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I feel like there’s a difference between the character’s sort-of transphobia within that sequence and the film agreeing with that character. I don’t think we’re really supposed to IDENTIFY with Paul Dano’s character, or view him as correct. In that sequence, he’s personally uncomfortable dressing as a girl (which is itself okay and not a condemnation of anyone else doing that. Besides, I feel like the film’s underlying message is more one of accepting one another, period.) Besides, as the film shows, if he’s a narrator, it’s an incredibly unreliable one.
Nah, it’s not that. It’s that they set up an arc that can go in a trans-positive direction, but then a twist happens. And that twist means that the character who’s depicted doing that is meeting instead a very hateful trope about trans people. And so all the scenes of X character doing trans-esque things are really setting up this ugly twist and “hinting” at it.
Because of course, this work couldn’t actually go in a surreal positive direction and instead needs to be about X overused hateful transphobic trope and some bullshit sad boner confessionalism.
And the part where my identity and the potential of it actually getting reflected was just actually set up to form a hateful trope mocking said identity is just a really foul dick move and a reflection that we’ll never see major actors like Daniel Radcliffe and huge indie buzz for a work that was genuinely revolutionary and truly did trans identities justice.
It was also especially galling because my enbyfriend* specifically chose it out as a birthday gift because a friend recommended it to them, despite knowing that they are trans.
*I really wish there was a term for being romantically attracted to anything other than men, cause homoromantic doesn’t technically fit anymore, but panromantic, I feel, let’s douchey guys think they have a potential in. *shrug shoulders* Identity is complicated.
I’d actually like spoilers on that, anywhere you can post this and be less vague about the pertinent tropes? Ty in advance as I gotta go back to sleep for a bit now
The main character starts the movie lost and like he’s about to die when he finds a dead body that comes to life and they become friends and more. He later has an arc where he starts dressing like a girl for their dead body companion because of a plot line involving magic boners (just roll with it) and they talk about their father being really against stuff like that and society disapproving of it and playing him like he’s a trans girl figuring stuff out now and falling in love with his dead body companion now that he thinks he’s going to die. Except twist, he wasn’t lost at all, he’s just a creepy stalker hiding out in the woman he’s obsessed with’s backyard and all the trans elements are just him being the creepy deranged trans psycho trope and signs of how sick his obsession really is. Cause that’s somehow more novel than a surrealist queer love story and metaphor for being lost in performative cisnormativity.
Oh yeah, now I see exactly what you meant about the seriously damaging tropes about transwomen. (I feel that it is specifically transwomen who get that bullshit and transmen just don’t show up- due to sexist bullshit I ain’t going into at 1am, but if you’ve followed me thus far you probably already get it.)
But yeah, I’d not even heard of this film but fuck that damaging bullshit. And big hugs for having to put up with that bullshit.
Have you seen “Hedwig and the Angry Inch”, Cerb?
It’s quite the experience and you may find it to be one of a very few that approach transsexuality as a major theme. It’s also a rock musical with both dark and uplifting segments.
I really wish there was a term for being romantically attracted to anything other than men, cause homoromantic doesn’t technically fit anymore, but panromantic, I feel, let’s douchey guys think they have a potential in. *shrug shoulders* Identity is complicated.
Shrug, “attentive”? “Romance” runs in complex patterns providing identification. Most of its elements are accessible to a good observer and interactor. Actual carnality is only a small and almost separate part.
We’ve had a pair of fillies here who had phases of stallionness. The highlight was one of them mounting her mother. It doesn’t get more wrong than that.
Maybe we need a Tiresian month for everybody in college age (staggered timing) where they spend their life attired as the other gender. Just to get a view of the different patterns modeling interaction and their influence on one’s own life.
Just to loosen the ties of gender identities to reproductive organs.
Yeah, identity is super complicated. And overall terms/vocabulary just don’t exist currently when nonbinary is involved. Like “gay/lesbian” and “straight” or “hetero” and “homo” are literally designed to be used in a binary system… they don’t work/make sense if they person trying to find a word for their identity is nonbinary… (personally I ended up making up the term femromantic for myself to get around this[defining it as attracted to feminine traits]. Coincidently Mascromantic and Enbyromantic could be things in that same vein. Haven’t considered/thought through possible terms for nonbinary + something else… so something else to think about)
Language has a lot of catching up to do when it comes to nonbinary….
Ugh, don’t get me started on how useless (and inherently degrading) ‘hetero’ and ‘homo’ have become in a non-binary world. Can we pls switch to ‘andro-‘ and ‘gyno-‘ (does ‘andro-romantic’ work?) (and yes, you can keep ‘pan-‘ and ‘a-‘, those are fine)??
I mean, as someone who’s thought about this to a fair degree, I think andro and gyno are almost exactly as problematic in a non-binary world as hetero and homo? I suppose they work when the user is non-binary, where hetero and homo don’t, but they still imply that the group of people you might be attracted to falls into a binary. I don’t know of a good alternative, though, since gender and sexuality are both basically a spectrum which means splitting it into labels is hard.
(Also I’m sure it’s not your intent, but I’ve seen andro/gynosexual used in gross transphobic ways by equating them to genitals so the user can say “I’m a gynosexual lesbian so I’m only interested in real cis girls.)
Wait, how are “hetero” and “homo” now exclusionary? Aren’t they just two points on a spectrum, which now includes the, for lack of a better term, “new” terms of sexuality?
@Jalathas You also start getting into the problem of the nontraditional terms becoming treated as so much ingroup jargon which cuts off people from even comprehending what you’re saying due to lack of experience and inevitably invites even more ingroup/outgroup bias.
@Jon Rich If one views the gender spectrum as two points “heterosexual” implies one likes those of the other point (ie a man who likes women). if one sees gender as a spectrum it becomes more of a problem because “hetero-” as a prefix implies the whole group of those dissimilar to oneself even though it’s most often used to imply the same meaning as though the spectrum were just two points which in term reinforces the binary gender viewpoint and suggests that is how one views gender which thereby implicitly others anyone who is not on those two points.
Now I get to hope you eventually do get to see this, considering the time and therefore that the next comic is up so those’ll be the comments most people read.
@Jalathas
Well, the point is that physical attraction is oft highly correlated with the hormones and the body build of the person, both characteristics that have nothing to do with that person’s identity, but with that person’s biology. Actually, it’d be strange for any form of attraction to be based on identity-based groups. There are assholes in any group (and for the different people, different assholes), so of course there won’t be emotional attraction just because somebody identifies as male.
By this logic I don’t see much point in getting mad about binary descriptions of sexual preferences, as long as everybody keeps in mind the thresholds between the binary descriptions will be different for everybody and fluctuating with time and mood. Like, “it’s not gay if he looks good in women’s clothing”.
That being said, some more words in the dictionary is always useful. Human beings are way too complicated to ever have a functional language that can accurately describe even one person’s sexuality. As a caveat, though, vlademir1 is right about the whole jargon and ingroup/outgroup mentality thing.
If you haven’t seen it already, I can recommend Normal (2003), with Tom Wilkinson in the lead as a trans person. It might be hard to find (since it was made for tv), but — as I remember it — beautifully played.
I hate that casual transphobia is the new casual racism in things that make you cringe twenty years after the fact. Monty Python’s The Life of Brian is a fantastic movie, but it’s just got one scene which I can’t get out of my head now when I think about it, and it means I don’t want to show my boyfriend an otherwise great movie. :/
And we’re not even (anywhere near) out of the woods on the matter, so it’ll be until I’m practically dying of old age that I can just say “it was a different time then” like people say when they talk about Huckleberry Finn as a classic now. (I sure hope we can talk about this like a memory before I die.)
Huckleberry Finn was very anti-slavery and anti-racism, though, wasn’t it? It has the n-word in it, but it’s there in order to show how icky the n-word was/is.
Which screams that this person really doesn’t understand what they’re talking about here. Probably agreed with the book burning it goes through for simply having a word that makes some people uncomfortable.
That’s the exact opposite of what their grammar suggests they’re saying:
“The above poster probably agrees with the book burning that Huckleberry Finn goes through, solely because it has a slur in it.”
Also, while misreading happens to all of us, your ‘found the white guy’ statement is a hypocritical reaction lacking in substance or contribution.
“Oh, look, found the white guy.” – Stating someone’s skin color in a pejorative manner is, dare I say, quite racist, 3-l.
Perhaps being less hilariously hypocritical would add to your next argument, since you’ve quite soundly shot yourself in the foot this time.
I wonder if the point was “we can point to Huckleberry Finn as an example of a different time, because it highlights the racism in the things that Huck and Jim have to put up with, even as it condemns them.”
CURRENT society’s views of racism as something bad are partially created by this book specifically. So, it’s not about “look how it was a different time back then”. it’s about “look how this book made the time right now different”.
(A note: I AM a bit of a Mark Twain fan, so my perception may be skewed by that. The summary is I think Twain got more progressive as he got older, and the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn are pretty well designed to show how awful racism is. It’s a work with flaws, but it’s definitely meant to make us sympathize with Jim and to hate how people treat him.)
If I recall correctly, Mark Twain was somewhat involved in progressive movements. For instance: when King Leopold decided to, you know, directly and indirectly cause the deaths of potentially twice the number of people that died in the Holocaust by doing awful shit in his “Congo Free State,” well… Mark Twain was one of the people who spoke out loudly against him.
A brief peek into Mark Twain’s history should show, too, that he was staunchly anti-racism, pro-abolitionism, pro-woman’s rights… He was definitely progressive for his time.
Now, from what I can tell, Mark Twain isn’t someone that was always that progressive (see one of his earlier works – with some fairly racist language – mentioning Native Americans, though he eventually seemed to reverse his stance on Native Americans), but he eventually became a guy that really hated racism. Which… I think that’s an important thing to understand: people can change. And I think Mark Twain did, and for the better. Twain grew as a person as he got older.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn show how goddamned dehumanizing the N-word can be, and how awful people treat someone for being black. Jim is constantly shown in a positive light, though he’s mistreated (if I recall correctly) even by Huck in the beginning. He’s kind, he’s patient, he’s uneducated but wise, he’s protective of Huck Finn… Etc. Though it’s been years, I remember thinking about how Jim seems to be the hero of the story as much as Huck at points.
I don’t blame anyone for thinking the book is racist, though. It can definitely be a tough call. It’s not just the use of the N-word that makes me say this – which, again, was used to express how awful that word is – but how Jim, despite having all those positive traits, is still shown as being superstitious to his own detriment and generally has his lack of education thrown in his face. But then again, I’d argue that Jim’s lack of education is mostly thrown at him in the first part of the book, where Huck Finn doesn’t appreciate Jim yet, and Huck becomes a better friend of Jim throughout the book and eventually treats him like an actual human being. However, the writing definitely makes you pause at points and wonder, on occasion, if the book is racist. So… I won’t begrudge anyone of that opinion, as ardently as I believe that Mark Twain was a good fellow and socially progressive.
One last thing: I’m not a Game of Thrones fan, but I’ve heard people claim – and I agree with this assessment – that George R. R. Martin’s work is meant to show how awful and horrible war is, how pointless it is, etc. Yet it does so by highlighting a brutal civil war in all its terrible details. We are NOT meant to cheer for the abusers, the murderers, the rapists, etc. in that story. They’re highlighted as awful people. We want them to die as we read, to get their comeuppance. I think Mark Twain’s work is similar in that regard: we’re not meant to agree with the racism shown by characters in the book, but to be upset by it and to want change. That’s my take, at least.
I apologize for the long piece, here. As said: I’m a bit of a Mark Twain fan, though I haven’t read his stuff in years. Of all the American classics, his stuff is probably the only stuff that really stuck with me.
I’m interested by the comparison you draw, because it’s an apt one: both Game of Thrones and Huck Finn suffer from having good intentions, marred by an author unable to lift their good intentions away from their own privileged viewpoint.
Twain was certainly a strong progressive, by the standards of his time… which makes uncomfortable reading now, as we realise that ‘far ahead of his time’ still left him with some whopping great blind spots.
Similarly, nobody is saying that Martin is glorifying war… and obviously we’re not meant to cheer for the abusers and murderers and rapists.
Nevertheless, in a brilliantly constructed world… he seems to have constructed the plot to depend disproportionately on rape and abuse. Yes, it’s good to acknowledge that rape is a horrific reality of war.
On the other hand, so is dysentry. And being covered in mud. And trench foot. And yet, somehow, rape seems to get all of the page count…
To be fair, there is a sequence in the 5th book where one of the major characters (Daenerys) gets dysentery. But you’re not wrong that rape seems to be the go-to horror way more often than any other.
“But you’re not wrong that rape seems to be the go-to horror way more often than any other.”
I’ll admit that I haven’t read or watched GoT, but one thing occurs to me: Would one possible factor be that rape is still something which still happens in modern, Western society, so it has a bigger impact on the reader/viewer. On the other hand, there are very few people in advanced, Western countries who die of dysentery or warfare anymore. It might not pack the same punch. So a big factor might be just writing for the audience.
I’m being totally in earnest here, this wasn’t meant to be catty or anything.
It’s interesting you mention people not having a frame of reference for dysentery and warfare, because I read a book that a friend recommended as “very good”–The Doomsday Book (or Domesday Book in “proper” English)–which is like 50% depictions of horrible disease.
I’d say SPOILERS but I dunno, I felt like I saw the twist coming from light years away. It was sort of interesting in the graphic detail of what the disease was like, but otherwise it was really… BORING. Just people dying for no reason, except to show how they died. No lesson learned.
I thought I had a conclusion to reach from sharing this, but I guess not.
A plague isn’t caused by human folly (at least historically), hence it isn’t something one can do away with via some sort of lesson learned.
War and related atrocities on the other hand are wholly dependent on the human element, hence there can be lessons aimed at mitigating such.
well, considering the people dying in the future was caused from mucking about with time travel and a dig site infested with latent plague virus, it is COMPLETELY human folly
To be fair, there is worse than aknowledged casual racism, and that is ignored casual racism.
Do you guys know about Tintin ? (If you don’t, it’s a comic book classic that’s very popular in francophones countries)
Well one of the early comic books is called “Tintin au Congo”, and it is so full of casual racism that it is sickening. There was a trial in the 2000′ (the book was published in th 1930’s) to ban the book or at least print a disclaimer on the cover. The belgian court of justice ruled that since the cartoonist wasn’t hostile toward black people in this book, then it was ok if he treated them as children (I’m paraphrasing by the way).
Wikipedia link if you wish to know more : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tintin_in_the_Congo
Also worth mentioning that Hegre repudiated his casual racism later in his life and acknowledged the damage he’d done. Not that it makes it better, but at least he acknowledged it & tried to fix it.
You mean the scene with Loretta? I dunno, I personally found it… progressive? both given the time and the context? The People’s Front of Judea is actually pretty accepting of Loretta’s new identity, even if they don’t fully understand it
Full disclosure though, I’m cis so maybe that scene is uncomfortable to trans folk and I’m missing that element
I agree, i just watched that scene again and all of the characters aside from the leader are pretty open to the idea, and don’t chastise Stan about wanting to be Loretta. They simply ask questions about it, without putting her down. I think it is pretty progressive, especially for the time. Also Huck Finn is very against racism. Just because it uses words associated with racism, doesn’t mean it is racist. Twain strongly breaks from the norm by making Jim a real and sympathetic character instead of a stereotype. He questions the idea of slavery through the eyes of a young boy.
I didn’t think it was transphobic at all. It was played for laughs, but to me the comedy just came from how little it had to do with the plot and how much screentime it was given despite that, and if it isn’t laughed at, it’s just a woman who was born a man and realizes they’re a woman. Also, wasn’t the actor who played Loretta actually a trans woman IRL?
But, the thing is, you have to actually see what people’s likely responses are going to be. How likely do you think it is that the average viewer isn’t just going to see this as “haha, he thinks he is a woman how silly”? When writing something you have to take in account common opinions about stuff as well.
I always found the scene funny because just one character was getting frustrated, and it was increasingly upsetting him. Everybody was fine with Loretta being Loretta, but the angry character hated the reasoning behind it – this was set 2,000 years ago, and the reasoning was that she wanted to have babies. For me, the scene peaked in amusement with the other character’s wail of “where’s the foetus gonna gestate? You gonna keep it in a box?” which – you know, with a slightly more sensitive rewording – I feel like something like that scene could play out in a comedy in 2016 – you know, actual trans or NB character has an aggravatingly utopian worldview when it comes to their options, and everybody around them wants to be supportive, except that isn’t actually very helpful?
IDK, I think it plays out as a lot funnier than any other trans jokes from back then, or from now, really.
Shrug. “otherwise great movie”? “The Life of Brian” is an offensive movie. It is written and executed as one. I find it almost amusing that you have no problem with Terry Jones depicting Brian’s mother yet object to Loretta. In their sketches even more than in “Life of Brian”, Monty Python rides out stereotypes ridiculously into the sunset.
Invariably, all women are depicted as ditzy and focused on appearance. Strangely, it feels less off-pitch when done by Terry Jones (the go-to female), Eric Idle and even the occasional John Cleese than in the rare occasion where they have actual female actors. Take a look “Prejudice”, for example. The female number girl is actually the one I find most offensive here, not the “shoot the poof” slur. Probably because it’s safely outside of the uncomfortable bounds.
But this “safely outside of the uncomfortable bounds” is also very much culturally defined. You would not want to watch “The Life of Brian” with a set of hooligans. You would not want to watch it with a Quran reading class, never mind that the joke is on you (or not).
The ultimate message is that our only weapon against intolerance is laughing about ourselves. It’s a bit sad that there is a narrow window of audience between those who laugh too little and those who laugh too much, but it matches the stereotypical audience it was created for well enough to still work.
It doesn’t for you. And you would not want to have it work for your friend, so it would not be a good video to view together since it would be disturbing him in effigy. That’s both the good and the bad thing about sharing a movie.
“Invariably, all women are depicted as ditzy and focused on appearance.”
That’s a remarkable thing to say about a film where the only relatively grounded and moral character is a woman (Judith), and where practically all men are ditzy, erratic, and whimsical, and the one most focused on appearance is a man (Pilate).
I think you might have had some coloured goggles on when you saw the film.
It was a long time ago, but as I recall it the female characters in the sketches weren’t really that much ditzier than the male ones, except when the characters were meant as parodies of typical contemporary female characters in film / tv, such as the “Scott of the Antarctic” sketch. The Python gang weren’t all that progressive, but they were at least intelligent and in general didn’t base much of their humor on the kind of stereotype you mention.
In a documentary, Carol Cleveland said that she thinks one of the things is that the the Pythons didn’t know how to write young women because they didn’t know many young women well. They knew middle-aged women from their mothers and their friends, so they tended to write from what they knew.
(Carol Cleveland is the actress who played most of the women in the Python series who weren’t played by the men in drag.)
i had never heard of swiss army man before noticing there were a couple reviews of it on youtube. had no plans to see it and now that i know theres transphobia in it, im definitely never gonna watch that movie.
This is why one should never argue with idiots. If they win, you feel extra stupid because you lost to an idiot. If you win, they fail to understand that you won, and you had to listened to their idiocy, so really they won after all.
“Never argue with a stupid person. They’ll drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.”
-Dunno, but I remember it from the internet
“Never argue with a pigeon. No matter how good you are at chess, the pigeon will just knock the pieces over, shit on the board, and strut around like it’s victorious”
Explains both the last two Australian Prime Ministers and Donald Trump.
Eh, I wouldn’t exactly call it “mean” – callous as hell, yes, but he’s not doing it out of malice, he’s doing it because he genuinely thinks she’s objectively wrong.
Besides, I somehow doubt he picked up on ANY of the subtext she had going on with that statement.
I thought D&MM cartoons were essentially Walky’s LIFE after his sister got sent away and his only friend ditched him, though? Like, I distinctly remember him talking about that, and the scene actually being kind of uncomfortable.
Carla doesn’t have a monopoly on suffering, or on using entertainment as an escape from the problems in her life.
How is he deliberately shitting on Carla by not caving to her personal reasons for liking the show? As I mentioned elsewhere, Carla would not give half a damn if he explained why he’s so passionate about D&MM, and people have told me Carla’s never beholden to other people’s issues. Why is Walky supposed to be beholden to hers when he’s got reasons of his own?
I don’t think that by continuing to be Walky and not immediately softening into “oh jeez I’m sorry” he’s trying to torment Carla or trying to keep her bad week going. He’s Walky, immaturity and using goofiness/childishness to avoid serious situations is what he does.
So what if he’s suffered if he’s taking the opportunity to keep Carla’s hell week going?
That seems to be more like an unfortunate byproduct of him wanting the last word or some other similarly petty bullshit that he’s all about right now, rather than him actually wanting to make her life suck.
He doesn’t need to pick up on subtext. She explicitly told him that everybody hated her growing up, that Ultra Car was the only thing she really had besides her parents, and that Ultra Car is important to her very identity. Walky doesn’t need to know that she’s trans to, I don’t know, listen to her words, realize that this is more important and painful to her than a round of “who’s got the best cartoon?” and back down a little.
Or he could laugh in her face, because what are someone else’s feelings compared to fart jokes?
Walky just grabbed the wrong script. He got cast in a performance of Serious Backstory Moment and he’s reading the opening lines from Playfully Smug Fandom Rivalry.
This has not been the first time where his love of presenting “I am smart guy who is winning this encounter” lead to him being a major dick to an identity that was the source of a lot of suffering for another person.
One of the reasons really finding something to hang his sense of self-worth on besides a smug sense of unearned superiority is such a crucial character development arc to be on.
It’s not just about being able to adjust to having to work at things. It’s about leaving behind the dangerous belief that just because something is “easy” to you, then that must have meant you somehow earned it being easy due to your “intelligence and worth”.
Cause there be scary privileged mountains down that path.
… The other thing with that is the fact that growing up thinking natural talent/intelligence is a proxy for worth is a good way to become an adult who is possessed of a crippling fear of failure. Which at its heart I think is why Walky avoids studying so hard – if he has to study, he’s failed at getting everything “naturally”, so it challenges his self-image and self-worth, which has always been dependent on being the smart one between the two siblings.
(N-not like I had to go through that and learn how to accept failure as a possibility and am still in the process of learning how to separate my performance in a particular role from my worth and quality as a person or anything…)
I think that’s really on point. And yeah, I think Walky is utterly terrified of acknowledging that intelligence doesn’t just mean “everything comes easy forever” for exactly the reasons you note. And I think it’s also what triggers his more asshole nerd moments*.
*It’s probably not made any easier by being black and thus being hit constantly with social messages that black people are unintelligent and so this realization about intelligence is even more fraught than it would be for a white nerd in the same situation.
It’d be really interesting to explore that and see where it goes. He’s shown that he doesn’t identify as black- but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t affected his life or evolution as an individual, and it’s not like Walky is king of self-understanding. (Or even vaguely in the self-understanding nobility, and I’m not taking this analogy any further because it’s already teetering on dodgy.)
But yeah, so far his reaction to race has been “wut?” I would really like to see that start to break down and get glimpses of how it’s actually affected his life (beyond the obvious family dynamic).
“As a field of study, communications is applied to journalism, business, public relations, marketing, news broadcasting, intercultural communications, education, public administration—and beyond. Communications majors are best defined as students that are: Seeking a general liberal arts education.” http://www.communications-major.com/
(I really want to see an interaction with Carla and either Rachel or Joe now, just to see what’s changed in their dynamic now that they’re not Carla’s parents.)
Okay, every now and again because my “schedule” gets fucked up I miss pages AND THAT WAS ONE OF THEM.
So major thanks for accidentally bringing that to my attention!
Secret half siblings? JoeDad (much cooler than ToeTad) is a ladykiller, so I could see him having the odd illegitimate kid around, or one from a previous marriage.
I dunno, I tend to empathize pretty strongly with (among other things) Walky’s excessive, sometime even self-destructive laid backness. I certainly went through the same wall of tumbling college grades he did. But I can’t see myself being as disrespectful when someone opens up to me like that.
Exactly. Carla opened up to Walky about something very serious and personal. Walky didn’t know how to handle something super-serious and personal. That’s totally like him to do that.
Honestly, I don’t think Walky can pick up on facial cues. Either that, or he did notice her expression, thought it was silly for someone to take a show as something other than entertainment, and tried to steer things back into what he understands. Yeah… he doesn’t get other people.
This is a guy who’s not good at dealing with emotions. I mean it’s expected of him and I hope Dorothy (if she’s in earshot) takes him to task over it, but I’m not surprised.
Eh, I see her trying to stay well out of it. I mean, a fight between a boyfriend she still plans to sleep with and cares about and someone he’s just been a massive dick to?
I can see her standing back, letting him dig his own grave, and then politely bringing up that that was a rude thing to do when they are alone again.
I dunno, I could see Dorothy feeling honour-bound to do what she feels is the right thing and try to diplomatically tell Walky- in front of Carla- he’s being a dick. Could go either way.
…IF she’s still in earshot.
I’m like 99% sure this is an avoidance tactic on Walky’s part; he is acutely uncomfortable dealing with serious topics, and so he’s deflecting with the most irreverent answer he can make in order to get out of there.
Bestest parents! Like, when the bar for parents of trans kids is usually at “doesn’t actually throw them out of the house, but still dismisses their identity”, truly supportive parents, much less truly supportive parents who go out of their way like this to show their unconditional support and love?
Yeah, there’s no way anyone’s topping that.
Good parent gold medal won with a world record that’ll last a good few decades at least.
I really hope the low, low bar you’re describing isn’t an inevitable universal. A friend of mine discovered recently that her youngest child was a girl, and her feelings were mainly feelings of relief because her child had finally figured out what was going on with them, and she had seen her wrestle but be unable to figure out what was going on and what she was until recently.
Of course, being cis, I have no idea how bad transphobia is in the Netherlands, where I live, but it sounds pretty awful where you live.
Sounds like your friend is clearing that low bar admirably and being a truly awesome mom. I always like to hear happy stories of trans people with positive families cause it tends to be rare.
Though, getting slightly less rare every year, which is super awesome and a sign that activism is working to make things less shit for the next generation.
I have some friends in the Netherlands, and their son is trans. Their opinion (and their son’s opinion) is that transphobia is alive and well there, but it’s nowhere near as virulent and violent as in North America – the kid generally encounters teachers misgendering out of ignorance/laziness and some degree of medical gatekeeping which has its roots in intersectional ableism (he is autistic, and even in the Netherlands, society seems to have the attitude of “here is your difference chit. You get one, so spend it wisely.” – i.e., you can be a visible minority OR disabled – with one and only one disability/chronic illness – OR you can be a gender minority OR you can have a non-het sexual orientation OR you can be not a member of the prevailing religion but you get one and only one… thus he’s got a lot of “Do you know how uncommon it is to be trans and autistic? And autistic people have difficulty with gender roles* anyway so have you considered it might just be your autism?”), but he has never encountered the kind of violent and virulent transphobia which is common here. He’s had only mild bullying at school for it which his school dealt with at once, he’s never been beaten up, he’s never been threatened with corrective rape, nobody makes an issue of which bathroom he uses, etc. Admittedly, one anecdote is not data – but they’re pretty involved in the trans community there, and they say a lot of the stuff that is super common here would be news-worthy there. Not to say that the Dutch don’t also have their own issues on that front, just that they’re probably 10 years ahead of North America.
*uhh yes and no but off topic for this thread – cliff’s notes: yes autistic people have trouble performing gender in a typical way but no that doesn’t mean it’s not possible for an autistic person to be trans and actually best available data suggests that we’re like 5-10x as likely to be trans than the general population.
UK here. Transman, with another transman close friend. His mother was utterly manipulative and bongoy and refused to really acknowledge that it was not only his identity but damned important to him. My mother was similar but without the manipulation, really, and more passive bongoiness.
(And assuming the word filter is still in place, the meaning may be slightly distorted, but I’m afraid that is the best word for the petty digs they both used.)
We both started transitioning in our adulthood- he’s still early in his transition and still in contact with his family; I’ve been living as male for coming up ten years and dropped contact with mine after my wedding two years ago. For the record.
I also have an older friend who refuses to transition, partly because they believe their mother would be devastated and their siblings extremely nasty. (Although from what’s been said, I think their mother would surprise them- and their siblings wouldn’t…)
The point being (and oh, for an edit button) that while some countries are better than others, getting a shit reception from family is by no means uncommon. Sad to say but the Ruttons really are being unusually supportive.
It makes me wonder how the various other parents would react to the hypothetical of their child coming out as identifying contrary to their assigned gender. Some (Seigals) we could guess, whereas others are more of a mystery.
Not sure that the incident described here is quite as positive as you think. At this point, all they did was make a toy their kid wanted but couldn’t get. That could have happened before they had any awareness of Carla’s actual gender.
But we do know from other strips that her parents continued their unqualified support even after they knew her identity, so for that they still make the grade as bestest.
Yeah, pretty sure Carla has close to the best parents of the strip so far (next to Dina, whose parents are also awesome from what we’ve seen so far).
I mean, I’m sure they’re not perfect. Knowing Carla and her own foibles I wouldn’t be surprised is her folks are like a 9 or 10 on the classism scale, but still. They did good by her.
As an old BTAS fan, I find myself thinking of Alison LaPlaca’s fine and moving performance toward the end of the eponymous episode, “Baby Doll” – when Mary Dahl, struggling with her own sort of dysphoria, is wonder-struck to finally see a reflection of the body she knows she should have:
“Look… that’s me in there. The real me. There I am.”
It’s definitely not too late. He’s still in a child state because he has the luxury of being in a child state. If he gets a big dose of “I’m responsible for crap? CRAP!” he’ll get a filter. But he’ll bongo and moan and whine about it the whole way.
Mike’s pretty much vanished from the story, if you haven’t noticed. He’s act 1 comedy relief filler and foil, and ever since the inciting incident of Becky showing up we’re into act 2.
Honestly, I couldn’t even crack a smile at that punchline because this is one of the most sincere vulnerable moments from Carla ever and probably the only moment, unless I’m misremembering, in which she actually shows this much real emotion to someone else, in which she talks about her childhood and people being asses to her…and Walky follows it up with something that crude and dismissive. I just. Walky. You insatiable ass.
But seriously, you’re right. Carla is OPENING UP HERE. I’m friend-shipping it right now. Walky’s a lost cause, but Dorothy’s going to make a point of bonding with Carla. Possibly by asking to see Ultra Car episodes to see what she was missing.
Yup, and I think this is one reason among many why she doesn’t open up and instead avoids all human contact as best she can. Because at best she’s going to get this sort of ignorant dismissal and at neutral she’s going to get Mary and at worse the people who “did” stuff to her and at worst, dead.
And it’s frustrating because Carla needs moments where she’s allowed to express emotions other than detachment and trying to pretend to be an asshole she’s not very good at being because vulnerability is punished too harshly.
Like fuck, I don’t think she’s opened this much up to Sal and she’s got a freaking crush on Sal and spends most of her social time with her. And Walky just farted all over that.
I’ve heard that theory before. Personally, I don’t see it- I may be surprised yet, but Willis is excellent at portraying real chemistry between people, and I just don’t get that from them.
…Also I really want Carla to crush on a lady who isn’t straight, and I think Sal is entirely into dudes? But Carla doesn’t need sad heartbreak over crushing on a lady she has no chance with. She needs sweet happy snuggles (if she’s into that in this universe).
We know she isn’t down to f with Marcie so she’s at least not sexually attracted to girls, romantically we don’t have confirmation either way but, really, chances are she’s straighter than a ruler at a circle convention.
I’m fairly sure Nightsbridge was talking about Sal. I don’t recall her ever explicitly stating her sexuality but I’m sure, in both universes, that she’s only ever shown interest in men.
Yeah, Sal’s straighter than a ruler, so I’m presuming it’s a sad heartbreak arc or if she’s lucky a “I initially wanted to get close to her for romantic feelings, but hanging out, she’s actually really cool and bonded as real friends” arc. I’m kinda holding out some hope for the latter.
Mary is NEUTRAL? …..can I offer you internet hugs for this being the world we live in? I’m just gonna leave them right here in the comment, and you can do with them as you will.
That’s a very touching story from Carla. It’s nice to finally see her go into why Ultra Car is so important to her. Seeing how intertwined her love of the character is with her parents’ support is an interesting wrinkle.
The punchline kinda leaves me cold though.
I know Walky likes to challenge people about their “nerd cred.” It happened when Dorothy asserted she knew the episode they first watched together, but I feel like he should understand having an emotional attachment to a show/property that can be around when people can’t. He lost his sister when she went to boarding school, and he lost his only(?) friend Billie when she became popular during high school, but he always had Dexter and Monkey Master to enjoy. However, he said himself, “It sucks watching them alone, y’know? […] It’s become a thing I enjoy by myself. Which is sometimes good, but not always.” It speaks to using a show to fill loneliness, appreciating that it’s there while lamenting that it’s the only thing there. A sentiment not too dissimilar from Carla’s.
It feels like Walky completely dismissing/ignoring Carla’s emotional attachment to the show and toy to stupidly (ha, fart episode) try and win their nerd fight reads as him being more of an asshole than he would be? Even knowing that he likes to get into nerd fights and present as a “manly man,” he’s not an idiot and he’s not completely apathetic.
I know it’s the punchline of a very wordy strip so there’s not a lot of room for nuance, I guess I’m just hoping the next strip shows Walky being a bit more human.
It’s not that he can’t care about or relate to other peoples’ problems and emotions. That part of his psyche is working. It’s that he DOESN’T relate because he’s oblivious to them.
This. Though I would argue his self-absorption is letting him be a massive asshole at moments, but that that doesn’t have to be a permanent condition if he’s willing to put in the work and let himself grow.
I really like that piece, that to Carla, Ultra Car isn’t just the show that clued her in to being trans or was there when she had no friends, but a lot of enemies. It’s proof that her parents would be there for her no matter what and would do whatever they could to do right by her.
And that’s really really powerful and amazing and makes me tear up just thinking about it.
I love Carla SO MUCH and her panel 2 expression has got to be the goshdarn cutest thing I have ever seen. Look at how happy she is!!
I feel this as well on a personal level, relating to fictional characters as a kid/teen, when I had no friends. I almost just cried reading Carla say this.
I love you the most, Carla.
(Walky, I love you too tho. Because sometimes fart jokes are really just the best xD)
What reactions to bisexuality? All that I’ve noticed is him guessing that Danny might be talking about being gay*, which since Danny never came out and said what he was talking about, he can hardly be blamed for. Becky has had worse reactions to bisexuality than that.
*Which to a rational person (i.e. not Danny) would be more of a real problem for his relationship with Amber than being bi, and it’s not like in our heavily heteronormative society it’s never happened that someone who turned out to be gay thought they were straight early in life, so…
He called a queer personal discovery an “excrutiating personal discovery”, chastises Danny for getting giggly about his jokes about dating men, and has hyper-exaggerated reactions about male sexuality including warning Danny off thinking he could be hot, saying that a table with more men in it than women is a sausage fest, and literally putting on earmuffs and a blindfold on as a visual distancing from the very idea of Danny masturbating in the same room: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2012/comic/book-2/02-choosing-my-religion/tissue/
And yes, would agree Becky’s indeed had worse reactions to bisexuality, or at least more openly hostile ones in her interaction with Billie.
Still am not at all wanting to know what he thinks about trans women before he gets a thorough queer education.
I may be misremembering, but I didn’t see Becky’s reaction as hostile, just completely ignorant. “Is there even a word for that?” Certainly an example of bi-invisibility, but a fairly justified one, given Becky’s upbringing.
Danny’s was about the same and that was him figuring out that he was bi.
True. But I think it is similar to Walky’s fail in that it was a fail from ignorance*.
And I love that later when she found out more and met someone who openly identified as bi, she was totally cool with it and supportive. Becky adapts quickly which is why I think she’ll be the first besides Ethan to support Jocelyne when she comes out.
I don’t really agree with you on the Joe front.
Self-discovery of any kind feels to me like “excruciating personal discovery” to Joe; and for his comment on Danny’s nervous giggle it felt more like he’d unknowingly hit a nerve and then basically gone “I don’t understand your reaction”. At the same time, the fact that he said what he would say to Ethan if it were a date was probably what he would say if it wasn’t (have fun and use protection) seems pretty gay-accepting to me.
Totally agree with the hyper masculinity, but it feels more like a coping mechanism to me. If hyper masculine men don’t have to deal with their feelings, then if Joe is hyper masculine, neither does he.
(As for the masturbation strip, how else are you supposed to react to your long-term friend masturbating in the same room? I never understood forcing a pair of uninvolved young adults to share a room- but basically saying “I’m giving you space to take care of that” genuinely feels like a decent, if incredibly awkward, move to me. But seriously, how do horny teens in shared rooms handle masturbation? Only ever do it in the halfbath or when you manage to get the room to yourself? Try to be quiet? Be Sarah and make a point of it to get a reaction? I can not understand the logic in the shared rooms at all.)
I think Joe’s problem is he sexualizes lesbian and bisexual women for heterosexual enjoyment. I do think he has the point of being not against them, though, which is a very common thing to exist in the dude bro. Then again, I think Joe is actually SINCERE in the fact he’s exist positive feminist versus being a dude bro chauvinist. It’s just its rare to encounter the former when so many fictional characters (and RL people) are the latter.
He may be sincere, but I’m not sure he’s actually right. He may think he’s he’s a positive feminist, but he’s shown very little interest in any women other than as sex toys for him.
The current interaction with Joyce being the first real exception.
It’s a little more complicated or perhaps a better term being that it’s a little more simple than that. Joe is in college to have as much sex as humanly possible. He wants women to have a good time, pays enough attention to do a sex video and a guy-guy-girl threesome, and respects boundaries. It’s just he’s uninterested in anything serious and lets people know that.
“Anything serious” not merely being relationships, yes. He’s genuinely got a big thing with dealing with ANYTHING serious, from self-discovery to sincere discussions. It’s his way of separating himself from his feelings and issues, I feel.
Huh. It just occurred to me that DoA doesn’t really have a full-on dudebro character. I don’t think Joe qualifies because he does respect women’s boundaries and always ensures his partners are fully consenting.
Ryan would surely qualify as a dudebro (from what little we’ve seen of him) but he’s not by any means a major character, except for his effect on Joyce.
I’m a long way beyond college age, but it certainly seems like the dudebro is a pretty common type among that cohort these days. Has Willis missed an opportunity here?
“fully consenting”, sometimes with the help of alcohol, especially for the threesomes.
Joe prides himself on being all about consent, but he’s actually pretty lousy at boundaries. Look how much it took for Sarah to get him to back off.
I’d actually love to see more of Joe’s “game”. See how he actually goes about picking up women. How he deals with rejection that’s more tentative than the screaming, punching and threats we’ve seen make him back off. How hard he pushes a girl who’s interested but not willing to jump into bed right then and there.
As it is, we’ve seen so little that we’re relying on hints and interpolations from the few bits we’ve seen.
But yeah, Joe’s our dudebro. He’s just not actually a rapist.
*shakes head* Oh Walky…
This is like every conversation I’ve had with one of my exs. Still friends actually, even though I’d like to bonk him over the head every so often.
I was idly reading the comments while my roommate was venting about her job, and it slowly dawned on me that she has had EXACTLY Walky’s response to things like this. All I could think was, I suddenly understand much better why I don’t try to hang out with you in public. Or in private much, for that matter.
Which is odd, because usually I’m the Walky in whatever group I’m in.
That’s a charming story and all, Carla, but it turns out the actual quality of a show doesn’t improve because of a personal connection to it. Not in a way that’ll win you arguments with fans of other shows with equally personal connections to them.
I’m curious to see if Carla’s self-righteousness will prove to be a genuine character flaw. Carla has faced tremendous adversity due to who she is, and she’s chosen to adopt a “accept who I am or fuck off” attitude. This is fine in itself, but I think she’s extended this to “accept my opinions/way of doing things/etc. or fuck off”.
I mean right here in this strip, she is teetering towards arguing that “I have faced adversity and this show helped me through it, therefore I win the argument”. Perhaps a character like Walky who is totally oblivious to her trans status would be a good person to show her that being a jerk isn’t okay even if other people are jerks to you.
This seems like a well thought out counterpoint to the ‘Walky’s an asshole’ comments. However, I regret to inform you that you are on the internet. If you are in possession of flame-retardant clothing, I’d recommend putting it on. I’ll now be running away from you.
But ultimately, this isn’t about which show was objectively better. This is about Carla’s right to post Ultra Car on her door without being mocked. And personal connection has EVERYTHING to do with that.
I didn’t think of this in so many words when I wrote my post, but I think this is kind of the point.
Carla thinks it’s about her right to post things on her door without being mocked, as she believes Walky is denying her rights or mocking her personally. And while Walky did mock her by calling her a loser (impersonally), he wasn’t denying that she was allowed to post it, or to like the show; he simply questioned her judgment since he believes the show to be of very poor quality. He did so in a very insensitive and rude manner, yes, and that was wrong of him.
But it seems Carla may not be able to separate his rather impersonal criticism of her. Walky doesn’t seem to know Carla and doesn’t seem to care about her being female or anything else; only her liking a show he doesn’t matters. He’s being adversarial without victimizing her, but she may be a bit stuck in a victim mindset. To clarify, Walky was indeed being a jerk to insult the show she obviously liked like that, so it’s not like I’m defending him as far as that goes.
I’m not so sure that’s how she always operates, but it’s been a bit of a trend thus far. I’m interested to see how it develops.
Ugh, I hate that term “victim mindset” cause it’s always thrown at people who are actually being victimized, often repeatedly by a bigoted society and used to diminish their right to note that.
Like, not saying you’re doing that, just reacting to that particular phrase cause of my previous experiences with those that have used it.
Similarly, in your OP, I disagree with a lot of your points, but I think it’s due mostly to a different perspective on the situation. Like, Carla isn’t trying to win some stupid nerd flexing argument. Like, Walky is. But to Carla, what is important is that people aren’t slagging the show that literally meant the world to her and has great personal resonance.
And that’s the crux of their disagreement. Walky’s thinking Carla’s stating of a fandom is an invitation to play “who’s got the biggest nerd dick” and “who’s tastes are crap” and that’s not actually the game Carla is interested in.
And why Walky thinks this game is worthwhile or some winner-takes-all thing I think is reflected in your OP’s construction. Or rather the assumption in it that there’s such a thing as “objective” quality.
Because there’s not.
Sorry, but that’s the truth, works of art are subjective experience and we always bring in our cultural perspectives into experiencing them. A work may resonate like crazy to one person, but to another, may contain an element or a trope that is hella alienating. One work may have elements that are crafted well in one perspective, but to someone not interested in those elements, that focus is going to grate like crazy (see any gamer argument about gameplay versus story or any film critic argument about cinematic aesthetics versus storytelling).
And even if you were to argue that craft elements can be objectively good or bad, there’s so many people who ironically and unironically love what supposedly “bad” craft elements can put together because it hits home and feels more raw and real to them.
Like Ed Wood has a cult following for a reason and critics like The Cinema Snob have built careers out of finding the worth and love in what others would dismiss as garbage.
She’s not trying to “win” a thing, because winning subjective tastes don’t exist. But she has a right to argue for why a work resonated for her. To hold bitterness of how her fandom was deemed commercially less worthwhile than the fandom of the “default humans” of cis het males. To want to defend a work that may have saved her life or at least let her start the process of being true to herself.
And if that’s being an asshole, then I’m genuinely not sure you know what being an asshole means.
Several of the things you’ve countered me on are things I didn’t actually say or misrepresent how I’ve said them. I never claimed there was objective quality in art, only that personal resonance is not a criteria that is likely to convince others, particularly people like Walky.
Second, I never claimed that I believe such an argument is worth having or winning, and I don’t appreciate being accused of such to suggest I don’t understand subjectivity in art – Walky’s need to incite a fandom war is very immature, but note that Carla is no better at first – two strips ago she leaps into an equally immature accusation that D&MM is a “baby show” before she brings up any personal resonance.
Regardless, I never once referred to Carla as an asshole. I did describe her as self-righteous, which I believe she is to a degree, though it is often quite justified. I did characterize her behavior with the word “jerk”, but it’s different to characterize someone’s behavior in a particular circumstance than to simply label them “an asshole.”
Frankly, your post reads as if you believe I am ignorant, uninformed, or unintelligent. I always try to assume otherwise of people and I appreciate the same courtesy.
What I believe, essentially, is this: Walky’s behavior was inappropriate and immature and Carla is perfectly within her rights to defend herself and her preferences. However, her reaction has neither smoothed the situation over, mollified Walky while standing her own ground, or otherwise resolved the situation. Instead, she has escalated it. I’m curious to see if that is a habit that will land her in trouble sometime – or not!
I don’t think you are unintelligent and I apologize if I misread your argument or made you feel diminished or put down.
I still think they are having two different conversations, Walky wanting a drag down fight of who wins the nerd fight and Carla talking about personal resonance and why she’ll counter any jerk trying to slag on her or her favorite show.
“This is about Carla’s right to post Ultra Car on her door without being mocked.”
Does she have such a right? Does everyone, or only people with a deep personal reason for liking a show, or only people with a deep personal reason tied to being part of a marginalized group? If the former, why? If the latter, what degree of responsibility does Walky have for determining who he is and isn’t allowed to mock?
She certainly has the right to put whatever she wants on the door without being personally attacked for her choices, but she doesn’t have the right to prevent the object in question from being criticized.
So I’d say Walky’s initial comment that whoever put it up was a “”loser” was wrong. But that doesn’t mean he can’t argue that the show she likes wasn’t very good – as long as he doesn’t claim that liking it means SHE is bad/dumb/a loser (which he did, and has yet to apologize for).
Okay, wow. This is going to be long and probably draw a lot of flames.
For all practical purposes, there is no such thing as an objective right. Rights do not exist in the sense that a rock exists or gravity exists. No amount of studying reality will tell us what rights are out there. We can’t convince someone who thinks we don’t have a right that we do have it by showing them the right like we would show them an object. There’s no no innate universal principle that will reliably and clearly smack someone in the face if they ignore someone else’s rights, the way that ignoring, say, gravity will do to you. In every way that objectiveness is useful or measurable, rights do not have that property. We will often argue about them as if there is some objective truth that we are striving for, but our methods of seeking to understand and debate rights are not the empirical sort that we employ for studying any objective truth, and do not on close examination seem in any way prone to uncovering or demonstrating a hitherto unknown aspect of reality.
Instead, rights are best understood as an alloy of belief, assertion, respect for others, social mores, and cultural paradigms, all of which are dynamically evolving in a sort of interrelated memetic ecosystem.
Rights can be framed as relationships and obligations (both positive and negative) of one class of people and institution towards another. For example, one way the right to freedom of speech in the American Constitution might be framed is as “Group of Institutions A (the various levels and branches of government) is obliged not impose or threaten any punishment against any member of class B (all individuals and institutions) on the sole basis of group B’s expressed views and ideas.” (This isn’t the only way or a perfect way of describing it, so save your flames. I’m just trying to give an example of rights as relational obligations.) As another example, in an aristocracy nobles might have (de facto, again, not arguing objective truth) a right to specific gestures of respect by their lessers. This can be expressed as “People of class A (peasantry) are obliged to bow and show respect to people of class B (nobility).”
Rights ultimately become established when people assert them, fight for them, and force others to honor and respect the relational obligations, to the point where they become subconsciously ingrained and shape the way that we regard ethics, and to where we feel allowed and even obligated to censure individuals who violate them. They become disestablished when people defy those obligations to the point where society at large no longer recognizes them.
So does Carla have a right not to be mocked for having Ultra Car on her door? Well she’s asserting that (if not in so many words) and she’s fighting for it. Walky doesn’t recognize it. Whether society at large does recognize it depends on various factors like whether society thinks it’s inappropriate to come up to someone’s residence and start loudly badmouthing stuff they care about, or whether society holds a double-standard for trans people, or how highly the feeling of Walky’s freedom of expression and opinion is valued, or whether exceptions to that freedom are to be recognized, and so on. It’s a dynamic exchange, an often brutal back-and-forth fight to establish or reject in the larger social conscience obligations, respect, and freedoms.
My point in the earlier post wasn’t that she HAS a right not to have the stuff on her door criticized. My point was that this exchange must be understood in terms of Carla’s personal space being invaded and her tastes, preferences, and fanhood being attacked in that personal space on no more grounds than that she expressed them, rather than in terms of simply comparing and critiquing the qualities of two different cartoon shows.
And to be clear, I would be willing to assert and defend that as her right, within certain bounds of taste. (If it was a swastika on her door, for example, that would be another story.) But I won’t say that she has the right in the sense that society at large has decided to respect and honor it. It hasn’t been established as such in the collective psyche.
Thank you, Reltzik! I was about to post something similar.
Basically “right” = “how we think the world should be”. And a “right” must be defended if it is to exist.
Sigh. Someone else who wants to attack my rights by denying that they exist. You can try to diminish them all you want by denying their objectivity, but that misses the entire point.
Carla has a fundimental right to express to express an opinion and this includes expressing it on her door. Walky has a fundamental right to express his opinion as well, and this includes expressing it to her face. Both have a right to be as snarky, judgemental, and within limits offensive, as they choose. Both have availed themselves of these rights in the past. Currently Walky is being an insensitive immature jerk. This is his right, but it is not a good thing.
But it is unclear as yet how serious a thing it is.
Those who would deny the individual the basic right to express an opinion are turning their back on civilization. Whether you consider that objective in any sense is a matter of vocabulary. And no, that doesn’t mean that someone who creates a communication channel for a particular purpose, such as Willis, is violating anyone’s fundamental rights by regulating the use of that channel AS LONG AS that is not the only channel available for an individual to express those opinions.
I’d agree that Walky has a right to express that opinion in general. But as a time and place matter, doing it LOUDLY RIGHT OUTSIDE HER DORM DOOR is gauche, outside good social norms, and worthy of censure. It’s not WHAT he’s saying, it’s where and how he is saying it. That violates what little personal space college students have and brings the fight right up to where she lives, studies, sleeps, and unwinds. Denying individuals respect for the privacy of an inner sanctum ALSO attacks the basic ideas of boundaries that make up our civilization. There must be a balance in these interests.
Carla openly and ruthlessly mocks everything and everyone she thinks is stupid, and very rarely shows much empathy that isn’t buried under a facade of snark. This is not to say that I think that she’s a bad person in any way, she’s probably one of my favorite characters, it’s just that I think she’s closed off emotionally which often allows her to act selfishly. What Walky is doing here is pretty much the same thing Carla was doing to Billie and Ruth; deflecting their personal issues with humor instead of showing empathy.
I don’t think Carla is trying to make this a “I have emotional attachment therefore my show is better,” thing. She’s now JUST defending Ultra Car as something worth watching, if only to herself. At this point it’s not about UC being better than D&MM.
And then Walky shits all over her moment because he’s a (mostly unintentional but still very real) fucking asshole.
I like Walky most of the time. Then he’s got high points that make me like him more like his talk with Amazigirl. And then there are moments like now where I hope Dorothy smacks him upside the head again.
Now, yes. At the start of the conversation, a couple of strips back, D&MM was a “dumb, baby show” that “Ultra Car took shits on”.
She started with the same kind of nerd fandom bullshit that Walky did. This strip she moved into her deeper more personal reasons for liking the show. And Walky didn’t follow, which does make him a bit of an ass, since he should have realized that the context had changed and this was more personal, but then Walky’s always been kind of oblivious to personal stuff – mostly by design.
Personally, I think it might be interesting if D&MM was really the better show, as far as such things can be objective, but UC just resonated better with Carla. I know there are certainly things I like for personal reasons even though I’m well aware of their shortcomings. And others whose quality I can recognize, even though I don’t enjoy them.
I’m not remembering any significant talk Walky had with Amazigirl. Schpoonman, could you jog my memory? Since D&MM and UC are basically the Dumbverse instantiation of the Walkyverse, I’d be willing to bet the were pretty good — flawed but brilliant in their own irreverent way.
I don’t think that “Actual quality” really exists in terms of media. Media gains meaning from the ability for people to find value and connection to it. So Carla’s love of ultra car is a sign of it’s quality to her.
She really enjoyed the show because it made her happy and Walky says the show about farts is better. I think if we’re comparing faulty arguments then Carla still wins.
But why are you presuming anything about the objective quality of these fictional TV shows we know literally nothing about outside of characters’ biased opinions?
Now I’m curious at what age Carla fully realized she was female. From her “Giving voice to everything in my head I didn’t understand yet,” it sounds like Ultra Car WAS her female self for awhile. Maybe her parents knew that she needed that outlet for expression–or maybe they just knew that their son (at that point, maybe?) really, really liked this girl car character, and that it was important.
Now I’m thinking of little Carla, maybe still presenting as a boy at that point, being ostracized for reasons she doesn’t understand, ALSO being teased for liking a girl cartoon. <3
And if her arc is anything like mine or a lot of my friends, I’m sure she spent a good amount of time in that limbo space of really identifying with certain works but only realizing why years later.
And infinite smiles for how supportive her family is hinted to be.
And if her arc is anything like mine or a lot of my friends, I’m sure she spent a good amount of time in that limbo space of really identifying with certain works but only realizing why years later.
… I think I might be one of those folks.
(let’s be real: I’ve followed Assigned Male, Misfile, and What’s Normal Anyway? since I encountered each of them, and aside from Dumbing of Age, they’re the only webcomics I bother with anymore. 4/4 for trans representation and 3/4 are about trans issues.
Hell, I don’t even follow any autistic webcomics (though I do follow autistic serial webnovels… but oh wait both of those are also by trans authors and have trans subtext like whoa. I read novels! … which all have plots involving the choice between conformance to expectations or self honesty and abiding by your internal code of values and being true to yourself. Damn, nothing I consume in media doesn’t deal with this stuff on at least a subtext basis, does it?).
Don’t mind me just realizing that what’s going on with me has been super obvious for like years and I was playing the denial game hard. >.>
*Massive hugs* And lots of excitement for you figuring stuff out.
And yeah, I’ve been there. The denial game got comical at parts to look back at it, so be kind to yourself as you figure out pieces.
Lots of “oh nah, lots of guys are super into lesbian comics like Dykes to Watch Out For or Hothead Paisan and identify strongly and make jokes to their friends about how they’d be trans if they had the right body shape and can’t look at themselves in the mirror cause they suddenly feel really sad when they do that and really connect with that ‘lesbro’ character on the L Word (cause the writer is transphobic and she’s clearly supposed to be a trans woman)…”. Even the comic character I took my name from I realized I really identified with cause she has a major arc where she has her body altered by someone else and then has to go on a big personal quest to set it right even though everyone else is saying that alteration looks better. Yeah, no signs…
Anyways, massive hugs and know that we’ve got your back no matter where your personal discovery leads! And that I personally am excited to see you discover yourself!
Humans are really, truly excellent at the denial game. It’s one of the major constants in the human race. Self discovery and understanding is, for all of us, a long and painful road that many don’t even begin to walk down.
But when the steps we take are as momentous as gender identity and working through what that means for us… That is still one of the biggest, most jarring self discoveries I have ever had. And in hindsight, yeah, there’s so many red flags. I believe that’s true for all people under the trans* umbrella. But it’s human nature to see things the way we expect or want to, and the steps to stop and open our eyes are incredibly important to our self-development.
I’m done with the counsellor-leaning talk now. Sincerely, congratulations.
I guess Walky ran out intelligent answers at the same time Carla ran out of because I said so answers. This I can sympathize with since even to this day I have a tendency to like characters who aren’t all that popular, but that being said only a few people getting something is not enough to maintain marketability which means inevitable cancellation. Incidentally Carla’s quest to find an Ultra-car toy is similar to my own to find Dr. Claw’s Madmobile. I was told that it existed, but searched all over without finding one.
Becky probably needs to read about thirty pages of the gender studies book to even know that transgender is a thing, and then there’s the question of whether she’d accept it. I’d guess she would, especially given how things have played out, but given her religious background it’s not a sure thing. And I doubt Carla’s folks would bring anyone into the family that they don’t know for solid sure would be supportive of Carla.
… also, no one working the Becky problem knows about Carla’s parents.
You realize that you have painted yourself into a corner here, Willis? Your fandom is going to demand that the story eventually reveals that Carla still has that little home-made toy, no doubt occupying a place of honor within her dorm room. Or the “Damning of the Willis” will reach a level never before seen or even imagined.
Oh, I think we can assume that that toy is very much in her room in a very carefully chosen location that is probably the one part of her dorm that isn’t trashed like every other college student’s.
And that after the Mary incident, she probably played with it until she calmed down a little and then called her parents. /my headcanon is real to me, damnitt
Of course, IF the toy ever – god forbid – is broken Carla knows that she only has to push one button and a nearby 3D printer will spit out a new one. Not the same thing, of course, but a reminder that no matter what, you just can’t keep down someone as cool as CARLA RUTTEN!!!
It can be the same thing if the new one produced by the 3D printer isn’t a replacement, but a set of replacement parts. After enough accidents you’d start running into the Ship of Theseus question, but a new wing won’t make it not the childhood toy anymore.
I know that Walky is dense, but this is ridiculous. It has to be be a new low for him. Where’s the Walky that was talking to Amazi-Girl on the rooftop a while back?
That Walky was relating to someone he had an investment in being nice to when she had all but flat out stated “I am standing here because I am sad about this thing” and Walky was both scared after hearing she though her other self was going to stab somebody, and was also able to relate over the idea that they needed to be perfect at all times.
Who’s Carla to Walky? Where did this massive emotional bombshell come from when Walky’s argument was that D&MM was funny and goofy and therefore better?
Walky’s argument was that Dexter and Monkey Master wasn’t cancelled after one incomplete season, and was therefor better, and the one not liked by losers. And it was smarter, because it was full of pop culture references.
He didn’t move to ‘fart jokes are funny’ until after she explained her deep personal connection to it.
This seems. Out of character. Walky of all people understands how a cartoon can mean more to someone than just viewing it. He himself lamented on how it made him aware of how much he missed his sister and his best friend (Billie). Even if we’re assuming Walky’s just trying to mess with Carla this comic just seems to want Walky to be VERY clearly in the wrong so there’s not any nuance to it. Even as far as Walky’s immaturity goes, this is basically gone to the point where he also seems to be void of Empathy. I sure do hope this isn’t the end of this interaction. I also feel like Dexter and MM now has to be an even more low brow show so that whatever the Ultra-Car show is superior, probably.
But that’s just my opinion.
source:http://www.dumbingofage.com/2012/comic/book-2/02-choosing-my-religion/sshh/
Hmm, looking back on it this that has a lot more subtext than it leads on. Did Billie just straight up abandon Walky when he was lamenting about being separated from his sister?
I agree that it seems out of character. Like, Walky can be a dick, but he isn’t generally that much of a dick. Unless that was a quick joke which he is going to follow up with something less dickish in the next comic.
I think he does understand that on one level but isn’t very practiced at thinking about it quite on the same level Carla does. And that he’s more absent-mindedly tripping over his privilege rather than intending to be a douchebag for mustache-twirling reasons.
Like, this isn’t the first time he’s had a major privilege fail moment and if it’s anything like his argument with his sister, I feel he’ll probably be a dick in the short term, but in the long term put some of the pieces together and learn from it.
You keep using that word, but Walky’s privilege is that of young black man’s. Walky is privileged in the same way I am. Even if Carla didn’t have a lot of strong relationships (for obvious reasons) not only does she have a really good relationship with her parents, based on this but also she’s notoriously flush with cash. Walky’s probably middle, upper middle at most, wasn’t really established to have any friends other than Billie and his sister (who stopped liking him or being in his life) and has a doting mother who, while she’s more affectionate to him than his sister, also seems to push him and have high expectations and pressure on him. I can’t imagine a scenario where Linda would make Walky a toy.
He’s “generically beige”. Which is tied up in a lot of other nasty racial issues, but that doesn’t stop it from being a privilege that some other people of the ‘objectively’ same racial background do not have.
“He’s not black enough” is the basic gist of what you’ve said to me, and I take issue with that.
This is something I’ve had strong feelings about for a while but it fucking sickens me.
He may describe himself as beige but that is not at all some magical bypass from racism, and “passing privilege” (a term I dislike at many times) is one of those things that’s a mean-ass cudgel the second you let slip who you are or it’s “sussed out” and doesn’t spare you from getting a behind the scenes look at nasty beliefs about people who you are.
I, as a black person, definitely agree with you, especially in light of recent events where black people have been gunned down by police. I feel like the discussion of privilege can sometimes devolve into people believing that everyone that is different from them has lead a charmed life. Wally is still black. Hell, people here have referred to him as “not that black” , caramel or other weird candy variations (whereas who here has ever referred to a white character as having ivory or milky skin?).
Privilege in my opinion shouldn’t be discussed in such absolutes because life is complex like that. For example, Becky’s dad abused her for being gay, but even though Amber is not queer that we know of, her dad was also a piece of shit. Carla is trans buts she’s also white and had loving parents, while Wally is a straight guy but he’s also black and has a rather fucked up family life. And so on.
I totally agree with you because even though I am not mixed, it grinds my gears when people act like being mixed means you’re a magical unicorn that transcends all bias and prejudice.
Ditto. My cousins are mixed and they damn well deal with all the social garbage that comes with being black for it. Mixed race isn’t actually a free pass from racism. And “passing” for a privileged group still leaves you dealing with a whole lot of awful, but now also idiots dismissing that you experience the same bigotries as the group you belong to.
To be fair, some of the references to Walky’s skin color are canon: Dorothy described him early on as “molded caramel” and Walky described Sal as black, but himself as “generically beige”.
That was actually one of the early hints at the racial bias going on in his family.
Big agreement on the privilege/intersectionality stuff though. It’s complicated.
I think an interesting thing is WALKY’S take on his race. It has to have affected his life outside of his family dynamic (and he wasn’t even aware of that being racially affected until very recently), but he doesn’t identify as black and he’s said that he’s never noticed any negativity to his race. Walky is far from great at understanding himself beyond a surface level, though, so what has his experience really been, and how has it affected who he became? It’s something I’d be interested in seeing explored one day.
That said, he’s the favoured child of a presumably-not-poor family and had everything he wanted just dropped into his lap; and he never had any trouble in school. I would definitely describe that as having privilege, ignoring the obvious. (Male, cis, het, etc.) Especially as it impacted his family- set next to his sister, major privilege going on.
He’s now separated from both his family and the educational structure that he exceeded in, so that privilege has largely gone. He hasn’t figured that out yet, because he wasn’t ever aware that it was there.
(At least this is how I’ve taken what’s in the comic to date.)
Although I wonder if he has yet to acknowledge that side of his heritage, given that part of the problem is his family is Sal being treated worse because she’s darker (read: blacker) and he’s supposed to be better because he’s lighter – a common issue for mixed people. I my comment above I mentioned the use of the term “caramel” and others like it to describe Walky, which I find problematic in some ways because mixed race people in US also have a long history of being sexually objectified by other people, thought to be prettier or the best of both worlds in a really fucked up way.
I wonder if his arc will have him explore his identity and quit ignoring it by basically dismissing Sal’s reality on the regular. It’s not so much that he doesn’t know he’s black, it’s that at this point I feel he’s just not ready or interested in thinking about it right now – he’s actually drawn as very dark, and I’m positive that he’s had racialized experiences that he just hasn’t thought about substantially.
Acknowledging Sal’s blackness and struggle means acknowledging his own blackness.
…Oh good. A discussion on race and the twins is never complete without someone commenting on the fact that their skin tone is coloured the same.
In the interest of optimism I’ll assume this is an innocent bit of confusion but holy hell has that point been discussed to death. Racial stereotypes are not really about colour. They’re about physical attributes, academic abilities and behaviour. Racism is a hell of a lot deeper than “we have opinions on your skin tone”.
That’s it I’m out.
Walky being a young black man is going to get him into a massive amount of problems growing up and no matter how well off his family is, he’s probably run into a few of them already. So, you’re entirely right Yotomoe. However, privilege is something of a spectrum. To avoid tripping over people’s issues, Walky as a black man doesn’t run into the SAME issues as Carla the way Cyclops’ life sucks in a slightly different way than Nightcrawler.
I’m just sick of it being used as some sort of absolute. Walky has privileges, Carla has privileges. But because the narrative has never shown the negative aspect of Walky’s life we must assume he lives a charmed life. Which just feeds into the convenient ignoring of any other aspects of his life, because his life is great probably. Because he’s narratively “Not that black”.
I think it’s probably very unlikely Walky hasn’t run into a bunch of racially motivated shit if he’s a realistically drawn black American teen. Even if he’s been lucky to have been sheltered somewhat and the majority to have rolled down on Sal.
I mean, you’re right, but I don’t think the narrative has ever insisted that Walky is “not that black.” That was Sal and she said that in the heat of the moment, and later Walky says that he “hasn’t noticed” any of the subtle bigotries Billie was talking about, which I kinda took as an admission that he had gone through a lot of the same bullshit but had internalized it.
It’s like, Danny’s bi, but we haven’t gotten an arc of, say, Dorothy or Ethan going “pff thats not real thats dumb shut up” or “well I better warn Amber cuz you’re doomed to cheat on her” the way that tends to manifest for bi folks. Narratively he’s avoiding a major bigotry, but it’s still there because that’s just what it is when you’re a bi dude. I’m not sure if the comparison is apt, but that wouldn’t mean Danny was “not that bi.”
I dunno, I don’t think saying “Walky is privileged” somehow means he lives a charmed life free from bigotry, because no matter how you slice it, he’s a black guy in Indiana. It isn’t an absolute because as you point out, Carla’s rich as fuck. Her revenge against Mary only worked because she’s fabulously wealthy.
Yeah, he’s privileged as a cis straight man and he’s using his male and straight and cis privileges here. That’s not a slag against his character. Most people have at least one vertex of privilege that can be the source of fuckups because society is not good at educating the privileged classes about the life experiences of the marginalized classes on any given access.
Carla may be a trans woman, but she has white and class privilege. Myself, I have white and able-bodied privileges, and mostly binary privilege. These are aspects of myself I have to work hard at to try and not shit on people from a position of power or ignorance. And I’ve failed at that in my past in ways that has hurt people.
Privilege is not an accusation. It is not a condemnation of one’s character. Nor is it an all-or-nothing thing or some magic totem to win arguments. It’s simply an aspect of growing up in a system that favors certain sets of experiences over others.
And no, I do not think his life is charmed. He faces racism on a day-to-day basis and he’s probably also faced some religious bigotry growing up atheist in a majority religious part of the country. He also has other day to day issues that are frustrating for him and aspects where his privilege actually harms him (like how men are socialized to not show emotions or seek help if they feel they are floundering).
A friend of mine said privilege was a word which was annoying to Americans in a way which confused the issue and suggested it be changed to “advantages.”
Honestly, at this point in my activism, it’s really apparent that whatever we call things like this, people will still react negatively to it, because people don’t like acknowledging that the world is an unequal playing field and that they personally might benefit from that or perpetuate it unknowingly in harmful ways.
Call it privilege, call it societal biases, call it advantages, once people realize what it is your talking about they’ll react as if you leveled an accusation at them that they are a bad person, because as a general society, we want to believe that things like racism, sexism, homophobia is only a function of a small set of bad people who do bad things and hold hateful beliefs and we don’t want to think about the ways in which our whole culture reinforces that and makes discrimination and inequality normalized.
Because that’s harder to deal with. But it needs to because all the small stuff builds up into bigger stuff like some homophobe walking into a nightclub and murdering 49 people or all the cops gunning down black folks every damn day who posed no real danger to the police and so on…
I dunno, to quote Ani DiFranco, I’ve earned my disillusionments.
Hell, privileges are awesome. Like, the word, cause a privilege is something granted to you because of who we are. And what a world if we all could have the same privileges cause a lot of what having a privilege on an axis really is is just not suffering the discrimination and awfulness of the marginalized group.
In an ideal world, we’d all have the same privilege because there would be no social punishment for being a marginalized group. People’s identities would simply be their identities and could flavor their life experiences but not in a way that put them in more danger or suffering more inequality.
It really is only our system being so broken that makes privilege so necessary to discuss and why privilege gets its bad rap, because of how those who have it on various axes use it against those who do not.
To back up your point, my knee jerk reaction to the discussion of privilege is “come off it, I’m a neurodivergent transman in a same sex marriage dealing with poverty and a really shitty upbringing where I grew up female in a sexist environment” and it’s my second thought to go “no, wait, shut up self. You’re male (and pass as such wonderfully), you’re white, you’re (now) able bodied. You have your privileges. You can fucking admit that, don’t be a douchebag.”
Sooo yeah, I think you’re right. People really don’t like admitting they’ve got a bonus in getting by in some way.
im a white ablebodied cis straight male who just wants to 1.) leave everyone else alone, and 2.) be left the fuck alone. i dont care who you are, who you love, what you want. i barely care you’re alive. but stop screaming at me and calling me an asshole because i am who i am and people similar to me are assholes.
Now I can’t claim to speak for anyone, but I think Soul’s speaking in general, not directly as a response to your post. In a way I think he’s just saying his piece, not starting an argument.
For me this is pretty much in character for Walky. He is observant and not stupid at all so he understand perfectly well what Carla is talking about, and he completely share her experience of a cartoon being important.
But he also doesn’t want to go all FEELS about it, a sentiment that is generally shared by Carla, snarky jerkass GODESS as she is (as seen in her interaction with Sal or Ruth).
So he expresses his support as a joke. His counter argument is so obviously stupid compared to what he said last strip that it’s not meant to be taken seriously, it’s ment to set himself up as the butt of a joke.
Carla: “People who don’t like UltraCar are stupid”
Walky: [says something stupid]
Now, there is no guarantee that Carla appreciate the gesture – she might be just as annoyed by his attitude as Joyce is, but I’m convinced it MEANT as validation.
I’m honestly willing to bet Ultra-Car is not a great show. That being said I don’t think Dexter and Monkey Master is great either.
In my head Dexter and Monkey Master is like…Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy tier.
While Ultra-car is like…Class of 3000. A passion project with interesting themes that died before it’s time but in retrospect wasn’t groundbreaking in the animation or storytelling department. Just really enjoyable.
Billy and Mandy was somewhat entertaining at first until the lowbrow humerus got a bit lower in the later seasons but I still remember it going on for 6 seasons so I don’t think Ultra car could be on that same level maybe it was more on the level of it’s sister show Evil Con Carne. But if it’s being describe as a underrated show with well done clever writing then I would think of one of the more recent day cartoons like Amazing World of Gumball.
I’m pretty much assuming that Ultra Car is on the level of say Xena. Not great on a technical level because it’s running on a shoestring budget, but creating a small but rabid fanbase, because it resonated in important ways for a marginalized community who were under-served enough to overlook any of its many deficiencies.
And I love your note about everyone thinking their show was underrated, because yeah, that’s a beautiful summary of subjective tastes. What might leave one cold, may be the rock in a tumultuous stream for another. And that’s a beautiful thing about art.
I wonder how much of Walky’s appeal to Dorothy hinges on them keeping it more or less superficial. He’s so immature and emotionally stunted. Maybe this is why I can’t get into the pairing at all. Los areb’t enough if you’re just kind of exhausting and it’s like pulling teeth to get you to understand anything real.
Back in Book 5 Chapter 1, when Dorothy and Walky were in the cafeteria after she first told him she loved him, she said that, while yes, he is an emotionally-stunted goofball, she still managed to admire the young man who would go to great lengths to make sure his friends were doing alright.
Yeah that might be enough for her I guess but I’m still left scratching my head as to his actual appeal outside of eye candy and not being a completely useless friend . He’s just such a child so much of the time. I mean there’s potential for him to grow up yeah and Walky at 22 vs 18 will likely be a somewhat decent guy. But right now? There’s just so much growing up he needs to do and he and Dorothy seem so radically different to me I cannot buy into this love story. Liking him a lot? Yeah. Throwing out the l word and so soon into things? No.
Because he’s her for fun caramel boyfriend, and also he’s shown himself to be capable of significant emotional depth when needed. There’s a good dude in there and Walky’s gotta learn how to let him out.
I think we are starting to see Dorothy chafe under Walky’s attempts to stonewall any emotional connection in their relationship, though.
This. Sometimes, good sex, low stress, and no strings is exactly what you need. Walky is good for now, believes in her dreams, and lets her relax when her brain is running too fast.
That meets her needs for now.
I don’t think they’re going to be together forever, but right now, it’s a nice college fling.
Yeah that’s all fine and good if this relationship were being presented as a casual thing , for example what we get with Roz and Joe and not a legit romance. They keep calling it casual but I feel like it’s not really they just keep insisting it is because that was the initial agreement and they have an expiration date. I mean I’l fully admit I just don’t get Walky’s long term appeal and the slacker guy/type a girl is such a cliché dynamic to me at this point. It’s my own personal tastes at this point but I could not be less into this pairing. You could give me reason after reason why it’s okay for her to be with him and yeah it’s her choice. I’m still not feeling it.
It seems to me that Walky was simply not prepared to have a deeper, more emotional argument than Carla’s starting up here.
I don’t really consider this out of character, as other commenters are, because this immediate situation is somewhat different from the one where he was talking about D&MM with Dorothy.
I’m sure, some time later, if he were to ever bother looking back at this conversation, he’d probably empathize more with Carla’s argument.
Yeah, it definitely doesn’t feel out of character. He’s done this privilege fail bit before. He’s shown angry defensiveness and tactless cluelessness to how he’s benefitted from privileges (especially with his sister and with Joyce). He’s even been shitty to queer folks from a privileged position on several occasions before.
And yeah, I don’t think he’s at all prepared for even being aware of the idea that works can have critically important personal resonance other than just being cool and rad and totally boys rule, girls drool.
So it’s definitely an “oh Walky” *shake head sadly* moment, but not a very surprised one. But like with Joe this is a toxic masculinity phase he’s going to need to outgrow and shed to become a man worth spending time with. And I really do believe he can do it.
And sadly privilege fails are part of how he’s going to learn and grow to get there.
There’s his whole “oh, hey, I invaded this queer space and am making shitty jokes about being gay, because I’m so smart to score this free gay pizza, no homo” shtick here, which I still feel negatively about a year later: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/04-walking-with-dina/jim/
And there’s the constant jokes he makes at Joyce that she’s going to totally lez out over Dorothy, plus a few times where he’s high-fived into Joe’s gross fetishization of lesbians, and so on…
Like, it’s all understandable and “minor” and just “regular” dude behavior (in that normative tropes of dudedom can be really passively shitty to queer folks), but it’s still a series of privilege fails that have been shitty actions to do in a larger queer context.
Walkys prior Jokes always struck me as affirming and cluelessly
homo-normative.
( Not here. You can stab him for this! Easily the worst thing hes ever said. )
There have been enough of those prior jokes, to more than hint, he may be bi.
There are worse things in the world than socially awkward nerds offering ‘bro-jobs’ for free pizza.
I think It was Alice who was guilty of those things. Alice is a total garbage person who publicly outed Billy. This was right after Billy called out Alice for treating Walky like a nonperson.
Joyce may not have understood that Alice was billys ex without Walkys quip, but The entire Chic-fil-A restaurant did.
I found Walkys comment there to be Homo-normative and witty. ITs something a queer person would say. I’d say it.
The entire “no Homo” phenomenon, is interesting too.
Its seems to be about ostensibly straight ( or not so straight ) men lamp-shading severely homoerotic actions with a ironic fig-leaf.
Maybe it started as homophobic. Almost every use I’ve seen is gay-innuendo.
YYMV but I think this is what the arc-of-acceptance look like.
I’m fine with affirming gay innuendo, I think its one of our best weapons.
Equality means straights, allies and coming-out-the-closet slowly men, get to use it too.
I’m fine with fighting gay innuendo based stereotypes and stigmatization. But I don’t see this in Walky.
All good points. I suppose all I’m trying to note is that Walky blunders in a lot and that has led to him trampling over the emotional reality of queer people when he does it. A flaw of ignorance and a lack of engagement with feelings and a need to prop up his own intelligence and need to win rather than one of particularly hateful feelings.
There is no question, I kind of want Carla to punch him in the
Solar Plexus, and Dorothy to DTMF .
i think its the worse thing hes ever said the whole comic. It strikes me as even worse than Danny derided Dorothys ambitions to President. ( YMMV )
OH! I know this scene reminds me of:
CHarlie Jane’s Anders article on Star Blazers:
“Star Blazers got me Through the shittiest year of my childhood”
( I’ll link below this, so it wont get help up for prior approval
( or just google it you will totally love it )
And thats probably why I am so annoyed. ( My own connection to Star Blazers )
There is huge parallel to what Carla is saying, and what Charlie says there.
Funnily enough I had no idea Charlie was trans before i read this.
The article doenst give it away either. My own life experience did.
( No Im not trans, ill explain ) .
Charlies experience in this article is a universal touchstone for young boy-geek growing up in a certain area of South Eastern Massachusetts.
She may have been alone but there were a lot of others that connected the same, at the same time. Her growing up bullied is partly why she needed a refuge, and Star Blazers was it.
( Damn re-readign this, the parallels to what Charlie says about the Argo and Ultra-Car seem striking. Coincidence or Willispiration? )
To put in perspective, a decade later or so ( when I went through a stoner phase ), If I was with a group of ( new ) guys I would just try humming a few bars of the theme song , and 100% of the time I could get a full chorus going!
( Charlie is first female geek ever Ive seen that had this same coming of age experience with Star Blazers. It didnt surprise me to learn she grew up two towns away )
So Carla is sharing that kind of personal connection here, and Walky is talking a dump by ignoring it, and crapping on it with fart Jokes. WTF
***** On BRos*****
Personally , I think I find some broish or dude behavior less obnoxious than some people, because it seems like a vast improvement over what came before it.
I remember growing up any male-male affection, and most male emotion; was just taboo and labelled unmanly and gay. The entire code was ridiculous strict.
Men didnt flout the stupid Man-code in douchy ways,
or just hang a ‘No-homo’ on it, and shrug their shoulders.
They flouted it, and got harassed, socially ostratised, or their asses kicked.
So when “straight guys” bro out and hug each other;
or offer Brojob jokes like Walky did ( was that even a joke? ) and can do whatever , with a “no homo” ; —and Nobody gets murdered, Nobody gets beats up, nobody even cares.. I just see massive social progress.
For me, its better than a pride parade, because its from the bottom up, where change was most needed. A whole chain of male social taboos have been turned upside-down.
I’m sure my own male-privilege colors this, but i think society is as a whole , better off.
Obviously, Walky’s not honestly trying to insult or demean Danny here, but he’s not really trying to offend Carla with regards to her identity either. Both instances seem to stem from ignorance and not understanding that others have a VERY different, less rose-coloured worldview than he does.
(I could be wrong on the specific example, but given this, it’s hard to argue that a more appropriate citation would be out of character for Walky.)
But Walky has no idea that Danny is bi, and unstanding Carla means understanding her transgenderism. I wonder if the next strip will reveal that Walky has no idea about being transgender and just sees this as some rich girl complaining about how hard her life is.
Yay, hints at Carla origin story and on my birthday too! Happy Cerberus is happy! (Words can not communicate how much I fucking love Carla and everything she represents). And there’s so so much to unpack here. Sorry in advance to everyone for drowning the site in my word vomit.
Panel 1: I like how her eyes get a little thousand-yard stare here, like she’s partially remembering the situation, going from toystore to toystore, trying to find that beloved toy of a series that meant so much to her, possibly the first series she ever truly got into and just finding nothing after nothing and only finding out after days and days of searching that the toys were never made.
I’m imagining 10-year-old Carla trying to ruttle the data of why her favorite show’s toys were so hard to find and seeing some toy company press release about market share, demographics, or just some half-hearted apologia like when little girls were looking for Rey action figures or Black Widow action figures to play with. And just being crushed by it.
Which :(, but it’s also a nice character moment in showing just the physical dedication to the show to search and search for this one little piece to hold onto like all the other kids did with their D&MM merch. I dunno, I’ve done the scouring thing for obscure works that I truly loved, so I can massively sympathize with her plight here.
Panel 2: Oh, man, her eyes are so happy and lit up here. She’s still grateful and happy and remembers this moment so fondly and I’m bawling my eyes out back here, because Carla got to have such an amazing moment of support and dedication from her parents, one that was likely frequent for her growing up and still continues to this day and I envy that a lot. Especially on my birthday and especially after winding my way through the last two month’s parental themed holidays.
Carla is what I want every new trans kid growing up to have. Supportive parents who don’t fight their children on their gender identities or throw them out of houses or refuse to care for them. But who have their back and try their damndest to make their trans kids happy even if it is creating a little token for them to enjoy a weird work that seems to really bring the light to their kids eyes or letting them borrow some tech for a revenge scheme.
Carla truly knows that her parents love her unconditionally, with no reservations and will always be there to support her when things are hard and try and cheer her up when she is blue. And so that means she didn’t have to go through all the bullshit hell of growing up trans all alone with no one to turn to for support.
And that’s so beautiful I’m tearing up right now.
Panel 3: And there’s that confirmation of that. Her parents and this cartoon show, this is what she had growing up. This is all she had. And her parents support meant maybe she didn’t go through as many suicidal phases growing up, maybe even was able to score some blockers or at least a trip to an endo on her 18th birthday. But more importantly than that she had people to come home to and who got her.
Who would give her the world if she asked for it. And while she may be a bit spoiled in the technical sense, you can see the loyalty and gratitude she has for her parents being the rare good ones that so few trans kids get.
And she had a little token of their love and its various alt modes to play with when things got really bad.
This. There are so many, many things that parents can’t give their children. I can only imagine the fear, worry and frustration Carla’s parents went through as Carla grew up. There were so many things they couldn’t give her, so many questions they couldn’t answer for her, but at least they could give her the toy she wanted to feel validated in her love for a cartoon.
Or the experimental lasers she needed to push back against a bully, for that matter.
And to know that there are people who are willing to go that extra mile for you is worth the world.
Panel 4: Holy shit, I have so many feels about this panel, I might need to do a third text wall just for it. Sorry in advance for your scroll wheels.
Panel 5: Mm. That resonates. For a lot of trans people there’s a work or a book or something that just hits you while you’re still a baby trans egg and just makes everything click. That truly resonates, so much that when you come to choose a name, you may turn to it for guidance.
Carla means it when she says she loves that little toy and Walky does not understand that when she says that, she’s talking far more about the toy, but everything it represented. Familial support, realizations of identity, true impact on a level so incredibly deep because trans folk and other marginalized people rarely get to experience seeing their own experiences reflected back or have a work truly click.
She means it when she says she wouldn’t be who she is without Ultra Car. She might even mean she wouldn’t be alive today without Ultra Car and her family’s support when everything was super bad.
And that means so much more than just a really good cartoon that you really like on a level that might be hard to understand if you’ve never been in that space of confusion about why you fundamentally didn’t seem to fit in the universe.
Panel 6: Oh, Walky, I say this with love, but shut your fucking mouth, you fucking idiotic man-child. Like, I know. I really do. He doesn’t mean any harm or offense with this stuff, but he’s just taking a massive dump on a really personal reflection on Carla’s part, showing the depth of impact this weird show had and done so in a way that didn’t just shit on D&MM. She showed a lot of vulnerability she doesn’t show many people, because it’s important to her that people understand how important Ultra Car is to her and why insulting it feels like insulting her very identity to her.
And he couldn’t care less because he’s still trying to “win” the nerd pissing contest like a complete privileged fuckhead (and privileged here is an adjective). And it’s just frustrating cause that’s how it is in life. If you’re marginalized and try and talk about why this niche show mattered so much and resonated so hard or why another work left you cold because elements dismissed your identity, you weather an endless storm of Walkys just tearing that down because dumbass lowest-common-denominator bullshit and their complete cluelessness at being the marketing machine’s “default human” for everything to appeal to.
I mean, he’s not going full asshole geeks whining about new Ghostbusters here, but he’s still being a giant dick and that’s annoying.
Carla means every word she says. UltraCar made her the woman she is and was there for her when nothing else was.
Yeah, Walky is an idiot, but I actually read something else into it. He behaves just like he does with Billie, when there are FEELS he plays up the “stupid Walky” persona so she will have something to look down on.
Carla: “UltraCar was too smart.”
Walky: “Was not”
Carla:[long, personal, philosophical and honest discussion on UltraCar’s importance for her identity]
Walky: “fart”
Basically, he is proving Carla’s point for her, and not by mistake. He does it partly as a joke, partly as a deflection to avoid FEELS, but he also to validate her in his own inept way. “Everything you say is correct because someone as stupid as me doesn’t agree with it”.
And, going out more on a limb, I don’t think it is such a bad thing. I doubt Carla had expected a more profound response from him, and I really don’t think she feels threatened by him. It may be that she is just as annoyed by him as Joyce, but there might also be a Billie-like comfort in idiots being idiots.
Hmm, I can see that actually and it would fit into the regular trope of masks that we’ve seen with Amber, Sal, Becky, Carla, Ruth, Billie, and so on…
And it also makes me think about another element which is just how much dudes are discouraged from having “feels” by society. Like, Joe and Walky both grew up in our shitty society and its awful messages about how to be a man and one of the big aspects of that is dealing with the toxic masculinity trope of “if you have feelings other than rage, then you’re gay and you might as well be a woman and you know how we treat those”.
It’s a target for violence. And that fear and that culture makes it really hard for a dude to be fully in touch with sad emotions and the like. And both Joe and Walky have tried to handle that by trying to vomit out emotions as if they were a poison, keeping them as far from them as possible, to the point of crapping on those who express them in one form or another.
And both seem to be on similar arcs of slowly realizing that that limits them in crucial ways from being the type of people they actually want to be and so they’ve had to try and slowly adapt to that reality.
Joe seems to be building it in letting a genuine friendship form between him and Joyce and letting emotions live in that singular box for now. And Walky by tripping on his privilege, messing up, but occasionally learning from it and trying to deal with what that stirs up inside (see all the deep introspection and terror he feels about grappling with the Sal stuff).
And it gives me a lot of hope that they’ll both move out of their more “ugh, why” behaviors as the strip goes on.
Which gives me hope that eventually he’ll see way to seeing the humanity of everyone including women on his “hit list” (and eventually doing away with that fucking dehumanizing thing once and for all).
Like, by all means still enjoying copious casual sex, but being less creepily predatory about it.
Exactly! There is nothing in Walky’s script about “how to be a man” that allows him to support Carla and validate her feelings – EXCEPT making stupid jokes, preferably at his own expense.
Compare how he tried to support Joyce after the party with a stupid rant about pajama jeans.
I think Wally is being an ass here, but not intentionally. He’s being his same old self and learning that if he’s gonna genuinely get along with others, he needs to be more aware and vulnerable with them and be willing to talk about difficult things.
That being said, one could argue that what Carla said to him sort of blindsided him. I think its totally unfortunate that we as a society still can’t seem to talk about these things in the open, but I honestly don’t think Wally was expecting Carla to say any of that. like this conversation went from 0 to 100 in a couple seconds. he was caught off guard, but he was able to effortlessly deflect it because thats what he is used to doing.
I want Walky to be better too, and I wish that didn’t have to happen at the expense of others, but I honestly didn’t expect a different response from him. He’s not ready to be vulnerable, Carla talking about her parents might have meant he’d have to have a more substantial response, or maybe he’d have to think of his own crappy parents. Him being empathetic enough to have a conversation of this caliber means being vulnerable, and as mentioned above, means a guy entering Feelings Land, and he’s not ready to do that yet, because it means dealing with his own personal crap.
I’m super late to this conversation, but I feel I need to confess that I was Walky when I was his age, and I really agree with Bagge’s assessment.
I have a tendency to reflexively make jokes when I felt really awkward or insecure or just didn’t know how else to respond to something, but knew I need to say something. It led to a number of regrettable instances like this, where I ended up being really disrespectful to someone because I made a joke at a very inappropriate moment and giving the impression that I was making light of something very serious or personal.
Thankfully, I have since learned to control that impulse better, so that I usually recognize when I’m about to cram my foot in my mouth before I’d stuck it in there, and I’ve matured enough that when it does happen, I can recognize it and apologize for being a shit. Walky, obviously is not there yet.
It’s possible he was trying to be funny and self-deprecating here, in lui of actually admitting he was being a jerk (I’ve certainly had to learn how that’s not a acceptable substitute), but judging by Carla’s quizzical expression in that last panel, I don’t think so. I think Walky realizes he was being a jerk for attacking the validity of her fandom, and that she has just shared something deeply personal with him when she explained why Ultra Car is so important to her. The thought of directly addressing either the personal turn the conversation took, or how shitty he wasing being earlier both make him unconfortable, but he sincerely wants to make a show of not being a jerk now. So he tries to respond in-kind by telling Carla what makes him such a passionate fan of Dexter & Monkey Master. Namely, fart jokes involving giant monkey robots.
While he is still arguing with her, I feel like he’s accepted that Carla’s opinions are valid (not that she should have needed to open up so much for that to happen), and he seems to now be interested in engaging in a more friendly debate as fellow nerds. Sure, its also possible to have such discussions without arguing at all, but I don’t think Walky has learned that trick yet, and at least arguing about which show is better doesn’t require arguing that the other show is bad.
In summary, Walky’s still being a jerk, but I think in this strip he’s just doing a really bad job of not being one.
Walky is once again being an insensitive jerk. I mean, when someone’s just told you why something is REALLY important to them, you don’t continue to shit on that thing.
…how is comic capable of still being great with this dumb-ass in it? Seriously, I REALLY hate this character, and the fact that he shares the face of one of my teenhood heroes IRKS ME! I mean its not AMC’s Preacher bad, especially since he’s barely the focus, but it STILL bugs me a tad.
Hacks the Muzak and starts playing the soundtrack to the “That’s what I’M gonna do…” scene from Ren and Stimpy, in an attempt to warn Walky in a language he might recognize to run, RUN from the ingenious prankstress he has just angered.
Panel 4, holy mother of fucks, panel 4. Where do I even start.
First up, holy shit, this is a punch to the gut, because I know every last one of those feelings on a deep deep level. The lacking a language to even understand what was happening and why I felt so alienated and depressed from how everyone else was “humaning”, why it became natural to avoid even looking at myself in the mirror if it was avoidable, trying to figure out why everyone else seemed to be suddenly going through this series of changes that involved them liking porn and liking their bodies in ways that felt totally alien. Of being hated for whatever reason was convenient. I’ve been there.
And it’s a there a lot of trans kids have. It’s a there a lot of ace kids have. And it’s a fuckton a lot of there trans ace kids have, especially when they’re “unlucky” enough to be gay too. And it really really sucks.
Cause that point of “the reasons being convenient” is true to fucking life. When you’re hated for being the “other” and especially the queer other, the reasons for others to dislike you change by the second and are impossible to change. You can be in the closet and hating yourself, but you’ll still get shit on for not acting like the rest of the kids and having their same sexual or personal interests. Bullies can smell the queer on other kids and they enforce a normative with extreme prejudice.
And it continues into adulthood. Look at all the various excuses being weaved by various gatekeepers, elected officials, and hate groups of why trans people are awful, why they need to be denied rights, why we should look at them with fear or doubting inquisitiveness. Why we should hate and hurt them. Look at the folks during the Mary arc desperately searching for some way to interpret Carla as the instigator or the bad victim and Mary as the plucky heroine who had been pushed too far by a roller-skating mad”man”.
This is our everyday. This is our price of entry. Being hated for amorphous reasons simply because we exist and “won” the lottery of life in being trans.
And having a work that gets you. Having things that speak to the person you will eventually realize you are. Realizing only belatedly that the reason you were always super into lesbian culture is that you actually were a lesbian or the reason you were really into that book series or show was that a major character was a major trans metaphor or that cis people don’t wonder all the time if they are trans or avoid their reflection in mirrors.
Realizing that that character or that work was everything swimming in your head all along, you just never had a character to reflect that. Never saw yourself reflected in the works that surrounded you. Didn’t even know that was a possibility that you could be. That sort of character or work is truly special and that moment, of realizing why everything has been so off. Why you’ve been bumping against those particular works, is… revolutionary.
And it’s not worth the awful. And I’d say it’s been well-confirmed in this panel that Carla did not escape the awful and very much faced all the not-goodness I’ve been fan-theoring she has faced. Words thrown at her intending to wound. Deeds done to her, to give her injuries to nurse in the darkness, alone and a distaste for violence. Abandonment leaving her alone with just herself, her loving parents, and this one all-too-crucial character.
It is not easy being out as a trans person. It is not easy being a trans kid. And it certainly can’t be easy to be a trans kid in Indi-fucking-ana. And Carla survived that, with some scars and some triggers, and a hell of a chip on her shoulder. But she survived and she refuses to play the victim ever again and let people ignorantly slag her or the things she loves.
She’s older, and no matter what, she stands up for herself and refuses to let all the “did to me” stop her or break her or terrorize her into tiptoeing quietly around it. And maybe she got that strength from Ultra Car. Maybe just from her being too damn tired to do anything else. Maybe from the thread of queer politics that is underlying her whole speech here.
But it’s here. She’s here. And everyone better well hell get used to it.
Well I don’t recall that Walkyverse UC ever taking shit from anyone, so I figure that the character in this universe is similar in that regards. UC was there, and everyone else be damn. Powerful character. And wow, you just got piled on. Shame shit like that happens still.
“being hated for whatever reason was convenient” ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch. Yeah, sadly Carla knows all about that. A good reminder that nothing Mary said to Carla was in any way news.
Thanks for a post being just as awesome and smart as we have come to expeect, even if it did a number on my scroll wheel, and happy birthday!
I mean, I’m willing to give Walky a little wiggle room here, because I have to consider that Carla didn’t just bluntly come out with this story right out the gate. It’s presented that way to us because we don’t see what they said in the interim, but the ellipses in panel one indicate that this is likely just the final remark following a long rant of why the show was great and deserved better than it got. Walky isn’t just flat out dismissing her personal connection, really, because he’s still focused on the surface argument of “which show is better”. So most of what she’s saying at THIS point probably isn’t even registering to him.
Yeah, I feel like there’s obviously no malice here, it’s just that it’s all going straight over his head. He’s probably standing there thinking “what does this have to do with anything? the dumb show was still dumb an’ farts are hilarious.” He has no clue what she’s ACTUALLY saying.
And it’s a nice parallel to the Mary situation, because Mary was intending to hurt Carla and aimed her blows accordingly.
And here we get someone offending and hurting an important part of her, but more out of clumsy ignorance. And it nicely encapsulates how the daily ignorances and bad resonances of well-meaning folks can add up to a lot of microaggressions that can be similarly frustrating for the one suffering them.
Also, I mentally inserted a sound effect from the animated version of “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” into the break between the penultimate and the final panel. The sudden bell-like trill where his face falls into a sudden angryish pouty frown, paired with his Santa hat flopping forward with it.
Fuck… I’ve been in Carla’s shoes. At least I can just kinda sit back and show the show to people now and they’ll go “Oh ok no NOW I get why you like this”
That is literally the 2nd worst person to open up to… First being that crazy girl who hates everyone.. whose name i can never remember.. the ultra religious but kind of seems like she’s faking it girl.
I kind of hope the gf is still hanging out listening to slap him
Sort of related I ended up buying sailor moon (my ultra car) on dvd yesterday. This recent plot had me thinking on that show a lot recently. Though I’ have to admit that shitty DIC dub captured my heart and I’m not as excited as I would be about finally owning it because it won’t be what I’m getting even if the new dub fixed a lot of the mistakes of the past. Like all the straight washing.
I mean… Walky’s argument is basically unimpeachable. Sorry about that whole journey of self discovery thing, but if you come at the fart episode, you best not miss.
I like how, of all the things that prompts a massive outpouring of feelings for Carla, it’s Ultra Car. ‘Cause she’s on Ruth Watch right now and she’s deflecting her unease, but this? Nah, all aboard the feels train. This is what makes Carla go into a full, open dialogue on what’s important to her.
It’s just a shame her audience ended up being Walky. Could be worse, though. Mike woulda probably pulled out a little bag full of the pieces of her toy.
Ask a trans nerd about their day, get a non-committal shrug. Ask them about Steven Universe or Undertale and you’ll get a dissertation of personal relevance and impact.
and of course he brushes off carla’s story with fart jokes because classic walky. walky’s actions in the last few strips have placed him firmly in scrappy territory for me.
When she says that Ultracar made her the woman that she is today…is she proud of that? Unhappy about it? Who is she, today? Like, she’s a skater who likes cookies, right?
And this isn’t the first time that this has come up. When her machine spelled out her name to Mary she talked about how the fact that she existed bothered Mary more than anything else. Like…everyone exists, Carla. Walky’s past made him who he is too…same for Joyce and literally every other human. That’s how pasts work.
Did I miss something? Is she like a champion karate master who founded the internet and rescues puppies? Where does this *You can’t stop me from being me!* come from? Is someone trying to? Some sort of anti-fun mafia that hates skating and cookies?
*I should note that of this dude’s work I’ve only read Dumbing of Age. Does this stuff make sense if I know Carla with more context?*
She’s trans. Mary once tried to escort her “to the boys dorm where she belongs.” That’s why she says Mary is bothered by her existence; because Mary IS bothered by the existence of people who are quite happy defying Mary’s interpretation of the Word of God. It’s also why Carla had a lot of trouble finding things to relate to in media while growing up, hence her extra-special love for the one thing she did relate to.
This. Being trans means to sadly a lot of people, your existence is seen as negative and something that everyone else has a right to debate and dismiss and demand be hidden. Means you get a lot of deathglares and casual muttered slurs just walking down the street. Means you are acutely aware of how many of you die every year because someone was so enraged by your existence they decide they need to murder you.
Mary is especially bothered by Carla’s existence because she actively wanted to deny that existence and Carla’s name, wanting to treat her instead as the boy she never was, because that’s what’s on her birth certificate. And Carla emphasizing her name, her right to exist is actually an important act of defiance because I guarantee if Mary knew Carla’s dead name, that’s all she would ever us because in her eyes that’s her “real name”.
And this is why she’s so proud of becoming the woman she is today. Because that was hard fought and it meant getting fucked over in a variety of ways she outlines in Panel 4, with people saying and doing things to her and having literally no friends, but a lifetime of authority figures making empty promises to her and nursing wounds in the dark alone.
And that’s a pride that a lot of trans folks recognize, because our identities, our names, our true lives are a hard fought battle. Like, I’ve only just finished this year changing over my legal name to match my real name and that involved multiple court visits, over a thousand dollars in money, and a couple of years worth of work and even more than that securing a stable enough employment that I could trust wouldn’t fire me for being out.
Being trans means the whole world aggressively fights you being you. Means the whole world is made that you exist and would love nothing more than to see you die or crawl back into the closet miserable and hating yourself. Means that there’s a whole anti-fun mafia made up of sitting governors and state senators looking to steal your right to exist in public spaces and make you too scared to leave your bedroom.
Walkyverse Ultra-Car came out to her parents (Rachel and Joe) offscreen – they said that when they discovered she was their daughter, they were entirely supportive. Implicitly they also originally thought she was a guy (though they were entirely supportive of her coming out and were fine with admitting they were wrong.)
That first sentence in the first panel: In my head I heard it being spoken by an old Victorian era sea captain, with a Welsh accent, recounting a story in an old pub to anyone who cares to listen.
At the same time, I can see a friendship developing from this. Walky couldn’t care less about Carla being trans. For him it’s all about their nerd rivalry, and they could bond over this. His last line could even be interpreted as him making fun of their argument.
He’s being mean he’s just doing it because he’s an insensitive jackass rather than because he’s actively trying to hurt people. It’s not much of an excuse.
I wonder for how long the conversation went before it went to those panels.
Maybe Dotty literally fell asleep beside the door, or possibly walked away long ago.
Carla opens up to Walky, of all people, with a deeply personal story about her childhood and her feelings. And then Walky promptly demonstrates that she has wasted her breath. Does not seem like they’re going to be friends.
People who geek out together can be friends together!
Walky is in complete agreement with Carla that cartoons are Serious Business. He is wrong about WHICH cartoons are best (probably because he is some kind of yet to be diagnosed rare strain of idiot) but at least Carla can talk to him about important stuff, rather than Depressed RAs and breakups and non-cool stuff like that.
So yeah, I actually don’t think Carla regrets opening up to Walky.
Replace Ultra Car with Sailor Moon and you’ve basically told my story, Carla. It exposed me to queer characters, I met my wife because we’re both fans of the show, it even inspired my name.
Worth noting: Carla lucked out with her parents. It sounds like they were really supportive of her, transition and all. Rare thing even in fiction.
I love Carla’s reasons for praising Ultra-Car. I also love how Walky’s density and obsession with Dexter and Monkey Master prevents him from understanding.
Personally, I’m glad Carla liked it but Ultracar was also a bit of a dick to all of the other cast members. Especially her ultra-chipper brothers and sisters!
I feel like Walky just completely ignored that entire explanation in favor of trying to think of a D&MM episode he thought Ultra Car couldn’t possibly match.
One) Carla’s parents are awesome! I want them to be featured in the actual strip, ’cause the Ruttens must be the coolest people around!
Two) … Walky didn’t listen to a word Carla said, did he?
Though… Walky is probably seeing this as a “which cartoon is best?” argument, while Carla is defending the cartoon which helped her through her childhood. I think they’re having two different discussions without realising.
Walky is still horribly dense right now, though.
I have a hard time getting TOO mad at Walky for being an oblivious asshole dismissive of other peoples’ problems when 1) the show he’s defending was his solace after his sister was taken away from him and his only friend decided she was too cool for him and 2) Carla prides herself on deliberately being an asshole dismissive of other people’s problems.
Sure, the behavior comes from different places–Walky’s a very smart guy who distances himself from emotionally challenging situations and has presumably used goofiness as a crutch throughout his childhood, whereas Carla is trans and developed her jerkass personality in response to a lifetime of oppression–but I could just as easily see Carla sneering in the face of most other characters in this strip when they’ve got issues. Hell, a commenter told me just last week that Carla’s not obligated to care about Ruth or Billie’s problems. Why should Walky care about hers, especially given his deep emotional ties to D&MM?
Yeah…between Carla, Malaya, and mmmaaaayyyybe Ruth and Sarah, Mike’s “say mean things just to piss people off” shtick is basically redundant now, because so many people just…act like assholes so frequently.
So, does Walky know that Carla is trans? Because I didn’t put it together right away, I just thought she was a girl* at first. He’s sufficiantly clueless enough that unless someone flat out told him, he might not notice. So he would totally miss the significance and why it means so much to her, other than her parents made her a toy.
*I am in no way saying that a trans girl isn’t a girl. Just that I was slow on the uptake.
cisgirl, not cis. Because you could just as easily assume carla is a cisguy who just happens to be somewhat effeminate, and most people call him a girl and he just has given up fighting it.
Do you have to tack on the “trans” or “cis” if you are referring to someone as the gender they identify? Is it rude not to? I’m not trying to be a smartass, I just don’t want to offend.
I’d assume he doesn’t. That he assumes she’s cis. I’d honestly assume pretty much everyone does and that he’s not being particularly clueless. There’s been no indication that it’s that obvious. Nor has anyone reacted in anyway that suggests they’ve just figured it out. We know Sal figured it out, but they hang out together more than Carla does with anyone else. Ruth obviously knows and I think she spilled the beans to Billie. Mary knows, but she’s a snoop. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the older girls who were on the floor last year know, but there’s been no direct confirmation.
We would know if Joyce knew and she doesn’t. I’d be shocked if everyone else knew and had still been hiding it, even from the fundie.
this makes me want to make an Ultracar toy, though I probably wouldn’t scratch build one, maybe mod the crap out of a Pixar Cars toy or something from MASK.
So Carla is upset because someone did something in the hallway that disturbed her while she was chilling in her dorm room. Didn’t someone else have something like that happen to her; who was that again?
To be fair, I have yet to see anyone claim Carla’s actions prior to Mary misgendering her were anything but dickishness, but it’s like a black kid teasing a white kid and the white kid, instead of responding in kind, busting out the N-bomb. Within the “almost everybody’s kind of an asshole” world of DoA, Carla’s behavior was cartoonish fun; Mary’s annoyed reactions and attempts to get her to stop were cartoonish fun; Mary’s sudden, jarring switch to bigot mode was a step too far.
Mary could’ve just kept pranking Carla in response to Carla’s whining/stomping but took the whole train to too-far-town instead.
Yeah, and I respect your arguments, but that got a mite more awkward when TERF fans of the comic started using that logic to argue that Carla was an aggressive male terrorizing and assaulting a poor innocent woman who did nothing wrong. And it lead to a troop of those TERFs flocking to the comment sections to try and argue that fucked up idea.
That doesn’t equate. Carla engaged Walky not because he was breaking any rules, but because he was dissing Ultracar. If she was threatening to enforce the rules or tattle for a disturbance in the hallway (especially if she wouldn’t have if he hadn’t dissed Ultra car), *that* would make her a hypocrite. And to be clear, Mary was not doing that to be good; it was because she has a giant chip on her shoulder – if she wanted to be good, she wouldn’t have ruined the wheels &/or bearings on Carla’s skates. She deserved that pie in the face, and has a lot of growth ahead of her if she’s ever going to resemble a well-adjusted person.
….Mary didn’t give a fuck about rules either. That’s why she never fucking talks about the actual rule violations, instead whining about how it’s really loud. Skates are almost definitely a violation of the rules, but definitely not for quiet.
Ah! You are correct; I didn’t mention Carla’s skating noises as the catalyst for inflaming Mary’s vindictiveness. I still say she took it too far with the destruction of property, personal attacks, and manipulation.
Carla skated on carpet. That’s pretty quiet. Willis confirmed that it was quiet. The actual catalyst is that it was Carla, being vaguely annoying. Because she hates Carla. Because Carla is trans.
People have been saying that fart jokes will wear themselves out since before the Egyptians had writing.
As much as we may want them to die, fart jokes will *never* get old, just annoying. They have enough longevity that by the time you find them annoying, the next generation has just started with ’em.
Carla barely knows Becky, and the problem isn’t Becky getting kicked out of Billie’s room, it’s that she has to leave the dorm entirely because Mary’s going to tattle that she’s there.
I will say, my issues with Carla in general aside, Dave has done OUTSTANDING work on the facial expressions in this comic. You really get a sense of how important Ultra Car is to her and how vulnerable she feels talking about it.
And of course the “I’mma kill you” face at the end is just great.
My ten cents – I reckon what Walky’s doing here is responding to a situation that makes him uncomfortable in the only way he knows how, i.e. wise-cracking. While he may want to, he has no idea how to reply in the apologetic, supportive way the situation demands, and instead replies with a joke. Incidentally, his defence of D&MM is so ridiculous that I’m inclined to think he might be looking for a way to climbdown…
Or he’s just being a terrible person, genuinely not realising/caring that Carla’s just massively opened herself up to him, and is more concerned about asserting the superiority of his own beloved cartoon. Eh, either way.
…It’s one of those conversations, where you’ve built all your arguments and proofs carefully, arranged them in logical order, presented your view in brilliant, irrefutable style… and then realized all that effort was wasted because you’re talking to an imbecile.
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I’m gonna take a wild guess here at who’s seen Swiss Army Man and not walked out
ahhhh and look at that, a toy I wanted but couldn’t get as a kid is vaguely reasonable on eBay YESSSSSSS
Ugh, that movie. Not the fart jokes, just the nasty transphobia inherent in one of the major plot elements.
Seriously? I was looking forward to that one. Damn it.
I feel like there’s a difference between the character’s sort-of transphobia within that sequence and the film agreeing with that character. I don’t think we’re really supposed to IDENTIFY with Paul Dano’s character, or view him as correct. In that sequence, he’s personally uncomfortable dressing as a girl (which is itself okay and not a condemnation of anyone else doing that. Besides, I feel like the film’s underlying message is more one of accepting one another, period.) Besides, as the film shows, if he’s a narrator, it’s an incredibly unreliable one.
Nah, it’s not that. It’s that they set up an arc that can go in a trans-positive direction, but then a twist happens. And that twist means that the character who’s depicted doing that is meeting instead a very hateful trope about trans people. And so all the scenes of X character doing trans-esque things are really setting up this ugly twist and “hinting” at it.
Because of course, this work couldn’t actually go in a surreal positive direction and instead needs to be about X overused hateful transphobic trope and some bullshit sad boner confessionalism.
And the part where my identity and the potential of it actually getting reflected was just actually set up to form a hateful trope mocking said identity is just a really foul dick move and a reflection that we’ll never see major actors like Daniel Radcliffe and huge indie buzz for a work that was genuinely revolutionary and truly did trans identities justice.
It was also especially galling because my enbyfriend* specifically chose it out as a birthday gift because a friend recommended it to them, despite knowing that they are trans.
*I really wish there was a term for being romantically attracted to anything other than men, cause homoromantic doesn’t technically fit anymore, but panromantic, I feel, let’s douchey guys think they have a potential in. *shrug shoulders* Identity is complicated.
I’m being intentionally vague to try and avoid spoilers as best I can, but hopefully that is still understandable to people who’ve seen the movie.
I’d actually like spoilers on that, anywhere you can post this and be less vague about the pertinent tropes? Ty in advance as I gotta go back to sleep for a bit now
Okay, don’t hover over this text, people who don’t want spoilers
Hopefully this works.
If this works, hover over this link to see spoilers
Spoilers in this hover-text, maybe?
Last chance, before I give up and just ask Orion Fury.
Well that’s what I get for going to bed early, huh?
Oh, and if I recall correctly: &<
This is a test. Do not adjust your sect.
this is the base text if I am doing this right.
Below is what I just posted, with the angle brackets “” changed to “[” and “]”.
This is a test. Do not adjust your sect.
[abbr title=”this is hover text”]this is the base text[/abbr] if I am doing this right.
By angle brackets I mean shift-, and shift-. on a standard US QWERTY keyboard.
I should prolly comment somewhat late that those can easily be identified as “less than sign” and “greater than sign”
Thanks Slartibeast!
Okay, testing, hover for spoilers
Oh, frick it, SPOILERS BELOW:
*
The main character starts the movie lost and like he’s about to die when he finds a dead body that comes to life and they become friends and more. He later has an arc where he starts dressing like a girl for their dead body companion because of a plot line involving magic boners (just roll with it) and they talk about their father being really against stuff like that and society disapproving of it and playing him like he’s a trans girl figuring stuff out now and falling in love with his dead body companion now that he thinks he’s going to die. Except twist, he wasn’t lost at all, he’s just a creepy stalker hiding out in the woman he’s obsessed with’s backyard and all the trans elements are just him being the creepy deranged trans psycho trope and signs of how sick his obsession really is. Cause that’s somehow more novel than a surrealist queer love story and metaphor for being lost in performative cisnormativity.
Thank you Cerberus, and I apologise for putting you through so much hassle. Sounds like sucking to me, 500 demerits to Gryffindor!
Oh yeah, now I see exactly what you meant about the seriously damaging tropes about transwomen. (I feel that it is specifically transwomen who get that bullshit and transmen just don’t show up- due to sexist bullshit I ain’t going into at 1am, but if you’ve followed me thus far you probably already get it.)
But yeah, I’d not even heard of this film but fuck that damaging bullshit. And big hugs for having to put up with that bullshit.
Have you seen “Hedwig and the Angry Inch”, Cerb?
It’s quite the experience and you may find it to be one of a very few that approach transsexuality as a major theme. It’s also a rock musical with both dark and uplifting segments.
Shrug, “attentive”? “Romance” runs in complex patterns providing identification. Most of its elements are accessible to a good observer and interactor. Actual carnality is only a small and almost separate part.
We’ve had a pair of fillies here who had phases of stallionness. The highlight was one of them mounting her mother. It doesn’t get more wrong than that.
Maybe we need a Tiresian month for everybody in college age (staggered timing) where they spend their life attired as the other gender. Just to get a view of the different patterns modeling interaction and their influence on one’s own life.
Just to loosen the ties of gender identities to reproductive organs.
Yeah, identity is super complicated. And overall terms/vocabulary just don’t exist currently when nonbinary is involved. Like “gay/lesbian” and “straight” or “hetero” and “homo” are literally designed to be used in a binary system… they don’t work/make sense if they person trying to find a word for their identity is nonbinary… (personally I ended up making up the term femromantic for myself to get around this[defining it as attracted to feminine traits]. Coincidently Mascromantic and Enbyromantic could be things in that same vein. Haven’t considered/thought through possible terms for nonbinary + something else… so something else to think about)
Language has a lot of catching up to do when it comes to nonbinary….
Ugh, don’t get me started on how useless (and inherently degrading) ‘hetero’ and ‘homo’ have become in a non-binary world. Can we pls switch to ‘andro-‘ and ‘gyno-‘ (does ‘andro-romantic’ work?) (and yes, you can keep ‘pan-‘ and ‘a-‘, those are fine)??
I mean, as someone who’s thought about this to a fair degree, I think andro and gyno are almost exactly as problematic in a non-binary world as hetero and homo? I suppose they work when the user is non-binary, where hetero and homo don’t, but they still imply that the group of people you might be attracted to falls into a binary. I don’t know of a good alternative, though, since gender and sexuality are both basically a spectrum which means splitting it into labels is hard.
(Also I’m sure it’s not your intent, but I’ve seen andro/gynosexual used in gross transphobic ways by equating them to genitals so the user can say “I’m a gynosexual lesbian so I’m only interested in
realcis girls.)And ‘gynophilia’ is also way too reminiscent of ‘autogynephilia’.
Wait, how are “hetero” and “homo” now exclusionary? Aren’t they just two points on a spectrum, which now includes the, for lack of a better term, “new” terms of sexuality?
@Jalathas You also start getting into the problem of the nontraditional terms becoming treated as so much ingroup jargon which cuts off people from even comprehending what you’re saying due to lack of experience and inevitably invites even more ingroup/outgroup bias.
@Jon Rich If one views the gender spectrum as two points “heterosexual” implies one likes those of the other point (ie a man who likes women). if one sees gender as a spectrum it becomes more of a problem because “hetero-” as a prefix implies the whole group of those dissimilar to oneself even though it’s most often used to imply the same meaning as though the spectrum were just two points which in term reinforces the binary gender viewpoint and suggests that is how one views gender which thereby implicitly others anyone who is not on those two points.
Now I get to hope you eventually do get to see this, considering the time and therefore that the next comic is up so those’ll be the comments most people read.
@Jalathas
Well, the point is that physical attraction is oft highly correlated with the hormones and the body build of the person, both characteristics that have nothing to do with that person’s identity, but with that person’s biology. Actually, it’d be strange for any form of attraction to be based on identity-based groups. There are assholes in any group (and for the different people, different assholes), so of course there won’t be emotional attraction just because somebody identifies as male.
By this logic I don’t see much point in getting mad about binary descriptions of sexual preferences, as long as everybody keeps in mind the thresholds between the binary descriptions will be different for everybody and fluctuating with time and mood. Like, “it’s not gay if he looks good in women’s clothing”.
That being said, some more words in the dictionary is always useful. Human beings are way too complicated to ever have a functional language that can accurately describe even one person’s sexuality. As a caveat, though, vlademir1 is right about the whole jargon and ingroup/outgroup mentality thing.
If you haven’t seen it already, I can recommend Normal (2003), with Tom Wilkinson in the lead as a trans person. It might be hard to find (since it was made for tv), but — as I remember it — beautifully played.
!!!! there is a term for this though !!!! Nomaromantic means attraction to every gender except men!
I hate that casual transphobia is the new casual racism in things that make you cringe twenty years after the fact. Monty Python’s The Life of Brian is a fantastic movie, but it’s just got one scene which I can’t get out of my head now when I think about it, and it means I don’t want to show my boyfriend an otherwise great movie. :/
And we’re not even (anywhere near) out of the woods on the matter, so it’ll be until I’m practically dying of old age that I can just say “it was a different time then” like people say when they talk about Huckleberry Finn as a classic now. (I sure hope we can talk about this like a memory before I die.)
Huckleberry Finn was very anti-slavery and anti-racism, though, wasn’t it? It has the n-word in it, but it’s there in order to show how icky the n-word was/is.
Which screams that this person really doesn’t understand what they’re talking about here. Probably agreed with the book burning it goes through for simply having a word that makes some people uncomfortable.
Oh, look, found the white guy.
Because it’s okay to other, demonize, dismiss and stereotype a race and sex of people that don’t fit into our accepting and progressive vision, right?
When they’re saying marginalized people “Must be fans of book burning” and say the N slur makes people “uncomfortable,” yeah, kind of?
Their response betrays a life experience utterly removed from what they’re talking about.
That’s the exact opposite of what their grammar suggests they’re saying:
“The above poster probably agrees with the book burning that Huckleberry Finn goes through, solely because it has a slur in it.”
Also, while misreading happens to all of us, your ‘found the white guy’ statement is a hypocritical reaction lacking in substance or contribution.
“Oh, look, found the white guy.” – Stating someone’s skin color in a pejorative manner is, dare I say, quite racist, 3-l.
Perhaps being less hilariously hypocritical would add to your next argument, since you’ve quite soundly shot yourself in the foot this time.
He doesn’t want things banned, or purged or whatever, he literally wants to ‘just say “it was a different time then”’.
I wonder if the point was “we can point to Huckleberry Finn as an example of a different time, because it highlights the racism in the things that Huck and Jim have to put up with, even as it condemns them.”
That’d be again not doing justice to the book.
CURRENT society’s views of racism as something bad are partially created by this book specifically. So, it’s not about “look how it was a different time back then”. it’s about “look how this book made the time right now different”.
(A note: I AM a bit of a Mark Twain fan, so my perception may be skewed by that. The summary is I think Twain got more progressive as he got older, and the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn are pretty well designed to show how awful racism is. It’s a work with flaws, but it’s definitely meant to make us sympathize with Jim and to hate how people treat him.)
If I recall correctly, Mark Twain was somewhat involved in progressive movements. For instance: when King Leopold decided to, you know, directly and indirectly cause the deaths of potentially twice the number of people that died in the Holocaust by doing awful shit in his “Congo Free State,” well… Mark Twain was one of the people who spoke out loudly against him.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Leopold%27s_Soliloquy
A brief peek into Mark Twain’s history should show, too, that he was staunchly anti-racism, pro-abolitionism, pro-woman’s rights… He was definitely progressive for his time.
Now, from what I can tell, Mark Twain isn’t someone that was always that progressive (see one of his earlier works – with some fairly racist language – mentioning Native Americans, though he eventually seemed to reverse his stance on Native Americans), but he eventually became a guy that really hated racism. Which… I think that’s an important thing to understand: people can change. And I think Mark Twain did, and for the better. Twain grew as a person as he got older.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn show how goddamned dehumanizing the N-word can be, and how awful people treat someone for being black. Jim is constantly shown in a positive light, though he’s mistreated (if I recall correctly) even by Huck in the beginning. He’s kind, he’s patient, he’s uneducated but wise, he’s protective of Huck Finn… Etc. Though it’s been years, I remember thinking about how Jim seems to be the hero of the story as much as Huck at points.
I don’t blame anyone for thinking the book is racist, though. It can definitely be a tough call. It’s not just the use of the N-word that makes me say this – which, again, was used to express how awful that word is – but how Jim, despite having all those positive traits, is still shown as being superstitious to his own detriment and generally has his lack of education thrown in his face. But then again, I’d argue that Jim’s lack of education is mostly thrown at him in the first part of the book, where Huck Finn doesn’t appreciate Jim yet, and Huck becomes a better friend of Jim throughout the book and eventually treats him like an actual human being. However, the writing definitely makes you pause at points and wonder, on occasion, if the book is racist. So… I won’t begrudge anyone of that opinion, as ardently as I believe that Mark Twain was a good fellow and socially progressive.
One last thing: I’m not a Game of Thrones fan, but I’ve heard people claim – and I agree with this assessment – that George R. R. Martin’s work is meant to show how awful and horrible war is, how pointless it is, etc. Yet it does so by highlighting a brutal civil war in all its terrible details. We are NOT meant to cheer for the abusers, the murderers, the rapists, etc. in that story. They’re highlighted as awful people. We want them to die as we read, to get their comeuppance. I think Mark Twain’s work is similar in that regard: we’re not meant to agree with the racism shown by characters in the book, but to be upset by it and to want change. That’s my take, at least.
I apologize for the long piece, here. As said: I’m a bit of a Mark Twain fan, though I haven’t read his stuff in years. Of all the American classics, his stuff is probably the only stuff that really stuck with me.
Thanks for an excellent analysis.
I’m interested by the comparison you draw, because it’s an apt one: both Game of Thrones and Huck Finn suffer from having good intentions, marred by an author unable to lift their good intentions away from their own privileged viewpoint.
Twain was certainly a strong progressive, by the standards of his time… which makes uncomfortable reading now, as we realise that ‘far ahead of his time’ still left him with some whopping great blind spots.
Similarly, nobody is saying that Martin is glorifying war… and obviously we’re not meant to cheer for the abusers and murderers and rapists.
Nevertheless, in a brilliantly constructed world… he seems to have constructed the plot to depend disproportionately on rape and abuse. Yes, it’s good to acknowledge that rape is a horrific reality of war.
On the other hand, so is dysentry. And being covered in mud. And trench foot. And yet, somehow, rape seems to get all of the page count…
To be fair, there is a sequence in the 5th book where one of the major characters (Daenerys) gets dysentery. But you’re not wrong that rape seems to be the go-to horror way more often than any other.
“But you’re not wrong that rape seems to be the go-to horror way more often than any other.”
I’ll admit that I haven’t read or watched GoT, but one thing occurs to me: Would one possible factor be that rape is still something which still happens in modern, Western society, so it has a bigger impact on the reader/viewer. On the other hand, there are very few people in advanced, Western countries who die of dysentery or warfare anymore. It might not pack the same punch. So a big factor might be just writing for the audience.
I’m being totally in earnest here, this wasn’t meant to be catty or anything.
[deletes a lot of rambling and second-guessing]
It’s interesting you mention people not having a frame of reference for dysentery and warfare, because I read a book that a friend recommended as “very good”–The Doomsday Book (or Domesday Book in “proper” English)–which is like 50% depictions of horrible disease.
I’d say SPOILERS but I dunno, I felt like I saw the twist coming from light years away. It was sort of interesting in the graphic detail of what the disease was like, but otherwise it was really… BORING. Just people dying for no reason, except to show how they died. No lesson learned.
I thought I had a conclusion to reach from sharing this, but I guess not.
A plague isn’t caused by human folly (at least historically), hence it isn’t something one can do away with via some sort of lesson learned.
War and related atrocities on the other hand are wholly dependent on the human element, hence there can be lessons aimed at mitigating such.
well, considering the people dying in the future was caused from mucking about with time travel and a dig site infested with latent plague virus, it is COMPLETELY human folly
why? to chronicle what it was like back then
mission success, I suppose
To be fair, there is worse than aknowledged casual racism, and that is ignored casual racism.
Do you guys know about Tintin ? (If you don’t, it’s a comic book classic that’s very popular in francophones countries)
Well one of the early comic books is called “Tintin au Congo”, and it is so full of casual racism that it is sickening. There was a trial in the 2000′ (the book was published in th 1930’s) to ban the book or at least print a disclaimer on the cover. The belgian court of justice ruled that since the cartoonist wasn’t hostile toward black people in this book, then it was ok if he treated them as children (I’m paraphrasing by the way).
Wikipedia link if you wish to know more : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tintin_in_the_Congo
Also worth mentioning that Hegre repudiated his casual racism later in his life and acknowledged the damage he’d done. Not that it makes it better, but at least he acknowledged it & tried to fix it.
You mean the scene with Loretta? I dunno, I personally found it… progressive? both given the time and the context? The People’s Front of Judea is actually pretty accepting of Loretta’s new identity, even if they don’t fully understand it
Full disclosure though, I’m cis so maybe that scene is uncomfortable to trans folk and I’m missing that element
I agree, i just watched that scene again and all of the characters aside from the leader are pretty open to the idea, and don’t chastise Stan about wanting to be Loretta. They simply ask questions about it, without putting her down. I think it is pretty progressive, especially for the time. Also Huck Finn is very against racism. Just because it uses words associated with racism, doesn’t mean it is racist. Twain strongly breaks from the norm by making Jim a real and sympathetic character instead of a stereotype. He questions the idea of slavery through the eyes of a young boy.
The film wants you to find the whole affair absurd, which is a fundamentally different context from Huck Finn.
I didn’t think it was transphobic at all. It was played for laughs, but to me the comedy just came from how little it had to do with the plot and how much screentime it was given despite that, and if it isn’t laughed at, it’s just a woman who was born a man and realizes they’re a woman. Also, wasn’t the actor who played Loretta actually a trans woman IRL?
That’d be Eric Idle, and I doubt it.
But, the thing is, you have to actually see what people’s likely responses are going to be. How likely do you think it is that the average viewer isn’t just going to see this as “haha, he thinks he is a woman how silly”? When writing something you have to take in account common opinions about stuff as well.
I always found the scene funny because just one character was getting frustrated, and it was increasingly upsetting him. Everybody was fine with Loretta being Loretta, but the angry character hated the reasoning behind it – this was set 2,000 years ago, and the reasoning was that she wanted to have babies. For me, the scene peaked in amusement with the other character’s wail of “where’s the foetus gonna gestate? You gonna keep it in a box?” which – you know, with a slightly more sensitive rewording – I feel like something like that scene could play out in a comedy in 2016 – you know, actual trans or NB character has an aggravatingly utopian worldview when it comes to their options, and everybody around them wants to be supportive, except that isn’t actually very helpful?
IDK, I think it plays out as a lot funnier than any other trans jokes from back then, or from now, really.
Shrug. “otherwise great movie”? “The Life of Brian” is an offensive movie. It is written and executed as one. I find it almost amusing that you have no problem with Terry Jones depicting Brian’s mother yet object to Loretta. In their sketches even more than in “Life of Brian”, Monty Python rides out stereotypes ridiculously into the sunset.
Invariably, all women are depicted as ditzy and focused on appearance. Strangely, it feels less off-pitch when done by Terry Jones (the go-to female), Eric Idle and even the occasional John Cleese than in the rare occasion where they have actual female actors. Take a look “Prejudice”, for example. The female number girl is actually the one I find most offensive here, not the “shoot the poof” slur. Probably because it’s safely outside of the uncomfortable bounds.
But this “safely outside of the uncomfortable bounds” is also very much culturally defined. You would not want to watch “The Life of Brian” with a set of hooligans. You would not want to watch it with a Quran reading class, never mind that the joke is on you (or not).
The ultimate message is that our only weapon against intolerance is laughing about ourselves. It’s a bit sad that there is a narrow window of audience between those who laugh too little and those who laugh too much, but it matches the stereotypical audience it was created for well enough to still work.
It doesn’t for you. And you would not want to have it work for your friend, so it would not be a good video to view together since it would be disturbing him in effigy. That’s both the good and the bad thing about sharing a movie.
“Invariably, all women are depicted as ditzy and focused on appearance.”
That’s a remarkable thing to say about a film where the only relatively grounded and moral character is a woman (Judith), and where practically all men are ditzy, erratic, and whimsical, and the one most focused on appearance is a man (Pilate).
I think you might have had some coloured goggles on when you saw the film.
“In their sketches even more”.
It was a long time ago, but as I recall it the female characters in the sketches weren’t really that much ditzier than the male ones, except when the characters were meant as parodies of typical contemporary female characters in film / tv, such as the “Scott of the Antarctic” sketch. The Python gang weren’t all that progressive, but they were at least intelligent and in general didn’t base much of their humor on the kind of stereotype you mention.
In a documentary, Carol Cleveland said that she thinks one of the things is that the the Pythons didn’t know how to write young women because they didn’t know many young women well. They knew middle-aged women from their mothers and their friends, so they tended to write from what they knew.
(Carol Cleveland is the actress who played most of the women in the Python series who weren’t played by the men in drag.)
That was transphobia… Oh….
i had never heard of swiss army man before noticing there were a couple reviews of it on youtube. had no plans to see it and now that i know theres transphobia in it, im definitely never gonna watch that movie.
Still can’t believe this is an actual movie and not an snl skit.
Yeah, when I started seeing the ads I had to check that it wasn’t somehow April 1st in the middle of June.
oh hey I FINALLY got the aforementioned toy yaaaaaaay
granted part of that was on me for forgetting I had to go to the post office to pick it up
…yay Megavolt =D
And the epic battle continues with no winner in sight
I would say Carla wins but she lost by having to suffer through Walky’s bullshit.
This is why one should never argue with idiots. If they win, you feel extra stupid because you lost to an idiot. If you win, they fail to understand that you won, and you had to listened to their idiocy, so really they won after all.
“Never argue with a stupid person. They’ll drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.”
-Dunno, but I remember it from the internet
“Never argue with a pigeon. No matter how good you are at chess, the pigeon will just knock the pieces over, shit on the board, and strut around like it’s victorious”
Explains both the last two Australian Prime Ministers and Donald Trump.
“Explains [..] Donald Trump.”
Wow, that’s rude.
Apologize to pigeons everywhere.
Never battle wits with an idiot; they’ll drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.
In a battle of wits, Walky is unarmed.
Most of the cast of DoA, in a battle of wits, would be armed with squeaky-hammers.
*giggle-snort*
Arguing with idiots is like wrestling with pigs in the mud : At some point you realize the pig is really enjoying himself.
There are no winners in this kind of situations. Just jerks, like Walky for example.
No clear winner, but definitely a clear loser.
Walky you dick
Agreed… somehow I feel this is the worst I’ve seen him. He’s usually tactless, not unapologetically mean.
Eh, I wouldn’t exactly call it “mean” – callous as hell, yes, but he’s not doing it out of malice, he’s doing it because he genuinely thinks she’s objectively wrong.
Besides, I somehow doubt he picked up on ANY of the subtext she had going on with that statement.
He seems to be incapable of deriving any value outside of entertainment from a show.
I thought D&MM cartoons were essentially Walky’s LIFE after his sister got sent away and his only friend ditched him, though? Like, I distinctly remember him talking about that, and the scene actually being kind of uncomfortable.
Carla doesn’t have a monopoly on suffering, or on using entertainment as an escape from the problems in her life.
He’s deliberately shitting on Carla, however. So what if he’s suffered if he’s taking the opportunity to keep Carla’s hell week going?
How is he deliberately shitting on Carla by not caving to her personal reasons for liking the show? As I mentioned elsewhere, Carla would not give half a damn if he explained why he’s so passionate about D&MM, and people have told me Carla’s never beholden to other people’s issues. Why is Walky supposed to be beholden to hers when he’s got reasons of his own?
I don’t think that by continuing to be Walky and not immediately softening into “oh jeez I’m sorry” he’s trying to torment Carla or trying to keep her bad week going. He’s Walky, immaturity and using goofiness/childishness to avoid serious situations is what he does.
So what if he’s suffered if he’s taking the opportunity to keep Carla’s hell week going?
That seems to be more like an unfortunate byproduct of him wanting the last word or some other similarly petty bullshit that he’s all about right now, rather than him actually wanting to make her life suck.
He doesn’t need to pick up on subtext. She explicitly told him that everybody hated her growing up, that Ultra Car was the only thing she really had besides her parents, and that Ultra Car is important to her very identity. Walky doesn’t need to know that she’s trans to, I don’t know, listen to her words, realize that this is more important and painful to her than a round of “who’s got the best cartoon?” and back down a little.
Or he could laugh in her face, because what are someone else’s feelings compared to fart jokes?
Walky just grabbed the wrong script. He got cast in a performance of Serious Backstory Moment and he’s reading the opening lines from Playfully Smug Fandom Rivalry.
Yup.
This has not been the first time where his love of presenting “I am smart guy who is winning this encounter” lead to him being a major dick to an identity that was the source of a lot of suffering for another person.
One of the reasons really finding something to hang his sense of self-worth on besides a smug sense of unearned superiority is such a crucial character development arc to be on.
It’s not just about being able to adjust to having to work at things. It’s about leaving behind the dangerous belief that just because something is “easy” to you, then that must have meant you somehow earned it being easy due to your “intelligence and worth”.
Cause there be scary privileged mountains down that path.
He won’t get any emotionally close to his sister until he realize that.
… The other thing with that is the fact that growing up thinking natural talent/intelligence is a proxy for worth is a good way to become an adult who is possessed of a crippling fear of failure. Which at its heart I think is why Walky avoids studying so hard – if he has to study, he’s failed at getting everything “naturally”, so it challenges his self-image and self-worth, which has always been dependent on being the smart one between the two siblings.
(N-not like I had to go through that and learn how to accept failure as a possibility and am still in the process of learning how to separate my performance in a particular role from my worth and quality as a person or anything…)
I think that’s really on point. And yeah, I think Walky is utterly terrified of acknowledging that intelligence doesn’t just mean “everything comes easy forever” for exactly the reasons you note. And I think it’s also what triggers his more asshole nerd moments*.
*It’s probably not made any easier by being black and thus being hit constantly with social messages that black people are unintelligent and so this realization about intelligence is even more fraught than it would be for a white nerd in the same situation.
It’d be really interesting to explore that and see where it goes. He’s shown that he doesn’t identify as black- but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t affected his life or evolution as an individual, and it’s not like Walky is king of self-understanding. (Or even vaguely in the self-understanding nobility, and I’m not taking this analogy any further because it’s already teetering on dodgy.)
But yeah, so far his reaction to race has been “wut?” I would really like to see that start to break down and get glimpses of how it’s actually affected his life (beyond the obvious family dynamic).
Which probably subconsciously plays into his identification as ‘generically beige’, instead of black or mixed-race.
If there’s one thing Dumbiverse Walky takes a firm stance on, it’s cartoons.
The scary thing is that he’s majoring in Communication, IIRC.
Apparently that’s a good thing, because he genuinely needs the education.
Wouldn’t that just be a cursus in bullshiting people to sell ’em stuff tho ?
That’s not what a Communication Major learns, no.
Oh ?
“As a field of study, communications is applied to journalism, business, public relations, marketing, news broadcasting, intercultural communications, education, public administration—and beyond. Communications majors are best defined as students that are: Seeking a general liberal arts education.”
http://www.communications-major.com/
That’s like saying a Poli-sci major teaches you how to lie.
I bet you’re a poli-sci major, telling us a lie right now! =O
:3
Actually he is in telecommunications!
I just read that script as Carla is doing the inner monlogue we all do when discussing our beloved fandoms, and Walky is voicing the outer debate.
Walky, a banjo that farts is still a banjo.
(um, not that I’m against banjos or anything…)
I really wanna know who Carla’s parents are now.
They’re new in this universe, but they’re founders of their own tech company named Ruttech R&D.
I just want her dad to look exactly like joe with a beard.
TWIST
Rachel with a beard
So… like Joe’s dad, then?
Secret cousins!
OH SHIT PLOT TWIST
(I really want to see an interaction with Carla and either Rachel or Joe now, just to see what’s changed in their dynamic now that they’re not Carla’s parents.)
We’ve seen Rachel and Carla: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/04-it-all-returns/dog/
Okay, every now and again because my “schedule” gets fucked up I miss pages AND THAT WAS ONE OF THEM.
So major thanks for accidentally bringing that to my attention!
I’ll just be sitting back here, laughing in my head at the alternate interpretation of “Joe with a beard”.
It’s a different beard. It’s subtle for you, but for them it’s obvious.
Hey, Orion Fury, do you mind me asking how you do those hovertext words?
You just use the “abbr title” tags listed under the text box when replying.
So, after replacing the parentheses below with angle brackets:
(abbr title=”Hovertext!”)example(/abbr)
becomes
example
And what makes missing you last night worse is that I was debating on waiting for you to show as well. Now I know why I wanted to wait.
Secret half siblings? JoeDad (much cooler than ToeTad) is a ladykiller, so I could see him having the odd illegitimate kid around, or one from a previous marriage.
She’s Ruth and Billie’s lesbian baby, displaced in time.
I wonder if Carla had ever bumped into Ethan and Amber on toy hunts.
Who says Ultracar didn’t have an exhaust joke episode?
She never fell for the banana in the tailpipe.
“You’re not gonna fall for the ‘banana in the tailpipe’?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHVjXtA54Gw
There was one planned but it didn’t air due to Ultra Car’s early cancellation. Rumos has it Samuel L. Jackson did a guest voice.
And there was the one where Daniel Craig just walked into the studio and got a few lines because he was on break from filming two sound stages down.
(Just kidding. That would never happen.)
Fart For The Sake Of Fart
SOMEONE’S NOT MY FAVORITE CHARACTER ANYMORE WALKY >:| HINT IT’S YOU
How did you NOT expect this from Walky? In fact, I’m pretty sure Walky has to say something related to butts every day or else he dies.
Lucky he lives in a David Willis comic then.
#BUTTS
I dunno, I tend to empathize pretty strongly with (among other things) Walky’s excessive, sometime even self-destructive laid backness. I certainly went through the same wall of tumbling college grades he did. But I can’t see myself being as disrespectful when someone opens up to me like that.
I CAN be that bad, but it’s mostly when I’m going full steam trying to say my piece and so am not listening to anything else being said.
Because I’ve got the most important things to say, obviously.
….
…. well of course not, but they’re more important than what Walky has to say. Dammit Walky!
Exactly. Carla opened up to Walky about something very serious and personal. Walky didn’t know how to handle something super-serious and personal. That’s totally like him to do that.
I mean, my god, how the hell can you be like that after the panel 3 facial expression?
Or that Panel 5 facial expression?
Like, that’s the verbal cue equivalent of a rattlesnake shaking its tail.
Honestly, I don’t think Walky can pick up on facial cues. Either that, or he did notice her expression, thought it was silly for someone to take a show as something other than entertainment, and tried to steer things back into what he understands. Yeah… he doesn’t get other people.
And those were his last words.
^^^
He won’t die, though. He’s just gonna get punched in the throat and the healing time before he can speak again is gonna take real-world years.
Carla will be distraught that her victim was throatpunched before she was through with him, just as Mike planned.
So, twenty or thirty seconds in comic time?
Seriously, it feels like somebody standing there would almost be obligated to hold Walky down so Carla can get a good punch or two in
Or at least force him to apologize and make him write a 500 page essay on how rude that was
Said person who could force him is standing right there and allI don’t think Dina could force him.
*slow clap*
I do
(good catch tho)
Dammit Walky, this is why you’re an idiot.
She SAID she wouldn’t murder you because she wanted you to be aware of just how badly you had been owned.
Then, you went and proved you were incapable of any awareness. At all. Thus removing her motive to keep you alive.
AND THEN, SIMULTANEOUSLY, you gave her fresh motive to murderize you!
…..
One Darwin Award nomination coming right up.
Walky’s an asshat. Just saying.
Taco Bell tie in episose
Well you can’t beat farting to live…..Oh wait, you definitly can and Walky’s an idiot.
This is a guy who’s not good at dealing with emotions. I mean it’s expected of him and I hope Dorothy (if she’s in earshot) takes him to task over it, but I’m not surprised.
Actually, I’m hoping Dorothy’s in earshot so she can reach out to and befriend Carla.
Or, you know, try. Carla’s a bit prickly. But Dorothy’s an awesome friend.
Eh, I see her trying to stay well out of it. I mean, a fight between a boyfriend she still plans to sleep with and cares about and someone he’s just been a massive dick to?
I can see her standing back, letting him dig his own grave, and then politely bringing up that that was a rude thing to do when they are alone again.
I dunno, I could see Dorothy feeling honour-bound to do what she feels is the right thing and try to diplomatically tell Walky- in front of Carla- he’s being a dick. Could go either way.
…IF she’s still in earshot.
I’m like 99% sure this is an avoidance tactic on Walky’s part; he is acutely uncomfortable dealing with serious topics, and so he’s deflecting with the most irreverent answer he can make in order to get out of there.
Very likely, and I feel he’s just as likely to be 100% unaware of that.
Oh dear gawd in heaven, Walky, stop talking or she’s going to punch you, and Dorothy isn’t going to do a thing to stop it.
i have had both sides of this exact conversation…
Oh my GOD, Walky sucks.
Walky, you fuck.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand like that you’ve lost him.
…And we’ve got a new runner up for Best Parents!
Runner-up? I mean, they’re at least TIED with Dorothy’s parents right now. Second to none.
Hank’s made some truly impressive turnaround, though.
He only contributes half of their score though.
Dorothy’s parents don’t even come close to this.
Bestest parents! Like, when the bar for parents of trans kids is usually at “doesn’t actually throw them out of the house, but still dismisses their identity”, truly supportive parents, much less truly supportive parents who go out of their way like this to show their unconditional support and love?
Yeah, there’s no way anyone’s topping that.
Good parent gold medal won with a world record that’ll last a good few decades at least.
I really hope the low, low bar you’re describing isn’t an inevitable universal. A friend of mine discovered recently that her youngest child was a girl, and her feelings were mainly feelings of relief because her child had finally figured out what was going on with them, and she had seen her wrestle but be unable to figure out what was going on and what she was until recently.
Of course, being cis, I have no idea how bad transphobia is in the Netherlands, where I live, but it sounds pretty awful where you live.
Sounds like your friend is clearing that low bar admirably and being a truly awesome mom. I always like to hear happy stories of trans people with positive families cause it tends to be rare.
Though, getting slightly less rare every year, which is super awesome and a sign that activism is working to make things less shit for the next generation.
I have some friends in the Netherlands, and their son is trans. Their opinion (and their son’s opinion) is that transphobia is alive and well there, but it’s nowhere near as virulent and violent as in North America – the kid generally encounters teachers misgendering out of ignorance/laziness and some degree of medical gatekeeping which has its roots in intersectional ableism (he is autistic, and even in the Netherlands, society seems to have the attitude of “here is your difference chit. You get one, so spend it wisely.” – i.e., you can be a visible minority OR disabled – with one and only one disability/chronic illness – OR you can be a gender minority OR you can have a non-het sexual orientation OR you can be not a member of the prevailing religion but you get one and only one… thus he’s got a lot of “Do you know how uncommon it is to be trans and autistic? And autistic people have difficulty with gender roles* anyway so have you considered it might just be your autism?”), but he has never encountered the kind of violent and virulent transphobia which is common here. He’s had only mild bullying at school for it which his school dealt with at once, he’s never been beaten up, he’s never been threatened with corrective rape, nobody makes an issue of which bathroom he uses, etc. Admittedly, one anecdote is not data – but they’re pretty involved in the trans community there, and they say a lot of the stuff that is super common here would be news-worthy there. Not to say that the Dutch don’t also have their own issues on that front, just that they’re probably 10 years ahead of North America.
*uhh yes and no but off topic for this thread – cliff’s notes: yes autistic people have trouble performing gender in a typical way but no that doesn’t mean it’s not possible for an autistic person to be trans and actually best available data suggests that we’re like 5-10x as likely to be trans than the general population.
UK here. Transman, with another transman close friend. His mother was utterly manipulative and bongoy and refused to really acknowledge that it was not only his identity but damned important to him. My mother was similar but without the manipulation, really, and more passive bongoiness.
(And assuming the word filter is still in place, the meaning may be slightly distorted, but I’m afraid that is the best word for the petty digs they both used.)
We both started transitioning in our adulthood- he’s still early in his transition and still in contact with his family; I’ve been living as male for coming up ten years and dropped contact with mine after my wedding two years ago. For the record.
I also have an older friend who refuses to transition, partly because they believe their mother would be devastated and their siblings extremely nasty. (Although from what’s been said, I think their mother would surprise them- and their siblings wouldn’t…)
The point being (and oh, for an edit button) that while some countries are better than others, getting a shit reception from family is by no means uncommon. Sad to say but the Ruttons really are being unusually supportive.
It makes me wonder how the various other parents would react to the hypothetical of their child coming out as identifying contrary to their assigned gender. Some (Seigals) we could guess, whereas others are more of a mystery.
Not sure that the incident described here is quite as positive as you think. At this point, all they did was make a toy their kid wanted but couldn’t get. That could have happened before they had any awareness of Carla’s actual gender.
But we do know from other strips that her parents continued their unqualified support even after they knew her identity, so for that they still make the grade as bestest.
Yeah, pretty sure Carla has close to the best parents of the strip so far (next to Dina, whose parents are also awesome from what we’ve seen so far).
I mean, I’m sure they’re not perfect. Knowing Carla and her own foibles I wouldn’t be surprised is her folks are like a 9 or 10 on the classism scale, but still. They did good by her.
why walky why
Fart > Gas(oline)
When you think about it, don’t engines have to fart continuously?
Walky can be so dense. Dorothy should slap him upside the head for that.
That would just kill more brain cells.
Does he even have any left?
They’re not dead, just mostly inactives
Panel 2 face is my favorite face. Also, Carla’s parents are best parents. I’m so happy ♥
Yes, real engineers can make the best toys. I wasn’t a real engineer so my toys were so-so.
I know! It’s just so full of awe and gratitude, and love. You can practically see how much she lights up just thinking about that moment.
Just looking at it, I can’t help but smile.
As an old BTAS fan, I find myself thinking of Alison LaPlaca’s fine and moving performance toward the end of the eponymous episode, “Baby Doll” – when Mary Dahl, struggling with her own sort of dysphoria, is wonder-struck to finally see a reflection of the body she knows she should have:
“Look… that’s me in there. The real me. There I am.”
It would appear Walky, as well, wouldn’t be who he is today, without Dexter & Monkey Master.
For be… okay, just for worse.
he’s just so grating I’m sorry
I wonder if it’s too late for Walky to develop a filter. I’ve known some people that developed them late, and some who never did.
It’s definitely not too late. He’s still in a child state because he has the luxury of being in a child state. If he gets a big dose of “I’m responsible for crap? CRAP!” he’ll get a filter. But he’ll bongo and moan and whine about it the whole way.
RIP WALKY
Walky: -> [
Walky: –> [
Walky: —> [
Walky: —-^ [
This is his major flaw. He can’t really comprehend people’s problem over his own. And he’s easily amused. Ah well.
Carla has been usurped as Chief Asshole.
I thought Mike holds that title.
It appears to be passed down from storyline to storyline.
It’s like the idiot ball.
Mike’s pretty much vanished from the story, if you haven’t noticed. He’s act 1 comedy relief filler and foil, and ever since the inciting incident of Becky showing up we’re into act 2.
Eh. We’ll come back to Ethan’s arc eventually.
Also, Mike has so been present since Becky showed up. Surely you recall his epic conversation with Joyce’s mother.
For fucks sake Walky.
Honestly, I couldn’t even crack a smile at that punchline because this is one of the most sincere vulnerable moments from Carla ever and probably the only moment, unless I’m misremembering, in which she actually shows this much real emotion to someone else, in which she talks about her childhood and people being asses to her…and Walky follows it up with something that crude and dismissive. I just. Walky. You insatiable ass.
But yes, best parents award for her toy-making wonderful mom and dad!
An insatiable ass that’s always passing hot air.
LIKE MONKEY MASTER!
But seriously, you’re right. Carla is OPENING UP HERE. I’m friend-shipping it right now. Walky’s a lost cause, but Dorothy’s going to make a point of bonding with Carla. Possibly by asking to see Ultra Car episodes to see what she was missing.
Yup, and I think this is one reason among many why she doesn’t open up and instead avoids all human contact as best she can. Because at best she’s going to get this sort of ignorant dismissal and at neutral she’s going to get Mary and at worse the people who “did” stuff to her and at worst, dead.
And it’s frustrating because Carla needs moments where she’s allowed to express emotions other than detachment and trying to pretend to be an asshole she’s not very good at being because vulnerability is punished too harshly.
Like fuck, I don’t think she’s opened this much up to Sal and she’s got a freaking crush on Sal and spends most of her social time with her. And Walky just farted all over that.
She has a crush on Sal?
It is an interpretation of Carla’s face in the last panel of that strip.
Hey look, an excuse to post this fanart.
http://dumbingofage.tumblr.com/post/111965664642/x0whitelily0x-ah-yes-carlasal-yet-another#notes
I’ve heard that theory before. Personally, I don’t see it- I may be surprised yet, but Willis is excellent at portraying real chemistry between people, and I just don’t get that from them.
…Also I really want Carla to crush on a lady who isn’t straight, and I think Sal is entirely into dudes? But Carla doesn’t need sad heartbreak over crushing on a lady she has no chance with. She needs sweet happy snuggles (if she’s into that in this universe).
We know she isn’t down to f with Marcie so she’s at least not sexually attracted to girls, romantically we don’t have confirmation either way but, really, chances are she’s straighter than a ruler at a circle convention.
She has the same identity from Walkyverse. Homoromantic Asexual Trans-woman.
I’m fairly sure Nightsbridge was talking about Sal. I don’t recall her ever explicitly stating her sexuality but I’m sure, in both universes, that she’s only ever shown interest in men.
Yeah, Sal’s straighter than a ruler, so I’m presuming it’s a sad heartbreak arc or if she’s lucky a “I initially wanted to get close to her for romantic feelings, but hanging out, she’s actually really cool and bonded as real friends” arc. I’m kinda holding out some hope for the latter.
Mary is NEUTRAL? …..can I offer you internet hugs for this being the world we live in? I’m just gonna leave them right here in the comment, and you can do with them as you will.
(>^.^)> (>^.^)> (>^.^)> (>^.^)> (>^.^)>
Pretty sure no one’s meant to “crack a smile” at the punchline, here. Walky’s being an insensitive dick, pretty blatantly.
That’s a very touching story from Carla. It’s nice to finally see her go into why Ultra Car is so important to her. Seeing how intertwined her love of the character is with her parents’ support is an interesting wrinkle.
The punchline kinda leaves me cold though.
I know Walky likes to challenge people about their “nerd cred.” It happened when Dorothy asserted she knew the episode they first watched together, but I feel like he should understand having an emotional attachment to a show/property that can be around when people can’t. He lost his sister when she went to boarding school, and he lost his only(?) friend Billie when she became popular during high school, but he always had Dexter and Monkey Master to enjoy. However, he said himself, “It sucks watching them alone, y’know? […] It’s become a thing I enjoy by myself. Which is sometimes good, but not always.” It speaks to using a show to fill loneliness, appreciating that it’s there while lamenting that it’s the only thing there. A sentiment not too dissimilar from Carla’s.
It feels like Walky completely dismissing/ignoring Carla’s emotional attachment to the show and toy to stupidly (ha, fart episode) try and win their nerd fight reads as him being more of an asshole than he would be? Even knowing that he likes to get into nerd fights and present as a “manly man,” he’s not an idiot and he’s not completely apathetic.
I know it’s the punchline of a very wordy strip so there’s not a lot of room for nuance, I guess I’m just hoping the next strip shows Walky being a bit more human.
i guess i feel like being an asshole is one of the most human things there is since so many of us seem to excel at it
Yes. He is acting like an asshole.
He probably doesn’t realize to what extent.
Walky has… empathy issues.
No, that’s not right. Walky has AWARENESS issues.
It’s not that he can’t care about or relate to other peoples’ problems and emotions. That part of his psyche is working. It’s that he DOESN’T relate because he’s oblivious to them.
He’s not an asshole, he’s just self-absorbed.
This. Though I would argue his self-absorption is letting him be a massive asshole at moments, but that that doesn’t have to be a permanent condition if he’s willing to put in the work and let himself grow.
I really like that piece, that to Carla, Ultra Car isn’t just the show that clued her in to being trans or was there when she had no friends, but a lot of enemies. It’s proof that her parents would be there for her no matter what and would do whatever they could to do right by her.
And that’s really really powerful and amazing and makes me tear up just thinking about it.
I love Carla SO MUCH and her panel 2 expression has got to be the goshdarn cutest thing I have ever seen. Look at how happy she is!!
I feel this as well on a personal level, relating to fictional characters as a kid/teen, when I had no friends. I almost just cried reading Carla say this.
I love you the most, Carla.
(Walky, I love you too tho. Because sometimes fart jokes are really just the best xD)
I just remembered this is my Slipshine avatar, too =D (well, before I let it lapse, because come on, SOMETIMES I need to not be reading porno comix)
Sadly, Carla, you picked one of the worst people to try to open up to. u_u
Monkey Master farting? How did that come to be?
Did he put something too spicy in his Tummy Prison, or something?
….
I dread to imagine Walky’s first attempt to turn in a college essay.
This is also my first post of the night, so let’s see what the Gravatar Roulette gets me. For ONCE I hope I’m not Walky, because dammit Walky.
And I’m Joe.
….
Dammit, I wish I was Walky. Joe’s not EVIL like Mary, but… even Walky’s got more awareness than Joe. Yes, even after today’s comic strip.
….
That raises an interesting question in my mind about Joe’s views on trans women, and how they differ (if at all) from his views on cis women.
Joe strikes me as a hell of ot more self aware than Walky. He also doesn’t strike me as a bigot.
Joe’s cool with gay people, is kinda respectful of women’s boundaries, and seems to be striking up a friendship with Joyce.
Meanwhile, Walky’s childish, immature and has berated Joyce on pretty much anything to do with her religion.
Joe wins.
I really don’t want to know his views on trans women given how bad his views on lesbians are and how bad his reactions to bisexuality have been.
Like, I get that enough in my daily life.
What reactions to bisexuality? All that I’ve noticed is him guessing that Danny might be talking about being gay*, which since Danny never came out and said what he was talking about, he can hardly be blamed for. Becky has had worse reactions to bisexuality than that.
*Which to a rational person (i.e. not Danny) would be more of a real problem for his relationship with Amber than being bi, and it’s not like in our heavily heteronormative society it’s never happened that someone who turned out to be gay thought they were straight early in life, so…
He called a queer personal discovery an “excrutiating personal discovery”, chastises Danny for getting giggly about his jokes about dating men, and has hyper-exaggerated reactions about male sexuality including warning Danny off thinking he could be hot, saying that a table with more men in it than women is a sausage fest, and literally putting on earmuffs and a blindfold on as a visual distancing from the very idea of Danny masturbating in the same room:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2012/comic/book-2/02-choosing-my-religion/tissue/
And yes, would agree Becky’s indeed had worse reactions to bisexuality, or at least more openly hostile ones in her interaction with Billie.
Still am not at all wanting to know what he thinks about trans women before he gets a thorough queer education.
I may be misremembering, but I didn’t see Becky’s reaction as hostile, just completely ignorant. “Is there even a word for that?” Certainly an example of bi-invisibility, but a fairly justified one, given Becky’s upbringing.
Danny’s was about the same and that was him figuring out that he was bi.
True. But I think it is similar to Walky’s fail in that it was a fail from ignorance*.
And I love that later when she found out more and met someone who openly identified as bi, she was totally cool with it and supportive. Becky adapts quickly which is why I think she’ll be the first besides Ethan to support Jocelyne when she comes out.
I don’t really agree with you on the Joe front.
Self-discovery of any kind feels to me like “excruciating personal discovery” to Joe; and for his comment on Danny’s nervous giggle it felt more like he’d unknowingly hit a nerve and then basically gone “I don’t understand your reaction”. At the same time, the fact that he said what he would say to Ethan if it were a date was probably what he would say if it wasn’t (have fun and use protection) seems pretty gay-accepting to me.
Totally agree with the hyper masculinity, but it feels more like a coping mechanism to me. If hyper masculine men don’t have to deal with their feelings, then if Joe is hyper masculine, neither does he.
(As for the masturbation strip, how else are you supposed to react to your long-term friend masturbating in the same room? I never understood forcing a pair of uninvolved young adults to share a room- but basically saying “I’m giving you space to take care of that” genuinely feels like a decent, if incredibly awkward, move to me. But seriously, how do horny teens in shared rooms handle masturbation? Only ever do it in the halfbath or when you manage to get the room to yourself? Try to be quiet? Be Sarah and make a point of it to get a reaction? I can not understand the logic in the shared rooms at all.)
I think Joe’s problem is he sexualizes lesbian and bisexual women for heterosexual enjoyment. I do think he has the point of being not against them, though, which is a very common thing to exist in the dude bro. Then again, I think Joe is actually SINCERE in the fact he’s exist positive feminist versus being a dude bro chauvinist. It’s just its rare to encounter the former when so many fictional characters (and RL people) are the latter.
He may be sincere, but I’m not sure he’s actually right. He may think he’s he’s a positive feminist, but he’s shown very little interest in any women other than as sex toys for him.
The current interaction with Joyce being the first real exception.
It’s a little more complicated or perhaps a better term being that it’s a little more simple than that. Joe is in college to have as much sex as humanly possible. He wants women to have a good time, pays enough attention to do a sex video and a guy-guy-girl threesome, and respects boundaries. It’s just he’s uninterested in anything serious and lets people know that.
“Anything serious” not merely being relationships, yes. He’s genuinely got a big thing with dealing with ANYTHING serious, from self-discovery to sincere discussions. It’s his way of separating himself from his feelings and issues, I feel.
Huh. It just occurred to me that DoA doesn’t really have a full-on dudebro character. I don’t think Joe qualifies because he does respect women’s boundaries and always ensures his partners are fully consenting.
Ryan would surely qualify as a dudebro (from what little we’ve seen of him) but he’s not by any means a major character, except for his effect on Joyce.
I’m a long way beyond college age, but it certainly seems like the dudebro is a pretty common type among that cohort these days. Has Willis missed an opportunity here?
“fully consenting”, sometimes with the help of alcohol, especially for the threesomes.
Joe prides himself on being all about consent, but he’s actually pretty lousy at boundaries. Look how much it took for Sarah to get him to back off.
I’d actually love to see more of Joe’s “game”. See how he actually goes about picking up women. How he deals with rejection that’s more tentative than the screaming, punching and threats we’ve seen make him back off. How hard he pushes a girl who’s interested but not willing to jump into bed right then and there.
As it is, we’ve seen so little that we’re relying on hints and interpolations from the few bits we’ve seen.
But yeah, Joe’s our dudebro. He’s just not actually a rapist.
*shakes head* Oh Walky…
This is like every conversation I’ve had with one of my exs. Still friends actually, even though I’d like to bonk him over the head every so often.
I was idly reading the comments while my roommate was venting about her job, and it slowly dawned on me that she has had EXACTLY Walky’s response to things like this. All I could think was, I suddenly understand much better why I don’t try to hang out with you in public. Or in private much, for that matter.
Which is odd, because usually I’m the Walky in whatever group I’m in.
<3 Carla's parents.
It almost sounds like Walkey has a death wish.
Walky, I will never spell that name right the first time. >.<
Maybe he just learned that Dexter and Monkey Master now has M Night Shymalan directing the movie?
That would explain it.
That’s a charming story and all, Carla, but it turns out the actual quality of a show doesn’t improve because of a personal connection to it. Not in a way that’ll win you arguments with fans of other shows with equally personal connections to them.
I’m curious to see if Carla’s self-righteousness will prove to be a genuine character flaw. Carla has faced tremendous adversity due to who she is, and she’s chosen to adopt a “accept who I am or fuck off” attitude. This is fine in itself, but I think she’s extended this to “accept my opinions/way of doing things/etc. or fuck off”.
I mean right here in this strip, she is teetering towards arguing that “I have faced adversity and this show helped me through it, therefore I win the argument”. Perhaps a character like Walky who is totally oblivious to her trans status would be a good person to show her that being a jerk isn’t okay even if other people are jerks to you.
This seems like a well thought out counterpoint to the ‘Walky’s an asshole’ comments. However, I regret to inform you that you are on the internet. If you are in possession of flame-retardant clothing, I’d recommend putting it on. I’ll now be running away from you.
But ultimately, this isn’t about which show was objectively better. This is about Carla’s right to post Ultra Car on her door without being mocked. And personal connection has EVERYTHING to do with that.
I didn’t think of this in so many words when I wrote my post, but I think this is kind of the point.
Carla thinks it’s about her right to post things on her door without being mocked, as she believes Walky is denying her rights or mocking her personally. And while Walky did mock her by calling her a loser (impersonally), he wasn’t denying that she was allowed to post it, or to like the show; he simply questioned her judgment since he believes the show to be of very poor quality. He did so in a very insensitive and rude manner, yes, and that was wrong of him.
But it seems Carla may not be able to separate his rather impersonal criticism of her. Walky doesn’t seem to know Carla and doesn’t seem to care about her being female or anything else; only her liking a show he doesn’t matters. He’s being adversarial without victimizing her, but she may be a bit stuck in a victim mindset. To clarify, Walky was indeed being a jerk to insult the show she obviously liked like that, so it’s not like I’m defending him as far as that goes.
I’m not so sure that’s how she always operates, but it’s been a bit of a trend thus far. I’m interested to see how it develops.
Ugh, I hate that term “victim mindset” cause it’s always thrown at people who are actually being victimized, often repeatedly by a bigoted society and used to diminish their right to note that.
Like, not saying you’re doing that, just reacting to that particular phrase cause of my previous experiences with those that have used it.
Similarly, in your OP, I disagree with a lot of your points, but I think it’s due mostly to a different perspective on the situation. Like, Carla isn’t trying to win some stupid nerd flexing argument. Like, Walky is. But to Carla, what is important is that people aren’t slagging the show that literally meant the world to her and has great personal resonance.
And that’s the crux of their disagreement. Walky’s thinking Carla’s stating of a fandom is an invitation to play “who’s got the biggest nerd dick” and “who’s tastes are crap” and that’s not actually the game Carla is interested in.
And why Walky thinks this game is worthwhile or some winner-takes-all thing I think is reflected in your OP’s construction. Or rather the assumption in it that there’s such a thing as “objective” quality.
Because there’s not.
Sorry, but that’s the truth, works of art are subjective experience and we always bring in our cultural perspectives into experiencing them. A work may resonate like crazy to one person, but to another, may contain an element or a trope that is hella alienating. One work may have elements that are crafted well in one perspective, but to someone not interested in those elements, that focus is going to grate like crazy (see any gamer argument about gameplay versus story or any film critic argument about cinematic aesthetics versus storytelling).
And even if you were to argue that craft elements can be objectively good or bad, there’s so many people who ironically and unironically love what supposedly “bad” craft elements can put together because it hits home and feels more raw and real to them.
Like Ed Wood has a cult following for a reason and critics like The Cinema Snob have built careers out of finding the worth and love in what others would dismiss as garbage.
She’s not trying to “win” a thing, because winning subjective tastes don’t exist. But she has a right to argue for why a work resonated for her. To hold bitterness of how her fandom was deemed commercially less worthwhile than the fandom of the “default humans” of cis het males. To want to defend a work that may have saved her life or at least let her start the process of being true to herself.
And if that’s being an asshole, then I’m genuinely not sure you know what being an asshole means.
Several of the things you’ve countered me on are things I didn’t actually say or misrepresent how I’ve said them. I never claimed there was objective quality in art, only that personal resonance is not a criteria that is likely to convince others, particularly people like Walky.
Second, I never claimed that I believe such an argument is worth having or winning, and I don’t appreciate being accused of such to suggest I don’t understand subjectivity in art – Walky’s need to incite a fandom war is very immature, but note that Carla is no better at first – two strips ago she leaps into an equally immature accusation that D&MM is a “baby show” before she brings up any personal resonance.
Regardless, I never once referred to Carla as an asshole. I did describe her as self-righteous, which I believe she is to a degree, though it is often quite justified. I did characterize her behavior with the word “jerk”, but it’s different to characterize someone’s behavior in a particular circumstance than to simply label them “an asshole.”
Frankly, your post reads as if you believe I am ignorant, uninformed, or unintelligent. I always try to assume otherwise of people and I appreciate the same courtesy.
What I believe, essentially, is this: Walky’s behavior was inappropriate and immature and Carla is perfectly within her rights to defend herself and her preferences. However, her reaction has neither smoothed the situation over, mollified Walky while standing her own ground, or otherwise resolved the situation. Instead, she has escalated it. I’m curious to see if that is a habit that will land her in trouble sometime – or not!
I don’t think you are unintelligent and I apologize if I misread your argument or made you feel diminished or put down.
I still think they are having two different conversations, Walky wanting a drag down fight of who wins the nerd fight and Carla talking about personal resonance and why she’ll counter any jerk trying to slag on her or her favorite show.
“This is about Carla’s right to post Ultra Car on her door without being mocked.”
Does she have such a right? Does everyone, or only people with a deep personal reason for liking a show, or only people with a deep personal reason tied to being part of a marginalized group? If the former, why? If the latter, what degree of responsibility does Walky have for determining who he is and isn’t allowed to mock?
She certainly has the right to put whatever she wants on the door without being personally attacked for her choices, but she doesn’t have the right to prevent the object in question from being criticized.
So I’d say Walky’s initial comment that whoever put it up was a “”loser” was wrong. But that doesn’t mean he can’t argue that the show she likes wasn’t very good – as long as he doesn’t claim that liking it means SHE is bad/dumb/a loser (which he did, and has yet to apologize for).
Okay, wow. This is going to be long and probably draw a lot of flames.
For all practical purposes, there is no such thing as an objective right. Rights do not exist in the sense that a rock exists or gravity exists. No amount of studying reality will tell us what rights are out there. We can’t convince someone who thinks we don’t have a right that we do have it by showing them the right like we would show them an object. There’s no no innate universal principle that will reliably and clearly smack someone in the face if they ignore someone else’s rights, the way that ignoring, say, gravity will do to you. In every way that objectiveness is useful or measurable, rights do not have that property. We will often argue about them as if there is some objective truth that we are striving for, but our methods of seeking to understand and debate rights are not the empirical sort that we employ for studying any objective truth, and do not on close examination seem in any way prone to uncovering or demonstrating a hitherto unknown aspect of reality.
Instead, rights are best understood as an alloy of belief, assertion, respect for others, social mores, and cultural paradigms, all of which are dynamically evolving in a sort of interrelated memetic ecosystem.
Rights can be framed as relationships and obligations (both positive and negative) of one class of people and institution towards another. For example, one way the right to freedom of speech in the American Constitution might be framed is as “Group of Institutions A (the various levels and branches of government) is obliged not impose or threaten any punishment against any member of class B (all individuals and institutions) on the sole basis of group B’s expressed views and ideas.” (This isn’t the only way or a perfect way of describing it, so save your flames. I’m just trying to give an example of rights as relational obligations.) As another example, in an aristocracy nobles might have (de facto, again, not arguing objective truth) a right to specific gestures of respect by their lessers. This can be expressed as “People of class A (peasantry) are obliged to bow and show respect to people of class B (nobility).”
Rights ultimately become established when people assert them, fight for them, and force others to honor and respect the relational obligations, to the point where they become subconsciously ingrained and shape the way that we regard ethics, and to where we feel allowed and even obligated to censure individuals who violate them. They become disestablished when people defy those obligations to the point where society at large no longer recognizes them.
So does Carla have a right not to be mocked for having Ultra Car on her door? Well she’s asserting that (if not in so many words) and she’s fighting for it. Walky doesn’t recognize it. Whether society at large does recognize it depends on various factors like whether society thinks it’s inappropriate to come up to someone’s residence and start loudly badmouthing stuff they care about, or whether society holds a double-standard for trans people, or how highly the feeling of Walky’s freedom of expression and opinion is valued, or whether exceptions to that freedom are to be recognized, and so on. It’s a dynamic exchange, an often brutal back-and-forth fight to establish or reject in the larger social conscience obligations, respect, and freedoms.
My point in the earlier post wasn’t that she HAS a right not to have the stuff on her door criticized. My point was that this exchange must be understood in terms of Carla’s personal space being invaded and her tastes, preferences, and fanhood being attacked in that personal space on no more grounds than that she expressed them, rather than in terms of simply comparing and critiquing the qualities of two different cartoon shows.
And to be clear, I would be willing to assert and defend that as her right, within certain bounds of taste. (If it was a swastika on her door, for example, that would be another story.) But I won’t say that she has the right in the sense that society at large has decided to respect and honor it. It hasn’t been established as such in the collective psyche.
Thank you, Reltzik! I was about to post something similar.
Basically “right” = “how we think the world should be”. And a “right” must be defended if it is to exist.
Sigh. Someone else who wants to attack my rights by denying that they exist. You can try to diminish them all you want by denying their objectivity, but that misses the entire point.
Carla has a fundimental right to express to express an opinion and this includes expressing it on her door. Walky has a fundamental right to express his opinion as well, and this includes expressing it to her face. Both have a right to be as snarky, judgemental, and within limits offensive, as they choose. Both have availed themselves of these rights in the past. Currently Walky is being an insensitive immature jerk. This is his right, but it is not a good thing.
But it is unclear as yet how serious a thing it is.
Those who would deny the individual the basic right to express an opinion are turning their back on civilization. Whether you consider that objective in any sense is a matter of vocabulary. And no, that doesn’t mean that someone who creates a communication channel for a particular purpose, such as Willis, is violating anyone’s fundamental rights by regulating the use of that channel AS LONG AS that is not the only channel available for an individual to express those opinions.
I’d agree that Walky has a right to express that opinion in general. But as a time and place matter, doing it LOUDLY RIGHT OUTSIDE HER DORM DOOR is gauche, outside good social norms, and worthy of censure. It’s not WHAT he’s saying, it’s where and how he is saying it. That violates what little personal space college students have and brings the fight right up to where she lives, studies, sleeps, and unwinds. Denying individuals respect for the privacy of an inner sanctum ALSO attacks the basic ideas of boundaries that make up our civilization. There must be a balance in these interests.
Carla openly and ruthlessly mocks everything and everyone she thinks is stupid, and very rarely shows much empathy that isn’t buried under a facade of snark. This is not to say that I think that she’s a bad person in any way, she’s probably one of my favorite characters, it’s just that I think she’s closed off emotionally which often allows her to act selfishly. What Walky is doing here is pretty much the same thing Carla was doing to Billie and Ruth; deflecting their personal issues with humor instead of showing empathy.
Thank you. I’m uncomfortable with the way everyone’s demonizing Walky for doing, essentially, the same thing Carla does to everyone else.
I…really don’t think she has the right to post shit on her door without being mocked, dude, trans status notwithstanding.
I don’t think Carla is trying to make this a “I have emotional attachment therefore my show is better,” thing. She’s now JUST defending Ultra Car as something worth watching, if only to herself. At this point it’s not about UC being better than D&MM.
And then Walky shits all over her moment because he’s a (mostly unintentional but still very real) fucking asshole.
I like Walky most of the time. Then he’s got high points that make me like him more like his talk with Amazigirl. And then there are moments like now where I hope Dorothy smacks him upside the head again.
Now, yes. At the start of the conversation, a couple of strips back, D&MM was a “dumb, baby show” that “Ultra Car took shits on”.
She started with the same kind of nerd fandom bullshit that Walky did. This strip she moved into her deeper more personal reasons for liking the show. And Walky didn’t follow, which does make him a bit of an ass, since he should have realized that the context had changed and this was more personal, but then Walky’s always been kind of oblivious to personal stuff – mostly by design.
Personally, I think it might be interesting if D&MM was really the better show, as far as such things can be objective, but UC just resonated better with Carla. I know there are certainly things I like for personal reasons even though I’m well aware of their shortcomings. And others whose quality I can recognize, even though I don’t enjoy them.
I’m not remembering any significant talk Walky had with Amazigirl. Schpoonman, could you jog my memory? Since D&MM and UC are basically the Dumbverse instantiation of the Walkyverse, I’d be willing to bet the were pretty good — flawed but brilliant in their own irreverent way.
I don’t think that “Actual quality” really exists in terms of media. Media gains meaning from the ability for people to find value and connection to it. So Carla’s love of ultra car is a sign of it’s quality to her.
She really enjoyed the show because it made her happy and Walky says the show about farts is better. I think if we’re comparing faulty arguments then Carla still wins.
Her reason (parents made her a toy) is maximum level subjective.
Walky applying a subjective criterion / rule is fair game.
As a Literature Professor–subjectivity is the nature of art.
But why are you presuming anything about the objective quality of these fictional TV shows we know literally nothing about outside of characters’ biased opinions?
can u not
Aww, that story is pretty adorable.
And I’m pretty sure Walky has terminal butts disease. It’s fried his brain and that’s why he’s doing poorly in class.
There’s an episode where Monkey Master farts every ten seconds and gets together with Sandra Bullock? Are you sure you don’t mean Sandra Buttock?
walky i will kick your nipple off
[Insert Jeff Foxworthy Joke Here]
Honestly I half expect Dorothy to just break up with him on the spot in the next strip.
No, if Dorothy breaks up with him, he snd Danny will form the club of evil ex-boyfriends and invite all the others she dated…Oh wait, wring comic.
It’s easy to get confused here, what with the two freckled redheaded surly Canadian girls with hearts of gold running around
“My parents and Ultra Car…that’s all I had growing up.”
So for a while I’ve been concerned about how the Rutten’s received Carla’s coming-out. This seems like an indicator that things are good between them.
Now I’m curious at what age Carla fully realized she was female. From her “Giving voice to everything in my head I didn’t understand yet,” it sounds like Ultra Car WAS her female self for awhile. Maybe her parents knew that she needed that outlet for expression–or maybe they just knew that their son (at that point, maybe?) really, really liked this girl car character, and that it was important.
Now I’m thinking of little Carla, maybe still presenting as a boy at that point, being ostracized for reasons she doesn’t understand, ALSO being teased for liking a girl cartoon. <3
Yup, that very likely happened.
And if her arc is anything like mine or a lot of my friends, I’m sure she spent a good amount of time in that limbo space of really identifying with certain works but only realizing why years later.
And infinite smiles for how supportive her family is hinted to be.
… I think I might be one of those folks.
(let’s be real: I’ve followed Assigned Male, Misfile, and What’s Normal Anyway? since I encountered each of them, and aside from Dumbing of Age, they’re the only webcomics I bother with anymore. 4/4 for trans representation and 3/4 are about trans issues.
Hell, I don’t even follow any autistic webcomics (though I do follow autistic serial webnovels… but oh wait both of those are also by trans authors and have trans subtext like whoa. I read novels! … which all have plots involving the choice between conformance to expectations or self honesty and abiding by your internal code of values and being true to yourself. Damn, nothing I consume in media doesn’t deal with this stuff on at least a subtext basis, does it?).
Don’t mind me just realizing that what’s going on with me has been super obvious for like years and I was playing the denial game hard. >.>
*Massive hugs* And lots of excitement for you figuring stuff out.
And yeah, I’ve been there. The denial game got comical at parts to look back at it, so be kind to yourself as you figure out pieces.
Lots of “oh nah, lots of guys are super into lesbian comics like Dykes to Watch Out For or Hothead Paisan and identify strongly and make jokes to their friends about how they’d be trans if they had the right body shape and can’t look at themselves in the mirror cause they suddenly feel really sad when they do that and really connect with that ‘lesbro’ character on the L Word (cause the writer is transphobic and she’s clearly supposed to be a trans woman)…”. Even the comic character I took my name from I realized I really identified with cause she has a major arc where she has her body altered by someone else and then has to go on a big personal quest to set it right even though everyone else is saying that alteration looks better. Yeah, no signs…
Anyways, massive hugs and know that we’ve got your back no matter where your personal discovery leads! And that I personally am excited to see you discover yourself!
Humans are really, truly excellent at the denial game. It’s one of the major constants in the human race. Self discovery and understanding is, for all of us, a long and painful road that many don’t even begin to walk down.
But when the steps we take are as momentous as gender identity and working through what that means for us… That is still one of the biggest, most jarring self discoveries I have ever had. And in hindsight, yeah, there’s so many red flags. I believe that’s true for all people under the trans* umbrella. But it’s human nature to see things the way we expect or want to, and the steps to stop and open our eyes are incredibly important to our self-development.
I’m done with the counsellor-leaning talk now. Sincerely, congratulations.
I guess Walky ran out intelligent answers at the same time Carla ran out of because I said so answers. This I can sympathize with since even to this day I have a tendency to like characters who aren’t all that popular, but that being said only a few people getting something is not enough to maintain marketability which means inevitable cancellation. Incidentally Carla’s quest to find an Ultra-car toy is similar to my own to find Dr. Claw’s Madmobile. I was told that it existed, but searched all over without finding one.
I would watch that cartoon.
*By that I mean what Walky said.
Goddammit it Walky. Right now he makes me want to punch him in the face.
He’s falling from grace faster than his marks.
It’s a race to the bottom. I wonder which would fall faster in a vacuum?
…
I’m sorry, I’m just trying to process the words “Walky” and “grace” together like that, and it’s difficult.
Can Carla’s parents adopt Becky? Is that a solution that we can get going, because they seem very supportive (and also they’re rich, right?)
Becky probably needs to read about thirty pages of the gender studies book to even know that transgender is a thing, and then there’s the question of whether she’d accept it. I’d guess she would, especially given how things have played out, but given her religious background it’s not a sure thing. And I doubt Carla’s folks would bring anyone into the family that they don’t know for solid sure would be supportive of Carla.
… also, no one working the Becky problem knows about Carla’s parents.
Can Carla’s parents be every queer kids’ parents now and forever, because Bob damn would that be an amazing thing to see.
Ruttech Queer Child Adoption Agency: We’re Your Parents Now, Have A Hug.
You realize that you have painted yourself into a corner here, Willis? Your fandom is going to demand that the story eventually reveals that Carla still has that little home-made toy, no doubt occupying a place of honor within her dorm room. Or the “Damning of the Willis” will reach a level never before seen or even imagined.
Oh, I think we can assume that that toy is very much in her room in a very carefully chosen location that is probably the one part of her dorm that isn’t trashed like every other college student’s.
And that after the Mary incident, she probably played with it until she calmed down a little and then called her parents. /my headcanon is real to me, damnitt
Of course, IF the toy ever – god forbid – is broken Carla knows that she only has to push one button and a nearby 3D printer will spit out a new one. Not the same thing, of course, but a reminder that no matter what, you just can’t keep down someone as cool as CARLA RUTTEN!!!
It can be the same thing if the new one produced by the 3D printer isn’t a replacement, but a set of replacement parts. After enough accidents you’d start running into the Ship of Theseus question, but a new wing won’t make it not the childhood toy anymore.
…the current child generation will have exactly that discussion with their grand children, won’t they?
“Best hammer I ever had. Got it from my grandfather. Replaced the head once and the handle three times.”
You are probably right which makes something cold settle into my gut at the thought of Mary finding out how important it is to her.
I like to think it lives on a little plinth under a glass cover.
The toy was run over by a truck. Because Willis, remember?
was –> will be
Fixed that for you.
I know that Walky is dense, but this is ridiculous. It has to be be a new low for him. Where’s the Walky that was talking to Amazi-Girl on the rooftop a while back?
That Walky was relating to someone he had an investment in being nice to when she had all but flat out stated “I am standing here because I am sad about this thing” and Walky was both scared after hearing she though her other self was going to stab somebody, and was also able to relate over the idea that they needed to be perfect at all times.
Who’s Carla to Walky? Where did this massive emotional bombshell come from when Walky’s argument was that D&MM was funny and goofy and therefore better?
Walky’s argument was that Dexter and Monkey Master wasn’t cancelled after one incomplete season, and was therefor better, and the one not liked by losers. And it was smarter, because it was full of pop culture references.
He didn’t move to ‘fart jokes are funny’ until after she explained her deep personal connection to it.
This seems. Out of character. Walky of all people understands how a cartoon can mean more to someone than just viewing it. He himself lamented on how it made him aware of how much he missed his sister and his best friend (Billie). Even if we’re assuming Walky’s just trying to mess with Carla this comic just seems to want Walky to be VERY clearly in the wrong so there’s not any nuance to it. Even as far as Walky’s immaturity goes, this is basically gone to the point where he also seems to be void of Empathy. I sure do hope this isn’t the end of this interaction. I also feel like Dexter and MM now has to be an even more low brow show so that whatever the Ultra-Car show is superior, probably.
But that’s just my opinion.
source:http://www.dumbingofage.com/2012/comic/book-2/02-choosing-my-religion/sshh/
Hmm, looking back on it this that has a lot more subtext than it leads on. Did Billie just straight up abandon Walky when he was lamenting about being separated from his sister?
I think he’s describing two separate things in his life that weren’t directly connected, but combined led to him being alone.
That said, Billie was not a nice person in high school, so this could go either way.
I mean, this is Walky we’re talking about. It’s pretty in-character for him to have blatant empathy issues for anyone not named Dorothy or Billie.
If Walky says “wow, you have a point” then that means he loses the argument and such a crime cannot pass.
I agree that it seems out of character. Like, Walky can be a dick, but he isn’t generally that much of a dick. Unless that was a quick joke which he is going to follow up with something less dickish in the next comic.
I think he does understand that on one level but isn’t very practiced at thinking about it quite on the same level Carla does. And that he’s more absent-mindedly tripping over his privilege rather than intending to be a douchebag for mustache-twirling reasons.
Like, this isn’t the first time he’s had a major privilege fail moment and if it’s anything like his argument with his sister, I feel he’ll probably be a dick in the short term, but in the long term put some of the pieces together and learn from it.
You keep using that word, but Walky’s privilege is that of young black man’s. Walky is privileged in the same way I am. Even if Carla didn’t have a lot of strong relationships (for obvious reasons) not only does she have a really good relationship with her parents, based on this but also she’s notoriously flush with cash. Walky’s probably middle, upper middle at most, wasn’t really established to have any friends other than Billie and his sister (who stopped liking him or being in his life) and has a doting mother who, while she’s more affectionate to him than his sister, also seems to push him and have high expectations and pressure on him. I can’t imagine a scenario where Linda would make Walky a toy.
He’s “generically beige”. Which is tied up in a lot of other nasty racial issues, but that doesn’t stop it from being a privilege that some other people of the ‘objectively’ same racial background do not have.
“He’s not black enough” is the basic gist of what you’ve said to me, and I take issue with that.
This is something I’ve had strong feelings about for a while but it fucking sickens me.
I would agree, Yotomoe.
He may describe himself as beige but that is not at all some magical bypass from racism, and “passing privilege” (a term I dislike at many times) is one of those things that’s a mean-ass cudgel the second you let slip who you are or it’s “sussed out” and doesn’t spare you from getting a behind the scenes look at nasty beliefs about people who you are.
Yeah, I think Walky’s been fortunate enough to avoid some of it within his own home, but Yotomoe is absolutely right.
I, as a black person, definitely agree with you, especially in light of recent events where black people have been gunned down by police. I feel like the discussion of privilege can sometimes devolve into people believing that everyone that is different from them has lead a charmed life. Wally is still black. Hell, people here have referred to him as “not that black” , caramel or other weird candy variations (whereas who here has ever referred to a white character as having ivory or milky skin?).
Privilege in my opinion shouldn’t be discussed in such absolutes because life is complex like that. For example, Becky’s dad abused her for being gay, but even though Amber is not queer that we know of, her dad was also a piece of shit. Carla is trans buts she’s also white and had loving parents, while Wally is a straight guy but he’s also black and has a rather fucked up family life. And so on.
I totally agree with you because even though I am not mixed, it grinds my gears when people act like being mixed means you’re a magical unicorn that transcends all bias and prejudice.
Ditto. My cousins are mixed and they damn well deal with all the social garbage that comes with being black for it. Mixed race isn’t actually a free pass from racism. And “passing” for a privileged group still leaves you dealing with a whole lot of awful, but now also idiots dismissing that you experience the same bigotries as the group you belong to.
I apologize for how off-topic this is, but seeing your post start with “I, as a black person,” with an avatar of Dorothy just made me snort-giggle.
Lol yeah that is weird
To be fair, some of the references to Walky’s skin color are canon: Dorothy described him early on as “molded caramel” and Walky described Sal as black, but himself as “generically beige”.
That was actually one of the early hints at the racial bias going on in his family.
Big agreement on the privilege/intersectionality stuff though. It’s complicated.
I think an interesting thing is WALKY’S take on his race. It has to have affected his life outside of his family dynamic (and he wasn’t even aware of that being racially affected until very recently), but he doesn’t identify as black and he’s said that he’s never noticed any negativity to his race. Walky is far from great at understanding himself beyond a surface level, though, so what has his experience really been, and how has it affected who he became? It’s something I’d be interested in seeing explored one day.
That said, he’s the favoured child of a presumably-not-poor family and had everything he wanted just dropped into his lap; and he never had any trouble in school. I would definitely describe that as having privilege, ignoring the obvious. (Male, cis, het, etc.) Especially as it impacted his family- set next to his sister, major privilege going on.
He’s now separated from both his family and the educational structure that he exceeded in, so that privilege has largely gone. He hasn’t figured that out yet, because he wasn’t ever aware that it was there.
(At least this is how I’ve taken what’s in the comic to date.)
Although I wonder if he has yet to acknowledge that side of his heritage, given that part of the problem is his family is Sal being treated worse because she’s darker (read: blacker) and he’s supposed to be better because he’s lighter – a common issue for mixed people. I my comment above I mentioned the use of the term “caramel” and others like it to describe Walky, which I find problematic in some ways because mixed race people in US also have a long history of being sexually objectified by other people, thought to be prettier or the best of both worlds in a really fucked up way.
I wonder if his arc will have him explore his identity and quit ignoring it by basically dismissing Sal’s reality on the regular. It’s not so much that he doesn’t know he’s black, it’s that at this point I feel he’s just not ready or interested in thinking about it right now – he’s actually drawn as very dark, and I’m positive that he’s had racialized experiences that he just hasn’t thought about substantially.
Acknowledging Sal’s blackness and struggle means acknowledging his own blackness.
Sal and Walky’s skin tones are identical.
…Oh good. A discussion on race and the twins is never complete without someone commenting on the fact that their skin tone is coloured the same.
In the interest of optimism I’ll assume this is an innocent bit of confusion but holy hell has that point been discussed to death. Racial stereotypes are not really about colour. They’re about physical attributes, academic abilities and behaviour. Racism is a hell of a lot deeper than “we have opinions on your skin tone”.
That’s it I’m out.
Walky being a young black man is going to get him into a massive amount of problems growing up and no matter how well off his family is, he’s probably run into a few of them already. So, you’re entirely right Yotomoe. However, privilege is something of a spectrum. To avoid tripping over people’s issues, Walky as a black man doesn’t run into the SAME issues as Carla the way Cyclops’ life sucks in a slightly different way than Nightcrawler.
If that makes sense.
I’m just sick of it being used as some sort of absolute. Walky has privileges, Carla has privileges. But because the narrative has never shown the negative aspect of Walky’s life we must assume he lives a charmed life. Which just feeds into the convenient ignoring of any other aspects of his life, because his life is great probably. Because he’s narratively “Not that black”.
I think it’s probably very unlikely Walky hasn’t run into a bunch of racially motivated shit if he’s a realistically drawn black American teen. Even if he’s been lucky to have been sheltered somewhat and the majority to have rolled down on Sal.
I mean, you’re right, but I don’t think the narrative has ever insisted that Walky is “not that black.” That was Sal and she said that in the heat of the moment, and later Walky says that he “hasn’t noticed” any of the subtle bigotries Billie was talking about, which I kinda took as an admission that he had gone through a lot of the same bullshit but had internalized it.
It’s like, Danny’s bi, but we haven’t gotten an arc of, say, Dorothy or Ethan going “pff thats not real thats dumb shut up” or “well I better warn Amber cuz you’re doomed to cheat on her” the way that tends to manifest for bi folks. Narratively he’s avoiding a major bigotry, but it’s still there because that’s just what it is when you’re a bi dude. I’m not sure if the comparison is apt, but that wouldn’t mean Danny was “not that bi.”
I dunno, I don’t think saying “Walky is privileged” somehow means he lives a charmed life free from bigotry, because no matter how you slice it, he’s a black guy in Indiana. It isn’t an absolute because as you point out, Carla’s rich as fuck. Her revenge against Mary only worked because she’s fabulously wealthy.
Yeah, he’s privileged as a cis straight man and he’s using his male and straight and cis privileges here. That’s not a slag against his character. Most people have at least one vertex of privilege that can be the source of fuckups because society is not good at educating the privileged classes about the life experiences of the marginalized classes on any given access.
Carla may be a trans woman, but she has white and class privilege. Myself, I have white and able-bodied privileges, and mostly binary privilege. These are aspects of myself I have to work hard at to try and not shit on people from a position of power or ignorance. And I’ve failed at that in my past in ways that has hurt people.
Privilege is not an accusation. It is not a condemnation of one’s character. Nor is it an all-or-nothing thing or some magic totem to win arguments. It’s simply an aspect of growing up in a system that favors certain sets of experiences over others.
And no, I do not think his life is charmed. He faces racism on a day-to-day basis and he’s probably also faced some religious bigotry growing up atheist in a majority religious part of the country. He also has other day to day issues that are frustrating for him and aspects where his privilege actually harms him (like how men are socialized to not show emotions or seek help if they feel they are floundering).
A friend of mine said privilege was a word which was annoying to Americans in a way which confused the issue and suggested it be changed to “advantages.”
Honestly, at this point in my activism, it’s really apparent that whatever we call things like this, people will still react negatively to it, because people don’t like acknowledging that the world is an unequal playing field and that they personally might benefit from that or perpetuate it unknowingly in harmful ways.
Call it privilege, call it societal biases, call it advantages, once people realize what it is your talking about they’ll react as if you leveled an accusation at them that they are a bad person, because as a general society, we want to believe that things like racism, sexism, homophobia is only a function of a small set of bad people who do bad things and hold hateful beliefs and we don’t want to think about the ways in which our whole culture reinforces that and makes discrimination and inequality normalized.
Because that’s harder to deal with. But it needs to because all the small stuff builds up into bigger stuff like some homophobe walking into a nightclub and murdering 49 people or all the cops gunning down black folks every damn day who posed no real danger to the police and so on…
I dunno, to quote Ani DiFranco, I’ve earned my disillusionments.
Hell, privileges are awesome. Like, the word, cause a privilege is something granted to you because of who we are. And what a world if we all could have the same privileges cause a lot of what having a privilege on an axis really is is just not suffering the discrimination and awfulness of the marginalized group.
In an ideal world, we’d all have the same privilege because there would be no social punishment for being a marginalized group. People’s identities would simply be their identities and could flavor their life experiences but not in a way that put them in more danger or suffering more inequality.
It really is only our system being so broken that makes privilege so necessary to discuss and why privilege gets its bad rap, because of how those who have it on various axes use it against those who do not.
To back up your point, my knee jerk reaction to the discussion of privilege is “come off it, I’m a neurodivergent transman in a same sex marriage dealing with poverty and a really shitty upbringing where I grew up female in a sexist environment” and it’s my second thought to go “no, wait, shut up self. You’re male (and pass as such wonderfully), you’re white, you’re (now) able bodied. You have your privileges. You can fucking admit that, don’t be a douchebag.”
Sooo yeah, I think you’re right. People really don’t like admitting they’ve got a bonus in getting by in some way.
im a white ablebodied cis straight male who just wants to 1.) leave everyone else alone, and 2.) be left the fuck alone. i dont care who you are, who you love, what you want. i barely care you’re alive. but stop screaming at me and calling me an asshole because i am who i am and people similar to me are assholes.
Ehhh, you did once complain that certain strips feel like “filler.”
You’re at least a little bit of an asshole.
Uhhhh… where the hell did I do that?
If it’s that I’m talking about the existence of privilege, then um…
Now I can’t claim to speak for anyone, but I think Soul’s speaking in general, not directly as a response to your post. In a way I think he’s just saying his piece, not starting an argument.
Hmm, that makes sense.
Sure you are ablebodied?
You seem to suffer from the “disability to either skip a text that disturbs you or read on without posting a comment”!
Following that logic, so do you.
For me this is pretty much in character for Walky. He is observant and not stupid at all so he understand perfectly well what Carla is talking about, and he completely share her experience of a cartoon being important.
But he also doesn’t want to go all FEELS about it, a sentiment that is generally shared by Carla, snarky jerkass GODESS as she is (as seen in her interaction with Sal or Ruth).
So he expresses his support as a joke. His counter argument is so obviously stupid compared to what he said last strip that it’s not meant to be taken seriously, it’s ment to set himself up as the butt of a joke.
Carla: “People who don’t like UltraCar are stupid”
Walky: [says something stupid]
Now, there is no guarantee that Carla appreciate the gesture – she might be just as annoyed by his attitude as Joyce is, but I’m convinced it MEANT as validation.
that’s really dang deep and relatable.
Also in other news today’s my birthday.
Happy Birthday!
Happy Birthday! Here, have a douchy Walky.
happy birthday!
I think Willis heard it was going to be your birthday and changed the comic so you get an ungift.
Oh, and Happy Birthday. You do Gods’ work Yotomoe, keep it up.
Happy birthday man
Happy Birthday! Also, thanks for all the fanart that goes up, it’s fantastic.
Happy birthday!
Happy birthday, and thanks for all the
fishpictures.Happy Birthday!
Yay your birthday is only a dat after my birthday!
and a happy birthday to you too!
Happy Birthday, and thanks for all the amazing artwork.
Tanjoubi omedetou !
Happy b-day, Yotomoe!
Happy birthday!
Happy birthday!!!
Happy Yotomoe Day!
Happy Birthday!
Congratulations on your birth!
Happy birthday!
Happy birthday and keep posting that amazi-art!
Happy birthday!
Happy birthday!
Hope you have a happy birthday, and I hope you get presents that are as awesome as the drawings you gift us with.
Goddammit,
DannyWalky!I’m honestly willing to bet Ultra-Car is not a great show. That being said I don’t think Dexter and Monkey Master is great either.
In my head Dexter and Monkey Master is like…Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy tier.
While Ultra-car is like…Class of 3000. A passion project with interesting themes that died before it’s time but in retrospect wasn’t groundbreaking in the animation or storytelling department. Just really enjoyable.
Billy and Mandy was somewhat entertaining at first until the lowbrow humerus got a bit lower in the later seasons but I still remember it going on for 6 seasons so I don’t think Ultra car could be on that same level maybe it was more on the level of it’s sister show Evil Con Carne. But if it’s being describe as a underrated show with well done clever writing then I would think of one of the more recent day cartoons like Amazing World of Gumball.
Everyone thinks their show has clever writing and underrated.
Also I said Ultra Car is Class of 3000.
Ooooh mixed it up sorry
I’m pretty much assuming that Ultra Car is on the level of say Xena. Not great on a technical level because it’s running on a shoestring budget, but creating a small but rabid fanbase, because it resonated in important ways for a marginalized community who were under-served enough to overlook any of its many deficiencies.
And I love your note about everyone thinking their show was underrated, because yeah, that’s a beautiful summary of subjective tastes. What might leave one cold, may be the rock in a tumultuous stream for another. And that’s a beautiful thing about art.
I wonder how much of Walky’s appeal to Dorothy hinges on them keeping it more or less superficial. He’s so immature and emotionally stunted. Maybe this is why I can’t get into the pairing at all. Los areb’t enough if you’re just kind of exhausting and it’s like pulling teeth to get you to understand anything real.
Meant to type “looks aren’t enough” I’m on my tablet.
Back in Book 5 Chapter 1, when Dorothy and Walky were in the cafeteria after she first told him she loved him, she said that, while yes, he is an emotionally-stunted goofball, she still managed to admire the young man who would go to great lengths to make sure his friends were doing alright.
Yeah that might be enough for her I guess but I’m still left scratching my head as to his actual appeal outside of eye candy and not being a completely useless friend . He’s just such a child so much of the time. I mean there’s potential for him to grow up yeah and Walky at 22 vs 18 will likely be a somewhat decent guy. But right now? There’s just so much growing up he needs to do and he and Dorothy seem so radically different to me I cannot buy into this love story. Liking him a lot? Yeah. Throwing out the l word and so soon into things? No.
Because he’s her for fun caramel boyfriend, and also he’s shown himself to be capable of significant emotional depth when needed. There’s a good dude in there and Walky’s gotta learn how to let him out.
I think we are starting to see Dorothy chafe under Walky’s attempts to stonewall any emotional connection in their relationship, though.
This. Sometimes, good sex, low stress, and no strings is exactly what you need. Walky is good for now, believes in her dreams, and lets her relax when her brain is running too fast.
That meets her needs for now.
I don’t think they’re going to be together forever, but right now, it’s a nice college fling.
Yeah that’s all fine and good if this relationship were being presented as a casual thing , for example what we get with Roz and Joe and not a legit romance. They keep calling it casual but I feel like it’s not really they just keep insisting it is because that was the initial agreement and they have an expiration date. I mean I’l fully admit I just don’t get Walky’s long term appeal and the slacker guy/type a girl is such a cliché dynamic to me at this point. It’s my own personal tastes at this point but I could not be less into this pairing. You could give me reason after reason why it’s okay for her to be with him and yeah it’s her choice. I’m still not feeling it.
That’s fair.
Walky.
…I didn’t really expect any more from you. Yet I want to think you’re capable of more than this.
Walky here makes me think of the line “I had no expectations for you, and yet you still managed to disappoint”.
It seems to me that Walky was simply not prepared to have a deeper, more emotional argument than Carla’s starting up here.
I don’t really consider this out of character, as other commenters are, because this immediate situation is somewhat different from the one where he was talking about D&MM with Dorothy.
I’m sure, some time later, if he were to ever bother looking back at this conversation, he’d probably empathize more with Carla’s argument.
Yeah, it definitely doesn’t feel out of character. He’s done this privilege fail bit before. He’s shown angry defensiveness and tactless cluelessness to how he’s benefitted from privileges (especially with his sister and with Joyce). He’s even been shitty to queer folks from a privileged position on several occasions before.
And yeah, I don’t think he’s at all prepared for even being aware of the idea that works can have critically important personal resonance other than just being cool and rad and totally boys rule, girls drool.
So it’s definitely an “oh Walky” *shake head sadly* moment, but not a very surprised one. But like with Joe this is a toxic masculinity phase he’s going to need to outgrow and shed to become a man worth spending time with. And I really do believe he can do it.
And sadly privilege fails are part of how he’s going to learn and grow to get there.
“He’s even been shitty to queer folks from a privileged position on several occasions before.”
Could you source (or just tell me a general idea of what the situation was)? I believe you, but I don’t remember and I’m curious.
There’s his whole “oh, hey, I invaded this queer space and am making shitty jokes about being gay, because I’m so smart to score this free gay pizza, no homo” shtick here, which I still feel negatively about a year later:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/04-walking-with-dina/jim/
There was the time he outed Billie:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/04-the-whiteboard-dong-bandit/dramahurricane/
And there’s the constant jokes he makes at Joyce that she’s going to totally lez out over Dorothy, plus a few times where he’s high-fived into Joe’s gross fetishization of lesbians, and so on…
Like, it’s all understandable and “minor” and just “regular” dude behavior (in that normative tropes of dudedom can be really passively shitty to queer folks), but it’s still a series of privilege fails that have been shitty actions to do in a larger queer context.
Walkys prior Jokes always struck me as affirming and cluelessly
homo-normative.
( Not here. You can stab him for this! Easily the worst thing hes ever said. )
There have been enough of those prior jokes, to more than hint, he may be bi.
There are worse things in the world than socially awkward nerds offering ‘bro-jobs’ for free pizza.
I think It was Alice who was guilty of those things. Alice is a total garbage person who publicly outed Billy. This was right after Billy called out Alice for treating Walky like a nonperson.
Joyce may not have understood that Alice was billys ex without Walkys quip, but The entire Chic-fil-A restaurant did.
I found Walkys comment there to be Homo-normative and witty. ITs something a queer person would say. I’d say it.
The entire “no Homo” phenomenon, is interesting too.
Its seems to be about ostensibly straight ( or not so straight ) men lamp-shading severely homoerotic actions with a ironic fig-leaf.
Maybe it started as homophobic. Almost every use I’ve seen is gay-innuendo.
YYMV but I think this is what the arc-of-acceptance look like.
I’m fine with affirming gay innuendo, I think its one of our best weapons.
Equality means straights, allies and coming-out-the-closet slowly men, get to use it too.
I’m fine with fighting gay innuendo based stereotypes and stigmatization. But I don’t see this in Walky.
All good points. I suppose all I’m trying to note is that Walky blunders in a lot and that has led to him trampling over the emotional reality of queer people when he does it. A flaw of ignorance and a lack of engagement with feelings and a need to prop up his own intelligence and need to win rather than one of particularly hateful feelings.
Thanks.
You are totally here right too.
There is no question, I kind of want Carla to punch him in the
Solar Plexus, and Dorothy to DTMF .
i think its the worse thing hes ever said the whole comic. It strikes me as even worse than Danny derided Dorothys ambitions to President. ( YMMV )
OH! I know this scene reminds me of:
CHarlie Jane’s Anders article on Star Blazers:
“Star Blazers got me Through the shittiest year of my childhood”
( I’ll link below this, so it wont get help up for prior approval
( or just google it you will totally love it )
And thats probably why I am so annoyed. ( My own connection to Star Blazers )
There is huge parallel to what Carla is saying, and what Charlie says there.
Funnily enough I had no idea Charlie was trans before i read this.
The article doenst give it away either. My own life experience did.
( No Im not trans, ill explain ) .
Charlies experience in this article is a universal touchstone for young boy-geek growing up in a certain area of South Eastern Massachusetts.
She may have been alone but there were a lot of others that connected the same, at the same time. Her growing up bullied is partly why she needed a refuge, and Star Blazers was it.
( Damn re-readign this, the parallels to what Charlie says about the Argo and Ultra-Car seem striking. Coincidence or Willispiration? )
To put in perspective, a decade later or so ( when I went through a stoner phase ), If I was with a group of ( new ) guys I would just try humming a few bars of the theme song , and 100% of the time I could get a full chorus going!
( Charlie is first female geek ever Ive seen that had this same coming of age experience with Star Blazers. It didnt surprise me to learn she grew up two towns away )
So Carla is sharing that kind of personal connection here, and Walky is talking a dump by ignoring it, and crapping on it with fart Jokes. WTF
***** On BRos*****
Personally , I think I find some broish or dude behavior less obnoxious than some people, because it seems like a vast improvement over what came before it.
I remember growing up any male-male affection, and most male emotion; was just taboo and labelled unmanly and gay. The entire code was ridiculous strict.
Men didnt flout the stupid Man-code in douchy ways,
or just hang a ‘No-homo’ on it, and shrug their shoulders.
They flouted it, and got harassed, socially ostratised, or their asses kicked.
So when “straight guys” bro out and hug each other;
or offer Brojob jokes like Walky did ( was that even a joke? ) and can do whatever , with a “no homo” ; —and Nobody gets murdered, Nobody gets beats up, nobody even cares.. I just see massive social progress.
For me, its better than a pride parade, because its from the bottom up, where change was most needed. A whole chain of male social taboos have been turned upside-down.
I’m sure my own male-privilege colors this, but i think society is as a whole , better off.
Charlie Jane Enders
http://io9.gizmodo.com/star-blazers-got-me-through-the-shittiest-year-of-my-ch-1691333606
….The shittiest year of my childhoold
Thank you. I forgot the first two, and sort of skipped over the Joyce ones because I was only thinking over his interactions with queer characters
My first thought was this strip:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/03-the-butterflies-fly-away/conceding/
Obviously, Walky’s not honestly trying to insult or demean Danny here, but he’s not really trying to offend Carla with regards to her identity either. Both instances seem to stem from ignorance and not understanding that others have a VERY different, less rose-coloured worldview than he does.
(I could be wrong on the specific example, but given this, it’s hard to argue that a more appropriate citation would be out of character for Walky.)
But Walky has no idea that Danny is bi, and unstanding Carla means understanding her transgenderism. I wonder if the next strip will reveal that Walky has no idea about being transgender and just sees this as some rich girl complaining about how hard her life is.
Comic Reactions:
Yay, hints at Carla origin story and on my birthday too! Happy Cerberus is happy! (Words can not communicate how much I fucking love Carla and everything she represents). And there’s so so much to unpack here. Sorry in advance to everyone for drowning the site in my word vomit.
Panel 1: I like how her eyes get a little thousand-yard stare here, like she’s partially remembering the situation, going from toystore to toystore, trying to find that beloved toy of a series that meant so much to her, possibly the first series she ever truly got into and just finding nothing after nothing and only finding out after days and days of searching that the toys were never made.
I’m imagining 10-year-old Carla trying to ruttle the data of why her favorite show’s toys were so hard to find and seeing some toy company press release about market share, demographics, or just some half-hearted apologia like when little girls were looking for Rey action figures or Black Widow action figures to play with. And just being crushed by it.
Which :(, but it’s also a nice character moment in showing just the physical dedication to the show to search and search for this one little piece to hold onto like all the other kids did with their D&MM merch. I dunno, I’ve done the scouring thing for obscure works that I truly loved, so I can massively sympathize with her plight here.
Panel 2: Oh, man, her eyes are so happy and lit up here. She’s still grateful and happy and remembers this moment so fondly and I’m bawling my eyes out back here, because Carla got to have such an amazing moment of support and dedication from her parents, one that was likely frequent for her growing up and still continues to this day and I envy that a lot. Especially on my birthday and especially after winding my way through the last two month’s parental themed holidays.
Carla is what I want every new trans kid growing up to have. Supportive parents who don’t fight their children on their gender identities or throw them out of houses or refuse to care for them. But who have their back and try their damndest to make their trans kids happy even if it is creating a little token for them to enjoy a weird work that seems to really bring the light to their kids eyes or letting them borrow some tech for a revenge scheme.
Carla truly knows that her parents love her unconditionally, with no reservations and will always be there to support her when things are hard and try and cheer her up when she is blue. And so that means she didn’t have to go through all the bullshit hell of growing up trans all alone with no one to turn to for support.
And that’s so beautiful I’m tearing up right now.
Panel 3: And there’s that confirmation of that. Her parents and this cartoon show, this is what she had growing up. This is all she had. And her parents support meant maybe she didn’t go through as many suicidal phases growing up, maybe even was able to score some blockers or at least a trip to an endo on her 18th birthday. But more importantly than that she had people to come home to and who got her.
Who would give her the world if she asked for it. And while she may be a bit spoiled in the technical sense, you can see the loyalty and gratitude she has for her parents being the rare good ones that so few trans kids get.
And she had a little token of their love and its various alt modes to play with when things got really bad.
happy birthday!!!
<3 all of this about carla
I wonder who else has their birthday today in the comment section.
Happy birthday, and thank you for this lovely gift.
This. There are so many, many things that parents can’t give their children. I can only imagine the fear, worry and frustration Carla’s parents went through as Carla grew up. There were so many things they couldn’t give her, so many questions they couldn’t answer for her, but at least they could give her the toy she wanted to feel validated in her love for a cartoon.
Or the experimental lasers she needed to push back against a bully, for that matter.
And to know that there are people who are willing to go that extra mile for you is worth the world.
Happy Birthday! And thank you for your continued insight on these comics, you’re giving me as many feels as the comic itself.
happy birthday cerberus!
Happy Birthday!
Happy Birthday, Cerberus!
Joyeux anniversaire !
Two in one day?! Happy birthday Cerberus and Yotomoe!
Happy birthday.
And there’s no need to apologize for the word vomit.
Happy Cerberus Day!
Happy birthday, Cerberus. Thanks for all you do around here.
Happy birthday, glad you get beautiful Carla backstory and Ruttens Being Awesome for it.
happy Birthday,
Whoa hey, it’s my birthday too! I’m pleased to share a birthday with someone so overall neat.
Also a happy birthday from me, your texts really add to my understanding of the comic!
Happy birthday!
Happy Birthday!
Comic Reactions continued:
Panel 4: Holy shit, I have so many feels about this panel, I might need to do a third text wall just for it. Sorry in advance for your scroll wheels.
Panel 5: Mm. That resonates. For a lot of trans people there’s a work or a book or something that just hits you while you’re still a baby trans egg and just makes everything click. That truly resonates, so much that when you come to choose a name, you may turn to it for guidance.
Carla means it when she says she loves that little toy and Walky does not understand that when she says that, she’s talking far more about the toy, but everything it represented. Familial support, realizations of identity, true impact on a level so incredibly deep because trans folk and other marginalized people rarely get to experience seeing their own experiences reflected back or have a work truly click.
She means it when she says she wouldn’t be who she is without Ultra Car. She might even mean she wouldn’t be alive today without Ultra Car and her family’s support when everything was super bad.
And that means so much more than just a really good cartoon that you really like on a level that might be hard to understand if you’ve never been in that space of confusion about why you fundamentally didn’t seem to fit in the universe.
Panel 6: Oh, Walky, I say this with love, but shut your fucking mouth, you fucking idiotic man-child. Like, I know. I really do. He doesn’t mean any harm or offense with this stuff, but he’s just taking a massive dump on a really personal reflection on Carla’s part, showing the depth of impact this weird show had and done so in a way that didn’t just shit on D&MM. She showed a lot of vulnerability she doesn’t show many people, because it’s important to her that people understand how important Ultra Car is to her and why insulting it feels like insulting her very identity to her.
And he couldn’t care less because he’s still trying to “win” the nerd pissing contest like a complete privileged fuckhead (and privileged here is an adjective). And it’s just frustrating cause that’s how it is in life. If you’re marginalized and try and talk about why this niche show mattered so much and resonated so hard or why another work left you cold because elements dismissed your identity, you weather an endless storm of Walkys just tearing that down because dumbass lowest-common-denominator bullshit and their complete cluelessness at being the marketing machine’s “default human” for everything to appeal to.
I mean, he’s not going full asshole geeks whining about new Ghostbusters here, but he’s still being a giant dick and that’s annoying.
All that vitriol. It’s just a movie. And in reference to the comic, great facial expressions throughout it.
Carla means every word she says. UltraCar made her the woman she is and was there for her when nothing else was.
Yeah, Walky is an idiot, but I actually read something else into it. He behaves just like he does with Billie, when there are FEELS he plays up the “stupid Walky” persona so she will have something to look down on.
Carla: “UltraCar was too smart.”
Walky: “Was not”
Carla:[long, personal, philosophical and honest discussion on UltraCar’s importance for her identity]
Walky: “fart”
Basically, he is proving Carla’s point for her, and not by mistake. He does it partly as a joke, partly as a deflection to avoid FEELS, but he also to validate her in his own inept way. “Everything you say is correct because someone as stupid as me doesn’t agree with it”.
And, going out more on a limb, I don’t think it is such a bad thing. I doubt Carla had expected a more profound response from him, and I really don’t think she feels threatened by him. It may be that she is just as annoyed by him as Joyce, but there might also be a Billie-like comfort in idiots being idiots.
Hmm, I can see that actually and it would fit into the regular trope of masks that we’ve seen with Amber, Sal, Becky, Carla, Ruth, Billie, and so on…
And it also makes me think about another element which is just how much dudes are discouraged from having “feels” by society. Like, Joe and Walky both grew up in our shitty society and its awful messages about how to be a man and one of the big aspects of that is dealing with the toxic masculinity trope of “if you have feelings other than rage, then you’re gay and you might as well be a woman and you know how we treat those”.
It’s a target for violence. And that fear and that culture makes it really hard for a dude to be fully in touch with sad emotions and the like. And both Joe and Walky have tried to handle that by trying to vomit out emotions as if they were a poison, keeping them as far from them as possible, to the point of crapping on those who express them in one form or another.
And both seem to be on similar arcs of slowly realizing that that limits them in crucial ways from being the type of people they actually want to be and so they’ve had to try and slowly adapt to that reality.
Joe seems to be building it in letting a genuine friendship form between him and Joyce and letting emotions live in that singular box for now. And Walky by tripping on his privilege, messing up, but occasionally learning from it and trying to deal with what that stirs up inside (see all the deep introspection and terror he feels about grappling with the Sal stuff).
And it gives me a lot of hope that they’ll both move out of their more “ugh, why” behaviors as the strip goes on.
Of course, the woman Joe will let himself have feelings around is one who is most definitely no longer on his hit list. Coincidence? I think not.
Indeed!
Which gives me hope that eventually he’ll see way to seeing the humanity of everyone including women on his “hit list” (and eventually doing away with that fucking dehumanizing thing once and for all).
Like, by all means still enjoying copious casual sex, but being less creepily predatory about it.
Aw heck, Joe!
Can I put $5 on Becky finding a bunk via Joyce & Joe? ‘Cos being part of helping someone out like that would be a helluva growth move on his part.
No, 5 packets of Arby’s sauce.
Exactly! There is nothing in Walky’s script about “how to be a man” that allows him to support Carla and validate her feelings – EXCEPT making stupid jokes, preferably at his own expense.
Compare how he tried to support Joyce after the party with a stupid rant about pajama jeans.
I think Wally is being an ass here, but not intentionally. He’s being his same old self and learning that if he’s gonna genuinely get along with others, he needs to be more aware and vulnerable with them and be willing to talk about difficult things.
That being said, one could argue that what Carla said to him sort of blindsided him. I think its totally unfortunate that we as a society still can’t seem to talk about these things in the open, but I honestly don’t think Wally was expecting Carla to say any of that. like this conversation went from 0 to 100 in a couple seconds. he was caught off guard, but he was able to effortlessly deflect it because thats what he is used to doing.
I want Walky to be better too, and I wish that didn’t have to happen at the expense of others, but I honestly didn’t expect a different response from him. He’s not ready to be vulnerable, Carla talking about her parents might have meant he’d have to have a more substantial response, or maybe he’d have to think of his own crappy parents. Him being empathetic enough to have a conversation of this caliber means being vulnerable, and as mentioned above, means a guy entering Feelings Land, and he’s not ready to do that yet, because it means dealing with his own personal crap.
Definitely agree with all of that.
I’m super late to this conversation, but I feel I need to confess that I was Walky when I was his age, and I really agree with Bagge’s assessment.
I have a tendency to reflexively make jokes when I felt really awkward or insecure or just didn’t know how else to respond to something, but knew I need to say something. It led to a number of regrettable instances like this, where I ended up being really disrespectful to someone because I made a joke at a very inappropriate moment and giving the impression that I was making light of something very serious or personal.
Thankfully, I have since learned to control that impulse better, so that I usually recognize when I’m about to cram my foot in my mouth before I’d stuck it in there, and I’ve matured enough that when it does happen, I can recognize it and apologize for being a shit. Walky, obviously is not there yet.
It’s possible he was trying to be funny and self-deprecating here, in lui of actually admitting he was being a jerk (I’ve certainly had to learn how that’s not a acceptable substitute), but judging by Carla’s quizzical expression in that last panel, I don’t think so. I think Walky realizes he was being a jerk for attacking the validity of her fandom, and that she has just shared something deeply personal with him when she explained why Ultra Car is so important to her. The thought of directly addressing either the personal turn the conversation took, or how shitty he wasing being earlier both make him unconfortable, but he sincerely wants to make a show of not being a jerk now. So he tries to respond in-kind by telling Carla what makes him such a passionate fan of Dexter & Monkey Master. Namely, fart jokes involving giant monkey robots.
While he is still arguing with her, I feel like he’s accepted that Carla’s opinions are valid (not that she should have needed to open up so much for that to happen), and he seems to now be interested in engaging in a more friendly debate as fellow nerds. Sure, its also possible to have such discussions without arguing at all, but I don’t think Walky has learned that trick yet, and at least arguing about which show is better doesn’t require arguing that the other show is bad.
In summary, Walky’s still being a jerk, but I think in this strip he’s just doing a really bad job of not being one.
Walkies how to guide on how to fuck up a sentimental moment in one Fell Swoop.
Walky, if you were real, I’d ask Carla to please take a seat WHILE I TURNED YOUR FEMURS INTO POWDER.
Nothing beats fart jokes. NOTHING!!!
Walky is once again being an insensitive jerk. I mean, when someone’s just told you why something is REALLY important to them, you don’t continue to shit on that thing.
Ultra Car is no substitute for Turbo Teen…
Oh, the horrors…
…how is comic capable of still being great with this dumb-ass in it? Seriously, I REALLY hate this character, and the fact that he shares the face of one of my teenhood heroes IRKS ME! I mean its not AMC’s Preacher bad, especially since he’s barely the focus, but it STILL bugs me a tad.
I like that panel three could also be read as a fourth wall break about Walkyverse Ultra Car.
Hacks the Muzak and starts playing the soundtrack to the “That’s what I’M gonna do…” scene from Ren and Stimpy, in an attempt to warn Walky in a language he might recognize to run, RUN from the ingenious prankstress he has just angered.
Is it possible that Walky’s been running with obfuscating stupidity for so long he’s become the mask?
Fart
Comic Reactions, the scroll-wheel murdering:
Panel 4, holy mother of fucks, panel 4. Where do I even start.
First up, holy shit, this is a punch to the gut, because I know every last one of those feelings on a deep deep level. The lacking a language to even understand what was happening and why I felt so alienated and depressed from how everyone else was “humaning”, why it became natural to avoid even looking at myself in the mirror if it was avoidable, trying to figure out why everyone else seemed to be suddenly going through this series of changes that involved them liking porn and liking their bodies in ways that felt totally alien. Of being hated for whatever reason was convenient. I’ve been there.
And it’s a there a lot of trans kids have. It’s a there a lot of ace kids have. And it’s a fuckton a lot of there trans ace kids have, especially when they’re “unlucky” enough to be gay too. And it really really sucks.
Cause that point of “the reasons being convenient” is true to fucking life. When you’re hated for being the “other” and especially the queer other, the reasons for others to dislike you change by the second and are impossible to change. You can be in the closet and hating yourself, but you’ll still get shit on for not acting like the rest of the kids and having their same sexual or personal interests. Bullies can smell the queer on other kids and they enforce a normative with extreme prejudice.
And it continues into adulthood. Look at all the various excuses being weaved by various gatekeepers, elected officials, and hate groups of why trans people are awful, why they need to be denied rights, why we should look at them with fear or doubting inquisitiveness. Why we should hate and hurt them. Look at the folks during the Mary arc desperately searching for some way to interpret Carla as the instigator or the bad victim and Mary as the plucky heroine who had been pushed too far by a roller-skating mad”man”.
This is our everyday. This is our price of entry. Being hated for amorphous reasons simply because we exist and “won” the lottery of life in being trans.
And having a work that gets you. Having things that speak to the person you will eventually realize you are. Realizing only belatedly that the reason you were always super into lesbian culture is that you actually were a lesbian or the reason you were really into that book series or show was that a major character was a major trans metaphor or that cis people don’t wonder all the time if they are trans or avoid their reflection in mirrors.
Realizing that that character or that work was everything swimming in your head all along, you just never had a character to reflect that. Never saw yourself reflected in the works that surrounded you. Didn’t even know that was a possibility that you could be. That sort of character or work is truly special and that moment, of realizing why everything has been so off. Why you’ve been bumping against those particular works, is… revolutionary.
And it’s not worth the awful. And I’d say it’s been well-confirmed in this panel that Carla did not escape the awful and very much faced all the not-goodness I’ve been fan-theoring she has faced. Words thrown at her intending to wound. Deeds done to her, to give her injuries to nurse in the darkness, alone and a distaste for violence. Abandonment leaving her alone with just herself, her loving parents, and this one all-too-crucial character.
It is not easy being out as a trans person. It is not easy being a trans kid. And it certainly can’t be easy to be a trans kid in Indi-fucking-ana. And Carla survived that, with some scars and some triggers, and a hell of a chip on her shoulder. But she survived and she refuses to play the victim ever again and let people ignorantly slag her or the things she loves.
She’s older, and no matter what, she stands up for herself and refuses to let all the “did to me” stop her or break her or terrorize her into tiptoeing quietly around it. And maybe she got that strength from Ultra Car. Maybe just from her being too damn tired to do anything else. Maybe from the thread of queer politics that is underlying her whole speech here.
But it’s here. She’s here. And everyone better well hell get used to it.
And her Ultra Car door decoration.
Well I don’t recall that Walkyverse UC ever taking shit from anyone, so I figure that the character in this universe is similar in that regards. UC was there, and everyone else be damn. Powerful character. And wow, you just got piled on. Shame shit like that happens still.
“being hated for whatever reason was convenient” ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch. Yeah, sadly Carla knows all about that. A good reminder that nothing Mary said to Carla was in any way news.
Thanks for a post being just as awesome and smart as we have come to expeect, even if it did a number on my scroll wheel, and happy birthday!
I want upvotes, plusses, all the things. Dear God, this.
Thank you for expressing it.
I don’t usually reply to your posts because they’re so well thought out that there’s really nothing more to be said but, DAMN this was a good one!
I mean, I’m willing to give Walky a little wiggle room here, because I have to consider that Carla didn’t just bluntly come out with this story right out the gate. It’s presented that way to us because we don’t see what they said in the interim, but the ellipses in panel one indicate that this is likely just the final remark following a long rant of why the show was great and deserved better than it got. Walky isn’t just flat out dismissing her personal connection, really, because he’s still focused on the surface argument of “which show is better”. So most of what she’s saying at THIS point probably isn’t even registering to him.
Also, farts are a very compelling argument.
Yeah, I read him as clueless privilege failing rather than trying to be openly malicious.
Yeah, I feel like there’s obviously no malice here, it’s just that it’s all going straight over his head. He’s probably standing there thinking “what does this have to do with anything? the dumb show was still dumb an’ farts are hilarious.” He has no clue what she’s ACTUALLY saying.
So much this!
And it’s a nice parallel to the Mary situation, because Mary was intending to hurt Carla and aimed her blows accordingly.
And here we get someone offending and hurting an important part of her, but more out of clumsy ignorance. And it nicely encapsulates how the daily ignorances and bad resonances of well-meaning folks can add up to a lot of microaggressions that can be similarly frustrating for the one suffering them.
Also, I mentally inserted a sound effect from the animated version of “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” into the break between the penultimate and the final panel. The sudden bell-like trill where his face falls into a sudden angryish pouty frown, paired with his Santa hat flopping forward with it.
Fuck… I’ve been in Carla’s shoes. At least I can just kinda sit back and show the show to people now and they’ll go “Oh ok no NOW I get why you like this”
That is literally the 2nd worst person to open up to… First being that crazy girl who hates everyone.. whose name i can never remember.. the ultra religious but kind of seems like she’s faking it girl.
I kind of hope the gf is still hanging out listening to slap him
Just admit that you are jealous of that toy, Walky.
Sort of related I ended up buying sailor moon (my ultra car) on dvd yesterday. This recent plot had me thinking on that show a lot recently. Though I’ have to admit that shitty DIC dub captured my heart and I’m not as excited as I would be about finally owning it because it won’t be what I’m getting even if the new dub fixed a lot of the mistakes of the past. Like all the straight washing.
I mean… Walky’s argument is basically unimpeachable. Sorry about that whole journey of self discovery thing, but if you come at the fart episode, you best not miss.
I like how, of all the things that prompts a massive outpouring of feelings for Carla, it’s Ultra Car. ‘Cause she’s on Ruth Watch right now and she’s deflecting her unease, but this? Nah, all aboard the feels train. This is what makes Carla go into a full, open dialogue on what’s important to her.
It’s just a shame her audience ended up being Walky. Could be worse, though. Mike woulda probably pulled out a little bag full of the pieces of her toy.
It’s not uncommon.
Ask a trans nerd about their day, get a non-committal shrug. Ask them about Steven Universe or Undertale and you’ll get a dissertation of personal relevance and impact.
It’s just how we are.
…and when you mention it, how Walky is.
cerberus youre trans?
My dark secret is out!
bwaaaaaaa
*drops the tea cup from which he was drinking whiskey* Shock and disbelief!
cerberus you’re nerdish?
Well, more half-nerdish on my mother’s side.
I am trying and failing to come up with a verbal expression that sufficiently expresses my delight at that joke. So this will have to do instead.
cerberus you’re cerberus?
No, that’s a scurrilous rumor and I don’t have to put up with such libelous jiggery-pokery!
*hides secret proof that I am Cerberus*
(whispers)No one can ever know(/whispers)
You mean to tell me you aren’t a massive three headed dog that guards the entrance of Tartarus?
I feel so betrayed.
*looks at timestamps*
Curse you to Tartarus for beating me to that one.
There is obviously some kind of three-headed-demonic-guard-dog-conspiracy at work here.
Cerberus, you like Steven Universe?
Cerberus, you’re a three-headed dog who guards the gate to the underworld?
Cerberus, you are?
Cerberus is? Darkseid’s trademark lawyers will have a field day with this one. >_>
Clearly the point goes to Walky. What is sentimentality compared to the genius of fart jokes?
clearly
fart
and of course he brushes off carla’s story with fart jokes because classic walky. walky’s actions in the last few strips have placed him firmly in scrappy territory for me.
Ouch, Carla. You chose to let your guard down and allow your inner feels to show through in front of Walky, of all people >_<
Oh well. It could have been Mike.
So…I don’t get Carla, like, at all.
When she says that Ultracar made her the woman that she is today…is she proud of that? Unhappy about it? Who is she, today? Like, she’s a skater who likes cookies, right?
And this isn’t the first time that this has come up. When her machine spelled out her name to Mary she talked about how the fact that she existed bothered Mary more than anything else. Like…everyone exists, Carla. Walky’s past made him who he is too…same for Joyce and literally every other human. That’s how pasts work.
Did I miss something? Is she like a champion karate master who founded the internet and rescues puppies? Where does this *You can’t stop me from being me!* come from? Is someone trying to? Some sort of anti-fun mafia that hates skating and cookies?
*I should note that of this dude’s work I’ve only read Dumbing of Age. Does this stuff make sense if I know Carla with more context?*
She’s trans. Mary once tried to escort her “to the boys dorm where she belongs.” That’s why she says Mary is bothered by her existence; because Mary IS bothered by the existence of people who are quite happy defying Mary’s interpretation of the Word of God. It’s also why Carla had a lot of trouble finding things to relate to in media while growing up, hence her extra-special love for the one thing she did relate to.
This. Being trans means to sadly a lot of people, your existence is seen as negative and something that everyone else has a right to debate and dismiss and demand be hidden. Means you get a lot of deathglares and casual muttered slurs just walking down the street. Means you are acutely aware of how many of you die every year because someone was so enraged by your existence they decide they need to murder you.
Mary is especially bothered by Carla’s existence because she actively wanted to deny that existence and Carla’s name, wanting to treat her instead as the boy she never was, because that’s what’s on her birth certificate. And Carla emphasizing her name, her right to exist is actually an important act of defiance because I guarantee if Mary knew Carla’s dead name, that’s all she would ever us because in her eyes that’s her “real name”.
And this is why she’s so proud of becoming the woman she is today. Because that was hard fought and it meant getting fucked over in a variety of ways she outlines in Panel 4, with people saying and doing things to her and having literally no friends, but a lifetime of authority figures making empty promises to her and nursing wounds in the dark alone.
And that’s a pride that a lot of trans folks recognize, because our identities, our names, our true lives are a hard fought battle. Like, I’ve only just finished this year changing over my legal name to match my real name and that involved multiple court visits, over a thousand dollars in money, and a couple of years worth of work and even more than that securing a stable enough employment that I could trust wouldn’t fire me for being out.
Being trans means the whole world aggressively fights you being you. Means the whole world is made that you exist and would love nothing more than to see you die or crawl back into the closet miserable and hating yourself. Means that there’s a whole anti-fun mafia made up of sitting governors and state senators looking to steal your right to exist in public spaces and make you too scared to leave your bedroom.
Spelled out here
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/02-that-perfect-girl/antagonize/
“An antifun Mafia that hates Skating and Cookies”
YES, all of this.
You met Mary right? and Carol? Ross?
I should note that of this dude’s work I’ve only read Dumbing of Age. Does this stuff make sense if I know Carla with more context?
Well in this case: Not really!
In the other ‘verse she was not a human trans girl, but was ultimately transformed into a human female shaped robot.
And before that transformation she was Ultra-Car.
(and readership probably assumed a male “gender”, e.g. male voice because that’s the default to assume, isn’t it?)
Walkyverse Ultra-Car came out to her parents (Rachel and Joe) offscreen – they said that when they discovered she was their daughter, they were entirely supportive. Implicitly they also originally thought she was a guy (though they were entirely supportive of her coming out and were fine with admitting they were wrong.)
Ok thats it, somebody slap walky on the head. A newspaper should suffice.
That first sentence in the first panel: In my head I heard it being spoken by an old Victorian era sea captain, with a Welsh accent, recounting a story in an old pub to anyone who cares to listen.
So like… this comic’s pretty progressive. Ultra Car is “trans-species” in Shortpacked!.
Is… is Carla fictionkin with Ultra Car?
Carla’s adapted from Ultra Car’s humanoid chassis from Shortpacked!.
More just a trans girl with a strong connection to a show.
guh shaddup walky
If I were Carla, I’d take that last panel as reason to back away with a terrified smile. “Um… yeah, sure Walky! Whatever makes you feel happy!”
Seriously, that was such a poignant story from Carla; I kind of want to give her hug now.
It’s interesting she opened to him like that (well, only to have Walky not listening, but hey)
To me, Walky doesn’t come across as mean here. Stupid? Yes. Utterly devoid of empathy? Yes. It’s like he completely filtered out Carla’s exposition.
At the same time, I can see a friendship developing from this. Walky couldn’t care less about Carla being trans. For him it’s all about their nerd rivalry, and they could bond over this. His last line could even be interpreted as him making fun of their argument.
He’s being mean he’s just doing it because he’s an insensitive jackass rather than because he’s actively trying to hurt people. It’s not much of an excuse.
I… disagree. His statement is too ridiculous for me to take it serious in the context of their conversation.
I’m beginning to question Walky’s judgement.
“Beginning to?
My beautiful, precious Carla!
You don’t deserve to be subjected to this powerful a stupid.
this is so goddamn beautiful.
when will carla wear a down with cis shirt in-strip
*evil grin* Will she be riding a bus that strip?
uh……is there context to that, or…..?
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/down-with-cis
RIP in pepperoni Walky
19??-2016
how many will miss him?
Depends on their training. “Squeeze, don’t pull.”
It’s probably cause I’m trans as well, but just, ugh, that just made me tear up.
*hugs*
*hugs*
I hope Walky was just trying to lighten the mood.
I think he did.
That and avoid feels.
And prove Carla’s point for her by being stupid.
What does Dorothy see in that guy?
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2012/comic/book-2/03-the-first-step-towards-recovery/caramel-2/
I wonder for how long the conversation went before it went to those panels.
Maybe Dotty literally fell asleep beside the door, or possibly walked away long ago.
Carla opens up to Walky, of all people, with a deeply personal story about her childhood and her feelings. And then Walky promptly demonstrates that she has wasted her breath. Does not seem like they’re going to be friends.
But Walky opened up to Carla with a deeply personal story about his childhood and his feelings as well in the last panel. Different feelings, yes.
People who geek out together can be friends together!
Walky is in complete agreement with Carla that cartoons are Serious Business. He is wrong about WHICH cartoons are best (probably because he is some kind of yet to be diagnosed rare strain of idiot) but at least Carla can talk to him about important stuff, rather than Depressed RAs and breakups and non-cool stuff like that.
So yeah, I actually don’t think Carla regrets opening up to Walky.
And then she murdered him. And there was much rejoicing.
YAY.
And once again Walky’s Clue Meter is reading zero.
Replace Ultra Car with Sailor Moon and you’ve basically told my story, Carla. It exposed me to queer characters, I met my wife because we’re both fans of the show, it even inspired my name.
Fundamentally, Walky is a narcissist. It’s hard for hum to not desperately try to get the conv back to himself.
Worth noting: Carla lucked out with her parents. It sounds like they were really supportive of her, transition and all. Rare thing even in fiction.
I love Carla’s reasons for praising Ultra-Car. I also love how Walky’s density and obsession with Dexter and Monkey Master prevents him from understanding.
She really did.
Personally, I’m glad Carla liked it but Ultracar was also a bit of a dick to all of the other cast members. Especially her ultra-chipper brothers and sisters!
The episode with the old mentor-figure UltraTRAIN was hilarious! Especially the “Thomas the Tank Engine” cameo
Walky is being that guy who still thinks Adam Sandler is a comedic genius. Don’t be that guy, Walky.
i Want Dorothy to dump him in the next panel
No.
For a second I thought they’d make friends after.
*fart*
I feel like Walky just completely ignored that entire explanation in favor of trying to think of a D&MM episode he thought Ultra Car couldn’t possibly match.
“You should write a book: How to offend women….”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSa4Od9gynQ
Walky is about to be billed for a pie.
Most important moments of your life < fart jokes
Becky agrees
One) Carla’s parents are awesome! I want them to be featured in the actual strip, ’cause the Ruttens must be the coolest people around!
Two) … Walky didn’t listen to a word Carla said, did he?
Though… Walky is probably seeing this as a “which cartoon is best?” argument, while Carla is defending the cartoon which helped her through her childhood. I think they’re having two different discussions without realising.
Walky is still horribly dense right now, though.
Walky only listens if it benefits him, honestly.
Yeah I want to see Carla’s parents too, since it’s no longer Joe and Rachel. I’d laugh if it ends up looking like Willis and his wife.
pull that foot out of your mouth, walky >_>
I just want to start a petition to bring back/remake the Ultra-Car animated TV series into the DoA universe just to make Carla happy.
With an in-comic Kickstarter that will only take 5 years or so to complete?
Dammit Walky, your dense clueless attitude is usually endearing, but here I hope Dorothy and Carla ultra-slap you.
Moral Lesson: All your life’s hardships can get trumped by farts.
Goddammit, Walky…
He is seriously going to die.
I have a hard time getting TOO mad at Walky for being an oblivious asshole dismissive of other peoples’ problems when 1) the show he’s defending was his solace after his sister was taken away from him and his only friend decided she was too cool for him and 2) Carla prides herself on deliberately being an asshole dismissive of other people’s problems.
Sure, the behavior comes from different places–Walky’s a very smart guy who distances himself from emotionally challenging situations and has presumably used goofiness as a crutch throughout his childhood, whereas Carla is trans and developed her jerkass personality in response to a lifetime of oppression–but I could just as easily see Carla sneering in the face of most other characters in this strip when they’ve got issues. Hell, a commenter told me just last week that Carla’s not obligated to care about Ruth or Billie’s problems. Why should Walky care about hers, especially given his deep emotional ties to D&MM?
So are Ethan, Galasso, and Joyce’s dad the 3 remaining decent men in DOA?
Wait, what’s wrong with Danny? At worst I’d say he’s too spineless, but I ship him and Ethan so maybe I’m looking at him through bi-colored glasses.
Spinelessness is actually a pretty egregious fault considering when Danny falls short as a result. It actually makes him fairly odious at times.
Every character is an arsehole at times.
(…)
(…ok some of them are most of the time)
Yeah…between Carla, Malaya, and mmmaaaayyyybe Ruth and Sarah, Mike’s “say mean things just to piss people off” shtick is basically redundant now, because so many people just…act like assholes so frequently.
So, does Walky know that Carla is trans? Because I didn’t put it together right away, I just thought she was a girl* at first. He’s sufficiantly clueless enough that unless someone flat out told him, he might not notice. So he would totally miss the significance and why it means so much to her, other than her parents made her a toy.
*I am in no way saying that a trans girl isn’t a girl. Just that I was slow on the uptake.
Better to say “I just thought she was cis” rather than “I just thought she was a girl.”
cisgirl, not cis. Because you could just as easily assume carla is a cisguy who just happens to be somewhat effeminate, and most people call him a girl and he just has given up fighting it.
Oh wow, I’d never thought of that!
Do you have to tack on the “trans” or “cis” if you are referring to someone as the gender they identify? Is it rude not to? I’m not trying to be a smartass, I just don’t want to offend.
It’s a nice consideration, and it’s useful for clarity.
I’d assume he doesn’t. That he assumes she’s cis. I’d honestly assume pretty much everyone does and that he’s not being particularly clueless. There’s been no indication that it’s that obvious. Nor has anyone reacted in anyway that suggests they’ve just figured it out. We know Sal figured it out, but they hang out together more than Carla does with anyone else. Ruth obviously knows and I think she spilled the beans to Billie. Mary knows, but she’s a snoop. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the older girls who were on the floor last year know, but there’s been no direct confirmation.
We would know if Joyce knew and she doesn’t. I’d be shocked if everyone else knew and had still been hiding it, even from the fundie.
this makes me want to make an Ultracar toy, though I probably wouldn’t scratch build one, maybe mod the crap out of a Pixar Cars toy or something from MASK.
So Carla is upset because someone did something in the hallway that disturbed her while she was chilling in her dorm room. Didn’t someone else have something like that happen to her; who was that again?
She is upset cause walky was insulting Ultracar, her favorite in the whole world.
Was there a strip where Carla called Mary a loser because of her door decorations? Damn, I missed that one.
Was there a strip where Carla was deliberately annoying outside Mary’s Room and laughed when Mary asked her to stop?
You’re absolutely right, it means Carla is allowed to call Walky a slur now.
It is known.
To be fair, I have yet to see anyone claim Carla’s actions prior to Mary misgendering her were anything but dickishness, but it’s like a black kid teasing a white kid and the white kid, instead of responding in kind, busting out the N-bomb. Within the “almost everybody’s kind of an asshole” world of DoA, Carla’s behavior was cartoonish fun; Mary’s annoyed reactions and attempts to get her to stop were cartoonish fun; Mary’s sudden, jarring switch to bigot mode was a step too far.
Mary could’ve just kept pranking Carla in response to Carla’s whining/stomping but took the whole train to too-far-town instead.
Thank you; that was a good example and something for me to consider
Ha! Called it!
It’s like bait and the assholes can’t help but do it every time Becky or Carla are being super vulnerable.
Now the real question is do you want to double down and go for a “pie to the face constitutes assault”? It’s a popular brand this year.
We went over this at the time, Cerberus.
Yeah, and I respect your arguments, but that got a mite more awkward when TERF fans of the comic started using that logic to argue that Carla was an aggressive male terrorizing and assaulting a poor innocent woman who did nothing wrong. And it lead to a troop of those TERFs flocking to the comment sections to try and argue that fucked up idea.
I didn’t notice them — I presume they were nuked, or I missed ’em on account of often just skimming things. Such statements are, hm, really dumb.
The pie thing being an assault ain’t though. :p
So is confusing a statement on something not being a horrible attack, with not being a legal felony. B
That doesn’t equate. Carla engaged Walky not because he was breaking any rules, but because he was dissing Ultracar. If she was threatening to enforce the rules or tattle for a disturbance in the hallway (especially if she wouldn’t have if he hadn’t dissed Ultra car), *that* would make her a hypocrite. And to be clear, Mary was not doing that to be good; it was because she has a giant chip on her shoulder – if she wanted to be good, she wouldn’t have ruined the wheels &/or bearings on Carla’s skates. She deserved that pie in the face, and has a lot of growth ahead of her if she’s ever going to resemble a well-adjusted person.
….Mary didn’t give a fuck about rules either. That’s why she never fucking talks about the actual rule violations, instead whining about how it’s really loud. Skates are almost definitely a violation of the rules, but definitely not for quiet.
Ah! You are correct; I didn’t mention Carla’s skating noises as the catalyst for inflaming Mary’s vindictiveness. I still say she took it too far with the destruction of property, personal attacks, and manipulation.
Carla skated on carpet. That’s pretty quiet. Willis confirmed that it was quiet. The actual catalyst is that it was Carla, being vaguely annoying. Because she hates Carla. Because Carla is trans.
The fart jokes will eventually wear itself out, Walky.
People have been saying that fart jokes will wear themselves out since before the Egyptians had writing.
As much as we may want them to die, fart jokes will *never* get old, just annoying. They have enough longevity that by the time you find them annoying, the next generation has just started with ’em.
its the difference between a personal connection and mass market appeal.
….i kinda want that toy. it sounds like a rad toy
For a moment there, I thought they were bonding. Nope, it was just Walky keeping his mouth shut for a few seconds.
To be fair, that’s major progress. For him.
Walky: “And that’s when she hit me with the Baseball Bat Officer.”
*Jots another example down on a piece of paper with the words “Reasons Why I Really Hate Walky” in big letters on it*
Well, I definitely can’t fault her on ‘dumb baby show’ now.
I have a theory – looks like Carla has her own room all to herself so maybe Becky will move in with her.
Or maybe the confluence of these two storylines is just a coincidence…
Carla barely knows Becky, and the problem isn’t Becky getting kicked out of Billie’s room, it’s that she has to leave the dorm entirely because Mary’s going to tattle that she’s there.
I will say, my issues with Carla in general aside, Dave has done OUTSTANDING work on the facial expressions in this comic. You really get a sense of how important Ultra Car is to her and how vulnerable she feels talking about it.
And of course the “I’mma kill you” face at the end is just great.
that’s a “r u srs” face
the “I’mma kill you” face is pending
My ten cents – I reckon what Walky’s doing here is responding to a situation that makes him uncomfortable in the only way he knows how, i.e. wise-cracking. While he may want to, he has no idea how to reply in the apologetic, supportive way the situation demands, and instead replies with a joke. Incidentally, his defence of D&MM is so ridiculous that I’m inclined to think he might be looking for a way to climbdown…
Or he’s just being a terrible person, genuinely not realising/caring that Carla’s just massively opened herself up to him, and is more concerned about asserting the superiority of his own beloved cartoon. Eh, either way.
“Here, allow me to fart all over your soul, laid bare in front of me.”
…It’s one of those conversations, where you’ve built all your arguments and proofs carefully, arranged them in logical order, presented your view in brilliant, irrefutable style… and then realized all that effort was wasted because you’re talking to an imbecile.
I feel ya, Carla.
You don’t even have to like Carla, but who could not love her parents right now?