A crummy wizard and an anxious monster have to get over themselves and bring order to an apartment building full of misfits.
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Kieran Bright is a college student home for the summer and roped into an online reunion with his old neighborhood friends in the most recent update of their favorite childhood MMORPG.
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Join Kieran and his friends as they are pulled into another reality that may or may not be real and are forced to confront their own identities, the nature of simulated universes and reality itself.
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Don’tcha know that parents are evil? That’s like, life lessons 101 or something. All they want to do is crush your dreams, kill your buzz, and make you miserable. Sarah gave Dana’s father exactly what he needed to do all three at once! Now there’ll be no stopping the villain!
Oh, sure. Just severely limited in the kinds of work environments you can handle; always making social mistakes that get you fired; being misunderstood by everyone you meet; having few if any friends to help you cope; with little public assistance available for your condition, in the US; and often dealing with severe depression due to all of the above. And that’s just for Asperger’s, never mind more severe forms of autism. But not, you know, handicapped.
In Sweden, where I live atm, if you’re diagnosed with aspbergers you can get a lot of assistance with all of the things you mentioned above (yes even the social life part), though usually after having to fight “the authorities” for it for a while, so I’m really happy for my diagnosed friends that they are living here and not in ANY other country I’ve ever visited.
It’s hard for me to imagine them coping as well as they do if there was no internet though, and I guess that’s available everywhere .
More like not wanting to know the whole story. Honestly discounting the person who is in a position to know that your friend is hiding her depression from you is stupid and dangerous. Assuming you know exactly how your friend is feeling from the little time you see them is arrogance at it’s finest.
But Sarah tried to TELL her the whole story. At some point it’s Raidah’s fault for not listening, which let’s face it is why she’s so hard on Sarah. She knows deep down that she probably should have done more so it didn’t come to that but it’s much easier to blame the girl who was directly involved with how it went down.
Yeah, seriously. That’s the single most effective choice for someone who will take her recovery seriously, who won’t throw her into jail and end her hopes of a future, and who actually is invested in her.
Sarah did the most mature thing possible. Yeah, Raidah really is a bongo if she’s flying off the handle at Sarah telling for Dana’s own family about her issues — unless Dana’s father is some sort of monster that we don’t know about.
Yeah, truth. Sarah was in the position of being Dana’s sole support system, which she recognized was insufficient, so she went and expanded the support network. And she picked somebody who would understand and be on Dana’s side and whose job it is to take care of Dana. Very good move.
Yeah, Sarah wins THIS round. “Oh my god, Sarah, you told a father than their emotionally wrecked, drug-snorting child was emotionally wrecked and increasingly drug-snorting and needed help that we refused to give her because we wanted to believe she was getting better and let ourselves be lied to!!!”
Losing these friends doesn’t seem like a big whoop anymore, y’know?
F is Forgetting all of her problems
I is for ignoring her issues
E is for Empathy that is misguided
N is for Not giving someone the benefit of the doubt
D is for Denying that your friend ever had a problem.
To be fair, unless Sarah is making up this side of the story whole cloth (and then I sold her to a group of passing slavers -er, I mean, then I told her dad about the problem) there’s not a lot of ways to make Radiah look better here. Radiah is *not* being presented as a villain; she’s being presented as a girl who refused to face the facts and misblames Sarah for all the perceived problems. Unless you change the actual facts about what Sarah did, the story’s not going to change.
To be fair, when we hear Raidah’s side of the story I’m pretty sure we’ll find she’s also had at least one conversation with Dana that Sarah wasn’t privy to. Sarah’s story doesn’t even have to be false so long as it’s incomplete.
I hope guys like you aren’t serious.
Please tell me, in what way could this situation be explained that would eventually make Sarah look bad and make it look like she made the wrong decision.
Please. Write it down.
Would it be… that maybe Dana did it all on purpose and actualy all of her friends knew she was alright because she told them “hey, I will act worse when Sarah is around, don’t worry about me, I’m actually ok, I’m just messing around!”? You mean something like that?
Seriously, what kind of extreme delusions you have to have in order o think that there’s a side of this story that can make Sarah look like the bad guy. Jesus, murrica.
Well, I’ve had friends with fathers that are total controlling assholes that overreact to everything. So this father may be the type to keep her on lock down, berate her to the point of abuse, promise to take away any form of financial aid on his part, etc. And with both of them being in an emotionally unstable state from Dana’s mom dying, both his actions and her reactions could become even more extreme.
Or something along those lines, at the least.
Well, for one, Sarah seemed to be more a friend to Dana than anyone.
However, Raidah and the others only saw Dana smiling, and slowly going back to normal, none of the crying or (probably additional) pot use.
I have seen this situation, and I involved the school because
1. I didn’t have the option to inform authorities at the time
2. I didn’t know his parents
and 3. He was a dick trying to hit me with a 2×4.
I bet we’ll see Dana again. Seems odd to introduce a character purely as part of another character’s backstory and never use them again. However, it probably won’t be until next semester, so realistically we aren’t gonna know for years.
The only problem that I see with it is that from the last strip it seems like she did it less out of concern for Dana and more as a way to get Dana out of her way so she could study. Sarah definitely did the right thing, but I wonder how much of it was done out of concern for Dana and how much was just her getting an “inconvenience” out of her way.
But he has a point, especially from an outside perspective. I’d assume selfishness before altruism if I were Raidah because Sarah acts like a judgmental grade-obsessed bongo and her scholarships (which I might not believe her about in this scenario, because I know plenty of people who will make up anything as an excuse to be bongoy) only justify the middle part. She’s a good person underneath, but we only know that because we’ve seen her interact with Joyce and Dina; she seems like she actually wants to hide it and I can’t blame Raidah and Co. for not seeing it.
I dunno because Sarah did try to appeal to Dana’s friends before she contacted her father. But this could actually open up the possibility that the college students of the dumbiverse do not own cellular phones.
But this could perhaps be social commentary where “people” consider it rude to call/write/email/telegraph/messenger pidgeon their friends to find out their current status in this year of 20XX. Thus Sarah’s actions made Dana incommunicado.
The thing is, if Raidah really gave a damn, she could have looked into Sara’s consistently voiced concerns, and would have seen how bad their freind was doing. She just wanted to blow it off as hyperbole.
When Dana is taken away BY HER FATHER, Raidah STILL could have looked into this and would have seen, again, that Sara’s concerns were factual, and that Dana needed help, badly.
Instead she crosses to aggressively threaten & ostracize her ‘grumpy’ friend for taking away her ‘fun’ friend. She makes no effort to help either of her friends in need.
Whether she realizes it or not, she is a superficial acquaintance, and not a true friend to Sara, and especially not to Dana.
She was clearly trying to comfort Dana in the first panel of the strip and the bong one, at least. And honestly, not being able to sleep in your own dorm goes well beyond “inconvenience” territory, so even if that was a main factor I can’t blame her. Between the freaking out about the scholarship, the friends ignoring her, the stress of the whole pot thing to cover up, her own attempts at comfort failing, and bad sleep taking its toll on her body, I’m betting she was just completely overwhelmed with the whole situation. Something’s gotta give.
Does it matter whether her motives were selfish or not? She still handled the situation the best way she felt she possibly could. I do think she cared about Dana to a certain extent, seeing as she first suggested therapy, then called Dana’s father, as ways of trying to help her.
This. The reasons doensn’t matter at all, and being selfish isn’t necessarily bad. Specially when it leads to good being done to other people. Selfishness is only a bad thing when you start harming everyone else.
If you have a dead parent, don’t you get a pass for that semester, or is that only for dead roommates? Which was a third option that we’re glad Sarah didn’t take.
At my school, there was a rumor that you’d get a free ride* if you got hit by a car crossing the street that bisected campus. I doubt it was true, but I dunno anything about liability stuff. So maybe?
*Free ride as in full scholarship, not “Oh God I’m stuck to the hood of this car why won’t it stop?”
That actually happened to my best friend when she was pursuing her graduate degree. And she sure didn’t get any free ride, or anything else except some time in the hospital.
Some degree of self-interest is not bad.
Dana was harming Sarah. She certainly owed her no loyalty, but she did the best she could to help her anyway. The fact that she *needed* to act out of self-interest doesn’t change that part, and it’s hardly selfish.
Ok, now that I’ve seen the conclusion of this debacle, my assumptions were wrong. It was probably for the best that Sarah did that, cuz I get the feeling Dana was not going to get any better during her time at the school, not to mention how horrid her grades must have looked by this point.
You bring up an excellent point. She was surrounded by enablers. Even Sara had become one without even realizing it, until she got her family alerted to what they probably didn’t even know was going on.
Seriously. My stance on Sarah was pretty much MEH, I didn’t like or dislike her … until she beat that would be rapist with a bat. Now, she’d have to come up with something pretty heinous for me to dislike her.
Dana’s dad is her dealer. Dana was actually doing fine and Sarah was just reading too much into some normal post-death-of-a-loved-one sadness and an increased pot usage. Now her dad’s got her on hard drugs and has her convinced her mother died because she was hogging all the weed.
In b4 tons of comments screaming how you can’t be dependent on pot even though just because everyone isn’t dependent on a substance or thing doesn’t mean it can’t happen to someone.
As someone who’s studying drug abuse and dependency, I’m really impressed–because when pot appears in media, it’s almost never shown as being negative to anyone ever, and if is, there is an angry backlash of ‘how dare you say pot is harmful you don’t understand’. Having the balls to say something that’s going to be unpopular is something I respect in a writer, especially in a topic I’m immersed in.
It’s not that smoking pot can’t lead to all sorts of problems, it that smoking pot doesn’t automatically lead to all sorts of problem. Use, abuse and addiction are not synonyms.
I don’t entirely agree. It looks more like emotional dependance than physical addiction to me. The two can be equally bad, so you and I are in agreement that, either way, she was in trouble and the habitual pot smoking was a serious symptom. But I think it’s important to be precise here. Just because someone is using a recreational drug to comfort themselves doesn’t make them an addict.
Granted. I’m hardly an expert in such things, so I’ve probably been referring to such things as emotional addiction while the actual terminology has passed me by.
I think pot appears in media the way it does to counter things like Reefer Madness or D.A.R.E. that went too far in the opposite direction. Sadly, like that outdated propaganda, modern depictions of pot are being taken as absolute fact by people who either have an agenda already or just believe that because it doesn’t happen in media it doesn’t happen in real life. I think David deserves extra props for not only talking about marijuana dependence when many people seem determined to deny its existence, but avoiding either extreme to create a realistic picture of it instead of perpetuating the myths on either side that make discussions of drug policy so difficult.
Also, just for the benefit of people who will argue that pot dependence isn’t real and they know because they know non-addicted regular smokers: Pot, like alcohol, is something you can be addicted to without totally ruining your life, so if you compared your stoner friends to stereotypical alcoholics or hard drug users you might have missed an addict or two. Pot also has a lower dependency rate than alcohol (I think I heard around 20-30% of users, period, are addicted) so your personal experience doesn’t mean marijuana dependence is a myth; it means you don’t know enough pot smokers for not knowing an addict to be statistically impossible.
There’s also a distinction that’s being drawn. Let’s call it addiction and dependence.
There are drugs like cocaine, or heroin, or crystal meth (or alcohol or nicotine), that are seriously “addictive.” Regular users will start having physiological symptoms if they don’t have their chemical of choice in their systems. Withdrawal causes headaches, or DTs, tremors, pain, a host of psychological symptoms. Things like crystal meth can leave the brain so fried that serotonin receptors no longer work as intended–you can’t be happy without more meth.
Dependence is a need for something that gives an endorphin rush. This can be drugs, including the physically addictive drugs, as well as things like mushrooms or, yes, marijuana. It can also be gambling, sex, shopping, internet use, video games, or just about anything else that’s fun or pleasurable.
Willis seems to be very familiar with psychological dependence, and it’s popped up several times in Shortpacked!. It is a very real problem that ruins lives, and Dana’s arc is a very believable one for it. Willis really does a very good job handling it.
HOWEVER, when people talk about “addictive drugs,” they’re usually referring to the first sort, not the second. People who favor legalization are usually fighting against the perception that marijuana is physically addictive like heroin or meth, and is treated as a schedule 1 narcotic.
Exactly! I use “addiction” and “dependence” interchangeably for convenience (and because most dependences get labeled “psychological addictions” or something similar by a lot of people) but that’s what I was getting at- people want to clarify the difference between crackheads and pot smokers so they can convince people to legalize a substance that’s less addictive and harmful than alcohol or cigarettes.
To be fair, Janette expected something that really might have happened in a different forum and posted before most of the actual discussion. Thankfully, we’re better people than that.
Heck, it has happened in threads under previous strips dealing with Sarah’s old roommate. At this point, I think it’s pretty well laid to rest, though.
At the same time, she *was* told about Dana’s problems by the one person who actually had the inside perspective: her roommate. And yet, she ignored the warning.
Sarah had the inside perspective AND a reputation for being a judgmental bongo. Those tend to cancel each other in my experience, because you know they technically have better information but can’t be sure that they aren’t just judging unfairly.
When did she get that “judgmental” reputation, though? They feel that way about her *now* because they’re being idiotic bastards over her attempt to get Dana the help she needed. But given what the flashbacks have shown, she was just “the awkward cranky person” before that.
Wow. The way she was being treated I was sure she’d, y’know, told authorities about the drugs and gotten Dana arrested. This sounds like she did the best thing possible in that situation, Dana’s friends didn’t believe her and Dana wasn’t seeking help she obviously needed so Sarah had to involve a person who both was close enough for Dana to open up to and had enough authority to get her off the chemical “crutch”, while being able to sympathize because he’d just lost the mother of his child (who was the same person).
Wow. I… I honestly did not see this coming. I would’ve continued to love Sarah regardless of exactly how this went down, but… way to absolve her of any wrongdoing, Willis. You’re always one step ahead.
Unfortunately, sometimes being a good friend to someone who has serious issues that they’re in denial about means making the hard choices that they CAN’T. And it means you’ll be hated.
It still doesn’t change that you’re being a true friend, though.
That’s the problem in the real world where doing the right thing means screwing yourself in the process and by screwing yourself, I don’t mean the “going back to the past and doing your past self” or the “clone myself so I can screw myself” variety.
She isn’t insane, she just saw Dana’s “public face” and assumed it was the real Dana. I can see not trusting Sarah, who admits to being a misanthrope and was clearly judgmental of Dana’s lifestyle, to accurately report how well Dana was handling her grief or know the difference between Dana smoking a little more weed to cope with problems and Dana crossing the line from “regular user” to “dangerously addicted”, which sounds like what happened.
Raidah still should have been worried when her friend who’d been “getting better” had a sudden breakup and maybe tried to get Dana to talk about things (or go to a counselor just to make sure she was OK), but I can also see why she wouldn’t do that and certainly wouldn’t have believed Sarah if I was in her position. It just goes to show, being a surly misanthrope can make misunderstandings easier.
I second what George said. She’s not “insane.” She’s just not in possession of all of the facts and far more optimistic about her friend’s recovery than Sarah was. Plus, if she doesn’t think Sarah’s in the wrong, then she has to face how wrong she was. A lot of people have real trouble doing that.
I think it’s more than just a lack of facts. She also just has a somewhat limited viewpoint right now. Just like everybody else she’s fresh out of highschool and she’s taken some misguided lessons with her from there.
Roz isn’t insane but she holds views that form a barrier of understanding between her and more reserved individuals. She also hasn’t quite realized that not everything that happens at her parties is fun and games. Doesn’t make her insane or even an inherently bad person. Just means her preconceived notions and areas of ignorance can lead her astray from time to time, which isn’t unusual.
Plus it was probably much easier for her to think that Dana was fine. It doesn’t absolve her of her part in enabling her friend, but when someone just lost a parent you want to give them space and confronting her about this difficult wouldn’t have been easy, so it was easier for her to believe Dana’s brave face.
Gonna have to agree with you here, Swissaboo. I was initially hoping for some shades of gray type stuff, not an incident that completely and irrevocably reinforces Sarah’s decision to be forever distant and grumpy.
Sometimes doing the right thing can be very painful.
Also, if Sarah hadn’t done anything, it’s entirely possible Dana would have committed suicide. The way Dana was acting in private seemed to be heading that way, and her other friends only saw what they wanted to see.
Pretty much. Like Sarah said last comic, she was the one that got to see Dana when she wasn’t around her friends. Raidah didn’t see what Sarah saw, and doesn’t understand where Sarah’s coming from.
BUT considering we have one more strip left in the week, I’m a little worried…
Tomorrow’s comic will be the feel-good, Joyce giving Sarah a hug to make her feel better, Billie maybe learning something, denouement. Otherwise, I will be sad…
That’s the first panel. The second through fourth are Raidah and Co. attacking Sarah, Joyce, Billie, and Dina getting involved (Joyce because her “big sister” is under attack, Billie because she doesn’t want Joyce getting hurt, and Dina because “apparently we’re fighting now. Ok then.”), and everyone getting arrested for starting a near-riot at the mall.
Nah, they don’t get arrested. They win the fight, after which Dina asks who wants to chip in on some meth so they can celebrate their victory. Everybody is so shocked that nobody notices Ryan sneaking up on them and reaching for something tucked into his waistband.
Next week, of course, will then consist entirely of gag strips featuring Joe and Danny.
Thankfully unlikely, since Dana seems to respect him and plans to use his connections, and if Sarah knew about that she either wouldn’t have done what she did or, if told about it afterwards, would feel insane amounts of guilt.
Oh that’s so much better. I was really worried for a second there. Dana can probably even go back to school next year (the one after the one Our Heroes are in). And I bet Dana’s Dad even knows about the smoking.
Well from her point of view Dana’s surly, reclusive, and slightly judgemental roommate got Dana pulled out of school because she sometimes liked to do recreational drugs. From what Raidah saw Dana was recovering from her mother’s death and then Sarah had to go and make everything worse.
It’s still pretty awful of her to treat Sarah the way she does though.
Sarah is an outsider, and a bongoy, grade-obsessed (by necessity, but still), misanthropic outsider at that. I think Raidah overreacted horribly, but in the moment I can see hearing that Dana got taken away from school and thinking “Oh God, that bongo decided her precious grades were better than my friend and got rid of her to have a quiet room.” This goes double if Raidah thought Sarah was exaggerating not only Dana’s problems but also the severity of the scholarship situation (which I can see, because I know I don’t believe my bongoy classmates’ assessment of their own personal problems, much less other people’s).
Forgot to add: She did the right thing and I don’t judge her for her study habits, but I can see how her personality would make it hard for other people to believe that she wasn’t being selfish or bongoy given that she was the only one seeing the full extent of Dana’s problems.
I guess so, but when somebody says your friend is in fact an “emotional wreck” wouldn’t it make sense to take a moment and find out what is actually happening?
If that somebody was so emotionless and antisocial that I could see them calling someone an “emotional wreck” for crying too loudly? Only if I saw some other sign that things were wrong. Not that any of Raidah’s actions beyond this point have been justified, but I wouldn’t judge her for not believing Sarah when Dana had been acting fine.
OK, Sarah has not be emotionless. And it was established that she was getting along with Dana’s friends and opening up before Dana’s mom died. So yeah, she might not be as close to that group as Dana, but she’s far from emotionless. Sheesh!
I think that one piece is particularly revealing. “She tried to take care of you”. In Raidah’s eyes Sarah’s still not part of the group. She’s just the little tagalong they’ve been babysitting all semester.
This entire speech isn’t “I thought you were our friend”. It’s “You owe us”. They’d bought her silence and inaction through the “care” they’d provided for the helpless little hermit who couldn’t find a friend. Sarah’s probably better off without that sort of friend.
Sarah didn’t make much of an effort to “upgrade” her status, though. She actually couldn’t find friends (which she was OK with but only because of the situation with her scholarships) and Dana knew that not making friends in college would haunt Sarah forever. From Raidah’s perspective, Dana tried to do a good thing for Sarah and Sarah got her pulled out of school over something she was handling just fine on her own.
We don’t know that. The fact that she gathered them up to talk about Dana, to me , implied that Sarah was actually trying with these people.
In any case, this is what bugged me. Raidah acts like they were all condescending to be her friends, but if they were actually her friends 1) They wouldn’t have seen it as a favor 2) They would have listened when she tried to talk to them about Dana instead of just blowing off her concers and 3) Raidah would have talked to Sarah about the reasoning for what she did instead just berating and blaming her. So, either Raidah is a lousy friend, or she’s two faced for acting like Sarah’s friend when she was really just tolerating her for Dana’s sake. Either way, Sarah’s well rid of the lot.
Eh. I’ve always felt it was more nuanced than that. I didn’t like her, but I’ve never *disliked* her either, and I still haven’t moved from that middle ground at all. This isn’t the first time she’s broken out of her “I hold everyone in contempt” shell. And she can generally be counted on to do what’s right, even if she tends to act smug and arrogant when she does.
The thing is, the good in her doesn’t cancel out the bad. She has very real issues (a very demanding scholarship, serious introversion, etc.), but that doesn’t excuse her also-very-real attitude problems. She acts like she’s the most mature person in the room (and gets very smug about it), but she really isn’t.
Her really big maturity problem is that not only does she not know how to interact with people, but she refuses to accept that she can’t dictate the terms of how they’re “allowed” to act. This strip is a good example of that. Any kind of interpersonal relationship will have its share of drama, and she can’t simply insist that it not happen.
And sure, she’s opened up a bit more and given us the back-story, but that doesn’t change her yet. She’s still the same person she was before she revealed this. When she *actually* starts changing, then I’ll reevaluate my opinion of her.
It just occurred to me that if there’s any justice in this universe, Dana’s dad will remember just who it was who helped get his daughter the help she needed when Sarah’s looking for a law job in a few years.
Too bad we aren’t going to flash forward, because I bet he will, especially because if he was OK with Dana’s smoking before he’d instantly notice the change and realize Sarah was the only person at IU who did so as well. Therefore, he knows she’s committed and hardworking from what Dana would probably tell him (even if it was phrased as “this bongo wanted me out because she couldn’t work while I grieved”, since as I noted he’d realize Dana was actually having problems Sarah couldn’t be expected to deal with and nobody else knew about) and he’d know she has a heart from how she handled the situation. I know I’d want employees like that if I had a business.
Or simply Raidah’s, and by supplier, I don’t mean pot or anything consumable. She didn’t just lose a friend. She lost a set of coattails to cling to and hide behind **on top of** the piece of mind that allowed her to be blissfully unaware she was doing such.
Ah, life. So simple and serene. Just like the Warhammer 40’000 Universe. *sigh*
Speaking as someone with a few mental glitches of my own, people with mental problems can be very good at acting “normal.” As an eighteen or nineteen year old here, I can’t blame Raidah and the others in the circle of friends for not being able to see through Dana’s front. Hindsight being 20/20 may actually be one of the reasons they’re still so hard on Sarah a year later.
Speaking as someone who’s cousin went from emotional problems to drug problems to heroin overdose, Sarah did the right thing. Dana needed help and wasn’t getting it, shutting out everyone but the person she COULDN’T shut out. My cousin got all the help her family could give, from support to tough love, and in the end it wasn’t enough. Sometimes tough choices need to be made, and I do think Sarah made the right one.
What worries me more is that apparently Dana hasn’t been in contact with her college friends. I hope her father didn’t make things worse himself or that nothing else happened to her.
it might be shame. Many people who are dealing with depression don’t like to admit to it because they might feel like they should have been able to deal with it themselves. and it hasn’t been a full year. they
Indeed ‘no good deed goes unpunished’ LiC. And Sarah is paying for hers as we already know.
Bravo Sarah.
Good Job Willis-nice handling of a particular pot scene’s detrimental effect without preaching, and I love your characters. They grow, up or down, they do grow.
hot damn, I was sure when Raihda used words like ‘narced’, that Sarah had gone to the Uni. This, this is the best solution I could even think of happening.
I just remembered how Raidah thought that Dinah was mentally challenged because of her total lack of social skills. Goes to show you what a lousy judge of character she is.
“I always see Dana smiling, that means she’s better.” Yeah, shut the fuck up, stupid bongo!
Bravo Sarah, nice one. Honestly at that point, telling the RA or whatever would have been a reasonable move, but this is even better. As expected, Raidah and her goon patrol just suck as people and Sarah is a flawed but well meaning good person.
Way to be in some serious denial there, Raidah. Also, way to be a judgemental bongo to boot.
And yeah, I’m totally cheering for doing the right thing even if it did screw her over, because if doing the right thing was easy, a whole hell of a lot more people would choose to.
Look, it was right of Sarah to call Dana’s dad, but her reasons for it are bullshit. Let’s be real, it was about her grades. She was right when she told Raidah that Dana was an emotional wreck, but she lied when she made it seem like that was the reason she called.
Sarah does have a heart, dude. The grades were just one of many factors. However, Sarah’s tendency to bring everything back to her grades explains why Raidah didn’t believe her.
And the situation was a clusterF for everybody involved. Dana was spiralling and Sarah was the only one that got a front-row seat to that trainwreck. She asked for help, but since Dana only let them see what they wanted to see, she was left on her own. When you add the pressure of her Scholarship and slipping grades you end up with a big fat pile of burdens that a teen barely out of High-School should have no business carrying by herself.
“She was right when she told Raidah that Dana was an emotional wreck, but she lied when she made it seem like that was the reason she called.”
She didn’t make it seem that way. She simply stated what she had done.
And even if this was 100% about the grades, at this point, after losing how many nights of sleep, seeing her grades plummet, and trying to get Dana’s alleged friends to help her, it was entirely justified.
Raidah is horribly misguided, sadly it doesn’t surprise me -.- And given Dana’s state at the moment, she clearly needed help, not just because of the drugs.
On the one hand, Raidah’s been harassing Sarah for almost a year (excepting when they’re away from college, hopefully) over a situation where Sarah was in the right and Raidah was, at best, in denial and willfully ignorant. I’d have trouble controlling myself around her too. On the other hand, Sarah’s still a bit of a misanthropic bongo (to the point where Joyce, optimistic as she is, thought Sarah didn’t like her despite what happened at the party because of the rest of Sarah’s personality). Therefore, I can totally see the punch being addressed but remaining unjustified because it’s consistent with Sarah’s character flaws to flip out and punch someone when there was nothing to suggest that the situation called for violence (though, knowing Raidah, it might have escalated eventually).
Being bongoy and a misanthrope does not preclude having human feelings. Honestly, I feel like maybe she opened up to Dana’s friends a little and when Raidah turned on her so vehemently, she realized that these people never really were interested in being her friends, but were tolerating her as Dana’s little project. I think this angered and hurt her. Now she’s made a new friend, someone who tries to see the best in most people, and I think she’s concerned that Joyce will be taken in by someone who appears kind and caring, when, to Sarah, she must appear to be a two-faced bongo. Add to that Raidah’s negative opinion of Sarah, which she might make Joyce believe, thereby costing Sarah the only friend she has, and I could understand why how that ball of anger, hurt, fear and protectiveness could’ve caused her to lash out.
Real people don’t get moral justification for all of their actions. Real people screw up every now and then.
Willis is mature enough of a writer to know that. What drove Sarah is easy to understand — just like what drove Raidah. That’s all a good writer needs to provide. A writer who makes a character always right is creating a Sue, not a a person.
Man, I’ve been there… I gotta say, I agree with Sarah on this one. Sometimes you gotta make the tough choices for the good of yourself and others, even if you look like a dick after.
And just like that, thousands of people who were arguing that Sarah was a total selfish bongo for getting Dana kicked out of college because her grades were dropping suddenly have their arguments deflated.
I don’t care for what reasons she did it or what triggered the call, she did the right thing. Sometimes intentions just don’t effing matter compared to the end result.
Um… guys… I’m glad Sarah didn’t call the authorities, but still… Dana’s life is over. Her money will buy her another shot, but as a nonstandard student, it won’t be the same; without a damn lucky break, she’s destined for downward mobility, and for the upper middle class that’s never pretty.
Oh, yes, the poor little rich girl. Waa waa. Dana, Raidah and the others are all children of privilege, and so will fare well regardless. Daddy’s money will make it all better, if not at this school, the next one.
Save your tears for people who actually have to work to go to college, not those who can use legacy admissions and similar dodges.
Not to mention the fact that she brought it on herself. Even if Sarah hadn’t called her dad, she would have either failed out, gotten caught and kicked out, or committed suicide eventually. The only question is whether or not she took Sarah down with her.
Pretty sure she can just reapply to come back to the school whenever she’s ready and pick up right where she left off. Business as usual. She left voluntarily. No doors were closed to her. Didn’t use up any shots.
There are lots of nonstandard students — I am among them. A lot of students are nonstandard age. We manage to do just fine, thank you very much. In fact, we tend to do better, because we have context and good practice at working hard and working within the system. So no. Nonstandard students are just fine.
I would imagine they probably explained to the college that she was too grief stricken to continue at this stage. She wouldn’t have lost anything because of that.
Being taken out of school by your parents is nowhere near the same thing as being kicked out of school. And if you’re implying that taking a year or two off to deal with personal issues is going to make Dana a “nonstandard” student (what the hell is that supposed to mean, anyway?) and ruin her chances of being successful, then you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Seriously! I just graduated from a uni, and I saw plenty of people much older than myself in classrooms. People who were starting after getting out of the military, transfers, and once a really badass little old lady who was just interested in neurobiology. And it’s pretty common for adults to go back and pick up a degree to change or speed up careers.
I guess I’ll be one of those nonstandard students? I’ve gone through a life-priority-shift over the last year and I’m going to enroll into art school once I’ve saved up a chunk of money (yes, just after graduating. ;_;)
I can only guess the original poster is still in high school and is getting the college-or-doom spam. Or they are Hermione Granger.
Speaking as a Non-Traditional Student: You have the right of it. Truly, returning to college only after several years of adulthood ruined my life and rendered me a pariah. While the UW is one of those few schools that does NOT require “nonnies” to dress in sackcloth and ring a warning bell as they travel between their classes lest other students become contaminated, the social pressure to do so was overwhelming. Oh Won’t Someone PLEASE Think of the Children (of Privilege)?!?
University of Washington? Are you sure? I thought I saw some people in the U-District dressed like that the other day, and could only conclude they must be “non-traditional”. I’m glad to know that wasn’t the case.
So people with the money to do so can’t take a year off to get treatment for emotional or drug problems, and get back into college once they get their heads together? She didn’t flunk out and she wasn’t expelled. I think someone like that would be able to start up again.
I gotta say, Sarah is a boss. She knew she was going to lose all her friends, but she got Dana help anyway.
Too bad Billie will probably side with Radaih on this one. Joyce’ll and Dina will stick with their buddy, but Billie will no doubt think Sarah was out of line turning someone in.
Let her. It will be Raidah & Co’s funeral. Plus she’d probably dump’em before they could do it first. Too much adapting to Raidah’s delicate feelings and being *nice*, not enough boozing and social-climbing.
Okay, I feel better now. She just called her father to get this girl some help. I was thinking she ratted her out to the university and authorities.That is a whole other can of worms here. Those “friends” were enablers for her destruction and then Sarah was brave enough to get Dana some help.
Would you really ask a friend to sacrifice so much (e.g. their future) for you?
I don’t think so. Dana seemed like a genuinely good person, so I don’t really think she’d put Sarah – whom she must have grown to trust – in such a position.
I think that it was Raidah and gang who treated Dana selfishly, without even stopping to think if she were putting on the brave face just for their sake. They even ignored Sarah’s warnings, so they just went on believing what they wanted.
How would you expect someone felt if they lost their mother prematurely and to such a painful disease like cancer?
It occurs to me that she wasn’t even really “Taken out of school” the way we’d been lead to believe. Sarah didn’t actually call anybody who had the power to do that against Dana’s will. Not after the tuition’s been paid anyway. Basically she called Dana’s dad and he came over to pick Dana up. Probably after Dana gave Sarah the father’s number. Presumably after a heart to heart where Sarah got Dana to accept that she was in no state for school right now and needed to be with family.
Less that she was taken from school and more that she just left.
I wouldn’t assume that much about what hasn’t been said. There are plenty of ways to get a roommate’s parent’s number without having a Hallmark moment first. (e.g. Check her cell phone, find out her emergency contact, check her computer’s contact list, etc.)
She did the right thing, but let’s not make up the story of her canonization as a Disney saint with birds landing on her shoulders and bunnies nuzzling against her feet.
True. Still, the main point is just that her father couldn’t have forcibly removed her from the school. The specifics of how Sarah got the number is just what seems more likely to me than the alternative. I freely admit that it’s in no way confirmed to be true.
Sorry to double post. It occurs to me that there was actually a point that I failed to effectively vocalize. I meant more to just explore the question of how Sarah got the number in order to paint how glaring a detail it is and bring attention to the fact that Raidah has shown remarkably little interest in why Sarah would have it. Then I just sort of got carried away into another train of thought.
Sure he could have. There are many ways he could have forced her to come home:
1) Dana might not have been 18 yet, and of the age of majority. He would still have legal authority of her.
2) Dana could be financially dependent on him, and he could have cut her off. (Weed isn’t free, even if she has housing, a meal plan, and tuition pre-paid.)
3) He could have threatened to get the authorities involved if she didn’t voluntarily clean herself up. (A bit heavy-handed, but still possible; he is an attorney and would know.)
4) Lastly, and most importantly, he’s still her dad, and the weight of parental authority is not so immediately shed upon entering college for most people.
None of those require a heart-to-heart with Sarah first, and Raidah probably didn’t bring any of that up because it’s one of those little niggling details that’s far less important than, “My God, you betrayed her, you selfish shut-in!”
Literally the man is incapable of withdrawing her from school. I don’t mean in some rebellious “He’s not the boss of her anymore” way. His word doesn’t mean anything to the school. I might as well go and to cancel a complete stranger’s gym membership for all the significance it would have.
Yes. He’s a father. He could’ve gotten the consent in any number of ways. He could not have done this for her though. She needed to say “Okay, let’s do this” in order for it to work. She had to choose to take herself off the student roster and she had to choose to get into the car in order to be gone. The school didn’t expel her for her. The police didn’t come and drag her away in cuffs. She walked over to that department office, told them she was withdrawing, walked over to the dad’s car and entered it willingly. Whatever else may have influenced that decision it was her own.
If you’re just talking about the status of her enrollment on paper, then sure, that could be the case.
If you’re talking about actually making her physically go home, then what I said stands.
I’m talking about both. What you listed was tools that her father would have for achieving the consent. She had to be a willing participant.
The school has the power remove her enrollment without needing her consent. The police have the power to physically take her from her home without requiring her consent. Her father does not have that power. If her father forcibly took her back home then that’s full-blown abduction. I don’t imagine that’s what happened. I imagine he came and picked her up. She may or may not have had reservations or complaints, but at the end of the day she walked into that car with her own legs, sat her own butt down into that car seat, and willingly went home. All according to her own agency.
We had thought that she was forcibly removed in a manner which would not require her cooperation. This is not the case. It cannot be the case with her father. It was entirely her own decision to leave with him.
I was just thinking along similar lines. Like Dana comes to visit and thanks Sarah for what she did, and that she has her act together now and could never have done it without her help.
I think a nice dash of Laser-Guided Karma for this little fiasco would be if Dana actually became closer friends with Sarah than she ever was with Raidah and Co.
I want to join Janette in praising the writer for presenting pot as a dangerous drug. I’m sick of writers presenting it in a funny, harmless way, and presenting any concern toward it was overblown & unjust.
I had two friends whose lives were ruined by pot addiction.
I know one man who was evicted from his apartment because he refused to pay his rent before buying bis pot.
I’m sick of it getting misrepresented in so much media.
The same could be said about alcohol or any substance or hobby one becomes so obsessed with that they abuse and retreat into rather than face reality. Recreational pot use is one thing, but Dana was getting baked so regularly that it was adversely affecting her. If it wasn’t pot she would’ve been getting plastered considering how easy it is to get booze at colleges.
And I know people who do and their lives have not been ruined by it. How do I know that you don’t know human train wrecks who would ruin their lives one way or another? If that’s the company you keep then the law of averages mean most of the pot users you know are full blown pot heads.
And I know of many who do, and manage to be productive members of society. the thing you have to consider is that people can become addicted to anything, if it wasn’t pot, it would have been something else.
Now Sarah would really deserve Dana coming back, if not healed, feeling a little better, and thanking her in front of Raidah and friends because she made the right choice and helped her.
she might not though. one of the problems with mental health is the stigmas that are attached to it. Dana might still be in recovery and feeling ashamed and has cut off contact with her friends. Remember she dumped Carl probably because he was starting to challenge her personal illusion that she was fine.
You know it would be interesting to see how Carl treats Sarah.
She didn’t open up to Raidah and the gang about any of this. Can’t imagine that got any easier to talk about when they called her up the day after her disappearance wanting to know the deats about why she’s gone.
I don’t believe Sarah’s being self-serving here, and she’s certainly not a monster. She did what she thought was best, for both her and Dana.
But I still think she made the wrong decision. Going behind another adult’s back to involve their parents is not a respectful way to respond. Dana wasn’t being respectful either, but this is not the correct response. She should have applied for a room change and simply removed herself from the situation.
Many people have pointed out that room changes are usually not that easy to get, particularly when you can’t explain why you want them.
Plus, even if she could get a room change, that leaves Dana without any support system except the people she’s putting up a front for. But when Sarah heard that Dana had failed out of college (or been arrested, or found dead in the bathtub) she could tell herself she’d been appropriately respectful by not involving herself in the situation.
And putting your hands on someone else’s body and probably breaking their bones when they haven’t given you permission is also disrespectful, but I would never complain about someone doing CPR on me.
Personally, I think a little disrespect is better than leaving someone to their self-destructive spiral that could have (as pointed out above) ended in suicide.
Without getting into whether or not I’m condoning drug use with this statement, it does seem that Dana had things fairly in hand and that the reason for the spiral was the emotional trauma of her mother’s death. Another such trauma is unlikely, though not impossible.
TO CLARIFY, since I apparently have trouble doing so on message boards: I do not know what might cause someone to spiral. I have never known anyone with a drug habit (that I knew of at the time), nor have I ever been particularly close to anyone who has lost a parent. I may have no idea what I am talking about and it might take only take something minor to trigger another spiral. I do not know.
The point I was making is, doing the room transfer would only end up placing Dana in with a roommate who might nor care at all. Removing one of the few supports she actually had since her other friends refused to believe she had a problem. She was after all already spiralling because of her mother’s death, she hadn’t recovered from the spiral when Sarah took action, so changing rooms could have been even worse for her because you’re banking on an unknown factor. I’m not saying the room transfer it’s self would have caused another spiral, though it might have, but that the new roomate Dana gets may not be as understanding or even care enough to act as a support which is what Dana needed.
Where as her father is someone you know can and has the resources to take care of her.
The reason for the spiral was her mother’s death, yeah, but… that means that she was in a self-destructive spiral. Yeah, that stuff does get worse, and at least based on the little we know her minor drug use turned into a heavy drug dependency. Drug use levels aside, she pretty clearly had a problem of some sort.
Dana was good at putting up a front for her friends so ultimatums would be useless since it would give her enough time to deceive. This was really the best solution for Sarah and Dana since at least she doesn’t have a drug bust on her record which could bar her from other colleges once she’s better. Maybe Raidah would know just how serious the problem was if Dana continued to speak to her later, but it doesn’t appear that she stayed in contact with her friends possibly because her therapist advised her to stay away from enablers.
Yeah, it doesn’t look like Raidah even really made much of an effort to follow up with Dana and figure out what really went down. Seems to me that she wasn’t that great a friend if she found out that Dana was gone and her first response was to start blaming Sarah without even figuring out what happened.
It’s amazing how many times the word “bongo” has come up in the comments, either calling Raidah one or saying Sarah had been acting like one. Guys, Raidah’s in the wrong but she’s obviously reacting because deep down she knew she should have done something and getting mad at Sarah is easier than admitting that. And Sarah might have been antisocial early on in college but it was established that she had been getting along with this group before Dana’s decline. Neither of them deserve to be called bongoes. Please stop.
I don’t think we can assume quite that much of Raidah just yet. I don’t believe she’s all that horrible but I don’t see any evidence that she ever really understood that she didn’t need to do what’s been done- if she had, I think a year is enough time for her to get the fuck over herself and stop treating Sarah the way that she has been. So until I see otherwise I’m going to assume that she just went and convinced herself that it’s all Sarah’s fault
What I find amazing is how quickly people seemed to switch from “Sarah is a bongo” to “Raidah is a bongo.” This is a complex matter! I think Raidah genuinely believes that Dana would have recovered on her own just fine, and so from her perspective, Sarah helped remove her friend from school for no adequate reason. We can fault Raidah with being ignorant of the situation, but I hardly think that qualifies her as a bongo.
Well this is a different spin from what was originally said. She didn’t get her kicked out, she withdrew. She can still come back once she gets her act together, many universities even allow for medical leaves so she could conceivably even still have her scholarships.
Actually, “kicked out” was always an assumption by the readers. Go check the first few strips under both the Sarah and Raidah tags above; everything said here fits in that original context fine.
Very sad. Sarah definitely did the right thing and Raidah and her friends overreacted badly. I could understand more if Raidah was mad for a few days then came back and apologized, but it she’s made things far worse by continuing to hold a grudge against Sarah a year later. It seemed like Raidah got off to a such a good start, but she let this issue make her bitter and cold. Hopefully she’ll come out of it and realize Sarah took the only course she knew to help Dana.
I’ll be honest – I see both sides here. I grew up with a lot of kids who had horrible home lives, who’s only support system was their group of friends. At the same time, Dana was not going to recover without her family, so it was really best to get her family involved. I don’t think Dana’s dad should have right away taken her out of school, but telling him was definitely the best first step to recovering for her. Being distanced from her family after losing her mother was really not what she needed, and had she stayed in school with just Raidah’s gang as her “group”, she very realistically would’ve ended up failing out of school and getting into a terrible cycle of bad and worse behavior.
It does take people several, several years to get over this kind of loss, though, and it is the kind of loss that changes people, changes how they see things and where their priorities are. I actually want to see how Dana is now – though the main storyline is likely only a year or two after these events.
Out of curiosity, is Sarah’s hairband, like a symbol of her bitterness or something? Sweet Sarah wears her hair in a pony tail, Sarah that lets people assume she’s a bongo for convenience where’s her hair with a band.
Raidah is batshit insane. I figured from the previous hints that Sarah narced on Dana to the University or something. She told her father, who took her out of school. She’s getting the help she needs rather than being in the legal system or in a death spiral. That makes Sarah a “monster”?
Dana “worried” about Sarah and “tried to take care of her”? Sarah’s not the one that needed help or worry here.
I would worry that the level of stupidity and selfishness Raidah is displaying here is unrealistic and not believable, but sadly I’m afraid that it’s not.
Wait, that’s it? That is the terrible thing she did, tell her dad? That is probably the best way she could have handled it. Holy denial Batman, way to overreact Raidah, you biotch.
Hmm, while I do believe that Sarah going to Dana’s father was the right choice, I don’t understand why it would have been a “bad/wrong” choice if she had alerted the authorities or the school about what was going on. People aren’t always going to know Daddy’s number, and someone had to get involved in a situation like this.
Getting kicked out of school or going to jail are of course awful consequences, but they are consequences of actions she herself chose to commit. And as life isn’t “over” until you are dead, she could always have done her time or apply to another school, and hopefully in the meantime realize where she erred and get cleaned up and receive counseling/therapy.
So really, whatever action Sarah was going to make, short of killing her roommate to make study time easier, I didn’t really see as a “bad” choice, or at least the choices of jail/expulsion that I’ve seen flung around in the comments.
You think their life would be improved by a criminal record and a stay in prison?
Weed is harmless. It’s addictive in the sense that gambling, shopping, and internet use are addictive. If someone’s ruining their life with it, they need help and support.
Which is something the legal system is REALLY SHITTY at providing.
Flawed or not, the law is the law; it’s there for a reason,
and breaking it has consequences.
No one likes to get a ticket for speeding, but the limits are
in place to protect themselves and the drivers around them.
And honestly? If Dana (whose father owns a law firm)
really cared about not ruining her life, then maybe
she shouldn’t be consuming a substance she knows is
illegal and has negative repercussions for being
in possession of.
Laws do not make things bad. Bad things should be against the law. The law is not some impersonal force–it’s people. If you get someone thrown in jail for smoking weed, you are doing a bad thing and should feel bad about yourself and what you’re doing.
It’s against the law to speed because driving too fast KILLS PEOPLE. Like, they die. And aren’t alive anymore.
Marijuana is illegal because of a combination of ignorance, lies, bullshit, and racism.
Given that Dana’s a grieving white girl who likely has a lawyer father, I don’t think she would get a harsh sentence. Might have to go on drg testing or to go to rehab. But courts and officers are also made of people, and they treat someone they see as a troubled kid very differently from someone who doesn’t have any of the usual societal sympathy triggers (aka privilege).
I think Sarah did the best thing, but I also think Dana would have turned out okay even if Sarah had gone to the police.
hero moment Dana shows up to hug Sarah and thank her…. Superhero moment we find out after the girls get back from shopping that Dana sent Sarah a letter thanking her already and Sarah hasn’t thrown that in Riddah’s face cause she still doesn’t fgeel like a good person about what she did.
I don’t see why everyone is jumping on Raidah’s case about this. You guys saw in the last strip that Druggie McDepressed put on a MUCH better face for her friends than she did for Sarah. This is simply a misunderstanding taken to its logical extreme.
Great storyline David. You’ve done a fantastic job of balancing everyone’s points of view. I feel for everyone involved in this mess. I really don’t think any of the ladies qualifies as a “bad person” and that’s what impressed me the most. Way to go sir.
bongo should of bongoin’ got that bongo crying like a bongo on bongo tape with a bongoin’ camera, you bongoes. Then that other bongo woulda seen she was being a bongoy bongo, you bongo.
I’m calling it now, at some point in the future, Dana will return and be all thankful to Sarah for what she did, and Raidah and her friends will be all “WTF?!”
If I remember correctly, wasn’t Raidah only pissed about Dana leaving because she wouldnt have as much access to pot, and that Sarah was just some fun hating spoil sport? If this is true, it really colors Raidah as not just being shallow, but a complete lowlife using her “Dana was trying to take care of you” argument to make herself look good and Sarah look like a pariah that should have known better.
Question: This story takes place in the present, so why didn’t they just ask Dana herself what happened? The Facebook isn’t THAT new, and neither are phones and email.
If this is right after she left, she probably doesn’t have the inclination or possibly the ability to go online or answer her phone. If she went straight to a rehab center, for example.
Was anyone else disappointed by the resolution to this story? Up until the flashback arc, we had VERY little information about what actually went down between Sarah and her roommate. Really, it could have gone two ways:
1. The roommate was out of control and it was seriously affecting Sarah and her studies. Fed up, she did what she had to do so her roommate wouldn’t ruin her future.
2. The roommate liked to party and use drugs, but was fairly responsible and kept it to herself. Sarah only ratted her out because she disapproved of her lifestyle.
Obviously, we now know that option 1 ended up being what really happened. But the second case was just as plausible – Sarah has shown herself to be a pretty judgmental person, and considering how Raidah and her friends reacted, it’s not unreasonable to think they might have had good reason to be angry.
All I’m saying is that it would have been really interesting if it turned out that Sarah was in the wrong, and that the others were justified in their rage. It would have added a whole new level of complexity to the plot and put their previous interactions in a whole new light. Instead, what we get is Sarah as a martyr, while Raidah and her friends just are a bunch of assholes. Meh.
I had to do this once….. Though not for weed. several years back, someone my husband knew developed a heroin addiction…. he started dragging his clean friends to pick up with him…. After my husband came home worried about his friend and very upset that he’d been dragged along, I had to put my foot down. I might have been yelled at and hated by this guy, but at least he’s gotten the help he needs, you know? His family shipped him off to rehab and a halfway home in anther state…. Even though he might have hated me fore doing it then, I occasionally get a call from him, thanking me for letting his family know how bad his problem really was and crediting me with saving his life.
Personally, I’m not as concerned about weed (having seen people on a number of different drugs, the people on weed are generally the most civil and friendly, as well as tidy and careful, people of the group), and Sarah probably could have tried to get her roommate switched before calling Dana’s dad, but in the end, she let a father, who was probably worried about his daughter, know that his daughter was hurting and needed help healing. She probably kept Dana from a downward spiral through different types of drugs. Dana didn’t wind up doing cocaine or MDMA or LSD or heroin or any of those more dangerous drugs before Sarah tried to get her help after all, so perhaps Sarah really did the poor girl a favor
Here's an entertaining cite at the bottom of the first page
Josh Gerstein@joshgerstein.bsky.social ⋅ 18h
JUST IN: Milwaukee Judge Hannah Dugan moves to dismiss federal criminal case against her for allegedly helping immigrant hide from ICE. Her lawyers say she's protected by official acts & judicial immunity and 10th Amendment. Doc: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
Where did Hollywood go so wrong? I thought movies were supposed to be an escape from reality, a chance to put your worries aside and not have to think about any underlying ideas or concepts. Well, not anymore.
theonion.com/you-can...
It's not a new argument, of course, but Chesterton dismissed it effectively in 1908.
"You will hear everlastingly... this argument that the rich man cannot be bribed. The fact is, of course, that the rich man is bribed; he has been bribed already. That is why he is a rich man."
Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com ⋅ 1d
Hawley dismisses Trump lining his pockets with his memecoin: "Listen, I think nobody believes that Donald Trump can be bought. I mean, what does Donald Trump need more money for?"
wilbur, savvy enough to know he's in a comic strip but still not a great actor, awkwardly lifts a muffin up into frame so that we, the audience, understand that he has a muffin right now, which is very important narratively, but he's not really selling it well as an organic, human action
confirming that the reason there's been no Galaxy Version female characters in Blokees until now is that they felt they needed to make Round Lady Thighs For Ladies
It's #webcomicday? We have a special day???
Well, my name is Pat McHoarney and I draw 69 Mouse-Ear Blvd, a multigenerational story about women who all have sexy legs and probably other features. There was a grandmother, but she wasn't hot and so she died off-panel.
Elizabeth Holmes is in prison for defrauding investors through her blood-testing company, Theranos. Her partner, Billy Evans, is now trying to raise money for a company that describes itself as “the future of diagnostics.” nyti.ms/3FbtZm9
Josh Gerstein @joshgerstein.bsky.social ⋅ 18h
Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com ⋅ 1d
Pavel
@spavel.bsky.social ⋅ 10d
The New York Times @nytimes.com ⋅ 5d
preternia @preternia.com ⋅ 3d
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So she only told her dad not the authorities, that’s something at least.
And lets be honest, thats probably what she needed. This only confirms the Raidah and gang bongofactor.
Not so much bongofactor. A lot of it is them not knowing the whole story.
But they’re also bongoes. They assumed Dina was handicapped, after all.
Also blaming Sarah for telling Dana’s father his daughter wasn’t well. I mean the sheer nerve of Sarah, informing a parent his daughter needs help.
Don’tcha know that parents are evil? That’s like, life lessons 101 or something. All they want to do is crush your dreams, kill your buzz, and make you miserable. Sarah gave Dana’s father exactly what he needed to do all three at once! Now there’ll be no stopping the villain!
DIna’s not handicapped? [honest question]
She may be autistic. That’s not really ‘handicapped’ in today’s world.
Oh, sure. Just severely limited in the kinds of work environments you can handle; always making social mistakes that get you fired; being misunderstood by everyone you meet; having few if any friends to help you cope; with little public assistance available for your condition, in the US; and often dealing with severe depression due to all of the above. And that’s just for Asperger’s, never mind more severe forms of autism. But not, you know, handicapped.
Well put
In Sweden, where I live atm, if you’re diagnosed with aspbergers you can get a lot of assistance with all of the things you mentioned above (yes even the social life part), though usually after having to fight “the authorities” for it for a while, so I’m really happy for my diagnosed friends that they are living here and not in ANY other country I’ve ever visited.
It’s hard for me to imagine them coping as well as they do if there was no internet though, and I guess that’s available everywhere
.
Exactly. It’s not a handicap – it just means things are different for the ones who have it. Also, I had a cat with your username! =O
Autism is a spectrum, some people are able to make do, some aren’t.
Er, I think you need to calibrate your sarcasm-meter there, ZK.
I got the name from the cat in A Wizard Abroad, same as you, I would guess.
I try not to use my sarcasm meter too much online, Tualha. It… doesn’t work as reliably as I’d like. >.>
Yup, same place. Except my kitty wasn’t all black, she was a dilute tortie. Every bit as energetic, though…
You sound kind of bitter; bad experiences?
More like not wanting to know the whole story. Honestly discounting the person who is in a position to know that your friend is hiding her depression from you is stupid and dangerous. Assuming you know exactly how your friend is feeling from the little time you see them is arrogance at it’s finest.
I could comment on how I agree with you, or I could point out that your name is a couple letters awar from “Zack Fair” of the Final Fantasy 7 series
So which one are you going to do? Good god man, don’t leave us in suspense!
But Sarah tried to TELL her the whole story. At some point it’s Raidah’s fault for not listening, which let’s face it is why she’s so hard on Sarah. She knows deep down that she probably should have done more so it didn’t come to that but it’s much easier to blame the girl who was directly involved with how it went down.
More like not accepting the whole story.
Oh. WOW.
For everyone so sure that the police were involved, or the university, or…
That was actually seriously the best move Sarah could have made (informing someone who knew better how to care for Dana).
Yeah, seriously. That’s the single most effective choice for someone who will take her recovery seriously, who won’t throw her into jail and end her hopes of a future, and who actually is invested in her.
Sarah did the most mature thing possible. Yeah, Raidah really is a bongo if she’s flying off the handle at Sarah telling for Dana’s own family about her issues — unless Dana’s father is some sort of monster that we don’t know about.
Yeah, truth. Sarah was in the position of being Dana’s sole support system, which she recognized was insufficient, so she went and expanded the support network. And she picked somebody who would understand and be on Dana’s side and whose job it is to take care of Dana. Very good move.
Yeah, Sarah wins THIS round. “Oh my god, Sarah, you told a father than their emotionally wrecked, drug-snorting child was emotionally wrecked and increasingly drug-snorting and needed help that we refused to give her because we wanted to believe she was getting better and let ourselves be lied to!!!”
Losing these friends doesn’t seem like a big whoop anymore, y’know?
Drug-snorting?
She was also known to put the weed into tiny little pill capsules.
What are marijuana tablets?
It’s like an iPad … only on Weeeeed.
Wiid?
MC Chris approves of this. FTW!
WOW seconded. This changes a lot… and it rings true that Sarah refused to justify or explain herelf to anyone before now.
Agreed. And let’s face it: It was her dad’s decision to pull her out.
I’ll admit, I was expecting it to be something much worse. Sarah definitely doesn’t deserve the crap she’s been getting over that.
Raidah you are a terrible friend.
In other word, a fiend?
A fiend in deed is a fiend indeed.
F is Forgetting all of her problems
I is for ignoring her issues
E is for Empathy that is misguided
N is for Not giving someone the benefit of the doubt
D is for Denying that your friend ever had a problem.
All we need now is a bunch of cheerleaders to spell it out.
Billie! You’re not doing anything right now, get over here a minute.
Or SpongeBob to sing about it.
Down here in the deep blue….
oh.
U is for Uranium!,,, Wait am I on the wrong verse?
U is for Underwear, Red!
a fiend with weed is better?
I’ve found that most fiends get less fiendish with weed… which could explain why Dana was friends with them.
A fiend who’s depressed and all the rest
A fiend who’s not getting better~
A friend was stressed she’d fail her test
And she will… um… something Placebo-ish
..and she will call your father
Because fatherly calls are the most Placobo-ish thing there are.
Walky surprised.
To be fair, we only have Sarah’s side of the story.
To be fair, unless Sarah is making up this side of the story whole cloth (and then I sold her to a group of passing slavers -er, I mean, then I told her dad about the problem) there’s not a lot of ways to make Radiah look better here. Radiah is *not* being presented as a villain; she’s being presented as a girl who refused to face the facts and misblames Sarah for all the perceived problems. Unless you change the actual facts about what Sarah did, the story’s not going to change.
To be fair, when we hear Raidah’s side of the story I’m pretty sure we’ll find she’s also had at least one conversation with Dana that Sarah wasn’t privy to. Sarah’s story doesn’t even have to be false so long as it’s incomplete.
I hope guys like you aren’t serious.
Please tell me, in what way could this situation be explained that would eventually make Sarah look bad and make it look like she made the wrong decision.
Please. Write it down.
Would it be… that maybe Dana did it all on purpose and actualy all of her friends knew she was alright because she told them “hey, I will act worse when Sarah is around, don’t worry about me, I’m actually ok, I’m just messing around!”? You mean something like that?
Seriously, what kind of extreme delusions you have to have in order o think that there’s a side of this story that can make Sarah look like the bad guy. Jesus, murrica.
Well, I’ve had friends with fathers that are total controlling assholes that overreact to everything. So this father may be the type to keep her on lock down, berate her to the point of abuse, promise to take away any form of financial aid on his part, etc. And with both of them being in an emotionally unstable state from Dana’s mom dying, both his actions and her reactions could become even more extreme.
Or something along those lines, at the least.
…
I see no wrong with Sarah’s actions.
And they hate her for that. What is this world coming to when being concerned about your friend is a bad thing?
Well, for one, Sarah seemed to be more a friend to Dana than anyone.
However, Raidah and the others only saw Dana smiling, and slowly going back to normal, none of the crying or (probably additional) pot use.
I have seen this situation, and I involved the school because
1. I didn’t have the option to inform authorities at the time
2. I didn’t know his parents
and 3. He was a dick trying to hit me with a 2×4.
I wonder if we’ll later find out whether Dana sees things that way or not.
I bet we’ll see Dana again. Seems odd to introduce a character purely as part of another character’s backstory and never use them again. However, it probably won’t be until next semester, so realistically we aren’t gonna know for years.
Years
That seems optimistic
4. And everyone has been forgetting this one in disturbingly increasing regularity: fiction.
Is it bad to become ensnared in a good story?
The only problem that I see with it is that from the last strip it seems like she did it less out of concern for Dana and more as a way to get Dana out of her way so she could study. Sarah definitely did the right thing, but I wonder how much of it was done out of concern for Dana and how much was just her getting an “inconvenience” out of her way.
Hardly just an “inconvenience.”
But he has a point, especially from an outside perspective. I’d assume selfishness before altruism if I were Raidah because Sarah acts like a judgmental grade-obsessed bongo and her scholarships (which I might not believe her about in this scenario, because I know plenty of people who will make up anything as an excuse to be bongoy) only justify the middle part. She’s a good person underneath, but we only know that because we’ve seen her interact with Joyce and Dina; she seems like she actually wants to hide it and I can’t blame Raidah and Co. for not seeing it.
I dunno because Sarah did try to appeal to Dana’s friends before she contacted her father. But this could actually open up the possibility that the college students of the dumbiverse do not own cellular phones.
But this could perhaps be social commentary where “people” consider it rude to call/write/email/telegraph/messenger pidgeon their friends to find out their current status in this year of 20XX. Thus Sarah’s actions made Dana incommunicado.
Eh.
The thing is, if Raidah really gave a damn, she could have looked into Sara’s consistently voiced concerns, and would have seen how bad their freind was doing. She just wanted to blow it off as hyperbole.
When Dana is taken away BY HER FATHER, Raidah STILL could have looked into this and would have seen, again, that Sara’s concerns were factual, and that Dana needed help, badly.
Instead she crosses to aggressively threaten & ostracize her ‘grumpy’ friend for taking away her ‘fun’ friend. She makes no effort to help either of her friends in need.
Whether she realizes it or not, she is a superficial acquaintance, and not a true friend to Sara, and especially not to Dana.
We don’t know anything about Sarah’s background.
If she is very poor, this might be her only chance at college.
Given the “unforgiving scholarship” line, this seems
reasonable.
Note I don’t want to fall into the trap of *assuming* all
black people are poor, so we don’t really know at this point.
She was clearly trying to comfort Dana in the first panel of the strip and the bong one, at least. And honestly, not being able to sleep in your own dorm goes well beyond “inconvenience” territory, so even if that was a main factor I can’t blame her. Between the freaking out about the scholarship, the friends ignoring her, the stress of the whole pot thing to cover up, her own attempts at comfort failing, and bad sleep taking its toll on her body, I’m betting she was just completely overwhelmed with the whole situation. Something’s gotta give.
Does it matter whether her motives were selfish or not? She still handled the situation the best way she felt she possibly could. I do think she cared about Dana to a certain extent, seeing as she first suggested therapy, then called Dana’s father, as ways of trying to help her.
Exactly, doing the right thing for the wrong reason is still doing the right thing. And I’m not 100% convinced it was for the wrong reasons.
Not at all.
There is no better choice I could think of.
She did not squeal her out to the cops, or to the campus authorities, like I had suspected earlier.
This was the most compassionate and wise move she could make.
This. The reasons doensn’t matter at all, and being selfish isn’t necessarily bad. Specially when it leads to good being done to other people. Selfishness is only a bad thing when you start harming everyone else.
Well, this is a classic tension between Kantian morality and utilitarianism.
The loss of a scholarship is a bit more than just an inconvenience.
If you have a dead parent, don’t you get a pass for that semester, or is that only for dead roommates? Which was a third option that we’re glad Sarah didn’t take.
Sarah doesn’t have a dead parent, and I’m pretty sure they don’t give you a pass because someone’s parent died, somewhere.
It’s college lore that if your roommate dies you will pass all of your classes that semester.
It isn’t true, although there’s a good chance your professors will be willing to give you a break.
At my school, there was a rumor that you’d get a free ride* if you got hit by a car crossing the street that bisected campus. I doubt it was true, but I dunno anything about liability stuff. So maybe?
*Free ride as in full scholarship, not “Oh God I’m stuck to the hood of this car why won’t it stop?”
That actually happened to my best friend when she was pursuing her graduate degree. And she sure didn’t get any free ride, or anything else except some time in the hospital.
Some degree of self-interest is not bad.
Dana was harming Sarah. She certainly owed her no loyalty, but she did the best she could to help her anyway. The fact that she *needed* to act out of self-interest doesn’t change that part, and it’s hardly selfish.
Kabam! Expectations of Sarah’s betrayal subverted!
BAM! and the dirt is gone!
Lol!
I love you guys.
BAM! In the FAAAAAACE!!
BAM! that’s a nice soufle.
Ok, now that I’ve seen the conclusion of this debacle, my assumptions were wrong. It was probably for the best that Sarah did that, cuz I get the feeling Dana was not going to get any better during her time at the school, not to mention how horrid her grades must have looked by this point.
Indeed!
You bring up an excellent point. She was surrounded by enablers. Even Sara had become one without even realizing it, until she got her family alerted to what they probably didn’t even know was going on.
If she had not, no good would have come to Dana.
I have new respect for Sarah.
What, you didn’t already respect her for beating a rapist with a baseball bat?
Truth.
Seriously. My stance on Sarah was pretty much MEH, I didn’t like or dislike her … until she beat that would be rapist with a bat. Now, she’d have to come up with something pretty heinous for me to dislike her.
Not just “would be” – I really doubt this was the first time he had tried this.
I said new respect. Added on to that. Actually this whole arc thus far makes her cool.
That is a teeny tiny couch beneath a monstrous plasma screen.
It must be a metaphor somehow…. or a lyric from A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.
All we need now for another twist was to have Dana’s father be the Chief of Police or something.
Didn’t Dana already say he owns a law firm?
Sorry, I forgot about that detail.
Strictly speaking she STRONGLY IMPLIED he owns a law firm but who gives a shit, he owns a law firm.
Turns out she misheard. All of their parents own law forms.
He’s the Chief of Police anyway. BOOM! There’s your plot twist.
He’s the Chef of Police who owns dozens of Law Forms.
Dana’s dad is her dealer. Dana was actually doing fine and Sarah was just reading too much into some normal post-death-of-a-loved-one sadness and an increased pot usage. Now her dad’s got her on hard drugs and has her convinced her mother died because she was hogging all the weed.
Mike? Is that really you?!
lol
And just like that, all of Sarah’s bongo-cred disappeared.
How will she afford her bongoing gear now?
The way the rest of us do: with good old-fashioned bongoin’. No need for that fancy “cred” stuff.
With the BADASS cred her baseball bat brings her.
Nope. She’s still a bongo … righteous bongo!
In b4 tons of comments screaming how you can’t be dependent on pot even though just because everyone isn’t dependent on a substance or thing doesn’t mean it can’t happen to someone.
As someone who’s studying drug abuse and dependency, I’m really impressed–because when pot appears in media, it’s almost never shown as being negative to anyone ever, and if is, there is an angry backlash of ‘how dare you say pot is harmful you don’t understand’. Having the balls to say something that’s going to be unpopular is something I respect in a writer, especially in a topic I’m immersed in.
Just wanted to say that.
It’s not that smoking pot can’t lead to all sorts of problems, it that smoking pot doesn’t automatically lead to all sorts of problem. Use, abuse and addiction are not synonyms.
I would say that all signs point to it being addiction in Dana’s case, however.
I don’t entirely agree. It looks more like emotional dependance than physical addiction to me. The two can be equally bad, so you and I are in agreement that, either way, she was in trouble and the habitual pot smoking was a serious symptom. But I think it’s important to be precise here. Just because someone is using a recreational drug to comfort themselves doesn’t make them an addict.
Granted. I’m hardly an expert in such things, so I’ve probably been referring to such things as emotional addiction while the actual terminology has passed me by.
I think it’s pretty obvious here that Dana was abusing the drugz, and possibly also becoming addicted or at least dependent on them.
I approve of this message.
I think pot appears in media the way it does to counter things like Reefer Madness or D.A.R.E. that went too far in the opposite direction. Sadly, like that outdated propaganda, modern depictions of pot are being taken as absolute fact by people who either have an agenda already or just believe that because it doesn’t happen in media it doesn’t happen in real life. I think David deserves extra props for not only talking about marijuana dependence when many people seem determined to deny its existence, but avoiding either extreme to create a realistic picture of it instead of perpetuating the myths on either side that make discussions of drug policy so difficult.
Also, just for the benefit of people who will argue that pot dependence isn’t real and they know because they know non-addicted regular smokers: Pot, like alcohol, is something you can be addicted to without totally ruining your life, so if you compared your stoner friends to stereotypical alcoholics or hard drug users you might have missed an addict or two. Pot also has a lower dependency rate than alcohol (I think I heard around 20-30% of users, period, are addicted) so your personal experience doesn’t mean marijuana dependence is a myth; it means you don’t know enough pot smokers for not knowing an addict to be statistically impossible.
There’s also a distinction that’s being drawn. Let’s call it addiction and dependence.
There are drugs like cocaine, or heroin, or crystal meth (or alcohol or nicotine), that are seriously “addictive.” Regular users will start having physiological symptoms if they don’t have their chemical of choice in their systems. Withdrawal causes headaches, or DTs, tremors, pain, a host of psychological symptoms. Things like crystal meth can leave the brain so fried that serotonin receptors no longer work as intended–you can’t be happy without more meth.
Dependence is a need for something that gives an endorphin rush. This can be drugs, including the physically addictive drugs, as well as things like mushrooms or, yes, marijuana. It can also be gambling, sex, shopping, internet use, video games, or just about anything else that’s fun or pleasurable.
Willis seems to be very familiar with psychological dependence, and it’s popped up several times in Shortpacked!. It is a very real problem that ruins lives, and Dana’s arc is a very believable one for it. Willis really does a very good job handling it.
HOWEVER, when people talk about “addictive drugs,” they’re usually referring to the first sort, not the second. People who favor legalization are usually fighting against the perception that marijuana is physically addictive like heroin or meth, and is treated as a schedule 1 narcotic.
Exactly! I use “addiction” and “dependence” interchangeably for convenience (and because most dependences get labeled “psychological addictions” or something similar by a lot of people) but that’s what I was getting at- people want to clarify the difference between crackheads and pot smokers so they can convince people to legalize a substance that’s less addictive and harmful than alcohol or cigarettes.
In b4 weird and random straw man argument about the phantom legions of drug supporters in a discussion that’s otherwise all about Sarah and Raidah.
Aw, man. Too late.
To be fair, Janette expected something that really might have happened in a different forum and posted before most of the actual discussion. Thankfully, we’re better people than that.
Heck, it has happened in threads under previous strips dealing with Sarah’s old roommate. At this point, I think it’s pretty well laid to rest, though.
Sarah was a better friend than Raidah. Huh.
Sarah…you’re friggin’ awesome, and an excellent friend. Thought you should know that.
Raidah…you suck. Just…you suck. You…you suck.
To be fair to Raidah, Dana didn’t exactly confide how she truly felt to her.
At the same time, she *was* told about Dana’s problems by the one person who actually had the inside perspective: her roommate. And yet, she ignored the warning.
Raidah certainly seems to be good at ignoring all information that contrasts with her view of things. I know too many people like that.
I guess Raidah’s Radar failed.
O’Reilly?
Slowclap
I approve if this obscure reference to one of my favorite things.
Well, to be fair it’d make for a rather interesting mashup with this or SP.
Sarah had the inside perspective AND a reputation for being a judgmental bongo. Those tend to cancel each other in my experience, because you know they technically have better information but can’t be sure that they aren’t just judging unfairly.
When did she get that “judgmental” reputation, though? They feel that way about her *now* because they’re being idiotic bastards over her attempt to get Dana the help she needed. But given what the flashbacks have shown, she was just “the awkward cranky person” before that.
I love you because I know where you got that username.
Oh. Well, thank you.
You suck… SO hard. Wait.. that might sound wrong.
Maybe.
Try using ‘blow’ this time.
Isn’t ‘blow’ worse than pot?
Blow restores oxygen to Druidia. So… no, it’s not worse than pot.
But pot contains Rupees, hearts, and sometimes even fairies so blow can’t be that much better than pot.
You guys are awesome.
So does weed for that matter.
But blow can lead to orgasm. Beat that, weed!
Wow. The way she was being treated I was sure she’d, y’know, told authorities about the drugs and gotten Dana arrested. This sounds like she did the best thing possible in that situation, Dana’s friends didn’t believe her and Dana wasn’t seeking help she obviously needed so Sarah had to involve a person who both was close enough for Dana to open up to and had enough authority to get her off the chemical “crutch”, while being able to sympathize because he’d just lost the mother of his child (who was the same person).
It also has the added benefit of not wrecking her college career. If/when she gets her head back on straight Dana will be able to re-enroll
Let me get this straight, Sarah is in the wrong because she called Dana’s father out of concern for her emotionally wrecked drug dependent friend?
Wow. I… I honestly did not see this coming. I would’ve continued to love Sarah regardless of exactly how this went down, but… way to absolve her of any wrongdoing, Willis. You’re always one step ahead.
Maybe there’s another twist coming up…
I doubt it. After what we’ve seen of this clique, they just didn’t WANT to understand Sarah’s concerns.
She did the right thing. Sometimes making the correct decision leads to misinterpretations.
Unfortunately, sometimes being a good friend to someone who has serious issues that they’re in denial about means making the hard choices that they CAN’T. And it means you’ll be hated.
It still doesn’t change that you’re being a true friend, though.
only time can tell if they’ll forgive you, but sometimes life is a b*+tch
Is this a good time to insert that quote from the Dark Knight?
That’s the problem in the real world where doing the right thing means screwing yourself in the process and by screwing yourself, I don’t mean the “going back to the past and doing your past self” or the “clone myself so I can screw myself” variety.
Alright I will completely cede having been in the wrong here. Sorry for thinking that willis wasn’t going to make raidah COMPLETELY INSANE.
She isn’t insane, she just saw Dana’s “public face” and assumed it was the real Dana. I can see not trusting Sarah, who admits to being a misanthrope and was clearly judgmental of Dana’s lifestyle, to accurately report how well Dana was handling her grief or know the difference between Dana smoking a little more weed to cope with problems and Dana crossing the line from “regular user” to “dangerously addicted”, which sounds like what happened.
Raidah still should have been worried when her friend who’d been “getting better” had a sudden breakup and maybe tried to get Dana to talk about things (or go to a counselor just to make sure she was OK), but I can also see why she wouldn’t do that and certainly wouldn’t have believed Sarah if I was in her position. It just goes to show, being a surly misanthrope can make misunderstandings easier.
At the words “public face” I got this mental image of a combination of Snowflame and Two Face. I will not sleep tonight.
I second what George said. She’s not “insane.” She’s just not in possession of all of the facts and far more optimistic about her friend’s recovery than Sarah was. Plus, if she doesn’t think Sarah’s in the wrong, then she has to face how wrong she was. A lot of people have real trouble doing that.
I think it’s more than just a lack of facts. She also just has a somewhat limited viewpoint right now. Just like everybody else she’s fresh out of highschool and she’s taken some misguided lessons with her from there.
Roz isn’t insane but she holds views that form a barrier of understanding between her and more reserved individuals. She also hasn’t quite realized that not everything that happens at her parties is fun and games. Doesn’t make her insane or even an inherently bad person. Just means her preconceived notions and areas of ignorance can lead her astray from time to time, which isn’t unusual.
Plus it was probably much easier for her to think that Dana was fine. It doesn’t absolve her of her part in enabling her friend, but when someone just lost a parent you want to give them space and confronting her about this difficult wouldn’t have been easy, so it was easier for her to believe Dana’s brave face.
Gonna have to agree with you here, Swissaboo. I was initially hoping for some shades of gray type stuff, not an incident that completely and irrevocably reinforces Sarah’s decision to be forever distant and grumpy.
Ah well.
50 shades of gray?
Sometimes doing the right thing can be very painful.
Also, if Sarah hadn’t done anything, it’s entirely possible Dana would have committed suicide. The way Dana was acting in private seemed to be heading that way, and her other friends only saw what they wanted to see.
Pretty much. Like Sarah said last comic, she was the one that got to see Dana when she wasn’t around her friends. Raidah didn’t see what Sarah saw, and doesn’t understand where Sarah’s coming from.
BUT considering we have one more strip left in the week, I’m a little worried…
Tomorrow’s comic will be the feel-good, Joyce giving Sarah a hug to make her feel better, Billie maybe learning something, denouement. Otherwise, I will be sad…
Sorry man, Shortpacked! keeps having positive developments. We’re due for a depressing twist ending.
You mean it’s just going to be a single panel “And that’s when we got the call that she was found dead in her bath tub.”
That’s the first panel. The second through fourth are Raidah and Co. attacking Sarah, Joyce, Billie, and Dina getting involved (Joyce because her “big sister” is under attack, Billie because she doesn’t want Joyce getting hurt, and Dina because “apparently we’re fighting now. Ok then.”), and everyone getting arrested for starting a near-riot at the mall.
Dina would fight since that falls under predation, and like most carnivores, needs to gorge herself then sleep her meal off.
Dina will stab a guy with a trident?
Nah, they don’t get arrested. They win the fight, after which Dina asks who wants to chip in on some meth so they can celebrate their victory. Everybody is so shocked that nobody notices Ryan sneaking up on them and reaching for something tucked into his waistband.
Next week, of course, will then consist entirely of gag strips featuring Joe and Danny.
No, Raidah. Sarah was a much better friend to Dana than Dana was to her.
I read that as “Sara was a much better friend to Dana than Dana was to [Dana]”. I think it’s time I went to bed.
Also true, I suppose. Dana certainly wasn’t a very good friend to herself.
And then tomorrow we find out that Dana’s dad is psychologically and physically abusive.
OH SHI-
Thankfully unlikely, since Dana seems to respect him and plans to use his connections, and if Sarah knew about that she either wouldn’t have done what she did or, if told about it afterwards, would feel insane amounts of guilt.
Oh that’s so much better. I was really worried for a second there. Dana can probably even go back to school next year (the one after the one Our Heroes are in). And I bet Dana’s Dad even knows about the smoking.
I never really liked Raidah, but now I can’t even understand her point of view.
Two words: Emotional Reasoning.
Well from her point of view Dana’s surly, reclusive, and slightly judgemental roommate got Dana pulled out of school because she sometimes liked to do recreational drugs. From what Raidah saw Dana was recovering from her mother’s death and then Sarah had to go and make everything worse.
It’s still pretty awful of her to treat Sarah the way she does though.
Sarah is an outsider, and a bongoy, grade-obsessed (by necessity, but still), misanthropic outsider at that. I think Raidah overreacted horribly, but in the moment I can see hearing that Dana got taken away from school and thinking “Oh God, that bongo decided her precious grades were better than my friend and got rid of her to have a quiet room.” This goes double if Raidah thought Sarah was exaggerating not only Dana’s problems but also the severity of the scholarship situation (which I can see, because I know I don’t believe my bongoy classmates’ assessment of their own personal problems, much less other people’s).
Forgot to add: She did the right thing and I don’t judge her for her study habits, but I can see how her personality would make it hard for other people to believe that she wasn’t being selfish or bongoy given that she was the only one seeing the full extent of Dana’s problems.
I guess so, but when somebody says your friend is in fact an “emotional wreck” wouldn’t it make sense to take a moment and find out what is actually happening?
If that somebody was so emotionless and antisocial that I could see them calling someone an “emotional wreck” for crying too loudly? Only if I saw some other sign that things were wrong. Not that any of Raidah’s actions beyond this point have been justified, but I wouldn’t judge her for not believing Sarah when Dana had been acting fine.
OK, Sarah has not be emotionless. And it was established that she was getting along with Dana’s friends and opening up before Dana’s mom died. So yeah, she might not be as close to that group as Dana, but she’s far from emotionless. Sheesh!
Yeah, that was pretty much the 100% right thing to do.
I think that one piece is particularly revealing. “She tried to take care of you”. In Raidah’s eyes Sarah’s still not part of the group. She’s just the little tagalong they’ve been babysitting all semester.
This entire speech isn’t “I thought you were our friend”. It’s “You owe us”. They’d bought her silence and inaction through the “care” they’d provided for the helpless little hermit who couldn’t find a friend. Sarah’s probably better off without that sort of friend.
Sarah didn’t make much of an effort to “upgrade” her status, though. She actually couldn’t find friends (which she was OK with but only because of the situation with her scholarships) and Dana knew that not making friends in college would haunt Sarah forever. From Raidah’s perspective, Dana tried to do a good thing for Sarah and Sarah got her pulled out of school over something she was handling just fine on her own.
We don’t know that. The fact that she gathered them up to talk about Dana, to me , implied that Sarah was actually trying with these people.
In any case, this is what bugged me. Raidah acts like they were all condescending to be her friends, but if they were actually her friends 1) They wouldn’t have seen it as a favor 2) They would have listened when she tried to talk to them about Dana instead of just blowing off her concers and 3) Raidah would have talked to Sarah about the reasoning for what she did instead just berating and blaming her. So, either Raidah is a lousy friend, or she’s two faced for acting like Sarah’s friend when she was really just tolerating her for Dana’s sake. Either way, Sarah’s well rid of the lot.
I take back me not liking Sarah.
I bet after this almost everybody will. Inb4 everybody replies to the contrary.
Eh. I’ve always felt it was more nuanced than that. I didn’t like her, but I’ve never *disliked* her either, and I still haven’t moved from that middle ground at all. This isn’t the first time she’s broken out of her “I hold everyone in contempt” shell. And she can generally be counted on to do what’s right, even if she tends to act smug and arrogant when she does.
The thing is, the good in her doesn’t cancel out the bad. She has very real issues (a very demanding scholarship, serious introversion, etc.), but that doesn’t excuse her also-very-real attitude problems. She acts like she’s the most mature person in the room (and gets very smug about it), but she really isn’t.
Her really big maturity problem is that not only does she not know how to interact with people, but she refuses to accept that she can’t dictate the terms of how they’re “allowed” to act. This strip is a good example of that. Any kind of interpersonal relationship will have its share of drama, and she can’t simply insist that it not happen.
And sure, she’s opened up a bit more and given us the back-story, but that doesn’t change her yet. She’s still the same person she was before she revealed this. When she *actually* starts changing, then I’ll reevaluate my opinion of her.
LET ME COMPLETELY BLOW THIS OUT OF PROPORTION FOR THE NEXT YEAR!!!
It just occurred to me that if there’s any justice in this universe, Dana’s dad will remember just who it was who helped get his daughter the help she needed when Sarah’s looking for a law job in a few years.
Too bad we aren’t going to flash forward, because I bet he will, especially because if he was OK with Dana’s smoking before he’d instantly notice the change and realize Sarah was the only person at IU who did so as well. Therefore, he knows she’s committed and hardworking from what Dana would probably tell him (even if it was phrased as “this bongo wanted me out because she couldn’t work while I grieved”, since as I noted he’d realize Dana was actually having problems Sarah couldn’t be expected to deal with and nobody else knew about) and he’d know she has a heart from how she handled the situation. I know I’d want employees like that if I had a business.
“No good deed goes unpunished” as the saying goes.
Awesome. Exactly the right thing to do.
We will find out that Raidah’s really pissed because Dana was their group’s supplier, and just screwed them ALL over.
Or simply Raidah’s, and by supplier, I don’t mean pot or anything consumable. She didn’t just lose a friend. She lost a set of coattails to cling to and hide behind **on top of** the piece of mind that allowed her to be blissfully unaware she was doing such.
Ah, life. So simple and serene. Just like the Warhammer 40’000 Universe. *sigh*
Everything being secretly caused by a bored chaos god would actually make life make more sense…
And so everything comes back to DAB once again…
OH GOD IT ALL MAKES SENSE NOW WHY DID YOU DO THIS TO-
ALL HAIL DAB!
WHO WANTS UROSITE?
Darn, it didn’t work.
That’s what I get for impersonating Dab, I guess. PRAISE BE TO DDAB!
Raidah does seem to be having a bit of a paranoid freakout there…
Speaking as someone with a few mental glitches of my own, people with mental problems can be very good at acting “normal.” As an eighteen or nineteen year old here, I can’t blame Raidah and the others in the circle of friends for not being able to see through Dana’s front. Hindsight being 20/20 may actually be one of the reasons they’re still so hard on Sarah a year later.
Speaking as someone who’s cousin went from emotional problems to drug problems to heroin overdose, Sarah did the right thing. Dana needed help and wasn’t getting it, shutting out everyone but the person she COULDN’T shut out. My cousin got all the help her family could give, from support to tough love, and in the end it wasn’t enough. Sometimes tough choices need to be made, and I do think Sarah made the right one.
What worries me more is that apparently Dana hasn’t been in contact with her college friends. I hope her father didn’t make things worse himself or that nothing else happened to her.
That’s…true. It’s only a year ago. Why didn’t Dana tell her friends herself? This does paint an odd picture of where she went.
Maybe she just decided to cut ties with that whole chapter of her life and move forward.
it might be shame. Many people who are dealing with depression don’t like to admit to it because they might feel like they should have been able to deal with it themselves. and it hasn’t been a full year. they
I kinda want to comment over everyone else comment saying this but
RAIDAH DESERVED THAT PUNCH IN THE FACE
haha stupid bongo
I sound stupid, disregard that comment
I think Sarah was just about a year late delivering it.
Oh shut the fuck up Raidah! If you had been in charge of Dana’s well-being, she would’ve ended up killing herself, consumed by grief!
I think that’s why Raidah has it in for Sarah. Because deep down in her heart, she knows that’s true.
Sarah deserves applause. She didn’t do a damn thing wrong. Game, set, Raidah’s a bongo.
Indeed ‘no good deed goes unpunished’ LiC. And Sarah is paying for hers as we already know.
Bravo Sarah.
Good Job Willis-nice handling of a particular pot scene’s detrimental effect without preaching, and I love your characters. They grow, up or down, they do grow.
hot damn, I was sure when Raihda used words like ‘narced’, that Sarah had gone to the Uni. This, this is the best solution I could even think of happening.
I just remembered how Raidah thought that Dinah was mentally challenged because of her total lack of social skills. Goes to show you what a lousy judge of character she is.
“I always see Dana smiling, that means she’s better.” Yeah, shut the fuck up, stupid bongo!
Bravo Sarah, nice one. Honestly at that point, telling the RA or whatever would have been a reasonable move, but this is even better. As expected, Raidah and her goon patrol just suck as people and Sarah is a flawed but well meaning good person.
I wouldn’t say they suck as people, Danah seems to have put up a good front for them. Tjey fell for it hook, line and sinker is all.
I would. Here, I’ll do it for you. They suck as people. Or at least Raidah does.
I would say they suck. Remember how they thought Dinah was mentally challenged because of her social awkwardness?
Sarah doesn’t need your FRIENDSHIP. Friendship is not magic, only pain.
I read that as Arnold Schwarzenegger.
I read it as an overly-wrought, emo or goth teenager. “Life is PAAAAAAIN…”
(Your way is 10x funnier.)
I read that as the little girl from The Long Kiss Goodnight. “Get used to it. “
Or Dawn from Mary Worth. Life is brutal.
Twilight Sparkle disapproves.
But Nigh Mare Moon would approve.
my head hurts just reading this…i have no idea why.
Did you forget to disengage the clamps again?
I hate it when that happens!
Ice ice baby.
clamps?…
Way to be in some serious denial there, Raidah. Also, way to be a judgemental bongo to boot.
And yeah, I’m totally cheering for doing the right thing even if it did screw her over, because if doing the right thing was easy, a whole hell of a lot more people would choose to.
Look, it was right of Sarah to call Dana’s dad, but her reasons for it are bullshit. Let’s be real, it was about her grades. She was right when she told Raidah that Dana was an emotional wreck, but she lied when she made it seem like that was the reason she called.
Sarah does have a heart, dude. The grades were just one of many factors. However, Sarah’s tendency to bring everything back to her grades explains why Raidah didn’t believe her.
Um, she is allowed to have multiple motivations. Caring about Dana and caring about her grades are not mutually exclusive.
And the situation was a clusterF for everybody involved. Dana was spiralling and Sarah was the only one that got a front-row seat to that trainwreck. She asked for help, but since Dana only let them see what they wanted to see, she was left on her own. When you add the pressure of her Scholarship and slipping grades you end up with a big fat pile of burdens that a teen barely out of High-School should have no business carrying by herself.
“She was right when she told Raidah that Dana was an emotional wreck, but she lied when she made it seem like that was the reason she called.”
She didn’t make it seem that way. She simply stated what she had done.
And even if this was 100% about the grades, at this point, after losing how many nights of sleep, seeing her grades plummet, and trying to get Dana’s alleged friends to help her, it was entirely justified.
“You stay the hell away from me! Except when I approach you to harass you, thats different.”
But it’s not, Raidah, you big doofus.
Raidah is horribly misguided, sadly it doesn’t surprise me -.- And given Dana’s state at the moment, she clearly needed help, not just because of the drugs.
Okay, I’m satisfied that Sarah is in the right…
…up until she punches Raidah in the face. That still doesn’t seem justified. Yet.
I’m guessing there’s more coming.
On the one hand, Raidah’s been harassing Sarah for almost a year (excepting when they’re away from college, hopefully) over a situation where Sarah was in the right and Raidah was, at best, in denial and willfully ignorant. I’d have trouble controlling myself around her too. On the other hand, Sarah’s still a bit of a misanthropic bongo (to the point where Joyce, optimistic as she is, thought Sarah didn’t like her despite what happened at the party because of the rest of Sarah’s personality). Therefore, I can totally see the punch being addressed but remaining unjustified because it’s consistent with Sarah’s character flaws to flip out and punch someone when there was nothing to suggest that the situation called for violence (though, knowing Raidah, it might have escalated eventually).
Being bongoy and a misanthrope does not preclude having human feelings. Honestly, I feel like maybe she opened up to Dana’s friends a little and when Raidah turned on her so vehemently, she realized that these people never really were interested in being her friends, but were tolerating her as Dana’s little project. I think this angered and hurt her. Now she’s made a new friend, someone who tries to see the best in most people, and I think she’s concerned that Joyce will be taken in by someone who appears kind and caring, when, to Sarah, she must appear to be a two-faced bongo. Add to that Raidah’s negative opinion of Sarah, which she might make Joyce believe, thereby costing Sarah the only friend she has, and I could understand why how that ball of anger, hurt, fear and protectiveness could’ve caused her to lash out.
No, I don’t think the punch was justified either…
…but it makes me smile.
I had the same thought (re: the punch may not have been deserved) but I’m assuming there’s more plot exposition to come.
Real people don’t get moral justification for all of their actions. Real people screw up every now and then.
Willis is mature enough of a writer to know that. What drove Sarah is easy to understand — just like what drove Raidah. That’s all a good writer needs to provide. A writer who makes a character always right is creating a Sue, not a a person.
That is not as bad as i thought
Man, I’ve been there… I gotta say, I agree with Sarah on this one. Sometimes you gotta make the tough choices for the good of yourself and others, even if you look like a dick after.
And just like that, thousands of people who were arguing that Sarah was a total selfish bongo for getting Dana kicked out of college because her grades were dropping suddenly have their arguments deflated.
I don’t care for what reasons she did it or what triggered the call, she did the right thing. Sometimes intentions just don’t effing matter compared to the end result.
Just sometimes? Raidah’s use of good intentions as a mulligan against being a glorified heckler is pretty true to life.
At least Deliberate Scumbags can be clearly seen and called on the harm that they do.
People like Raidah…..Well………They prove how give-or-take the nature of sin and virtue really are
Also how underrated making the system work for you is, on a less emo note.
I’m a criminal justice major. Intent typically is VERY important. So I stand by my “sometimes”.
Um… guys… I’m glad Sarah didn’t call the authorities, but still… Dana’s life is over. Her money will buy her another shot, but as a nonstandard student, it won’t be the same; without a damn lucky break, she’s destined for downward mobility, and for the upper middle class that’s never pretty.
Oh, yes, the poor little rich girl. Waa waa. Dana, Raidah and the others are all children of privilege, and so will fare well regardless. Daddy’s money will make it all better, if not at this school, the next one.
Save your tears for people who actually have to work to go to college, not those who can use legacy admissions and similar dodges.
Not to mention the fact that she brought it on herself. Even if Sarah hadn’t called her dad, she would have either failed out, gotten caught and kicked out, or committed suicide eventually. The only question is whether or not she took Sarah down with her.
Pretty sure she can just reapply to come back to the school whenever she’s ready and pick up right where she left off. Business as usual. She left voluntarily. No doors were closed to her. Didn’t use up any shots.
“As a nonstandard student”? Excuse moi?
There are lots of nonstandard students — I am among them. A lot of students are nonstandard age. We manage to do just fine, thank you very much. In fact, we tend to do better, because we have context and good practice at working hard and working within the system. So no. Nonstandard students are just fine.
And she wouldn’t thatonstandard if came back when she was, say, 20.
I would imagine they probably explained to the college that she was too grief stricken to continue at this stage. She wouldn’t have lost anything because of that.
Being taken out of school by your parents is nowhere near the same thing as being kicked out of school. And if you’re implying that taking a year or two off to deal with personal issues is going to make Dana a “nonstandard” student (what the hell is that supposed to mean, anyway?) and ruin her chances of being successful, then you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Seriously! I just graduated from a uni, and I saw plenty of people much older than myself in classrooms. People who were starting after getting out of the military, transfers, and once a really badass little old lady who was just interested in neurobiology. And it’s pretty common for adults to go back and pick up a degree to change or speed up careers.
I guess I’ll be one of those nonstandard students? I’ve gone through a life-priority-shift over the last year and I’m going to enroll into art school once I’ve saved up a chunk of money (yes, just after graduating. ;_;)
I can only guess the original poster is still in high school and is getting the college-or-doom spam. Or they are Hermione Granger.
Speaking as a Non-Traditional Student: You have the right of it. Truly, returning to college only after several years of adulthood ruined my life and rendered me a pariah. While the UW is one of those few schools that does NOT require “nonnies” to dress in sackcloth and ring a warning bell as they travel between their classes lest other students become contaminated, the social pressure to do so was overwhelming. Oh Won’t Someone PLEASE Think of the Children (of Privilege)?!?
University of Washington? Are you sure? I thought I saw some people in the U-District dressed like that the other day, and could only conclude they must be “non-traditional”. I’m glad to know that wasn’t the case.
So people with the money to do so can’t take a year off to get treatment for emotional or drug problems, and get back into college once they get their heads together? She didn’t flunk out and she wasn’t expelled. I think someone like that would be able to start up again.
I gotta say, Sarah is a boss. She knew she was going to lose all her friends, but she got Dana help anyway.
Too bad Billie will probably side with Radaih on this one. Joyce’ll and Dina will stick with their buddy, but Billie will no doubt think Sarah was out of line turning someone in.
Oh JESUS! MY AVATAR IS A DRUGGIE!!! DAMMIT!
Lol!
She’s also a young woman who deeply loved her mother, if that helps.
You can’t help but feel for her.
Fair enough.
And now I’m Dina. Hell yeah.
I hadn’t thought that far ahead!
I think you are right. Oh, the DRAMA!
It hurts us.
Let her. It will be Raidah & Co’s funeral. Plus she’d probably dump’em before they could do it first. Too much adapting to Raidah’s delicate feelings and being *nice*, not enough boozing and social-climbing.
Okay, I feel better now. She just called her father to get this girl some help. I was thinking she ratted her out to the university and authorities.That is a whole other can of worms here. Those “friends” were enablers for her destruction and then Sarah was brave enough to get Dana some help.
>2011+1
>chicken nuggets a plenty
>raidah in charge of chicken nugget rationing
>dana wants
>no get
>le grump face
Going back to the page where Raidah gets punched in the face. And enjoying the hell out of it.
You mean punched in the FAAAAAAACCCCEEE?!!
Where the decision to inform her father might have been better for Dana, it seems like Sarah made that decision for incredibly selfish reasons.
Would you really ask a friend to sacrifice so much (e.g. their future) for you?
I don’t think so. Dana seemed like a genuinely good person, so I don’t really think she’d put Sarah – whom she must have grown to trust – in such a position.
I think that it was Raidah and gang who treated Dana selfishly, without even stopping to think if she were putting on the brave face just for their sake. They even ignored Sarah’s warnings, so they just went on believing what they wanted.
How would you expect someone felt if they lost their mother prematurely and to such a painful disease like cancer?
It occurs to me that she wasn’t even really “Taken out of school” the way we’d been lead to believe. Sarah didn’t actually call anybody who had the power to do that against Dana’s will. Not after the tuition’s been paid anyway. Basically she called Dana’s dad and he came over to pick Dana up. Probably after Dana gave Sarah the father’s number. Presumably after a heart to heart where Sarah got Dana to accept that she was in no state for school right now and needed to be with family.
Less that she was taken from school and more that she just left.
Indeed!
Hell, Sara’s actions will greatly help Dana go to college again, if she so chooses & is able.
I wouldn’t assume that much about what hasn’t been said. There are plenty of ways to get a roommate’s parent’s number without having a Hallmark moment first. (e.g. Check her cell phone, find out her emergency contact, check her computer’s contact list, etc.)
She did the right thing, but let’s not make up the story of her canonization as a Disney saint with birds landing on her shoulders and bunnies nuzzling against her feet.
True. Still, the main point is just that her father couldn’t have forcibly removed her from the school. The specifics of how Sarah got the number is just what seems more likely to me than the alternative. I freely admit that it’s in no way confirmed to be true.
Sorry to double post. It occurs to me that there was actually a point that I failed to effectively vocalize. I meant more to just explore the question of how Sarah got the number in order to paint how glaring a detail it is and bring attention to the fact that Raidah has shown remarkably little interest in why Sarah would have it. Then I just sort of got carried away into another train of thought.
Sure he could have. There are many ways he could have forced her to come home:
1) Dana might not have been 18 yet, and of the age of majority. He would still have legal authority of her.
2) Dana could be financially dependent on him, and he could have cut her off. (Weed isn’t free, even if she has housing, a meal plan, and tuition pre-paid.)
3) He could have threatened to get the authorities involved if she didn’t voluntarily clean herself up. (A bit heavy-handed, but still possible; he is an attorney and would know.)
4) Lastly, and most importantly, he’s still her dad, and the weight of parental authority is not so immediately shed upon entering college for most people.
None of those require a heart-to-heart with Sarah first, and Raidah probably didn’t bring any of that up because it’s one of those little niggling details that’s far less important than, “My God, you betrayed her, you selfish shut-in!”
Literally the man is incapable of withdrawing her from school. I don’t mean in some rebellious “He’s not the boss of her anymore” way. His word doesn’t mean anything to the school. I might as well go and to cancel a complete stranger’s gym membership for all the significance it would have.
Yes. He’s a father. He could’ve gotten the consent in any number of ways. He could not have done this for her though. She needed to say “Okay, let’s do this” in order for it to work. She had to choose to take herself off the student roster and she had to choose to get into the car in order to be gone. The school didn’t expel her for her. The police didn’t come and drag her away in cuffs. She walked over to that department office, told them she was withdrawing, walked over to the dad’s car and entered it willingly. Whatever else may have influenced that decision it was her own.
If you’re just talking about the status of her enrollment on paper, then sure, that could be the case.
If you’re talking about actually making her physically go home, then what I said stands.
I’m talking about both. What you listed was tools that her father would have for achieving the consent. She had to be a willing participant.
The school has the power remove her enrollment without needing her consent. The police have the power to physically take her from her home without requiring her consent. Her father does not have that power. If her father forcibly took her back home then that’s full-blown abduction. I don’t imagine that’s what happened. I imagine he came and picked her up. She may or may not have had reservations or complaints, but at the end of the day she walked into that car with her own legs, sat her own butt down into that car seat, and willingly went home. All according to her own agency.
We had thought that she was forcibly removed in a manner which would not require her cooperation. This is not the case. It cannot be the case with her father. It was entirely her own decision to leave with him.
I wonder what Dana thinks of all this in the present?
I guess a lot of it depends on where she is in her recovery, if she recovered.
I hope she did, or is working toward it.
(Fingers crossed.)
I was just thinking along similar lines. Like Dana comes to visit and thanks Sarah for what she did, and that she has her act together now and could never have done it without her help.
I think a nice dash of Laser-Guided Karma for this little fiasco would be if Dana actually became closer friends with Sarah than she ever was with Raidah and Co.
I want to join Janette in praising the writer for presenting pot as a dangerous drug. I’m sick of writers presenting it in a funny, harmless way, and presenting any concern toward it was overblown & unjust.
I had two friends whose lives were ruined by pot addiction.
I know one man who was evicted from his apartment because he refused to pay his rent before buying bis pot.
I’m sick of it getting misrepresented in so much media.
The same could be said about alcohol or any substance or hobby one becomes so obsessed with that they abuse and retreat into rather than face reality. Recreational pot use is one thing, but Dana was getting baked so regularly that it was adversely affecting her. If it wasn’t pot she would’ve been getting plastered considering how easy it is to get booze at colleges.
I don’t know one person who uses pot for recreational purposes who does not have a problem because of the pot.
And I know people who do and their lives have not been ruined by it. How do I know that you don’t know human train wrecks who would ruin their lives one way or another? If that’s the company you keep then the law of averages mean most of the pot users you know are full blown pot heads.
And I know of many who do, and manage to be productive members of society. the thing you have to consider is that people can become addicted to anything, if it wasn’t pot, it would have been something else.
I just wanted to say this, as I don’t think Sara’s motives are are self-serving as she likes to view them in retrospect.
A real friend will risk your HATE to help you.
A false friend will not warn you of dangers to keep your love.
I am very glad my concerns about Sara overacting were completely wrong.
She is a true friend.
Now Sarah would really deserve Dana coming back, if not healed, feeling a little better, and thanking her in front of Raidah and friends because she made the right choice and helped her.
This would be extremely satisfying.
I dunno. I kinda think Raidah would still keep in contact with Dana. She’d know sooner than Sara if her break from college was actually helpful.
she might not though. one of the problems with mental health is the stigmas that are attached to it. Dana might still be in recovery and feeling ashamed and has cut off contact with her friends. Remember she dumped Carl probably because he was starting to challenge her personal illusion that she was fine.
You know it would be interesting to see how Carl treats Sarah.
She didn’t open up to Raidah and the gang about any of this. Can’t imagine that got any easier to talk about when they called her up the day after her disappearance wanting to know the deats about why she’s gone.
Why would you assume Raidah would keep tabs on her?
She seemed more concerned with only ranging out with Dana, not digging deeper to see how her friend is doing when there are warning signs.
She’s a fair-weather friend.
I don’t believe Sarah’s being self-serving here, and she’s certainly not a monster. She did what she thought was best, for both her and Dana.
But I still think she made the wrong decision. Going behind another adult’s back to involve their parents is not a respectful way to respond. Dana wasn’t being respectful either, but this is not the correct response. She should have applied for a room change and simply removed herself from the situation.
Many people have pointed out that room changes are usually not that easy to get, particularly when you can’t explain why you want them.
Plus, even if she could get a room change, that leaves Dana without any support system except the people she’s putting up a front for. But when Sarah heard that Dana had failed out of college (or been arrested, or found dead in the bathtub) she could tell herself she’d been appropriately respectful by not involving herself in the situation.
And putting your hands on someone else’s body and probably breaking their bones when they haven’t given you permission is also disrespectful, but I would never complain about someone doing CPR on me.
Personally, I think a little disrespect is better than leaving someone to their self-destructive spiral that could have (as pointed out above) ended in suicide.
And then what? Dana gets a new roomate who doesn’t care enough to help and ends up spiralling anyways?
Without getting into whether or not I’m condoning drug use with this statement, it does seem that Dana had things fairly in hand and that the reason for the spiral was the emotional trauma of her mother’s death. Another such trauma is unlikely, though not impossible.
TO CLARIFY, since I apparently have trouble doing so on message boards: I do not know what might cause someone to spiral. I have never known anyone with a drug habit (that I knew of at the time), nor have I ever been particularly close to anyone who has lost a parent. I may have no idea what I am talking about and it might take only take something minor to trigger another spiral. I do not know.
It sure doesn’t look like Dana “had things fairly in hand”. It looks more like she was an emotional wreck who needed help and wasn’t getting it.
I meant her drug use PRIOR to her mother’s death. See? I knew this would happen.
But, yeah, she did not have things in hand after her mother died. I completely agree with you on that.
The point I was making is, doing the room transfer would only end up placing Dana in with a roommate who might nor care at all. Removing one of the few supports she actually had since her other friends refused to believe she had a problem. She was after all already spiralling because of her mother’s death, she hadn’t recovered from the spiral when Sarah took action, so changing rooms could have been even worse for her because you’re banking on an unknown factor. I’m not saying the room transfer it’s self would have caused another spiral, though it might have, but that the new roomate Dana gets may not be as understanding or even care enough to act as a support which is what Dana needed.
Where as her father is someone you know can and has the resources to take care of her.
The reason for the spiral was her mother’s death, yeah, but… that means that she was in a self-destructive spiral. Yeah, that stuff does get worse, and at least based on the little we know her minor drug use turned into a heavy drug dependency. Drug use levels aside, she pretty clearly had a problem of some sort.
Dana was good at putting up a front for her friends so ultimatums would be useless since it would give her enough time to deceive. This was really the best solution for Sarah and Dana since at least she doesn’t have a drug bust on her record which could bar her from other colleges once she’s better. Maybe Raidah would know just how serious the problem was if Dana continued to speak to her later, but it doesn’t appear that she stayed in contact with her friends possibly because her therapist advised her to stay away from enablers.
Yeah, it doesn’t look like Raidah even really made much of an effort to follow up with Dana and figure out what really went down. Seems to me that she wasn’t that great a friend if she found out that Dana was gone and her first response was to start blaming Sarah without even figuring out what happened.
It’s amazing how many times the word “bongo” has come up in the comments, either calling Raidah one or saying Sarah had been acting like one. Guys, Raidah’s in the wrong but she’s obviously reacting because deep down she knew she should have done something and getting mad at Sarah is easier than admitting that. And Sarah might have been antisocial early on in college but it was established that she had been getting along with this group before Dana’s decline. Neither of them deserve to be called bongoes. Please stop.
You rock, thank you for saying what I’ve been thinking this entire damn thread.
Hell, I’ve been thinking it. Maybe I need to swear-filter the b-word.
How exactly does the swear word filter work on this site? Does it block the comment or just the word? [curiosity piqued]
Depends on what swear filter I download! This site doesn’t presently have one.
I don’t think we can assume quite that much of Raidah just yet. I don’t believe she’s all that horrible but I don’t see any evidence that she ever really understood that she didn’t need to do what’s been done- if she had, I think a year is enough time for her to get the fuck over herself and stop treating Sarah the way that she has been. So until I see otherwise I’m going to assume that she just went and convinced herself that it’s all Sarah’s fault
What I find amazing is how quickly people seemed to switch from “Sarah is a bongo” to “Raidah is a bongo.” This is a complex matter! I think Raidah genuinely believes that Dana would have recovered on her own just fine, and so from her perspective, Sarah helped remove her friend from school for no adequate reason. We can fault Raidah with being ignorant of the situation, but I hardly think that qualifies her as a bongo.
I noticed that. Once or twice, whatever, but this many times is just getting uncomfortable.
Well, I has a sad again.
Why, because someone got bongoed at for doing the right thing, which I can totally relate to because it happens to me all the time?
Well this is a different spin from what was originally said. She didn’t get her kicked out, she withdrew. She can still come back once she gets her act together, many universities even allow for medical leaves so she could conceivably even still have her scholarships.
It puts Sarah in a much different light.
Actually, “kicked out” was always an assumption by the readers. Go check the first few strips under both the Sarah and Raidah tags above; everything said here fits in that original context fine.
Very sad. Sarah definitely did the right thing and Raidah and her friends overreacted badly. I could understand more if Raidah was mad for a few days then came back and apologized, but it she’s made things far worse by continuing to hold a grudge against Sarah a year later. It seemed like Raidah got off to a such a good start, but she let this issue make her bitter and cold. Hopefully she’ll come out of it and realize Sarah took the only course she knew to help Dana.
“She would’ve been ok”. No, Raidah, you cannot ignore people’s problems and hope they’ll go away.
Who’s to say Sarah WASN’T concerned for Dana? She could have ratted her out to the cops and they’d just throw her in jail and be done with it.
If this is how Raidah takes the news, Sarah’s better off without her.
Indeed.
I’ll be honest – I see both sides here. I grew up with a lot of kids who had horrible home lives, who’s only support system was their group of friends. At the same time, Dana was not going to recover without her family, so it was really best to get her family involved. I don’t think Dana’s dad should have right away taken her out of school, but telling him was definitely the best first step to recovering for her. Being distanced from her family after losing her mother was really not what she needed, and had she stayed in school with just Raidah’s gang as her “group”, she very realistically would’ve ended up failing out of school and getting into a terrible cycle of bad and worse behavior.
It does take people several, several years to get over this kind of loss, though, and it is the kind of loss that changes people, changes how they see things and where their priorities are. I actually want to see how Dana is now – though the main storyline is likely only a year or two after these events.
I love Sarah!
It’s amazing how grown-up she actually acted.
…Raidah looks to be a more eviler b*** now though.
Out of curiosity, is Sarah’s hairband, like a symbol of her bitterness or something? Sweet Sarah wears her hair in a pony tail, Sarah that lets people assume she’s a bongo for convenience where’s her hair with a band.
Raidah is batshit insane. I figured from the previous hints that Sarah narced on Dana to the University or something. She told her father, who took her out of school. She’s getting the help she needs rather than being in the legal system or in a death spiral. That makes Sarah a “monster”?
Dana “worried” about Sarah and “tried to take care of her”? Sarah’s not the one that needed help or worry here.
I would worry that the level of stupidity and selfishness Raidah is displaying here is unrealistic and not believable, but sadly I’m afraid that it’s not.
Her heart may not have been in the right place but I guess she did what was best given the consequences of not doing so in the first place.
Sarah is above Malaya again.
So whose reaction tomorrow is gonna be better Joyce or Billie?
Slight rephrase. Mistakes were made all round so this was the optimal choice given a suboptimal situation.
Wait, that’s it? That is the terrible thing she did, tell her dad? That is probably the best way she could have handled it. Holy denial Batman, way to overreact Raidah, you biotch.
Hmm, while I do believe that Sarah going to Dana’s father was the right choice, I don’t understand why it would have been a “bad/wrong” choice if she had alerted the authorities or the school about what was going on. People aren’t always going to know Daddy’s number, and someone had to get involved in a situation like this.
Getting kicked out of school or going to jail are of course awful consequences, but they are consequences of actions she herself chose to commit. And as life isn’t “over” until you are dead, she could always have done her time or apply to another school, and hopefully in the meantime realize where she erred and get cleaned up and receive counseling/therapy.
So really, whatever action Sarah was going to make, short of killing her roommate to make study time easier, I didn’t really see as a “bad” choice, or at least the choices of jail/expulsion that I’ve seen flung around in the comments.
Sending someone to jail for smoking weed is a bad thing to do.
Alerting the authorities when someone is destroying their life with drugs and impairing the lives of others is a good thing to do.
Not when you have a less destructive alternative. That Law’s treatment of drug users is, in a word, whacked.
You think their life would be improved by a criminal record and a stay in prison?
Weed is harmless. It’s addictive in the sense that gambling, shopping, and internet use are addictive. If someone’s ruining their life with it, they need help and support.
Which is something the legal system is REALLY SHITTY at providing.
Flawed or not, the law is the law; it’s there for a reason,
and breaking it has consequences.
No one likes to get a ticket for speeding, but the limits are
in place to protect themselves and the drivers around them.
And honestly? If Dana (whose father owns a law firm)
really cared about not ruining her life, then maybe
she shouldn’t be consuming a substance she knows is
illegal and has negative repercussions for being
in possession of.
Laws do not make things bad. Bad things should be against the law. The law is not some impersonal force–it’s people. If you get someone thrown in jail for smoking weed, you are doing a bad thing and should feel bad about yourself and what you’re doing.
It’s against the law to speed because driving too fast KILLS PEOPLE. Like, they die. And aren’t alive anymore.
Marijuana is illegal because of a combination of ignorance, lies, bullshit, and racism.
Given that Dana’s a grieving white girl who likely has a lawyer father, I don’t think she would get a harsh sentence. Might have to go on drg testing or to go to rehab. But courts and officers are also made of people, and they treat someone they see as a troubled kid very differently from someone who doesn’t have any of the usual societal sympathy triggers (aka privilege).
I think Sarah did the best thing, but I also think Dana would have turned out okay even if Sarah had gone to the police.
hero moment Dana shows up to hug Sarah and thank her…. Superhero moment we find out after the girls get back from shopping that Dana sent Sarah a letter thanking her already and Sarah hasn’t thrown that in Riddah’s face cause she still doesn’t fgeel like a good person about what she did.
I don’t see why everyone is jumping on Raidah’s case about this. You guys saw in the last strip that Druggie McDepressed put on a MUCH better face for her friends than she did for Sarah. This is simply a misunderstanding taken to its logical extreme.
Great storyline David. You’ve done a fantastic job of balancing everyone’s points of view. I feel for everyone involved in this mess. I really don’t think any of the ladies qualifies as a “bad person” and that’s what impressed me the most. Way to go sir.
No good deed goes unpunished…
bongo should of bongoin’ got that bongo crying like a bongo on bongo tape with a bongoin’ camera, you bongoes. Then that other bongo woulda seen she was being a bongoy bongo, you bongo.
bongoin’ strip, though.
I’m calling it now, at some point in the future, Dana will return and be all thankful to Sarah for what she did, and Raidah and her friends will be all “WTF?!”
Would that be ironic? Or is it poetic justice or what? I never get the terms right.
I think in this case it’s poetic justice.
I wonder has anyone has even kept in contact with Dana?
If I remember correctly, wasn’t Raidah only pissed about Dana leaving because she wouldnt have as much access to pot, and that Sarah was just some fun hating spoil sport? If this is true, it really colors Raidah as not just being shallow, but a complete lowlife using her “Dana was trying to take care of you” argument to make herself look good and Sarah look like a pariah that should have known better.
I think that was just fan speculation
Yeah, we have no reason to believe that. Seems unlikely to me.
I’d love to see Dana return and thank Sarah for doing what she did just to see the look on those dumb bongoes faces
Yes. This must happen!
wow sarah way to be a witless idiot babbychild who doesn’t know sweet fuckall about nothin’.
or I mean I guess thats not totally fair i guess she could just be a terrible person
wow
sarahRaidah way to be a witless idiot babbychild who doesn’t know sweet fuckall about nothin’.FTFY.
Question: This story takes place in the present, so why didn’t they just ask Dana herself what happened? The Facebook isn’t THAT new, and neither are phones and email.
If this is right after she left, she probably doesn’t have the inclination or possibly the ability to go online or answer her phone. If she went straight to a rehab center, for example.
I’m pretty sure marijuana isn’t THAT addictive…
There’s a difference between physical and emotional dependency.
Was anyone else disappointed by the resolution to this story? Up until the flashback arc, we had VERY little information about what actually went down between Sarah and her roommate. Really, it could have gone two ways:
1. The roommate was out of control and it was seriously affecting Sarah and her studies. Fed up, she did what she had to do so her roommate wouldn’t ruin her future.
2. The roommate liked to party and use drugs, but was fairly responsible and kept it to herself. Sarah only ratted her out because she disapproved of her lifestyle.
Obviously, we now know that option 1 ended up being what really happened. But the second case was just as plausible – Sarah has shown herself to be a pretty judgmental person, and considering how Raidah and her friends reacted, it’s not unreasonable to think they might have had good reason to be angry.
All I’m saying is that it would have been really interesting if it turned out that Sarah was in the wrong, and that the others were justified in their rage. It would have added a whole new level of complexity to the plot and put their previous interactions in a whole new light. Instead, what we get is Sarah as a martyr, while Raidah and her friends just are a bunch of assholes. Meh.
The irony that my Gravitar ended up being Sarah is not lost on me.
I’m hoping that Dana shows up later having been through rehab and Theapy and thanks Sarah for getter her help.
“Isn’t why you idiots keep me around? Being a bitter misanthrope is the only thing I’m good at.”
I had to do this once….. Though not for weed. several years back, someone my husband knew developed a heroin addiction…. he started dragging his clean friends to pick up with him…. After my husband came home worried about his friend and very upset that he’d been dragged along, I had to put my foot down. I might have been yelled at and hated by this guy, but at least he’s gotten the help he needs, you know? His family shipped him off to rehab and a halfway home in anther state…. Even though he might have hated me fore doing it then, I occasionally get a call from him, thanking me for letting his family know how bad his problem really was and crediting me with saving his life.
Personally, I’m not as concerned about weed (having seen people on a number of different drugs, the people on weed are generally the most civil and friendly, as well as tidy and careful, people of the group), and Sarah probably could have tried to get her roommate switched before calling Dana’s dad, but in the end, she let a father, who was probably worried about his daughter, know that his daughter was hurting and needed help healing. She probably kept Dana from a downward spiral through different types of drugs. Dana didn’t wind up doing cocaine or MDMA or LSD or heroin or any of those more dangerous drugs before Sarah tried to get her help after all, so perhaps Sarah really did the poor girl a favor
Huh. Sarah starts wearing the the hair-andana at around the time she has misgivings about friendship again.