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I think it’s fairly obvious Sal is just as bad at inter-personal stuff as Dina, she just channels it in the wrong direction which is why she gets into trouble.
It’s also usually a slur. If you’re a queer woman, you might decide to reclaim it (the way I and some other queer women have reclaimed the word dyke), but even then it’s not super safe to apply to all queer women or any individual. And straight people should avoid entirely.
/waits for you to stop using this word generally
/because you’ve literally just been told it’s considered a slur
Like. Seriously. Your lesbian friends do not speak for me. They don’t speak for anyone but themselves. The polite thing now is to stop using this word except around them and other lesbians who are okay with it.
It’s like saying “because some lesbians are offended/hurt by this word, while the rest are indifferent to it, straight people should err on the side of not hurting anyone by avoiding the word.”
(Also I sure hope you are trans yourself, with that example. And I’d love to know what country that’s true of (“usually refers to a car transmission”), because it’s not the USA.)
Actually, Li, it is the US. I’ve only ever heard tranny as a slur twice in person, whereas everyone I know uses tranny to refer to a car’s transmission.
I’m MtF trans, polyamorous and pansexual.
So, should Lizzie the Lezzie stop using that name for her twitter and tumbler?
It’s absolutely not “the US”. It might be your state. It might be a few states! But it is not the US as a whole.
Still, you’re right about one thing, which is that I should have responded differently. I should have pointed out that “dyke” can also mean dam. The f-word can also mean cigarette, and afaik is still used that way in England. The n-word “originally” meant an ignorant person.
None of these alternate meanings make the slurs less hurtful to the people hurt by them. It’s literally irrelevant what other associations you might have with them. What should matter to you is that you are hurting someone by using them, so you should stop.
I’m MtF trans, polyamorous and pansexual.
Super. You’ll understand my thinking your readiness to use your lesbian friends as an excuse for using one slur might translate to using another slur on a similar pretext.
Btw, if you wanted to defend your right to use “lez” on the basis of you also being LGBTQIA, you should have done that when we were talking about how using it is something straight people shouldn’t do, by the way. Also your earlier comment about “the great thing about being friends with lesbians” now doesn’t really make sense. Sure, it means more men for you, but also fewer women, so… more of a breaking-even thing than a clear advantage, yes?
So, should Lizzie the Lezzie stop using that name for her twitter and tumbler?
Look. I don’t know who that is, or really care. Shall I assume she is a lesbian? Because as has already been explained in this thread, people have the right to reclaim slurs used against them.
Stop trying to make this into an argument it isn’t. I’m not saying no one gets to use this word. I’m saying that straight people should err on the side of not using it, just as they should avoid “queer”. Just as I, a cis person, should avoid the t-word (whether or not it personally offends you, because it is generally considered a slur and offends lots of other people). Just as white people should avoid the n-word. Just as…. etc, etc, etc.
I don’t… see what there is to agree to disagree about, though?? This is so simple…?
I’m not asking you to agree that “lez” is a terrible bad word to use ever. I’m not saying your lesbian friends are wrong to not be offended by it or to use it for themselves. :|a
All I’m saying is that the word is a slur. Like all slurs, some of the people in the group it affects are reclaiming it (like your friends), and some are not (like me). I am also making an appeal to common decency and common sense.
Suppose you are watching TV in the living room. Your roommate Tommy comes into the living room with his hands over his ears and says, “Could you turn that down a little? This much volume is giving me a migraine.”
You know that your other roommate, Billy, would probably disagree that it’s too loud — he likes listening to the TV from his room. But you also know that Billy can always come into the living room with you if he wants to watch it, whereas Tommy is currently in actual pain from the noise level.
Doesn’t it make sense to just turn down the TV? Why are you asking Tommy to agree to disagree about whether it’s too loud?
I really enjoyed that metaphor, but on reflection I think it’s getting in the way a bit of what I wanted to say, which is just: why not err on the side of not using this word, at least in public places where you (the general you!) can’t be sure whether you’re going to hurt anyone. Since not saying “lez” doesn’t hurt anyone, but saying it does, it makes the most sense for straight people to err on the side that is guaranteed to do no harm.
Heh. Well, for what it’s worth, I appreciate it. I think that’s all you can do. <3 And this is the part that counts most anyway, in the long run — not whether you offend/hurt anyone at ALL, but how you handle it when you do. You are handling it well!
Rycan, “me” probably is taking a rude pot shot at the idea of reserving slurs for the group they’re used against. The idea seems ridiculous to them, so they’ve made a ridiculous comparison and are under the (wrong) impression that it’s witty and clever.
Marcie could be a trans dude. Then Marcie being into Malaya would mean het or bi. Marcie could also be gender queer, in which case the labels that assume the subject is on one side or another of the “gender binary” and assign orientation relative to that break down. Since Malaya is a girl, though, “into girls” works regardless of Marcie’s gender.
Because we don’t know, it is a Willis comic, it is trying to balance out a diet of popular culture.
Right, “trans dude” would typically mean someone who identifies as a dude and was assigned female at birth. But I’m pretty sure Marcie’s NOT a trans dude. If Marcie WERE a trans man, then he would probably not want everyone to use female pronouns all the time.
My question is, have we ever seen Marcie being into anyone else before? I feel like this is the first time we’ve seen it!
Well, a few details of the subscriber-only pages of Joyce&Walky are written up on TVTropes. Apparently, the other universe’s Marcie dated Jason for a bit.
Aside from that, everyone in her old SEMME squad (Mandy, Grace, Sierra, plus one other who is not in the Dumbiverse) had a mutually-merry time with each other and Joe. (So that means Mandy, Grace, and Sierra are bi too.)
But in this universe? This is the first time I remember it happening.
Yes, but that doesn’t mean that Marcie wasn’t trans, Male GAAB, and out. Gender identity has nothing to do with sexual orientation; recognition of the one is completely independent of recognition of the latter.
Even if she did know, she could just find Malaya so unpleasant that she couldn’t imagine her own best friend could possibly be interested in the other definition of hitting that. She could barely even wrap her mind around the idea Marcie could want Malaya just as a friend.
Count me out for either. I don’t dislike Malaya anywhere near enough to want to punch her, but sex fantasies about fictional college kids aren’t my thing either.
You can like someone perfectly well and then get angry at them when they do something stupid. It doesn’t make them your enemy and it doesn’t mean you dislike them. It means they’ve pissed you off and you dislike what they did.
If I liked everything my friends said and did and never wanted to punch them, I’d be a weird human being. Smart people sometimes do stupid things.
Lifetime cyclist here so kicking (repeatedly) is a better option for me as well, but there’s something to be said for the feeling of fist meeting face where an idiot is involved (since those are the people that make me want to punch/kick people)
She’s got a great rack? Even Leslie’s mom conceded it.
More seriously, they share some interests and Malaya’s actually pretty nice to Marcie. Downright complimentary, even. And she’s put some effort into learning ASL to communicate better, which is a promising (pardon the pun) sign.
Malaya’s attractive, and fun (in abrasive way, granted), and into something Marcie’s into…idk why has to be some kind of fetish thing (I think that’s what you meant?)
Being attracted to certain races isn’t a fetish – it’s actually very common. Do we like to talk about it? No, of course not – it smacks of racism, and it’s made all the more uncomfortable by the fact that sexual attraction is pretty intractable. But data collected from places like OkCupid is hard to ignore.
Lemme rephrase that – this is racism, but it’s incredibly intractable to change on an individual level. I think racial perceptions would have to be changed on a cultural level to make any impact.
Sal and Marcie are such a reclusive pair that it was practically the end of an era when Marcie actually decided to seek out the company of another human being. Sal didn’t even know what to do with herself in light of Marcie’s bizarre and uncharacteristic new behavior.
Shared misanthropy is probably very much an aspect of their relationship.
You can’t just capitalize Marcie’s name as if that doesn’t apply to her. She’s traditionally very reclusive, to the point that it’s shocking new behavior for her to take an active interest in anybody but her single pre-existing friend. Marcie quite likely isn’t fond of people in general.
You should have seen that Death Diaries English dub. It was god awful, I have no idea what those dumb murderous kids were talking about. Awful source material too. Don’t read or watch it 9_9
She’s clearly standing slightly behind Marcie and is tall enough to see over her shoulder, which puts Marcie’s hands in her field of vision. Reading ASL from odd angles takes practice and is prone to fails, but she’s had years to learn.
Now panel 5, she’s totally missing the sign as she daydreams about committing violence on Malaya’s person. Sal’s easily distracted.
Since facial expressions give hints as to the intent of the signer, the fact the Sal couldn’t see Marcie’s face means that Sal had to interpret just based on the actual signs given. Since “I’d hit that” is already idiomatic, the chance for misinterpretation are even greater. Also, its hard to sometimes see your friends as sexual beings.
We know that she missed the very last sign–Marcie telling her that she’s wrong. But it’s assumed that Sal looked over at her, just as it’s assumed that Marcie tapped Sal on the shoulder or nudged her to get her attention to make sure that she would see what she was saying.
I was reading through doa book 1 yesterday and saw the unfinished blue line dealy for flashbacks, and there was a comment underneath that he’d like to keep doing that, did he ever wind up doing that again? I can’t remember
I really like the second panel in that one. When I realized that the first three panels were fantasy, I noticed some really minute differences in the second panel. Where the right side of it is slightly less filled in than normal. (It’s most obvious with Danny’s hair). Plus, those smiles are adorable. I mean, they’re imagined smiles, but still adorable.
Marcie dragged Sal off a fair distance, which made it pretty clear she wanted to talk to her in private. It’s generally considered rude to play peeping Tom on an ASL conversation you’ve been deliberately excluded from.
Some people assume a wall without a door is just a solid wall, others assume that it’s a wall with a big rectangular hole in it. It’s like the glass half full/half empty thing.
Most English-speaking people would say “I want to hit that.” The structure IS altered, and I checked it past some ASL-speaking folks, as well as several websites.
I’d have thought putting the object of the sentence up front and with a question mark would make it obvious that it’s not just usual English phrasing, but okey dokey.
Not necessarily. An example would be “That, I could do” (unsure if a comma would go there) – I use it if I had previously said that I couldn’t do something else, and had received a different request. Or something like that. I might also precede the sentence with ‘now’.
Well, the sentence structure is okay, considering ASL is flexible in word order (though it does often hold to a Object Subject Verb construction, unlike English with Subject Verb Object) but the sign for “HIT” would make absolutely no sense there, unless you mean to punch, or sometimes to make a conclusion (which comes from the English idiom, to hit upon something) although that’s less common.
If I had been signing that sentence (As I am an ASL interpreter) I would have used the ASL idiom “SLAP HANDS” with both hands held across the front of the body, one palm up one palm down, and slap the hands together, then dragging them apart so the fingers ‘snap’ against their respective palms. Almost like giving yourself a highfive/handshake. It means something like ‘one night stand’ or ‘casually fuck’
I think what he did is fine. From the comments section, most people here don’t know ASL. There are a lot of ways to say what Marcie said. It also depends on the area where you are from. I’ve seen it signed completely differently before. What he drew is totally acceptable, and honestly, with the context and her facial expression, I would be able to understand what she meant. Since Sal already had some animosity towards Malaya, she chose to interpret it as literal hitting.
I feel like people in these comments must have peripheral vision like a chameleon if they can see clearly enough to interpret ASL with it. Like the best I could see is that they are signing but the actual content would be entirely lost like trying to understand someone talking when you can only barely hear them.
The comic panels are like single frames out of a sequence. Just because they’re glancing in a particular direction at the instant we see them doesn’t mean that they aren’t looking in other directions intermittently. Their main focus is on the game, but that doesn’t mean they can’t make enough side glances to follow a conversation.
Thank you thank you! I said this above already, but I’m saying it again. We are missing other parts of the interaction, but that’s not really a problem. We’re missing Marcie tapping her to get her attention, as well as Sal glancing over. But the main point is seeing what Marcie is doing. It’s FINE. Take a deep breath, and calm the fuck down.
I wonder if this conversation means that once its over, Sal will decide to leave Marcie and Malaya alone for the evening and go back to Joyce’s dorm party where Amber is still unknowingly waiting to be involved in drama. (wishful thinking. I can’t get off the idea that is party is a dramamine waiting to go off.)
No edit function strikes again. Please reread with her name spelled Marcie and without the parenthetical comment as the comment down somewhere below doesn’t actually rule out Marie and Malaya motion sickness, if you know what I mean and I’m sure you do.
So you want the party in Joyce’s personal space, involving the people she trusts, which was thrown specifically to make her feel safe and happy to explode? That’s pretty cruel really.
Joyce and all her friends are fictional entities who exist for our entertainment. If Saki were talking about real folks that statement would horrible. As it is, it’s just expressing a preference for drama or tragedy over comedy or slice of life.
I’d rather not see characters I like put through the grinder, but I’m certainly not going to call a real person cruel for feeling otherwise.
So the moment Marcie told her bff that she wanted to date, Sal started to act increasingly pissy, possessive and jerkish, escalating into almost beating up Marcie’s would-be girlfriend. No wonder Marcie has been annoyed.
Sal is an even worse WingMan than Joe.
On the plus side, if this Malaya is anything like her shortpacked counterpart, acting pissy and possessive is a pretty good way of making her want whatever you are possessive about.
Sal has stopped acting so pissy and possessive. When she saw it as just friends, Sal didn’t understand the point of the relationship and got pissy and possessive of Marcie. To Sal, Malaya is just some dumb jerk who isn’t even worth her time because she’s frustrating to talk to, pugilistic, and abrasive in every sense of the word. This meant that Sal didn’t understand why the hell Marcie was even friends with Malaya.
In the context of sexual attraction, Sal now understands why Marcie was interested in being friends with Malaya and seems much more willing to spark the friendship – I don’t know how it’s going to go down exactly, but I can speculate that it will end up with Sal swallowing her pride and taking the insults without fighting, for Marcie’s sake. (not sure why people are taking Malaya’s side…she reaches new levels of bongoery in the past few strips that are a little much even for her. There was no need for her to actively try to get under Sal’s skin in the way that she did…)
Not sure what you think is happening here but I think you have the order of events backwards!
I think Bagge is referring to things from Marcie’s point of view. Sal only realised that Marcie wanted to date Malaya now, but Marcie told her that in the flashback. Therefore, for Marcie, Sal went extra pissy after she told her of her romantic interest.
I think people are also forgetting that Marcie kinda brushed Sal off after hanging out with Malaya back when. . Granted Sal could have joined in but I know if I didn’t want to do something and then when my friend was free, they said “going home” I’d be a little irritated I’d wasted my time waiting without it being a possessive thing. We don’t really know if this is isolated or a pattern of what Marcie’s been doing.
I doubt that this means everything is sunshine and rainbows for Sal now, considering the same problem still remains: Marcie has a life outside of her and Sal needs to accept that. I was hoping this would drag on a little longer so we could have a greater insight into Sal’s flaws, but the endpoint is still the same: Sal can’t be with Marcie all the time and if she doesn’t want to be alone she needs to open up to other people.
I sincerely hope that is the lesson Sal takes from this. Her complete backtrack yesterday indicates to me that her narrative right now is something in the line
“Marcie does not want to be friends with Malaya, just have sex with her (kinda like me and Jason). That’s OK, as long as I’m still Marcie’s only friend.”
I have no idea what sort of relationship Marcie wants to have with Malaya, but the point Sal needs to learn is that whatever it is she should be OK with it. Marcie is allowed to have other friends than her, and Sal is not allowed a veto even if Marcie’s choice is Malaya.
Oh wow, I never even considered it that way and that makes a remarkable amount of sense considering she seems to pull a 180 on Marcie spending time with Malaya when she learns it’s “just” about having sex.
I mean, Sal asks if they’re dating, Marcie says she’s working on it, so I doubt she really thinks Marcie only wants sex?
But I otherwise agree. I think Sal has had lots of casual relationships, and some casual sex, and maybe even one serious boyfriend, but she put them all in a separate mental category — and Marcie is also allowed to date people — but another FRIEND is threatening.
I might add that Sal’s version of even the serious boyfriend might have involved still prioritizing Marcie, and she might expect the same in return, but we will see.
It’s… not unheard of to put a particularly close friend on equal footing as a lover, actually. The problem is more Sal’s need to be the one friend than that.
I know, but that’s why I used the word “prioritizing”, which implies putting the friend first, always.
What I’m getting at is that Sal may expect to still be THE most important person in Marcie’s life, even while she’s compartmentalizing Malaya into the more comfortable category of “girlfriend” rather than “friend”. So there may be TWO issues here — Sal’s need to be the only friend, and Sal’s potential expectation than she won’t have to share Marcie all that much even with Malaya.
I’m gonna be that douche bag, but I play roller derby and wanted to point out that having either a star or a stripe on the design of the helmet is actually illegal, having both even worse. There are two positions in roller derby that require a helmet cover be used, one is the pivot who is denoted by a stripe down the centre of the cover and the other is the jammer who wears a cover with a star on either side.
In order to prevent confusion during game play helmets cannot have decals that could be misinterpreted as one of these positions. Having both means she appears to be pivot and jammer simultaneously which isn’t possible.
(I hate that my long time lurking is finally broken just to nitpick!)
what does marks shirt say? all i can make out is “blank you can read this I’m skating.” if the word is “if”, how in the world would a person be able to even read the shirt in the first place?
So it’s looking more and more like Sal isn’t going to be learning a lesson about how unhealthy her desire to isolate Marcie from other potential friends is and she’s going to get to just shrug this whole thing off as a misunderstanding.
Two latest updates, a disabled, mute, gay character, brownie points up.
I’m gonna feel sad for the newspaper lesbian girl that seeing Ruth or Billie or now even Marcie, she never managed to get any gf in college, even just for experimenting of usual straight girl phase.
What is wrong with her, she has broken gaydar?
I get the feeling that Daisy wants the girls to come to her. Billie had been looking for men before Ruth came and got her attention. Marcie has been actively seeking Malaya out. I think Daisy sits around waiting for her Princess Charming, and is sad that it’s not happening. Also, Leslie is single as well. Daisy is not the only known out queer person who is single.
I don’t know when it happened, exactly. But I’ve suddenly started reading Sal in the voice of AppleJack from My Little Pony. And it’s both disturbing and somehow appropriate.
Yeah, amroth there said that Marcie being bi was “ridiculous” and then some incredulous stuff about coming out trans. That’s not “criticism” that’s just being a dumb asshole, and it absolutely gets dumped into the fucking spam folder.
Stop a moment and think. The received wisdom is that sexual orientation is the same across universes (though the expression might differ). Now recall the words “I was experimenting and it turns out I’m not into girls” and their context. And ask yourself where this can possibly be eventually going except in the direction of many “Damn You Willis”‘s. Calling it now. Poor Marcie.
SP!Malaya’s not into robots, she’s into Ultra-Car. IMO, it meshes better with her general personality, and the fact that she’s never had a relationship that worked before her, with guys or with Leslie.
Am I alone in noticing that Sal’s gesture in the final panel, which she seems to think indicates her desire to hit Malaya in the literal sense, is rather similar to a colloquial gesture indicating what Marcie’s trying to say?
(Cf. Arnold Rimmer “All you need to know about Yvonne McGruder is…”)
I don’t like Dumbing of Age as much as your other strips. Marcie being mute is and using ASL to communicate I one of the most interesting thingd I’ve seen side in a comic.
one of my favorite things is when a commenter explodes WHEN DO THESE CHARACTERS GET THERAPY but directed towards a character who canonically has a regular therapist
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btw if you're one of those rando bluesky weirdos who doesn't know me but sees me in the wild being sarcastic and don't know i'm being sarcastic because you haven't taken like 30 seconds to, like, maybe look at my user profile or something, keep walking, you're not going to score internet points here
Here's an entertaining cite at the bottom of the first page
Josh Gerstein@joshgerstein.bsky.social ⋅ 2d
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 ⋅ 2d
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
preternia @preternia.com ⋅ 20h
Josh Gerstein @joshgerstein.bsky.social ⋅ 2d
Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com ⋅ 2d
Pavel
@spavel.bsky.social ⋅ 11d
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Marcie: *signs* “No, tap.”
Sal: “Yeah, sucks they don’t serve beer here.”
Your comments crack me up so much. Thank you. <3
Does ASL have a sign for “thang” (distinct from “thing”), as in: “I’d like to hit that sweet thaaaang.”
I believe you use the sign for “thing”, but put on a special, neon-colored, glove first.
As I understand it, inflection in ASL is done with facial expression, so it’s possible that the meaning can be conveyed.
So you make the sign for “thing” but while grinning with an arched eyebrow, like Joe.
I wonder if there’s a SignWriting glyph for “extreme eyebrow waggle”.
True story, some accents actually have different signing in ASL. Boston is a prime example.
Marcie: I mean, fuck.
Sal: why do you always swear when you are tongue tied?
Marcie: I meant “fuck her”!
Sal: Yeah! Fuck Malaya! Why are we even here?
Sal you lovable fool
Foolish love.
Foolish though it may be, marcie looks so happy in panel 3…
Lovable fool? No, I think Sal has been a real jerk with this Marcie-Malaya thing all along.
This scene was before that, though.
It’s like chronolinears don’t understand time at all…
I think it’s fairly obvious Sal is just as bad at inter-personal stuff as Dina, she just channels it in the wrong direction which is why she gets into trouble.
Plus, there are always people that one just can’t get along with, for little or no reason.
Everybody has that personality type the instinctively can’t stand. That’s what I’m thinking the actual case is here.
Understandable mistake.
Oh, totally.
Rolling your eyes makes you look less sincere, ya know
Says the pot to the kettle
Yeah, but trying to roll other people’s eyes just makes you look crazy.
Gomez: Look dear, he has your father’s eyes!
Morticia: Gomez! Get those away from him!
I remember that exchange with John Astin and Carolyn Jones from back in the 1960s, it’s funnier now.
Mistakable understanding.
Well, I can’t say I blame her for the confusion.
Marcie: “I’d hit it.”
Sal: “McDonald’s? Sure.”
“No, I mean I want to nail her.”
“Me too. Maybe we can jump her later on?”
“No, I’m talking about banging.”
“A gun? Seems a little drastic.”
“Me. Malaya. S. E. X.”
“You missed a few letters, that’s not how you spell suplex.”
OK, the Suplex line got me. XD
I’m sure there are some actual HILARIOUS jokes in ASL we’re missing out on because they won’t translate to straight English… =C
As opposed to gay English or bi-English?
As opposed to curled English. The language barrier in today’s strip stems from Sal’s artificially modified hairstyle.
as opposed to cussin’ like a sailor STRAIT ENGLISH GEDDIT LOLOLOLOL
*runs away*
I love you.
OK I can totally see that happening if Sal didn’t know Marcie was lez or bi.
If only she knew she was in a Willis comic, she might have figured it out a lot sooner.
Pardon me, I should have just said “into girls”. Sorry.
What’re you apologizing for?
Remembering the minor cat fight that went on a few pages back about calling Becky “lez” instead of “lesbian”.
I don’t recall that, but why am I not surprised?
Because you are learned and wise in the ways of the world, my friend.
…or maybe just in the ways of internet commenting. Maybe you should leave that off your resume.
Yeah, I’ll just stick to ‘skilled in slaughtering bacteria en masse’
Wow… People are so touchy sometimes.
Some people get sick of being disrespected.
Thank you.
I don’t really see how shortening lesbian to lez is in anyway disrespectful.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/lez
Because that is how it is usually used: disrespectfully! So now that you know, I trust you will refrain from using it in the future…?
It’s also usually a slur. If you’re a queer woman, you might decide to reclaim it (the way I and some other queer women have reclaimed the word dyke), but even then it’s not super safe to apply to all queer women or any individual. And straight people should avoid entirely.
I guess I’m just accustomed to different types of people. Couple of my lez friends just say “Yeah, I’m lez, no big deal.”
Best part about lez friends, more guys for me. :3
/waits for you to stop using this word generally
/because you’ve literally just been told it’s considered a slur
Like. Seriously. Your lesbian friends do not speak for me. They don’t speak for anyone but themselves. The polite thing now is to stop using this word except around them and other lesbians who are okay with it.
Not that hard, ma’am.
Li, you yourself don’t speak for all gay women either.
It’d be like saying I should always be offended at the word “tranny”, even when it’s more often than not used to refer to a car’s transmission.
Wow, no, that’s not at all what it’s like.
It’s like saying “because some lesbians are offended/hurt by this word, while the rest are indifferent to it, straight people should err on the side of not hurting anyone by avoiding the word.”
Not. That. Hard.
(Also I sure hope you are trans yourself, with that example. And I’d love to know what country that’s true of (“usually refers to a car transmission”), because it’s not the USA.)
Actually, Li, it is the US. I’ve only ever heard tranny as a slur twice in person, whereas everyone I know uses tranny to refer to a car’s transmission.
I’m MtF trans, polyamorous and pansexual.
So, should Lizzie the Lezzie stop using that name for her twitter and tumbler?
It’s absolutely not “the US”. It might be your state. It might be a few states! But it is not the US as a whole.
Still, you’re right about one thing, which is that I should have responded differently. I should have pointed out that “dyke” can also mean dam. The f-word can also mean cigarette, and afaik is still used that way in England. The n-word “originally” meant an ignorant person.
None of these alternate meanings make the slurs less hurtful to the people hurt by them. It’s literally irrelevant what other associations you might have with them. What should matter to you is that you are hurting someone by using them, so you should stop.
I’m MtF trans, polyamorous and pansexual.
Super. You’ll understand my thinking your readiness to use your lesbian friends as an excuse for using one slur might translate to using another slur on a similar pretext.
Btw, if you wanted to defend your right to use “lez” on the basis of you also being LGBTQIA, you should have done that when we were talking about how using it is something straight people shouldn’t do, by the way. Also your earlier comment about “the great thing about being friends with lesbians” now doesn’t really make sense. Sure, it means more men for you, but also fewer women, so… more of a breaking-even thing than a clear advantage, yes?
So, should Lizzie the Lezzie stop using that name for her twitter and tumbler?
Look. I don’t know who that is, or really care. Shall I assume she is a lesbian? Because as has already been explained in this thread, people have the right to reclaim slurs used against them.
Stop trying to make this into an argument it isn’t. I’m not saying no one gets to use this word. I’m saying that straight people should err on the side of not using it, just as they should avoid “queer”. Just as I, a cis person, should avoid the t-word (whether or not it personally offends you, because it is generally considered a slur and offends lots of other people). Just as white people should avoid the n-word. Just as…. etc, etc, etc.
Li, I’m thinking at this point it may be best to extend an olive branch, and chalk it up to differences in opinion.
Because knowing how I am, I’m going to say something that’ll probably get me banned from the comments section.
So, agree to disagree?
I don’t… see what there is to agree to disagree about, though?? This is so simple…?
I’m not asking you to agree that “lez” is a terrible bad word to use ever. I’m not saying your lesbian friends are wrong to not be offended by it or to use it for themselves. :|a
All I’m saying is that the word is a slur. Like all slurs, some of the people in the group it affects are reclaiming it (like your friends), and some are not (like me). I am also making an appeal to common decency and common sense.
Suppose you are watching TV in the living room. Your roommate Tommy comes into the living room with his hands over his ears and says, “Could you turn that down a little? This much volume is giving me a migraine.”
You know that your other roommate, Billy, would probably disagree that it’s too loud — he likes listening to the TV from his room. But you also know that Billy can always come into the living room with you if he wants to watch it, whereas Tommy is currently in actual pain from the noise level.
Doesn’t it make sense to just turn down the TV? Why are you asking Tommy to agree to disagree about whether it’s too loud?
I really enjoyed that metaphor, but on reflection I think it’s getting in the way a bit of what I wanted to say, which is just: why not err on the side of not using this word, at least in public places where you (the general you!) can’t be sure whether you’re going to hurt anyone. Since not saying “lez” doesn’t hurt anyone, but saying it does, it makes the most sense for straight people to err on the side that is guaranteed to do no harm.
I can see your point. Doesn’t help that I’m the one that’s sensitive to sound… Bah! Logic!
*insert stupid argument bait here*
Yeah, I guess I’m just accustomed to reclamationists when it comes to certain words. I’ll try to be mindful of out in the future.
FUUUTUUUUUURE!
Sorry, couldn’t help that bit.
Heh. Well, for what it’s worth, I appreciate it. I think that’s all you can do. <3 And this is the part that counts most anyway, in the long run — not whether you offend/hurt anyone at ALL, but how you handle it when you do. You are handling it well!
FUUUTUUUUUUUUURE
Lez in and of itself, like any other word, isn’t disrespectful. Tone means everything.
And any non-mechanics should definitely refrain from using the words modulator or torque converter.
I don’t follow, me (now that’s a bizarre sentence).
Rycan, “me” probably is taking a rude pot shot at the idea of reserving slurs for the group they’re used against. The idea seems ridiculous to them, so they’ve made a ridiculous comparison and are under the (wrong) impression that it’s witty and clever.
Marcie could be a trans dude. Then Marcie being into Malaya would mean het or bi. Marcie could also be gender queer, in which case the labels that assume the subject is on one side or another of the “gender binary” and assign orientation relative to that break down. Since Malaya is a girl, though, “into girls” works regardless of Marcie’s gender.
Because we don’t know, it is a Willis comic, it is trying to balance out a diet of popular culture.
You’re forgetting Sal and Marcie first met when they were kids. Marcie was a little girl back then.
Right, “trans dude” would typically mean someone who identifies as a dude and was assigned female at birth. But I’m pretty sure Marcie’s NOT a trans dude. If Marcie WERE a trans man, then he would probably not want everyone to use female pronouns all the time.
My question is, have we ever seen Marcie being into anyone else before? I feel like this is the first time we’ve seen it!
Well, a few details of the subscriber-only pages of Joyce&Walky are written up on TVTropes. Apparently, the other universe’s Marcie dated Jason for a bit.
Aside from that, everyone in her old SEMME squad (Mandy, Grace, Sierra, plus one other who is not in the Dumbiverse) had a mutually-merry time with each other and Joe. (So that means Mandy, Grace, and Sierra are bi too.)
But in this universe? This is the first time I remember it happening.
Yes, but that doesn’t mean that Marcie wasn’t trans, Male GAAB, and out. Gender identity has nothing to do with sexual orientation; recognition of the one is completely independent of recognition of the latter.
Even if she did know, she could just find Malaya so unpleasant that she couldn’t imagine her own best friend could possibly be interested in the other definition of hitting that. She could barely even wrap her mind around the idea Marcie could want Malaya just as a friend.
I’m pretty sure one interpretation of that sentence or the other is true for 90% of the commenters here.
Hopefully we can get it down to 60%. Who’s with me!?
Maybe.
Count me out for either. I don’t dislike Malaya anywhere near enough to want to punch her, but sex fantasies about fictional college kids aren’t my thing either.
You don’t have to dislike someone to want to punch them…
I”m fairly sure I do.
You can like someone perfectly well and then get angry at them when they do something stupid. It doesn’t make them your enemy and it doesn’t mean you dislike them. It means they’ve pissed you off and you dislike what they did.
If I liked everything my friends said and did and never wanted to punch them, I’d be a weird human being. Smart people sometimes do stupid things.
shoot I must be a weird human being… I never want to hit anyone!
Unless you’re a boxer.
…So do you just go about your day wanting to punch random people, or something?
often. I don’t do it, but yeah. often.
I prefer to kick people
I’d have to side with you. Years of soccer makes me more likely to kick than punch.
Lifetime cyclist here so kicking (repeatedly) is a better option for me as well, but there’s something to be said for the feeling of fist meeting face where an idiot is involved (since those are the people that make me want to punch/kick people)
Plus punching hurts more
Are we in agreement that feet and/or fists of doom are to be reserved for the bodies of idiots?
I’m in the remaining 10%
There’s a 90% chance you would hit me?
my appreciation for malaya is purely platonic i promise
Huh. Well, now I wonder what Marcie _does_ see in Malaya. In Walky!Verse it was Malaya and Ultra-Car’s shared misanthropy keeping them together.
Probably the freckles.
She’s got a great rack? Even Leslie’s mom conceded it.
More seriously, they share some interests and Malaya’s actually pretty nice to Marcie. Downright complimentary, even. And she’s put some effort into learning ASL to communicate better, which is a promising (pardon the pun) sign.
I totally think Malaya’s the most attractive girl in the Dumbi/Walkyverses. Have since her first appearance.
The signs are good.
Maybe she’s “into” dark-skinned Asian girls?
Malaya’s attractive, and fun (in abrasive way, granted), and into something Marcie’s into…idk why has to be some kind of fetish thing (I think that’s what you meant?)
Being attracted to certain races isn’t a fetish – it’s actually very common. Do we like to talk about it? No, of course not – it smacks of racism, and it’s made all the more uncomfortable by the fact that sexual attraction is pretty intractable. But data collected from places like OkCupid is hard to ignore.
Lemme rephrase that – this is racism, but it’s incredibly intractable to change on an individual level. I think racial perceptions would have to be changed on a cultural level to make any impact.
Sal and Marcie are such a reclusive pair that it was practically the end of an era when Marcie actually decided to seek out the company of another human being. Sal didn’t even know what to do with herself in light of Marcie’s bizarre and uncharacteristic new behavior.
Shared misanthropy is probably very much an aspect of their relationship.
I don’t think Malaya and MARCIE have a shared misanthropy, though.
You can’t just capitalize Marcie’s name as if that doesn’t apply to her. She’s traditionally very reclusive, to the point that it’s shocking new behavior for her to take an active interest in anybody but her single pre-existing friend. Marcie quite likely isn’t fond of people in general.
Recluse =\= misanthrope
She’s friends with Sal. Apparently she likes women with a violent streak and a chip on their shoulder.
I’m not saying they’re the same, but there are some similarities there.
“Well, that changes everythin’! Ya clearly took one too many hits t’the head.”
Damn you, slang! DAMN YOU, SLAAANNNGGG!
Just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
I know V_V
All this drama over a simple communications failure. How realistic.
Stupid idiomatic language.
Idiomatics be idiotic.
You should have seen that Death Diaries English dub. It was god awful, I have no idea what those dumb murderous kids were talking about. Awful source material too. Don’t read or watch it 9_9
Poor Marcie, her only best friend for ages seems to be obvious to slang.
PM I think the word you are looking for is “oblivious”.
D’oh! I cant believe I made that mistake, now you can see why I only ever got Cs and Ds in English.
Eeh, there’s only a two letters difference. It’s like, poto, potato.
This has nothing to do with the comic, but since you said ‘potato’ I have to show this as I can’t hear/see the word without thinking of it.
http://youtu.be/dkgS0wfJlBY
Thank you for that video
POT-ato … great.
potato, tomato
This made me laugh ridiculously hard and clearly I need to sleep.
Sal has some god tier Peripheral vision. No wonder she’s good at roller derby.
Hm, Sal doesn’t play.
More like she could be good at it, but she’d probably wind in a knock-down, drag-out fight with somebody.
Given that Malaya is involved, it’s an honest mistake
When Marcie signs at Malaya, Sal assumes a violent context.
Apparently Sal has eyes on the side of her head because she’s clearly not looking at Marcie in panel 4.
It’s not like you need to see sign language to understand it surely…
She must be using her peripheries, which is probably part of the reason for her confusion
Yeah that’s hilarious lol.
Well, a lot of characters are also capable of talking with closed mouths or while drinking. This is just the ASL equivalent.
She’s clearly standing slightly behind Marcie and is tall enough to see over her shoulder, which puts Marcie’s hands in her field of vision. Reading ASL from odd angles takes practice and is prone to fails, but she’s had years to learn.
Now panel 5, she’s totally missing the sign as she daydreams about committing violence on Malaya’s person. Sal’s easily distracted.
It’s a static image, just assume she quickly glanced at Marcie when she saw movement.
Since facial expressions give hints as to the intent of the signer, the fact the Sal couldn’t see Marcie’s face means that Sal had to interpret just based on the actual signs given. Since “I’d hit that” is already idiomatic, the chance for misinterpretation are even greater. Also, its hard to sometimes see your friends as sexual beings.
We know that she missed the very last sign–Marcie telling her that she’s wrong. But it’s assumed that Sal looked over at her, just as it’s assumed that Marcie tapped Sal on the shoulder or nudged her to get her attention to make sure that she would see what she was saying.
Of course, each of them wants to hit her in a different area.
“No, you don’t understand. I wanna pound her”
“Yeah, me too buddy”
“no. bang her.”
“mmhmm”
“fist her”
“you bet”
“I swing that way”
“Ah’d take a swing at her too”
This comment made me laugh.
Sal just cannot imagine Mal as a sexual being me thinks.
Ding, Ding, Ding!
Or she can’t imagine anyone wanting to have sex with her – it just doesn’t register.
I was reading through doa book 1 yesterday and saw the unfinished blue line dealy for flashbacks, and there was a comment underneath that he’d like to keep doing that, did he ever wind up doing that again? I can’t remember
The unfinished blue line dealy isn’t for flashbacks, but for a character’s daydreams or imagination. I think I’ve used it at least once more.
The most famous instance is probably this one.
heeheehoohoo
find every excuse you can to post that link
I really like the second panel in that one. When I realized that the first three panels were fantasy, I noticed some really minute differences in the second panel. Where the right side of it is slightly less filled in than normal. (It’s most obvious with Danny’s hair). Plus, those smiles are adorable. I mean, they’re imagined smiles, but still adorable.
I could stare at this strip for hours. The whole thing is just so adorable.
it really is so good
Hasn’t he only used the blue lines for characters thoughts and ideas?
Aw crap now my post is redundant
Hey, your post is redundant.
That is to say, you are merely reiterating something that has already been stated.
Repeating an idea, even.
Did I mention that I really miss Mojo Jojo?
Because I really miss Mojo Jojo.
Then I should mention that Cartoon Network is gonna bring back the Power Puff Girls.
Oh, I know. Just dreading it proving to be a disaster. There have been some pretty awful takes on the series in the past.
And really, I’d rather see Samurai Jack get a proper series wrap up instead.
An Aku/Mojo Jojo teamup would make me a very happy boy.
It wouldn’t be the same without Mako voicing Aku though.
Oh yeah, that is an issue, isn’t it? Pity. I keep trying to forget we’ve lost him.
ahh, that’s what it was, thanks.
Huh, I guess it’s ambiguous in both languages.
God damnit Sal
Today’s strip is 100% adorable. Even Sal’s grouchiness is adorable.
It’s about as adorable as you can be without Dina around.
This will be just like Taming of the Shrew but with lesbians, sign language, and roller derby.
I look forward to when the story is like MacBeth but with bisexuals, transformer figurines and Mario-Cart.
Then what would the story look like if it where Othello?
No survivors.
That’s Hamlet.
Romeo and Juliet… Dang he sure used that ending a lot didn’t he?
Please, you must refer to it as the Sottish Lay.
That’s not really any weirder than the Cowboy Western-themed take on the play that I got the last time I saw that play on stage.
Things I learned today: The sign for “want” looks like an ass grab.
Also impressed Sal can look at Marcy’s hands without looking at them.
…now that you mention it, “want” totally looks like that.
Only if the ass is really high… http://www.lifeprint.com/asl101/signjpegs/w/want.h1.jpg
So it’s grabbing boobs instead.
ASL: Sign language for horny teenage boys (and girls)
Adolescent Sex Language.
Yup.
Heh.
the sign for “want” actually is quite similar to a sign for ass/butt
I can guess what the sign language for “I want some ass” would look like.
(Dying of laughter) Oh gawd almighty, poor Marcie. She has the worst friends.
You keep saying friends in plural.
We know she has at least two friends. Both of whom are dumbasses.
Pretttttty much. Poor Marcie.
Sal basically has one friend. Doesn’t mean the same is true for Marcie (though it could be).
Oh, sitcom misunderstandings, how we love you!
It kinda cracks me up how swiftly Sal shifts from “jealous bestie” to “supportive wingwoman.”
Here are some useful sign language slang terms:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kristin-henson/sign-language-sexual_b_4059840.html
“Lost in Translation” starring Sal Walkerton and Marcie Diaz
What’s Marcie signing in the last panel?
Its the shaka sign.
… I don’t understand why she’d make that sign in that context?
Literally, it means “wrong”. She’s saying “um, no”
Since Malaya has learned sign language, she can probably see everything Marcie is saying. Or the gist of it, at least.
Marcie dragged Sal off a fair distance, which made it pretty clear she wanted to talk to her in private. It’s generally considered rude to play peeping Tom on an ASL conversation you’ve been deliberately excluded from.
. . . MALAYA.
Gives no fucks.
Or simply behing a corner/angle of the building.
We’re talking Malaya here.
But she can’t see through Sal, and I imagine that she’s in the way.
You’re a better door than a window, Sal.
Actually, you’re not a very good door either. I never did understand that saying.
Doors work best when they get out of your way.
I find they work better when they’re in the way.
We may have different priorities for the use of doors.
Some people assume a wall without a door is just a solid wall, others assume that it’s a wall with a big rectangular hole in it. It’s like the glass half full/half empty thing.
Well, now I know who I shouldn’t hold the door open for, then.
It’s hard to see through a person, so even if they make a shitty door, they’re still better at it than at being a window.
So Sal is a door that enters and exits windows.
…This sounds like some kind of demented construction porn.
I absolutely refuse to google “construction porn” – mostly because I’m afraid it exists.
Bah, you’re more likely to find image akin to “earth porn”, i.e. photo of beautiful buildings.
Or ancient Greek porn, where the Earth is a woman that has sex with/gets raped by the sky.
I wish I knew more about ASL, but there seems to be something wrong with Marcie’s statement.
“That? Hit. I want.” Would make more sense wouldn’t it?
I think that was intentional. Sentence structure for ASL appears to be different than spoken English.
I know it is different, which is why; “That? I want to hit.” sounds wrong because it is an casual English sentence.
But then again I do not know enough about it to make a definite statement. I suppose it could depend on which verb is given emphasis.
Most English-speaking people would say “I want to hit that.” The structure IS altered, and I checked it past some ASL-speaking folks, as well as several websites.
I’d have thought putting the object of the sentence up front and with a question mark would make it obvious that it’s not just usual English phrasing, but okey dokey.
Heh, maybe not in formal English, but sometimes we fool around with sentence structure. At least, I do.
Well, topic-fronting is a feature of some English dialects.
Yoda-speak…
Not necessarily. An example would be “That, I could do” (unsure if a comma would go there) – I use it if I had previously said that I couldn’t do something else, and had received a different request. Or something like that. I might also precede the sentence with ‘now’.
That said, ‘That? I wanna hit” does sound off in English. Funny, if ‘wanna’ were replaced with ‘would’, it would sound less odd in my mind.
Well, the sentence structure is okay, considering ASL is flexible in word order (though it does often hold to a Object Subject Verb construction, unlike English with Subject Verb Object) but the sign for “HIT” would make absolutely no sense there, unless you mean to punch, or sometimes to make a conclusion (which comes from the English idiom, to hit upon something) although that’s less common.
If I had been signing that sentence (As I am an ASL interpreter) I would have used the ASL idiom “SLAP HANDS” with both hands held across the front of the body, one palm up one palm down, and slap the hands together, then dragging them apart so the fingers ‘snap’ against their respective palms. Almost like giving yourself a highfive/handshake. It means something like ‘one night stand’ or ‘casually fuck’
Ah, but then Sal would have known what Marcie met.
Also, I’m not sure Marcie’s planning on a one night stand.
I think what he did is fine. From the comments section, most people here don’t know ASL. There are a lot of ways to say what Marcie said. It also depends on the area where you are from. I’ve seen it signed completely differently before. What he drew is totally acceptable, and honestly, with the context and her facial expression, I would be able to understand what she meant. Since Sal already had some animosity towards Malaya, she chose to interpret it as literal hitting.
ASL is a separate language from English, so I imagine Willis went ahead and changed the grammar to fit English, like any good translator will do.
Yeah, ASL and English have different structures.
That’s because ASL is not simply a cipher for English.
“ah ah ah they’re reading ASL without looking !!”
— 90% of the pages with sign language on it.
sigh.
…do you not have peripheral vision??? you don’t need to look straight at someone to see what they’re doing.
I feel like people in these comments must have peripheral vision like a chameleon if they can see clearly enough to interpret ASL with it. Like the best I could see is that they are signing but the actual content would be entirely lost like trying to understand someone talking when you can only barely hear them.
The comic panels are like single frames out of a sequence. Just because they’re glancing in a particular direction at the instant we see them doesn’t mean that they aren’t looking in other directions intermittently. Their main focus is on the game, but that doesn’t mean they can’t make enough side glances to follow a conversation.
Thank you thank you! I said this above already, but I’m saying it again. We are missing other parts of the interaction, but that’s not really a problem. We’re missing Marcie tapping her to get her attention, as well as Sal glancing over. But the main point is seeing what Marcie is doing. It’s FINE. Take a deep breath, and calm the fuck down.
That and panels tend to be more interesting if everyone aren’t always looking at each other’s hands.
Oh, man, Marcie’s smile in panel one…
and here Sal shows she’s more like her brother than either of them would like to admit – completely clueless about some things.
Most things.
And Marcie kept you from getting your wish, Sal.
Panel one, happy Marcie, enlightened Sal.
Panel four, typical sit-com screwed up miscommunication.
Sal can now go back to ignoring Malaya, happily.
THIS IS NOT WHAT WE LEARNED TODAY, SAL!
Take a hint, Sal
She never misses hints. She’s catch them with her good reflexes.
But she throws them at Malaya before she gets a good look at it.
I love everything about this strip hahaha
I wonder if this conversation means that once its over, Sal will decide to leave Marcie and Malaya alone for the evening and go back to Joyce’s dorm party
where Amber is still unknowingly waiting to be involved in drama. (wishful thinking. I can’t get off the idea that is party is a dramamine waiting to go off.)You expect them to get motion sickness?
Marcy and Malaya? Sure. (Actually not, see my comment below.)
No edit function strikes again. Please reread with her name spelled Marcie and without the parenthetical comment as the comment down somewhere below doesn’t actually rule out Marie and Malaya motion sickness, if you know what I mean and I’m sure you do.
So you want the party in Joyce’s personal space, involving the people she trusts, which was thrown specifically to make her feel safe and happy to explode? That’s pretty cruel really.
Joyce and all her friends are fictional entities who exist for our entertainment. If Saki were talking about real folks that statement would horrible. As it is, it’s just expressing a preference for drama or tragedy over comedy or slice of life.
I’d rather not see characters I like put through the grinder, but I’m certainly not going to call a real person cruel for feeling otherwise.
Perfect strip is perfect XDXDXDXDXDXDXDXD Thank you, Willis!
I imagine Sal and Marcie could make a pretty good Who’s on first routine.
So the moment Marcie told her bff that she wanted to date, Sal started to act increasingly pissy, possessive and jerkish, escalating into almost beating up Marcie’s would-be girlfriend. No wonder Marcie has been annoyed.
Sal is an even worse WingMan than Joe.
On the plus side, if this Malaya is anything like her shortpacked counterpart, acting pissy and possessive is a pretty good way of making her want whatever you are possessive about.
Sal has stopped acting so pissy and possessive. When she saw it as just friends, Sal didn’t understand the point of the relationship and got pissy and possessive of Marcie. To Sal, Malaya is just some dumb jerk who isn’t even worth her time because she’s frustrating to talk to, pugilistic, and abrasive in every sense of the word. This meant that Sal didn’t understand why the hell Marcie was even friends with Malaya.
In the context of sexual attraction, Sal now understands why Marcie was interested in being friends with Malaya and seems much more willing to spark the friendship – I don’t know how it’s going to go down exactly, but I can speculate that it will end up with Sal swallowing her pride and taking the insults without fighting, for Marcie’s sake. (not sure why people are taking Malaya’s side…she reaches new levels of bongoery in the past few strips that are a little much even for her. There was no need for her to actively try to get under Sal’s skin in the way that she did…)
Not sure what you think is happening here but I think you have the order of events backwards!
I think Bagge is referring to things from Marcie’s point of view. Sal only realised that Marcie wanted to date Malaya now, but Marcie told her that in the flashback. Therefore, for Marcie, Sal went extra pissy after she told her of her romantic interest.
Yup, that was what I was going for. From her point of view Sal has been a real jerk throughout this whole thing.
I think people are also forgetting that Marcie kinda brushed Sal off after hanging out with Malaya back when. . Granted Sal could have joined in but I know if I didn’t want to do something and then when my friend was free, they said “going home” I’d be a little irritated I’d wasted my time waiting without it being a possessive thing. We don’t really know if this is isolated or a pattern of what Marcie’s been doing.
That was after their row and part of mutual escalating pissiness
I doubt that this means everything is sunshine and rainbows for Sal now, considering the same problem still remains: Marcie has a life outside of her and Sal needs to accept that. I was hoping this would drag on a little longer so we could have a greater insight into Sal’s flaws, but the endpoint is still the same: Sal can’t be with Marcie all the time and if she doesn’t want to be alone she needs to open up to other people.
I sincerely hope that is the lesson Sal takes from this. Her complete backtrack yesterday indicates to me that her narrative right now is something in the line
“Marcie does not want to be friends with Malaya, just have sex with her (kinda like me and Jason). That’s OK, as long as I’m still Marcie’s only friend.”
I have no idea what sort of relationship Marcie wants to have with Malaya, but the point Sal needs to learn is that whatever it is she should be OK with it. Marcie is allowed to have other friends than her, and Sal is not allowed a veto even if Marcie’s choice is Malaya.
Oh wow, I never even considered it that way and that makes a remarkable amount of sense considering she seems to pull a 180 on Marcie spending time with Malaya when she learns it’s “just” about having sex.
I mean, Sal asks if they’re dating, Marcie says she’s working on it, so I doubt she really thinks Marcie only wants sex?
But I otherwise agree. I think Sal has had lots of casual relationships, and some casual sex, and maybe even one serious boyfriend, but she put them all in a separate mental category — and Marcie is also allowed to date people — but another FRIEND is threatening.
I might add that Sal’s version of even the serious boyfriend might have involved still prioritizing Marcie, and she might expect the same in return, but we will see.
It’s… not unheard of to put a particularly close friend on equal footing as a lover, actually. The problem is more Sal’s need to be the one friend than that.
I know, but that’s why I used the word “prioritizing”, which implies putting the friend first, always.
What I’m getting at is that Sal may expect to still be THE most important person in Marcie’s life, even while she’s compartmentalizing Malaya into the more comfortable category of “girlfriend” rather than “friend”. So there may be TWO issues here — Sal’s need to be the only friend, and Sal’s potential expectation than she won’t have to share Marcie all that much even with Malaya.
You and me both, Marcie, you and me both.
I’m gonna be that douche bag, but I play roller derby and wanted to point out that having either a star or a stripe on the design of the helmet is actually illegal, having both even worse. There are two positions in roller derby that require a helmet cover be used, one is the pivot who is denoted by a stripe down the centre of the cover and the other is the jammer who wears a cover with a star on either side.
In order to prevent confusion during game play helmets cannot have decals that could be misinterpreted as one of these positions. Having both means she appears to be pivot and jammer simultaneously which isn’t possible.
(I hate that my long time lurking is finally broken just to nitpick!)
Aw. I thought she played jammer.
Ah, thanks for the education/reminder!
It’s been a few years since I’ve seen derby and I had forgotten that.
Meanwhile, Sal has been playing clamjammer.
what does marks shirt say? all i can make out is “blank you can read this I’m skating.” if the word is “if”, how in the world would a person be able to even read the shirt in the first place?
Marcie’s
Because half-pipes and handstands go together often?
That, exactly.
DINGDINGDINGDINGDINGDINGDING-DING-DING
DINGDINGDINGDINGDINGDINGDING-DING-DING
Sorry. (Not sorry.)
So it’s looking more and more like Sal isn’t going to be learning a lesson about how unhealthy her desire to isolate Marcie from other potential friends is and she’s going to get to just shrug this whole thing off as a misunderstanding.
Two latest updates, a disabled, mute, gay character, brownie points up.
I’m gonna feel sad for the newspaper lesbian girl that seeing Ruth or Billie or now even Marcie, she never managed to get any gf in college, even just for experimenting of usual straight girl phase.
What is wrong with her, she has broken gaydar?
Eh, there’re plenty of straight people who don’t manage to find a partner despite being surrounded by straight people.
Marcie’s bi.
I get the feeling that Daisy wants the girls to come to her. Billie had been looking for men before Ruth came and got her attention. Marcie has been actively seeking Malaya out. I think Daisy sits around waiting for her Princess Charming, and is sad that it’s not happening. Also, Leslie is single as well. Daisy is not the only known out queer person who is single.
Thank you for the subtitles. Much nicer not having to go look at the comments to understand the comic.
“Working up to it”, as in Malaya doesn’t know that – oh no. I see where this is going.
Ayup.
“You reject Marcie => I reject your face with extreme prejudice” — Sal
Now there’s a comic I would click “like” over…
That would be a case of ‘STOP HELPING, SAL!’
yep
Do we know what the characters’ derby names are? Has this come up yet in comments or Word of God from Willis?
Is Marcie wearing Morpheus glasses? I see no temples. Of course, I’m not surprised by this.
Her earpieces are drawn occasionally, mostly when she’s in profile. It weirds me out a bit when they are drawn without them (which is a lot).
Notice that all of the glasses wearing people in DOA do not show the earpieces when shown from the front. Just an artistic choice.
XD the way she signs wrong at the end just completes the comic
I don’t know when it happened, exactly. But I’ve suddenly started reading Sal in the voice of AppleJack from My Little Pony. And it’s both disturbing and somehow appropriate.
O_o
Am I the person “who’s now in the spam folder.”? Juest writing to test.
LOL, guess probably I am (since I couldn’t comment from original IP). Willis just hate any criticism after all.
I whine about Willis all the time in these comments. Yours just sucked.
Yeah, amroth there said that Marcie being bi was “ridiculous” and then some incredulous stuff about coming out trans. That’s not “criticism” that’s just being a dumb asshole, and it absolutely gets dumped into the fucking spam folder.
How can being bi be ridiculous?
Fitting that he got a “Joe” yet I bet the real Joe is more sensitive.
That’s an example of a question I’d rather not hear the answer to.
here is their clarification, which immediately reiterates exactly why I dumped them into the spam folder: https://36.media.tumblr.com/60fa4ba46a42ecdca6406c42f5b9d998/tumblr_nq27f7VeNL1qkinreo1_540.png
Facepalm.jpg
Riiiiiight, because a handful of non-hetero characters on a campus of hundreds is unbelievable.
Thousands if IU is anything like UT, there are close to 10K students on campus at any one time.
Unoriginal troll is unoriginal.
Stop a moment and think. The received wisdom is that sexual orientation is the same across universes (though the expression might differ). Now recall the words “I was experimenting and it turns out I’m not into girls” and their context. And ask yourself where this can possibly be eventually going except in the direction of many “Damn You Willis”‘s. Calling it now. Poor Marcie.
Well, maybe not? She was also very attracted to Ultra Car’s female chassis.
Like Kamino Neko mentioned yesterday, I think Malaya might be demisexual.
Yeah, it really makes the most sense to me.
SP!Malaya’s not into robots, she’s into Ultra-Car. IMO, it meshes better with her general personality, and the fact that she’s never had a relationship that worked before her, with guys or with Leslie.
Rather, she hates (most) humans.
Am I alone in noticing that Sal’s gesture in the final panel, which she seems to think indicates her desire to hit Malaya in the literal sense, is rather similar to a colloquial gesture indicating what Marcie’s trying to say?
(Cf. Arnold Rimmer “All you need to know about Yvonne McGruder is…”)
Yesterday, I was all “Ooooh, Marcie and Malaya? That sounds like an interesting relationship with lots of character development!”
And now, it’s like oh, they’re not actually a thing yet? Oh well, maybe it’ll happen in a few weeks (years).
Or maybe Marcie will reveal her feelings to Malaya tonight!
So, like, in a week or two.
I don’t like Dumbing of Age as much as your other strips. Marcie being mute is and using ASL to communicate I one of the most interesting thingd I’ve seen side in a comic.
I got a question: how do you use sign language in Canada? When it’s minus 45*C? Do mitts give you a special accent?