci professor.
There’s no logical reason for him to assume that what Dorothy did was anything but a reasoned and intentional act of advocacy, even though we all know otherwise. He doesn’t yet know that she doesn’t know her head from her ass on the Bulmerian conflict, and he isn’t privy to her on-going mental breakdown.
In short, what Dorothy did was actually so short-sighted, dumb, and selfish, that he can’t reconcile her actions as they are; therefore, he assumes she must have known exactly what she was doing, because that’s honestly a much more reasonable explanation of the events, then what actually happened.
There’s also possibility that he’s the opposite of a liberal and what he’s celebrating is the ‘leadership’ of turning an anti-genocide protest into something all about white girls kissing. Like ‘way to distract the mob and take hold of the narrative, Keener’ kind of thing.
Given what his character was like in the Walkyverse, it could legitimately be “you made yourself the face of a movement and now that people actually know who you are, you can leverage that to accomplish bigger things and attach yourself to bigger movements.”
This seems like a much saner interpretation. Congratulations Dorothy, it’s time to go study up on Bulmeria and figure out how to leverage this to platform the people closer to the issue, or at least their priorities. Or you can hide. But “Dorothy tries to figure out how to use notoriety to get attention onto people who are actually close to the issues” seems like an interesting arc for an aspiring political actor.
She impulsively wanted to become a political agitator; now, it’s time to Keener down, and start obsessing over politically agitating in the most objectively correct fashion!
By the fact that in text we’ve primarily seen Muslim characters care the most about it and meta textually it’s a parallel to israel/Palestine, the implication is that the heretofore unnamed people being genocided are Muslim. It’s possible it’s an internal conflict, maybe a specific ethnic group within bulmeria. Buuut we don’t know, bc the comic won’t tell us anything about the victims here
This guy is so ridiculous, Dorothy didn’t even actually apologize for being late. She just promised not to be late again. She didn’t even give him an excuse for why she was late!
I’m on the edge of my seat wanting to know in what world is two white girls kissing during a demonstration to protest genocide “leadership”, I REALLY want to hear this guy’s logic
I wouldn’t be surprised if he actually is going to forward the argument that the actual content doesn’t matter of any event and the important part is forwarding your own profile.
My guess is that he’s lacking or ignoring that perspective and that his take is “you used the situation to your advantage” or “you did something of your own accord that made the protest more famous than it would otherwise have been” which, in a nuanced way, might make sense if the anti-genocide protests are going to just be broken and forgotten. Something momentous may give more momentum… that’s certainly a theory one might push.
So, is O’ Ryan a tad better than his Walyverse version? Mind you, Walkyverse O’ Ryan never actually said anything bigoted, but it could be only because he mostly showed up in an era where being “anti-woke” wasn’t as openly “accepted”…
This guy better have one HELL of a second sentence in his lesson plan. We’ve got enough trouble with orange faced idiots thinking headline generation is any sort of leadership.
Two things: First, I didn’t expect Bart O’Ryan to become a character in DoA. Second, I’m really wondering what makes him think that Dorothy and Joyce kissing at an anti-genocide protest, a protest that wasn’t supposed to be about them, qualifies as leadership.
We never found out, because the point of view has almost entirely been on Joyce and Dorothy, but apparantly shortly after the kiss and after Amazi-Girl led the protesters away, the rest of the protesters began having wild same-day makeout sessions.
That’s why Asma looked so bummed when she got back – she missed it. That’s also why Raidah’s so pissed and why we haven’t seen Leslie or Robin.
Back in the Walkyverse, he was the legal representative for a class action of alien victims and generally opposed to SEMME, the alien-fighting gang that included most of the younger Dumbiverse cast.
He appeared in LAWsome, too, which made its way into the Dumbiverse: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2021/comic/book-11/04-hompk/lawsome-2/
Oh, and in his vendetta against the scary government agency of superheroes saving the earth, he worked with extradimensional British supervillains with ninjas at their command to obtain classified information. So. Untrustworthy.
The Britjas were aslo responsible for the Walkyverse deaths of many DoA characters (including Dina), so not the sorts a trustworthy type would associate with.
Oh hey what I just reread all Roomies! and It’s walky! and It’s Pregnancy! and I saw this same guy be a Walter Peck that makes you even angrier I’m not ready to have different feelings about him depending on what he’ll say next…
Which, is not looking too good tbh. But let’s see. After all, Mike tossed zero cadavers in Dumbing of Age. And Rachel’s not an alien, as far as we know.
Comparing him to Walter Peck seems apt, since Peck was ALSO kind of an extremely strange choice for a villain.
Ghostbusters is very funny, but thinking about it for even like half a second, a representative of the EPA asked very politely if he could see our heroes’ unlicensed nuclear reactor, and he was mocked, humiliated, and told to come back with a warrant.
So he came back with a warrant.
Darn those environmental protection agency inspectors, trying to…………. make sure a nuclear reactor in the heart of the biggest city in the country is safe????? We all know regulations just get in the way of heroic businessmen.
(Talking here about this guy being a villain in the Walkyverse despite “wanting superheroes to answer to someone” being an extremely reasonable viewpoint to have, basically.
I imagine he was inspired by stuff like Civil War (the comic book version) and other similar storylines. It’s always kind of frustrating when “maybe superheroes shouldn’t always be engaging in cowboy politics” turns directly into “the mutant registration act”. IRL, there would probably be some sort of middle ground between those two options.)
If the next strip is him explaining “This picture has been reprinted in 150 papers in the US and 30 outside of it and has be seen by an estimated 15 million people” or some such I am going to be eating popcorn for Dorothy’s expression.
There are way too many leadership coaches, gurus, and authors selling the snake oil that attitude equals leadership and as long as you’re sufficiently bold, decisive, and confident and override any objections you can be an inspirational leader.
Such as, say, ignoring absolutely everything anyone has to say about submarine safety because you’re a ~*Visionary*~
“You lead the charge!”
And sometimes the charge leads off a cliff
That tragedy also led to me learning just how much James Cameron is involved in deep ocean exploration.
Like, yes, to a certain degree being confident is important in being a leader but it’s also important to have some bare basic minimum understanding of what the hell it is your organization actually does as well as having the ability to listen and course-correct when people are telling you “The thing you want is not only impossible, even if it were possible it’d be a really bad idea!”
I feel so bad for them that attendance to lectured is mandatory bc it wasn’t at my school. If this was me I’d straight up turn on my heel and leave, fuck that
Redheads tend to skip the ‘growing gray’ phase and instead immediately go from red to white hair. In this guy’s case, I can only imagine that pure spite is keeping the color on the top of his head, but it cannot save his beard, temples, and eyebrows.
Wait they do? I immediately imagined him in a military uniform giving some kind of drill sergeant speech XD He is giving me the vibes of that one teacher from Starship Troopers.
Strictly speaking he wasn’t Walkyverse Bill O’Reully, because Bill O’Reilly also existed and had Bart on his show, and gave him an extremely hostile interview where Bill accused him of being a communist. Bart’s actual politics were kind of nebulously-defined outside of being an advocate for SEMME to either receive significantly more oversight or be shut down, so he could be a liberal or a conservative here, both are reasonable paths for the character to take. The knocks against him being liberal are mostly that he was slut-shamey and kind of ableist, but those could also be written off as artifacts of the time in which he was originally written.
Thank you comment section. I was wondering what the heck was going on. That said, I know a lot of readers are waiting for Jorothy (sp?) to face the consequences of their actions, but I was reeeallllyy hoping we could just….move….on. (At least for a bit.)
Even if Professor O’Ryan doesn’t recognize that one of the girls in the photo is one of his students, this is still wildly fucking inappropriate of a thing for a college professor to be doing, isn’t it?
You think its inappropriate for him to use recent events on campus as part of his lessons? Why, because his politics students shouldn’t be aware of things like protests?
I think it’s more the ongoing problem consent. Hopefully without rekindling the protest photo debate it is still somewhat morally objectionable to exploitatively use photos of others without their consent, especially if they may not agree with what you’re using them for, more so if you know requesting consent is realistically possible.
That genie is out of the bottle, and this could only be inappropriate if he does recognise one of his students in the photo. Taking somehting form the healdines to use in class happens all the time, and there’s no expectation of trying to contact people in any front page to ask if you can use it for that, or anything else you’d do with a newspaper article.
And the photo isn’t remotely the biggest issue about the protest if you’re talking about things that wronged Dorothy and Joyce, but there’s no recurring complaints about the tear gas or the university retroactively changing the rules on the protestors.
I don’t think it matters if he recognizes that it’s one of his students it should be very easy to conclude that they are students of IU just from the context. Even if we sweep aside the ethics of the photo and its free use from being on the front page, ect, you’re circulating a photo that will very likely put students of IU at risk of expulsion or legal consequences. Just because the news is reporting something doesn’t excuse anyone’s personally responsibility.
Back it high school I was nominated for a society that specifically said it wasn’t just for super-smart people*, they had to have I think it was four different qualities, one of which was “leadership.” And I noted that there was NFW I qualified as I never lead anyone into anything ever, and wouldn’t be able to even if I wanted to and tried to.
They came back with some nonsensical bafflegab about how you can be a leader even if no one followed you. Sheesh.
(And if I was that kind of a leader, I would have refused the nomination. I actually accepted it as an excuse to hang with some of the other super-smart kids in school. And of course it turned out to be another of those things that seem like a very big deal in high school that never ever comes up again in any context once you graduate.)
Throw a dozen randos into a challenging situation. After some milling around, you say, “Look, they’re not coming after us. We need to find our own way out of this.” … “Why is everyone looking at me? I’m not your leader.” … “OK, maybe I am the leader.”
Bit of a halo effect goin on there. I mean leadership is good (well not that asinine definition but he thinks so), and yuri is good, but that doesn’t mean they’re the same! Yuri also isn’t the same thing as chocolate, or groundnut soup, or suffrage, or healthcare, or ace representation, which are all good things.
Actually I wonder if next page tthis guy will make yuri yucky….
If you ever apologize, then you are admitting you are in the wrong. It is giving the other person a win. Never apologize. Never be on defense. Always attack.
This is the mindset of this type of person. (and, yes, Trump, Bannon, and pretty much all of the ‘MAGA’ crowd)
“See this woman on the right? She knew what she wanted, and she didn’t let anything stand in the way of getting it. Not tear gas or riot police or quaint notions of inappropriate PDA. She just went in there and took what she wanted. That’s leadership!
“This woman on the left, on the other hand, just stood there with a gormless expression on her face while the protest was being raided by police. Don’t be her. Be the woman on the right!”
:Dorothy pulls her hat all the way down over her feet, compresses herself into a singularity, and winks out of existence:
Is this square jawed-alpha teacher an alien? Those beady little green eyes…
And yeah, anyone saying a leader can’t ever apologize or ever cede ground… that’s not a leader I want to learn from. Sounds like it’s from the narcissist school of leadership.
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ooooooooooooooooh here we goooooooo 9-9
Leading down the primrose path is still leadership.
This is not leadership. This is…**checks notes**…a kiss.
**Dotty slips quietly back out of class and decides to change some of her courses**
First Angie Lastname now Bart O’ Ryan? Goddamn, who else is gonna show up in this chapter. Fucking Alan?
Everyone but Guns.
Guns must never make an appearance. The edicts must be upheld
In this universe, her name is Snug. She wears a Snuggie 24/7 and sometimes uses it to fight crime.
What about Bloodrose?
It is written that Bloodrose, like the Prophet, must never be depicted in art
So you think The Big Cheese is gonna be… the janitor or something?
Oh we’ve seen the Cheese, or at least his prior human form. He’s a youth minister here
Actually YKW I should start a betting pool on this. $50 on Manny whatshisname from Shortpacked! coming back.
My conspiracy hat is pointing out that Manny is also a ginger, so maybe he’s Professor O’Ryan’s kid.
Coulda sworn Manny had already shown up in DoA, but apparently not. Huh. Maybe a Patreon strip I’m forgetting?
I’ll give willis $20 if historical jesus shows up
We knew Bart O’Ryan existed because Walky based his comic on the guy and mentioned he was a law professor.
Alan Rees is the math professor: https://www.dumbingofage.com/tag/professor-rees/
what I’m learning from all these comments is that I should probably stop doing bits until I do another complete willisverse reread
counterpoint: never stop doing bits for any reason
I love how you have the perfect icon for this comment!
Do more bits and just don’t be self-conscious about it.
Don’t trust not doing bits.
Maybe we’ll see Barb (the bartender at Galasso’s) again. She started off buried under layers of main characters in the background art of a poster.
The Head Alien the Head Alien please please the Head Alien.
Or Sal’s boss from the theme rest- sorry, the space-themed dining adventure with duck pizza.
It would be interesting to see Head Alien in human form (he exists in universe as a fictional character)
We have already seen Alan Rees, who is curiously enough, human and not an alien in a suit
As far as we know.
cut to O’Ryan saying, “Oh sorry, that’s just my desktop”
Daisy’s, too.
What is peak fiction? *pulls up an image of Joyce and Dorothy kissing* This is peak fiction.
FUCK my enters didnt format
dying in a hole now bye
Not a bad output regardless. (2nd line showing action totally goes fine with 1st line’s dialogue.)
NOW WE’RE TALKING
GIMME THE EMBARRASSMENT
Panel 6: the face of someone who is desperately hoping that their beanie has secretly been replaced by a brain-eating alien parasite in the last five minutes and is ready to pass it the salt.
Way to call me out, Doctor XD
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
Agreed 100%, but I’m not sure anyone can do the kick as well as Mike.
Maybe Walky will draw Mike dropkicking Dorothy now.
For real, this got a solid ten seconds long laugh out of me.
Oh, shit! Also, this seems kind of inappropriate from the professor.
It depends on whether he knows that’s Dorothy or not. Apparently it’s not always obvious in-universe, even to people who see Dorothy regularly. Otherwise, it’s not totally inappropriate for a professor to use recent news items as a way to facilitate instruction and discussion on the current lecture topic.
Depending on what subject that class is, it’s quite appropriate to show topical items. He’s going on about “leadership”, so I’m guessing Introduction to Political Science (or Principles, or some such) class.
Enlarged like that (and with her currently wearing the same coat), it does seem more identifiable. At the same time, there are many people who were in my college classes that I’m sure I wouldn’t have recognized from an out-of-context picture showing less than half their face.
When I was at school (Year 9, I think), my Biology teacher had no idea who I was. I put my hand up to ask a question in class one day (sometime around April or May, I think), and she demanded to know who I was and why I was in her class. I explained I was one of her students, but she was adamant she’d never seen me before in her life and I’d just snuck into her class as a prank. Everyone else is just grinning like idiots at this point.
I walked calmly up to the front of the class, take the class register from her (which she tried to tell me was not for students to touch, FFS), and opened it in front of her. There was my name. There were a row of ticks showing I had been present in every. Single. Lesson. For the entire school year up to that point.
The class erupted into laughter, and she was utterly mortified.
Poor lady. I hadn’t wanted to embarrass her that badly, but I also didn’t want to get in trouble for being in the class I was meant to be in.
Moral of the story: Teachers can be completely oblivious to the identity of their students. This one didn’t know my face or name but had marked me down as present 3 times a week for nearly 9 months.
I had just been assuming he knew it was Dorothy, given that apparently everyone else (except Daisy) was able to recognize them. But you’re right, it’s possible he doesn’t realize that it’s her in the picture.
probably has tenure or something. but I imagine someone is gonna put in a complaint at least.
Way more than kind of. This is hideously (and hilariously) unprofessional of him. Basic respect for others say that you’d ask permission before doing this.
…ya know, Dorothy, good Leadership would also be calling him out on this. 😀
Pretty sure he doesn’t realize that one of the people in the picture is the person he was just talking to.
People are really shocked that the characters, who don’t look at Dorothy’s face literally every day, can’t recognize the 15% of her face visible in the picture, the rest being obscured by being smooshed into Joyce’s face.
I was arguing exactly this in the last storyline, but then it turned out that everyone who saw the photo recognized them, so I just assumed that the same was the case here.
1. Even if he doesn’t recognize that this is one of his students, he should at least be aware of the possibility (and the possibility that someone in class knows the girls in the photo, even if neither of them are)
2. I get that the joke is that he’s interpreting the kiss as an intentional political statement designed to get in the papers, but Dorothy and Joyce were not leading the protest in any way so this is stupid.
3. As far as we can tell. no one was really “leading” the protest and that was part of why it was so easily co-opted. To the extent that the kiss leading the papers was a result of anyone’s “leadership”, it was a FAILURE of protest leadership for doing a big stunt protest and not having any kind of media strategy at all, which is the kind of thing he should actually be talking about, why that happened and how to prevent it.
So he’s ignoring every potentially relevant aspect of the protest to gawk at hot teenage girls making out. That’s super fucking inappropriate, yeah, to the point that maybe an investigation would be warranted, and it makes me wonder if “O’Ryan” being so similar to “Ryan” is intentional or not.
These are all good points, and I particularly agree about number 3. It’s easy to blame Joyce & Dorothy for ruining the protest, but whoever was running the thing should really have had some kind of media strategy, especially given the probably sympathetic student paper.
On the point of Ryan and O’Ryan though, it seems that both characters date back to the Walkyverse where they didn’t really have any relationship, so I think it probably is just a coincidence.
To be fair to the organizers, they thought they were setting up a long term encampment, with no expectation of the board changing the rules and having the police attack on the first day.
Nor were they planning on a superhero going head to head with the cops, which is probably the most newsworthy event from the protest.
Honestly, maybe 3 is the point he’s making. The “leadership” of the protest was supposed to get images of the protesters on the front page, perhaps with some of the police violence that was occurring; instead, the images were dominated by two girls who just happened to kiss in front of a camera they didn’t even know was there. If that had been intentional on the part of the protest leaders, that would have been leadership.
If they managed to keep shots of AG drop kicking cops off the front page, they’re probably doing a good job.
“an intentional political statement”
Oh i disagree.
The kiss was just good luck. But Everything about Dorothy being there was what he described. Taking a stand( politically) planting feet in the ground, not ceding ground.
and Joyce followed and hasnt left.
I dont any of this is leadership.( its martyrdom )
he sounds like a giant Dbag. BUt He nailed her actions to a T.
I think Dorothy understands hes praising her things she actually did ( that were bad for multiple reasons; you described ) . Dorothy understands she acted impulsively out of character and has been rewarded for it.
Her getting undue political credit only makes sense to the narrative , ie criticism that she would get undue credit for something she took over.
If that didnt happen it would be empty complaint.
“Though we may never know who these women are…”
“Keener, since you’re the last arrival, tell us what you think these two women are trying to say, what’s their symbolism, with their kissing action at the political protest about Bulmeria.”
The Hat That Has Consumed Dorothy: ~maybe they’re just both idiots~
Prof: No, that can’t be it. This has symbolism, I just know it.
I hope this is exactly it. Make the latecomer tell the class her interpretation of the photo, and what she thinks motivated it.
goin by Carla’s perception, Dorothy and Joyce are practically indistinguishable from any white blonde women with glasses, so maybe this is lore accurate. lol
On the other hand, Carla’s world consists of Carla, Charlie, and Carla’s parents.
All of this shenaniganry was worth it for this one strip. My god that is AMAZING.
right before the triumphant return of mike
😭
But who could he dropkick?
I mean, Dorothy seems like the obvious choice
Yes please after all he is only in witness protection
This is a lawsome turn of events.
Professor O’Ryan goes on to compare the Dorothy-Joyce kiss picture to the Flag Raising On Iwo Jima photo.
(who took that photo? why, it was joe. joe rosenthal.)
SEMME is making college students gay!
Hi Bart
Gonna be honest, not looking forward to yet another set of strips of people relitigating the kiss in the comments
I’ll spare you, this time.
Too late.
Bart understands that real leaders cheat.
That’s right! Leaders don’t cede ground! FARMERS seed ground!
…. look, just pretend they’re spelled the same and it’ll be funny.
… okay, no it won’t.
And then farmers plant crops, but leaders plant FEET. It makes for a strange harvest but some people really like it I guess.
Leaders plant FEET, but never DEFEAT.
From the first words out of his mouth, it’s obvious this guy knows nothing about leadership.
Knows nothing about leadership but his TED talk was a big hit.
Orange creamsicle lookin’ ass
Which means he looks just a bit lickable.
the doof’s got the fucking sonic ice cream bar eyes as well
Maybe he can hook up with pudding head. They’d make a tasty couple.
Technically that wasn’t an apology
I had no clue who this guy was and for the briefest, dumbest of seconds on the second panel my brain thought Dorothy had an unhinged evil relative we hadn’t yet seen and he was here to start trouble. Completely forgot she went to class, dude was intense enough that I think I’d also rather skip than show up late lol.
I uh, am not entirely sure I like the last panel what he’s saying? The framing of the kiss at the protest is something I’ve hated from a meta perspective, but like… I guess he’s maybe an ally? Is that what this is? I feel like he was evil in the other universe maybe but I legit cannot remember him at all.
Either way, awkward af class and I’d definitely report my prof to someone if he blew up a pic of me making out with someone for the class to see. That feels like it breaks some sort of rule, it has to.
Depends on how he frames it. (I’m guessing he doesn’t recognize Dorothy in the photo.) How he ties in the two girls lip-locking to his “leadership” intro.
I suspect it makes a big difference on a scale of literally illegal to ehhh
1) private photo hacked from subject’s icloud
2) friends only photo from subject’s socials
3) public photo on subject’s socials
4) photo of subject on someone elses’s socials
5) photo taken publically but without permission by the professor
6) photo taken from the front page of the student newspaper without confirmation that the subjects consented to being on the front page of the newspaper
7) checking with the subjects if they consent to being used as teaching material…
Betting on #6. I imagine Daisy is also going to be on the consequences train
It’s obviously 6 and there aren’t going to be any consequences for Daisy or the professor.
Damn, I don’t think Bart O’Ryan has shown up a single time (outside of LAWsome) since… since It’s Walky! ended, has he? It’s been a surprisingly long gap for a character who was as prominent as he was.
Tag searching says, this is his first time DoA. Let the new O’Ryan commence!
He was mentioned to exist, as LAWsome appeared in DoA: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2021/comic/book-11/04-hompk/lawsome-2/
… but yeah, it’s been a long time.
Oh weird.
He’s tagged as “Bart” in that strip, but “Professor O’Ryan” here.
Oooh. A discrepancy? Mistake on Willis’s part?
Professor O’Ryan is the tag for the actual professor, whereas Bart is the tag for the character based on him in Walky’s comic, perhaps. This does not explain why Mike is tagged as Mike in the LAWsome comic. The reason for that is because your mom.
For a nickel.
*quiet gasp*
Consequences from outside forces once more…
Let us see how this plays out.
She didn’t even apologize. She asserted that she will not let it happen again. It can be taken as an apology but can also just be her asserting her future goals.
How did he even get a blown up picture? Like the one on the paper was supposedly too indistinct for Daisy to recognize them (Becky could but she knows them).
Either he knows the original source, or there’s an independent second picture with better clarity.
There was a second lensman on the grassy knoll
Lensman
A second stage Lensman…
A Grey Lensman?
A First Lensman on Galactic Patrol.
Y’all are referring to some _old_ school stuff.
I find that starkly unbelievable!
Web edition -> save as -> zoom ?
Enhance.
There are various AI-based image upscale software algorithms and packages. The results often look oddly smooth, but there they are.
See WikiP:Image scaling for examples.
I think Daisy only didn’t recognize them because until she found out it was them, she didn’t save space in her brain for what either of them looked like because she doesn’t care to store information in her head that isn’t lesbians
I’d figure he scanned the newspaper with a scanner
eh it’s 2025, he could even have just taken a photo of the newspaper with his phone.
More likely the online version of the paper.
Wouldn’t the online version of the photo be in color? I mean, some photogs do use B&W, or use one of the grayscale modes on their camera, but color is kinda the default.
Or did Willis goof a little and use the grayscale version by mistake?
I assume this will happen at every class Dorothy goes to today. “What is supply and demand? THIS is supply and demand.”
“What is lesbians? This is lesbians.”
“What is a burnout? This is burnout.”
“What is for lunch special today? This is lunch special.”
“What is math? THIS is math!”
what is love? baby don’t hurt me.
don’t hurt me
no more
Is a song forever?
What is Sparta? THIS…IS….probably not Sparta. Just to start they didn’t have glasses. I think this was for another class.
300, already queer as-is. The lesbian version couldn’t really queerify it moreso.
I think there might be at least 300 lesbians (and a few gay men) who would be willing to take a gender-reversed 300 as a challenge.
What
Holy Shit.
And some of y’all seemed to think that there wouldn’t be consequences outside of their friend group lol. Their kiss is gonna be plastered everywhere and if it makes it to the internet, its gonna be used as an example of MANY things both good and bad. It will be seen as an act of protest when it was really just a moment of pure adrenaline and passion, that just so happened to be in the middle of a protest being shut down.
I can see this causing A LOT of potential problems.
This moment, this is the moment I have been prepping popcorn for
Let me say it because I’m sure they’re all exhausted:
“No consequences” complaints aren’t about NOTHING happening as a result of the kiss, they’re about not enough characters criticizing Joyce and Dorothy for cheating on their boyfriends.
We already got enough of that here.
The Danny gravatar is a very good choice for demanding consequences
Mostly, but even more it’s about the boyfriends not criticizing them for cheating.
Eh, I think the “NOTHING HAS HAPPENED” refrain is explicitly broader than that, for all that there have been occasional more specific complaints about how consequences from other characters while Joe and Walky continue to be unbothered* are potentially easier for Joyce and Dorothy to dismiss.
* Walky isn’t unbothered, he’s just currently internalizing this as his own fault. With Joe, who can say. But I don’t think this asterisk really undermines anyone’s emotional sense of injustice.
I’m not actually sure Walky even knows about the cheating, rather than just getting dumped for Joyce.
You’re right that it’s broader, but I think the boys being upset would have more of an impact than any other pair of characters.
I doubt Walky is going to be upset at them on his own behalf regardless. As was somewhat cluelessly linked to like two months ago, when he thought Dorothy was about to tell him she’d slept with someone else, he said out loud, “oh great, and this is where I realize we never talked about whether or not we were exclusive,” so his gut reaction to what he thought he was hearing back then was to basically blame himself for not asking explicitly.
He had her on more of a pedestal at the time, but I think he’s only more self-loathing these days, so I bet it evens out.
People are going to have to be upset with Joyce/Dorothy on Walky’s behalf in order for any upsetedness to happen.
And I know: Walky’s not a real person, Willis writes them and is in control of all of this, but I think it’s a natural consequence of characterization long set in motion, rather than any conspiring on Willis’s part to spare Joyce and/or Dorothy from consequences.
(Also: I would love to see Walky break this pattern and value himself more.)
This could be what gets Dorothy’s Yale offer withdrawn.
OTOH, Ivies are all about clout-chasing bullshit, so it also might get her a bigger scholarship.
The photo will get a Wikipedia entry. A snopes clarification. And a Know Your Meme page. It will appear in both the democratic and republican platforms. DSA too.
Oh you thought this was over? Nah this is going to be a hot topic in every politi-sci class and club on campus for the next week.
Okay, using someone’s picture like this without permission HAS to be some kind of Illegal. Seriously, this is a MASSIVE breach of Dorothy and Joyce’s Privacy.
You have no expectation of privacy in public, at a public event. Hence the name “public”
He couldn’t use her image for commercial purposes, but that’s pretty much it
Didn’t that picture come from the front page of the school’s newspaper? If so, it’s public domain; not a privacy breach. If that’s not the paper’s pic, then, oh, yeah, that’s a privacy breach.
If it is from the newspaper. Then it is copyright by them. The opposite of public domain.
Pretty sure it’s perfectly legal to use the front page of the local page in a class discussion.
Copyright ‘s Fair Use policy provides a BROAD scope of legitimate, legal educational use without needing to seek explicit permission for use.
*18+ year educator.
Still not awesome he used students (of any kind) as his prop without ensuring consent, but not illegal in any way shape or form I can think of.
“Didn’t that picture come from the front page of the school’s newspaper? If so, it’s public domain”
I don’t think those words mean what you think they mean.
As noted, “public domain” is absolutely the wrong term to use. You might have been thinking of the concept of “fair use”.
(copied from WikiP:Fair use )
Thank you. For some reason, this tend to be a hard concept to get people to understand.
They kissed in public. In the middle of a protest.
I dunno, we were all here watching it happen on comic panel. does that make us assessories to the fictitious crime?
I aint. See. Nothing.
He pulled it from the front page of a newspaper XD
Which, interestingly, could be a copyright violation if Daisy knew about this and wanted to pursue it, though there’d be some argument over ‘fair use’. But yeah, photos can be taken (in the US) in public without the consent of the photographed, and there’s no breach of privacy, period.
This goes so far that there’s a paparazzi who, in addition to the usual scummy ‘gotcha’ photos, also likes to take really attractive pics of celebrities, then wait for the celeb to find the photo online and post it to their social media, whereupon he sues them for copyright infringement.
Showing it as an example in class is almost certainly covered by fair use. And I’m entirely too lazy to try to figure out exactly what the IDS’s relationship with IU is, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find that everything they publish is the intellectual property of the university anyway.
Last I looked the IDS is an official school thing, with journalism faculty on it’s board
Having worked at a college town Kinko’s, I’d think that this would be fair use for course materials. I remember copying off reams of the damnedest stuff for classes.
And then there was the guy with the Higgledy Piggledy double dactyl poetry…
Schools also have clauses and agreements that stuff made/produced by the college can be taken and used for college use. So that image is not only covered by fair use in media, but also college bs.
My kid’s public school district refused to send me lesson plans when they were absent or include that in their IEP because any educational materials created by teachers while working for the dostrict become district property. We were trying to create a homebound education plan and “just look onnthe google classroom” wasn’t good enough for me to home school. So Prof O’Ryan is more than allowed to pull source material from the college paper for the course.
The right to privacy does include the right to not have your picture “published” without consent, it’s an ethical minefield that journalists have to navigate every day and that everyone ignores anyway.
It’s not an invasion of privacy when there’s no expectation of privacy – to whit, Joyce and Dorothy were in public surrounded by people and cops *and cameras taking pictures*.
And they knew this. It’s the whole reason they were there in the first place: To warn Jocelyne that there were photos of her being posted where Hank could see them.
I think my brain would explode and my body would turn into dust if I were in Dorothy’s shoes.
I am CACKLING right now!
Right there with you.
ten bucks says this guy has a podcast
in the Walkyverse he’s literally a Bill O’Reilly parody
bill o’reilly would also have a podcast if he was still alive
i’m surprised they aren’t still airing one for him, despite his death
If people still cared about him there’d be an eternally running ai generated bill O’Reilly podcast running soon. But they got new podcast bro propagandists now
But . . . he’s alive . . . and does . . . pod . . .
Chat, am I scammed?
okay full disclosure I just assumed bill o’reilly was dead and didn’t bother to fact check before writing that, but let me have this wonderful dream anyway
He debates Bill O’Reilly in the Walkyverse, hilariously. https://www.itswalky.com/comic/or-maybe-youre-a-communist-peacenik/
LMAO that’s very funny Willis well played
Anyone else see this guy and think “Superman villain?”
Kryptonite eyes, weird worldview, evil facial hair.
I found myself thinking “what the ever loving EFF is going on with this dude’s color scheme” haha
Red hair, white beard, NUCLEAR green eyes?? (And maybe the Dumbiverse’s only example of non-black “dot-style” eyes, to boot)
No one has ever been more supervillain-coded.
wait is his colour palette literally just the irish flag?
Damn, a bongo can’t even be Irish anymore. What has the world come to
As an Irish, I do not approve of this man.
omg
Bart O’Ryan is a Militant Leftist in this universe?!?!?!
“leftist”?
we’ll just have to see i guess ¯\_(‘-‘)_/¯
Chances are I used the wrong word.
I mean yeah professors like this can also be liberal, but mind you US liberals tend to still score right of center on the global overton window.
I wonder if that’s still true, given the rise of fascism in so many other countries.
I mean, don’t get me wrong, it can still get bad and continue to get bad in Europe, etc,
it just tends to be offset by the fact that the United States has consistently been at this whole other LEVEL of bad
US is very weird about it, though — we got LGBTQ+ marriage fairly early in the grand scheme of things, both in terms of “the first state-level support of it was near the front of the global pack” and “the whole country was somewhere in the middle of the Western world, ahead of some parts of the EU”.
I rather think it just proves that the left/right dichotomy is a poor predictor of political behavior across political boundaries, given the number of ways it can shake out.
(economically, the US is consistently “rightward” of the developed world, that I’ll grant)
Mmm.
You know, I don’t really like approaching things from this direction.
I think it’s pretty reductive re: the whole rest of the world to say that American left-leaning politicians are still right-wing on a global Overton window (which countries are being counted? Which are being discounted?), and I think it’s actively unhelpful in terms of actually motivating young Americans to get more politically involved.
There are enough people already saying “don’t bother voting, both parties are basically the same”. We don’t need to give them more ammo by adding “and even the most left-leaning American political candidate is still right-wing if compared to some very specific other countries, never mind which ones exactly”.
I assumed the opposite. Seems like he thinks they intentionally stole the protesters’ thunder.
Yeah that was my guess too. This guy has a strong ‘ex-military and leans on it’ principled-but-blinkered vibe to me.
That seems a bit unlikely to me. Though there are Marxist professors out there, they aren’t nearly as common as most people fearmongering about “leftist professors” want you to think.
According to Bill O’Reilly in an old It’s Walky! strip linked above, he was a communist peacenik, so maybe?
I weirdly enjoy how the image has visible artifacts from being upscaled instead of just being the clean line version from the original page
more confirmation that he took it from the newsapaper website and just zoomed in lol
Ironically, at that moment, it was Joyce who was doing leadership
Is that what the kids are calling it now?
Dorothy: Isn’t it distracting from the genocide?
Professor: Absolutely. Leadership!
look, he’s a white liberal professor, he’s gonna have all of the expected blind spots XD
I mean I don’t think his Walkyverse counterpart was very liberal
oh no.
I may be missing something, but is there an indication of him being liberal other than him seemingly being fine with two girls kissing? My initial interpretation was that he was the kind of person who doesn’t care one way or the other about social issues beyond how he can use them to argue his viewpoint (and probably still annoyed that that old “alpha wolf” myth was debunked).
Admittedly, I’m not particularly familiar with US liberal professors; I wouldn’t be surprised if other hints are clear to people who aren’t me. Besides, we’ve only one strip to base our ideas of him on (not counting Lawsome).
I mean if we assume he supports the protest then he’s a HUGE liberal.
These protests were massively unpopular with the Right for SOME reason.
Also a huge chunk of the Democrats.
That was basically my reasoning. This comic is generally (and justifiably) inhospitable to Republicans. I just assumed the fact that he was a college professor (which statistically lean left), in the liberal arts (which statistically lean EXTREMELY left, by American standards), and wasn’t shouting a variety of in-universe slurs for Bulmerians, meant him being an American-style white liberal was a relatively safe bet. But, it turns out that premise may not track for this character, since he’s another multiversal import.
Of course this has me thinking of Baron Strucker saying “Never apologize, son, it is a sign of weakness.”
(This was to his Nazi minion before being defeated by Magneto, who stole all his gold.)
MCU Strucker: “I am going to apologize.”
“I’m going to do something spontaneous that will completely and irrevocably end the political career I no longer want!”
“Look at this brave, brave woman!”
“GODDAMNIT”
Dorothy: *drives herself to the very edge of burnout meticulously planning and trying to do everything ‘right’, the way she’s been taught things are supposed to work – is ignored and passed over*
Also Dorothy: *impulsively attempts to do everything ‘wrong’ to sabotage herself – receives attention and acclaim*
It’s like a classical Greek curse!
Instead, I am intrigued by the framing. 3 “class” panels, with defining surrounding line and 3 connected reaction panels, undefined. What are these art choices saying to our subconscious?
I don’t know. My subconscious never tells me.
LMAO
I think the hover text is pointed at me a little bit. I feel seen.
Oh hey, it’s the most correct character in all of It’s Walky! Did NOT think he had green eyes, dang.
Is the the only ginger + green hair combo we’ve seen? Becky doesn’t have green eyes and Ruth is a redhead but her shade isn’t what I’d associate with “ginger”.
also Penny, who is more “unethical” than her “actively, murderously evil” IW! original/counterpart, but still distressingly hot (if you’re into green-eyed gingers with British accents, and why wouldn’t you be?)
Most correct? Sure, SEMME needed oversight, but “we need to watch the watchers” didn’t have to go to “we need to papparazise and slut-shame the watchers and work with Britjas to illegally uncover internal affairs to shut them down in a vendetta sparked by the appeal of fame and money.”
He made some good points and SEMME was dysfunctional as all heck, but he almost doomed the world because he didn’t for one instant stop to think that SEMME was doing something important. And he started as the representative of human victims in the conflict that outed the aliens! He knew they were out there! “Someone is going to take care of it, but I don’t care about the consequences for my actions” mentality.
His position was that combating aliens was something best left to the military rather than a relatively loosely-organized gaggle of headcases, which is a fairly unimpeachable position to hold, even if the narrative ultimately proved him wrong.
That’s the ultimate advantage of fiction over reality. The author determines the narrative, unlike reality where it’s just one thing after another and everyone is putting their oar in just by being alive.
Can’t we just agree that my oar is more important than any one else’s?
Oh wow I hate this guy so much already. I wasn’t one of the people who hates Dorothy & Joyce now, but even if I was I would be completely distracted by how much more urgently this guy needs to be hated. Was that your clever plan, Willis? You probably could’ve just brought back Rachel for that.
Bart is the classic Walkyverse hatesink. Not for nothing that he’s kinda named after Bill O’Riley.
Nothing has changed!!
Its been decades but nothing has changed! Its almost the same pose too.
Magnificent.
Ohshizz. Ohshizz. Ohshizz.
That. Is not what leadership is.
Are you claiming no one was led?
I’m claiming that “never apologize” and “leaders take ground, they don’t cede it” are fucking terrible advice for people in positions of leadership. Good leadership requires being able to balance, manage, and support your people so that you can move in the right direction together, and if that direction turns out to be stupid then goddamnit you’d better be able to explain why you were wrong and get everyone on board with turning the ship. That means knowing where to hold ground and where to give it and how to prioritize and weigh tradeoffs, all while getting and maintaining people’s trust. Never ever back down is advice that is going to produce piss poor leadership.
I am not commenting on the photo. The photo could be interpreted as either leadership or just like people being there depending on viewer interpretation.
“Oops, wrong photo. That’s supposed to be a picture of the Power Rangers, not these two [slur]s.”
Never apologize.
My headcanon, right now: it was the wrong photo, as Taffy said, but because admitting he made a mistake would undermine his philosophy, he’s now mentally rewriting the entire lesson in order to make it seem like he’d intended to show this one.
<3<3<3
For everyone wondering how this presumably-intelligent guy thinks that the two white women macking it at the protest are inherently the picture of leadership:
He likely has not considered, for even one second, that Dorothy Keener, likely a star student of his freshman PoliSci class, who has likely professed in this very class that she wants to have a future in politics, would have just impulsively been at the protest (which she doesn’t understand or care about) for non-political reasons, and also impulsively kiss a girl at that protest, during an evacuation, for those same non-political reasons.
He’s a white liberal political scientist, who does not immediately recognize that two white women centering the image of the protest on themselves, might be a bad thing; and, he fully attributes reason to Dorothy’s actions, reading it as a deliberate political stunt; because, from his perspective, he would imagine Dorothy as being politically active and engaged, because that’s the image she would deliberately project for herself, when she’s trying to impress a PoliSci professor.
There’s no logical reason for him to assume that what Dorothy did was anything but a reasoned and intentional act of advocacy, even though we all know otherwise. He doesn’t yet know that she doesn’t know her head from her ass on the Bulmerian conflict, and he isn’t privy to her on-going mental breakdown.
In short, what Dorothy did was actually so short-sighted, dumb, and selfish, that he can’t reconcile her actions as they are; therefore, he assumes she must have known exactly what she was doing, because that’s honestly a much more reasonable explanation of the events, then what actually happened.
Okay, so he didn’t even read the fucking comic, and yet he’s in it? That’s a new level of stupidity. Fuck this guy.
a lot of characters would really make better choices if they accepted they were pawns in a fictional narrative, written by a sicko!
Or, put more simply: DAMN YOU WILLIS
from the perspective that the kiss was 100% planned and a pointed political performance: HOW is this an example of fine leadership?
please refer back to the “he is a white liberal” detail, it’s doing a lot of heavy lifting, here
i mean, i’m making that assumption, in this case; but, he probably wouldn’t look favorably on the subject of the protest, if he weren’t
There’s also possibility that he’s the opposite of a liberal and what he’s celebrating is the ‘leadership’ of turning an anti-genocide protest into something all about white girls kissing. Like ‘way to distract the mob and take hold of the narrative, Keener’ kind of thing.
Given what his character was like in the Walkyverse, it could legitimately be “you made yourself the face of a movement and now that people actually know who you are, you can leverage that to accomplish bigger things and attach yourself to bigger movements.”
This seems like a much saner interpretation. Congratulations Dorothy, it’s time to go study up on Bulmeria and figure out how to leverage this to platform the people closer to the issue, or at least their priorities. Or you can hide. But “Dorothy tries to figure out how to use notoriety to get attention onto people who are actually close to the issues” seems like an interesting arc for an aspiring political actor.
She impulsively wanted to become a political agitator; now, it’s time to Keener down, and start obsessing over politically agitating in the most objectively correct fashion!
Dorothy being praised for this while she knows exactly who it hurts is a special kind of irony I can get behind.
Watch it be interpreted:
“I take this to be a protest against Bulmerian homophobia.”
“Are Bulmerians homophobic?”
“They have to be as an Islamic country. Thus it is showing their support of its right to defend itself.”
“WHAT!?”
“It’s the position I’m taking on CNN tonight at least.”
Is Bulmeria Islamic? We only know it might be getting missionaries. And there is a genocide taking place there.
By the fact that in text we’ve primarily seen Muslim characters care the most about it and meta textually it’s a parallel to israel/Palestine, the implication is that the heretofore unnamed people being genocided are Muslim. It’s possible it’s an internal conflict, maybe a specific ethnic group within bulmeria. Buuut we don’t know, bc the comic won’t tell us anything about the victims here
That doesn’t sound like the kind of advice that makes leaders, it sounds like the kind of advice that produces assholes…
A lot of people confuse the two.
Yeah, but this guy is an expert on American politics, so…his advice is technically correct, which is the worst kind of correct.
This guy is so ridiculous, Dorothy didn’t even actually apologize for being late. She just promised not to be late again. She didn’t even give him an excuse for why she was late!
Technically, he didn’t actually say she apologized either.
Technically, Doopyboop didn’t actually say O’Ryan said Dorothy apologized, either.
He has underwear on his chin…
I’m on the edge of my seat wanting to know in what world is two white girls kissing during a demonstration to protest genocide “leadership”, I REALLY want to hear this guy’s logic
I wouldn’t be surprised if he actually is going to forward the argument that the actual content doesn’t matter of any event and the important part is forwarding your own profile.
I’m also curious to hear what his logic is for why that kiss is leadership.
My guess is that he’s lacking or ignoring that perspective and that his take is “you used the situation to your advantage” or “you did something of your own accord that made the protest more famous than it would otherwise have been” which, in a nuanced way, might make sense if the anti-genocide protests are going to just be broken and forgotten. Something momentous may give more momentum… that’s certainly a theory one might push.
My money is on bringing much needed attention and engagement to a protest that practically no one cared anything about.
Or maybe he’s talking about leadership of the LGBT3Xtreem movement.
No, I have no idea what he’s on about either.
Leadership is lesbians. Noted.
I mean, the future *is* female.
Leadership is when you lead ‘er ship aaaayyyyy
See: MCU Thor wanting to be a Valkyrie.
Now, Dorothy, don’t pull that hat too far down. If you obscure your eyes he can’t make aggressive eye contact with you anymore
So, is O’ Ryan a tad better than his Walyverse version? Mind you, Walkyverse O’ Ryan never actually said anything bigoted, but it could be only because he mostly showed up in an era where being “anti-woke” wasn’t as openly “accepted”…
i guess it’s good that he’s supportive…? still feels like he should’ve asked permission before discussing it, idk what class he teachers
Allegedly, he might not know who they are.
Time to redirect Mike and give us the LAWSOME sequel/reboot that the masses crave.
Already done! https://www.dumbingofage.com/2021/comic/book-11/04-hompk/lawsome-2/
…OK, Bart, what IS IT with you and introducing yourself to webcomics by publicly displaying candid pictures of Joyce’s first kiss with her new lover?
This guy better have one HELL of a second sentence in his lesson plan. We’ve got enough trouble with orange faced idiots thinking headline generation is any sort of leadership.
Two things: First, I didn’t expect Bart O’Ryan to become a character in DoA. Second, I’m really wondering what makes him think that Dorothy and Joyce kissing at an anti-genocide protest, a protest that wasn’t supposed to be about them, qualifies as leadership.
We never found out, because the point of view has almost entirely been on Joyce and Dorothy, but apparantly shortly after the kiss and after Amazi-Girl led the protesters away, the rest of the protesters began having wild same-day makeout sessions.
That’s why Asma looked so bummed when she got back – she missed it. That’s also why Raidah’s so pissed and why we haven’t seen Leslie or Robin.
Same-sex, not same day. Stupid autocorrect. No straight snogging allowed.
He was hinted at when Walky recreated LAWsome. https://www.dumbingofage.com/2021/comic/book-11/04-hompk/lawsome-2/
re: the second one,
I’m honestly already like, “Brian Griffin, eat your heart out” (-_-)
Uh, what? I don’t know who this guy is, but he ain’t seeming too trustworthy.
(Walkyverse spoilers ahead!)
Back in the Walkyverse, he was the legal representative for a class action of alien victims and generally opposed to SEMME, the alien-fighting gang that included most of the younger Dumbiverse cast.
He appeared in LAWsome, too, which made its way into the Dumbiverse: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2021/comic/book-11/04-hompk/lawsome-2/
Oh, and in his vendetta against the scary government agency of superheroes saving the earth, he worked with extradimensional British supervillains with ninjas at their command to obtain classified information. So. Untrustworthy.
The Britjas were aslo responsible for the Walkyverse deaths of many DoA characters (including Dina), so not the sorts a trustworthy type would associate with.
That said the Britjas also created SEMME in the first place. They’re responsible for… eh, a bit of everything.
Already I feel this man is responsible for so many sociopaths
Yes, you lead your faaaaace into another’s faaaaaaaaaaaace
welcome to Y205, where leadership is face-to-face
Oh hey what I just reread all Roomies! and It’s walky! and It’s Pregnancy! and I saw this same guy be a Walter Peck that makes you even angrier I’m not ready to have different feelings about him depending on what he’ll say next…
Which, is not looking too good tbh. But let’s see. After all, Mike tossed zero cadavers in Dumbing of Age. And Rachel’s not an alien, as far as we know.
Comparing him to Walter Peck seems apt, since Peck was ALSO kind of an extremely strange choice for a villain.
Ghostbusters is very funny, but thinking about it for even like half a second, a representative of the EPA asked very politely if he could see our heroes’ unlicensed nuclear reactor, and he was mocked, humiliated, and told to come back with a warrant.
So he came back with a warrant.
Darn those environmental protection agency inspectors, trying to…………. make sure a nuclear reactor in the heart of the biggest city in the country is safe????? We all know regulations just get in the way of heroic businessmen.
(Talking here about this guy being a villain in the Walkyverse despite “wanting superheroes to answer to someone” being an extremely reasonable viewpoint to have, basically.
I imagine he was inspired by stuff like Civil War (the comic book version) and other similar storylines. It’s always kind of frustrating when “maybe superheroes shouldn’t always be engaging in cowboy politics” turns directly into “the mutant registration act”. IRL, there would probably be some sort of middle ground between those two options.)
Is his interpretation going to be something like “A lesbian kiss at a protest will garner plenty of attention for the protest itself”?
Looks like it – and he might not be wong.
If the next strip is him explaining “This picture has been reprinted in 150 papers in the US and 30 outside of it and has be seen by an estimated 15 million people” or some such I am going to be eating popcorn for Dorothy’s expression.
>ugly laughing
Let’s go a step further
“Have you been on the Internet lately? That picture is all over the biggest news sites and Youtube new channels!”
At that point I would assume Joyce’s parents have both seen it, which is a whole other can of worms.
“Why can’t you be more like her, Keener? Huh?!! “
“Copying her hairstyle, glasses, and coat doesn’t cut it!”
There are way too many leadership coaches, gurus, and authors selling the snake oil that attitude equals leadership and as long as you’re sufficiently bold, decisive, and confident and override any objections you can be an inspirational leader.
Such as, say, ignoring absolutely everything anyone has to say about submarine safety because you’re a ~*Visionary*~
“You lead the charge!”
And sometimes the charge leads off a cliff
That tragedy also led to me learning just how much James Cameron is involved in deep ocean exploration.
Like, yes, to a certain degree being confident is important in being a leader but it’s also important to have some bare basic minimum understanding of what the hell it is your organization actually does as well as having the ability to listen and course-correct when people are telling you “The thing you want is not only impossible, even if it were possible it’d be a really bad idea!”
Did you know that 10 childrens were killed by evil vaccines?
Well I haven’t even seen 30s of this lesson and I really, really do not trust that prof already
Technically she did not apologize
God university lecturers are the wooooorst
I feel so bad for them that attendance to lectured is mandatory bc it wasn’t at my school. If this was me I’d straight up turn on my heel and leave, fuck that
…From the comments and the linked Walkyverse strip I gather what’s on his chin is supposed to be a very short purely white beard…???
His eyebrows are white, too.
Redheads tend to skip the ‘growing gray’ phase and instead immediately go from red to white hair. In this guy’s case, I can only imagine that pure spite is keeping the color on the top of his head, but it cannot save his beard, temples, and eyebrows.
Can confirm. Barbarossa one day, Saint Nick the next. (Well, maybe not quite that fast.)
It’s very interesting to see folks call Bart O’Ryan a liberal professor. Things could be different but he was the Walkyverse Bill O’Reilly.
So that’s interesting.
He had Sarah help him see Semme
Sue Semme*
Wait they do? I immediately imagined him in a military uniform giving some kind of drill sergeant speech XD He is giving me the vibes of that one teacher from Starship Troopers.
Strictly speaking he wasn’t Walkyverse Bill O’Reully, because Bill O’Reilly also existed and had Bart on his show, and gave him an extremely hostile interview where Bill accused him of being a communist. Bart’s actual politics were kind of nebulously-defined outside of being an advocate for SEMME to either receive significantly more oversight or be shut down, so he could be a liberal or a conservative here, both are reasonable paths for the character to take. The knocks against him being liberal are mostly that he was slut-shamey and kind of ableist, but those could also be written off as artifacts of the time in which he was originally written.
I’m going to be honest, slut-shaming and ableism are still quite common in liberal circles.
Yup! Less so now, at least openly, than in 2003, though.
Thank you comment section. I was wondering what the heck was going on. That said, I know a lot of readers are waiting for Jorothy (sp?) to face the consequences of their actions, but I was reeeallllyy hoping we could just….move….on. (At least for a bit.)
The fact that his eyes have no whites creeps me out. It’s like he’s a Green Lantern or something…
Oh my Cheese I love everything about this page.
O’Ryan, really? Is he secretly the son of Darkseid too?
Judging by the hair he could be Absolute Lex Luthor’s relative XD
She didn’t apologize, she stated a fact. “Won’t happen again”. Just a fact.
That’s a promise, not a fact. Though yeah, not an apology.
Most people call the ship “Joyrothy” or “Doroyce” or something like that, but I guess if you want to call the ship “Leader”, you do you.
Even if Professor O’Ryan doesn’t recognize that one of the girls in the photo is one of his students, this is still wildly fucking inappropriate of a thing for a college professor to be doing, isn’t it?
You think its inappropriate for him to use recent events on campus as part of his lessons? Why, because his politics students shouldn’t be aware of things like protests?
I think it’s more the ongoing problem consent. Hopefully without rekindling the protest photo debate it is still somewhat morally objectionable to exploitatively use photos of others without their consent, especially if they may not agree with what you’re using them for, more so if you know requesting consent is realistically possible.
That genie is out of the bottle, and this could only be inappropriate if he does recognise one of his students in the photo. Taking somehting form the healdines to use in class happens all the time, and there’s no expectation of trying to contact people in any front page to ask if you can use it for that, or anything else you’d do with a newspaper article.
And the photo isn’t remotely the biggest issue about the protest if you’re talking about things that wronged Dorothy and Joyce, but there’s no recurring complaints about the tear gas or the university retroactively changing the rules on the protestors.
I don’t think it matters if he recognizes that it’s one of his students it should be very easy to conclude that they are students of IU just from the context. Even if we sweep aside the ethics of the photo and its free use from being on the front page, ect, you’re circulating a photo that will very likely put students of IU at risk of expulsion or legal consequences. Just because the news is reporting something doesn’t excuse anyone’s personally responsibility.
Back it high school I was nominated for a society that specifically said it wasn’t just for super-smart people*, they had to have I think it was four different qualities, one of which was “leadership.” And I noted that there was NFW I qualified as I never lead anyone into anything ever, and wouldn’t be able to even if I wanted to and tried to.
They came back with some nonsensical bafflegab about how you can be a leader even if no one followed you. Sheesh.
(And if I was that kind of a leader, I would have refused the nomination. I actually accepted it as an excuse to hang with some of the other super-smart kids in school. And of course it turned out to be another of those things that seem like a very big deal in high school that never ever comes up again in any context once you graduate.)
* Which I was, by standard HS criteria
Throw a dozen randos into a challenging situation. After some milling around, you say, “Look, they’re not coming after us. We need to find our own way out of this.” … “Why is everyone looking at me? I’m not your leader.” … “OK, maybe I am the leader.”
Bit of a halo effect goin on there. I mean leadership is good (well not that asinine definition but he thinks so), and yuri is good, but that doesn’t mean they’re the same! Yuri also isn’t the same thing as chocolate, or groundnut soup, or suffrage, or healthcare, or ace representation, which are all good things.
Actually I wonder if next page tthis guy will make yuri yucky….
To be fair, I doubt Professor O’Ryan is that great on nuance. Then again… who in this comic is?
Booster maybe?
Walky is great on understanding nuance. I mean, he doesn’t engage with it at all, but he understands it just fine.
Pretend that was a reply to deliverything above.
*looks at gravatars* thanks sis!
Isn’t it just good manners to apologize when you’re in the wrong? Is apologizing really a sign of weakness? Thoughts?
There are, believe it or not, people who seem to sincerely believe that displaying good manners is exhibiting weakness.
Donald Trump was elected president twice, we can absolutely believe that.
Yes. Never fail to apologize, it’s a sign of weakness.
And what did he want if not an apology? Was she supposed to ignore him?
If you ever apologize, then you are admitting you are in the wrong. It is giving the other person a win. Never apologize. Never be on defense. Always attack.
This is the mindset of this type of person. (and, yes, Trump, Bannon, and pretty much all of the ‘MAGA’ crowd)
That is not leadership. That is desperation writ large. With a healthy dose of happiness.
Well this is going to be an akward class
“See this woman on the right? She knew what she wanted, and she didn’t let anything stand in the way of getting it. Not tear gas or riot police or quaint notions of inappropriate PDA. She just went in there and took what she wanted. That’s leadership!
“This woman on the left, on the other hand, just stood there with a gormless expression on her face while the protest was being raided by police. Don’t be her. Be the woman on the right!”
:Dorothy pulls her hat all the way down over her feet, compresses herself into a singularity, and winks out of existence:
“See, the woman on the left ceded so much ground she imploded into a black hole and deleted herself. Don’t be the woman on the left”
What class is this?
Also putting it out there: The poll is missing the “chicken” option.
Is this square jawed-alpha teacher an alien? Those beady little green eyes…
And yeah, anyone saying a leader can’t ever apologize or ever cede ground… that’s not a leader I want to learn from. Sounds like it’s from the narcissist school of leadership.
Kind of hoping that we just stick with this scene and watch a political science lecture for the next two weeks
No. this is sparta.
Burst out laughing at the last two panels.
It’s been years since my teachers had a class specifically about me.