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You could just say H. Jon Benjamin’s voice since it’s pretty much the same whether you’re talking about Archer, McGuirk, Bob Belcher, Byron Orpheus’ master…
I don’t know what it is, but somehow I have no problem buying Bob as a sad sack and Sterling as the ultimate stud, even though they have the exact same voice.
The joke “crossover” in Archer season 4 was kind of confusing for that reason.
The girls at IU seem kinda easy. I mean, aside from the lesbian editor there hasn’t been a single character who’s had trouble hooking up whenever they wanted to.
I’ve interpreted that as also including the men. Also, it’s descriptive for anyone who readily jumps on occasions to have sex – the negative connotations are only present for those who have a problem with sed behavior.
One, Palamdrone specifically said “The *girls* at IU seem kinda easy”, singling out the women as the ones being out of the norm.
Secondly, while it’s certainly possible for words to transcend their connotations, I don’t believe that’s happening in this case. “Easy” has been used for a while as a slightly less offensive version of “loose” or “slutty”–terms used to judge women for promiscuous behavior, based on a weird cultural assumption that men should be sexual aggressors and women should be withholding sex. Those negative connotations are based in the history and usage of culture and language.
To be clear, I don’t think Palamdrone intended badly but I think it’s worth pointing out when language perpetuates harmful cultural stereotypes. Instead they could have said “The students at IU all seem perpetually horny”, which is nonjudgmental and gets the same point across.
When people call out discrimination, consider that they might be more than just ‘easily offended’. For my part, I believe that it’s valuable to create cultures where this is commonplace; no-one is perfect, and by being able to openly communicate about issues helps to reduce them.
Also, part of the decision to call out sexism (or discrimination in general) is contextual and based on audience. I wouldn’t bother going on, say, /b/, and calling out discrimination, because I don’t believe it would make any difference. However, I think the sort of people who read DoA are more likely to be the sort of people who will listen to constructive criticism and want to improve themselves.
Ethan hasn’t had a single date with a guy, Joe strikes out with everyone on panel outside of Roz and Penny, Billie was turned down by both Joe and Danny, Becky was turned down by Joyce, Marcie is currently in a vague “I’m not sure she’s interested in me or girls” space with Malaya, so there’s definitely a fair set of strike outs.
But, I mean, beyond that, they’re college kids. A strong majority of college kids fuck. Hell, a strong majority of people in general fuck. It’s sort of a human thing.
To be fair, Ethan never tried from what we’ve seen and perhaps if he pursued Danny it would lead to sexy times, though between those two there’s more of a romance going on.
As for Joe… it’s more that it’s comical to see him fail and not so much comical to see him succeed – it’s been stated often (mostly by Joe himself) that he’s quite popular, sexually.
Is Marcie in a vague ‘not sure’ space with Malaya or has it moved on by now? It’s been a while since we’ve seen anything on that front (then again, comic-time is slower then a turtle, so it’s understandable).
Very true. Ethan hasn’t tried to pursue anyone from what we can see in comic. And I believe Joe when he says he has lots of success (he is very handsome and Roz has said in the porn comics that he has crazy good stamina if you can shut him up).
There has been no update in comic on whether or not it has progressed from there.
It was more just me pointing out that people strike out in comic, so it’s not like this is quite the Menagea3 orgy future ending or anything like that, more a fairly normal depiction of early college sexual experimentation and exploration.
Ethan not pursuing anyone seems to have more to do with his attempts to have more to his personality than just “the gay guy”, which also lead to his brief return to presenting himself as straight. It also hasn’t been very effective as he’s been shown lusting after pretty much every guy that comes into his field of view. The boy needs to get laid!
@Reltzik DW said that his characters have the same sexual orientation in all universes. Saying that, what part of Malaya having a thing for Leslie and Ultra Car makes her “not gay in the Ealkyverse”?
She does, when she’s trying to act according to a set of rules I consider arcane that Merika has constructed as the way to date people.
I wonder if she’d do better just treating Jacob as a friend first, and growing close more organically. Would it be doomed to failure because we say not to do that? Would she still cock that up because she wants to bang him too badly /now/? Dunno. But I wonder.
I’d attribute it more to the fact that pathetic losers are underrepresented in the cast. Just Daisy and Howard that I’ve noticed.
(Note this is not one of those stupid “The DoA cast should be representative of the real world IU student body.” complaints. Willis should write the characters his Muse tells him to, and not write characters she doesn’t. That’s an vital element of making art that doesn’t suck.)
I’m not sure how you’re defining “pathetic losers” except perhaps as people who want sex and aren’t getting it.
Howard’s a kid. Other than her perpetual single horniness, I’m not sure why Daisy’s pathetic or a loser.
Some of the other character might well be considered so by many, it’s just that they’ve found partners – Amber, the anti-social shut in, Walky the man-child, Danny the doormat.
They’re not really, of course, but they’re exactly the type you’d expect not to get laid often. Certainly not “players”.
I would suggest putting that term in quotes, then. The idea that people like that are actually losers has led to a lot of problems, and thus might bug people.
It created “Nice Guys.” And the groups that took that to mean that everyone must be a horrible jerk.
In the same way that women are taught that their value comes from their beauty, guys are often taught that their value comes from procuring sexual partners.
That’s not saying it’s wrong to try to have sex, as long as you are doing so with willing partners. But it has nothing to do with your manhood or “loser” status.
Well, there was the time Daisy, who appears to be an professor-type adult or grad student asked Billie to demonstrate her claim about sexual harassment by her RA, and then leaned in and kissed Billie when she complied -and then said that both that and what Ruth did (after Billie spelled out that Ruth knocked her against the wall first) was accidental, could happen to anyone, etc. Wouldn’t call that “pathetic loser” behavior, but it definitely comes across as sketchy, at best to me.
Actually got a better example of the voice I was thinking of. Take Scott Menville’s Red X from Teen Titans! but without the robotic voice adjustment and slightly raspier.
Frankly, I really don’t understand Mike here. His go-to move is just be an asshole with no reason or context. Seems kinda two dimensional characterization to me, I was hoping for some development.
Someone’s in a relationship, better break it up because the concept offends me?
This universe’s Mike seems to do seemingly asshole-ish things in order to help other characters grow, albeit in a painful and nasty ways. He keeps making others learn new lessons, and has lulz in the process. But he has a brand of tough love for which he prefers to be branded as just an asshole, even if he’s more than that.
In this case sleeping with Amber’s boyfriend would have broken her up. Amber is not in a good mental state, so breaking her up would be best, as she could be potentially toxic and/or dangerous for any partner until she gets her shit at least a little bit together.
That’s… still hella uncool. Like, everything you just said.
This idea that Mike is trying to Miyagi people into bettering themselves, like telling Ethan that he should pretend to be straight, or telling Amber that she’s doomed to become her father, or calling Dorothy and Sal giant sluts because they have sex with men, well it’s fucking gross.
And, come on; “Amber is mentally ill, so she deserves to have her boyfriend cheat on her, and she totally deserves it because she might fuck things up because of a litany of untreated mental health problems” is goddamn gross.
When the alternative is “he watches her gradually become her abuser and then he does nothing about it,” we have a pretty messed up situation! The thing we need to hear is so rarely the thing we want to hear.
“You are doomed to become your father because you want a partner you feel safe with” is not something an abuse victim needs to hear, especially one who’s already convinced that she’s one step away from hurting everyone around her.
I can’t believe so many fucking people defend this bullshit. The fuck is wrong with you.
Spencer- Oh yeah, on that point, full agree. Hell, for all people love old universe Mike, this universe’s Mike actually has the worst record for actually improving people’s situations with his “advice”. Amber and Ethan have been particularly good examples of this.
His “advice” helped drive Ethan back in the closet, encouraged Amber to not seek people out about mental health stuff, and dive even more into feeding one of her alters in a toxic way in response to the fear.
If he’s an asshole for the good of other people like a Sarah, he is frankly, awful at this.
He seems to me to pass up opportunities to terrorize Joyce, and that’s about the extent of some heart of gold that people want to carry over from the Walkyverse. In other words he’s just an asshole. I get the impression Willis likes having him around but has little to no interest in having him be three dimensional for the time being, or even at all. Many readers want everyone with major screen time to be well rounded, but the current situation is fine by me.
I was not defending him. At least not in an absolute way. None of this makes him good. Even if he has good intentions, even if he is attempting to fix people’s lives, he still goes about it in an awful, manipulative, hurtful way.
He comes from a really *nice* family so he acts out and he attempts to be the exact opposite, the jerkiest of jerks, but even in that it seems that he can’t avoid being well-intentioned deep, deep down, in a roundabout fucked-up way. He’s not good, he’s just not 100% absolute evil all the time always.
My point was just that he’s not one-dimensional at all. Which of course he isn’t, or we wouldn’t be having this discussion.
Because that’s what can be figured out by studying what he’s doing. It’s his modus operandi.
So he’s always one step ahead of the rest, he’s the first to pick up when someone is fucking up. So instead of trying to stop them, he satirizes them and ridicules them, then persuades them to do the exact opposite than they should be doing so that they can see how moronic they are being.
But it’s those situations that set him off, he’s never just an asshole without prompt. The things he does always end up with someone learning a lesson. It’s not random.
Leaving aside whether Mike actually has any good intentions, the things he does do not always end with someone learning a lesson (not even the one you think they’d pick up, “Mike is not someone I want to hang out with”). Ethan didn’t come out of the closet any faster because Mike told him to stay in it (or because he got Joyce to say she thought homosexuality was a sin, for that matter). Implying that Amber was an abuser because she was dating a guy like Danny did not accomplish anything except making her feel bad. Sal shrugged off his random slut-shaming after a few strips, and Dorothy seems to have just ignored his attempt to do it to her. I don’t even think beating up Joe, telling Walky that Billie was mauled by a bear, drawing dicks on Joyce’s door, or answering Joyce’s phone with “All Hail Satan” were trying to get anyone to do anything; he was just enjoying himself.
…he got Dorothy to admit she was dating Walky! Okay, yes, his assholery accomplished something useful. Once.
So if he is secretly trying to fix people, he’s doing a terrible job.
(The above post and this were meant to be in response to Dana)
And, yeah, I think people just want to assign all these deep narrative reasons to Mike. It’s just hella messed up in this circumstance because it prescribes a “deep” reason to Mike constantly being a total creep.
Like his character bio entirely consists of: “Mike is an asshole. He rooms with Walky.”
I see him similarly. My interpretation is that he does see all the awful stuff going on around him, sometimes even when others don’t, and I think he does want to see things get better for others, but for whatever reason, he thinks being awful in return is some sort of “tough love” that will show people how they’re messing things up (because it’s everyone else’s fault for not seeing what he sees). Basically, it’s an outlook of “the world is terrible and everyone around me is clueless, so I need to be terrible too until everyone else gets their act together.” Obviously, this is not a healthy way to interact with the world, for himself or anyone else.
I say this based on someone I know, so I may be projecting a bit. But it does mean I’m sympathetic towards Mike and hope someone like him can grow because I don’t think he’s truly heartless, instead harmfully unaware of what people actually need.
He dresses well, he’s at an age where people haven’t yet figured out that Bad Boys aren’t actually a good idea, he can play off his personality as nihilistic or rebellious as needed, and all of the alternatives for dating are also college students so it’s not like he’s got a high bar to clear.
Plus, he’s confident and he asks, which is sometimes all you need.
I thought it was tramatic rape therapy. I don’t have the link, but it’s from Shortpacked. It’s basically that he rapes people while doing something involved with what they want to avoid. He explained it as raping someone while singing the ninja turtles theme would make you not want to watch ninja turtles anymore, because it would remind them of the tragic rape.
It could be that Mike is secretly the most attractive character in the entire ‘verse, but his love of hate is so strong that it gives off a “resting bongoface” vibe.
I agree that that’s the Latin singular, but I don’t see it used in English. I’ve seen way too many people refer to a singular “more,” and have never seen anyone say “mos.”
We love Mike, not for his ability to support major plot lines with continual character input but for his ability to constantly upend stalled plots with massive bouts of assholish insight.
I like to think Carla’s kinda dumb for not seeing the smile was fake sooner, but… well, she wanted to believe she was fine, and that goes a long way towards thinking they are if they show something like it. Plus, I probably wouldn’t do much better- fake smiles are something I’m not really used to, so it could have fooled me too if I didn’t see this outside the comic.
I agree with you on that front, and another thing to keep in mind is that not only does Carla not have a particularly personal relationship with Ruth beyond Ruth being a vaguely authoritative figure but the last interaction they had that WASN’T because of Billie’s begging was about Ruth refusing to stand her ground about defending Carla when Mary misgendered her -which Carla saw. So not only does she not know Ruth all that well, but Ruth is yet another person who should have defended her, could have done better to protect her, but didn’t, and is potentially making (albeit passively) her living space more uncomfortable -and it’s only the start of the semester. She’s got a pretty good justification to want to spend as little time as possible around Ruth, and had no reason (presumably beyond her own personal experiences and maybe Billie being worried) to assume the smile was fake.
Ethan: so if there were a guy who were gay but repressed about it, would you sleep with him? you know, so he’d have like a crisis about it or something?
Pretty sure not. This sounds more like ideas that Mike’s coming up with now and repeating ad nauseum in this conversation, rather than a long-established pattern of behavior. He certainly didn’t try to break up Ethan and Joyce that way.
Mike specifically did not sleep with Ethan, because to do so would’ve helped Ethan realize he was gay in a less traumatic time and manner for both Ethan and Amber, thus not maximizing assholitude.
I think you mean “anime Japan” because I promise you part of the appeal of that kind of comedic violence is that nothing like it would ever happen in real life.
I dunno, it might just be that Willis is fond of misdirection, but yeah, definitely echoing that concern for Billie. We’ve all been ignoring her way too much this arc and way too much focus has been on the Ruth side of the equation. Like, by all means, Carla should check on both of them, but it should probably be a both sort of deal.
Fortunately it seems like Sal is starting to look out for Billie a bit. Nice symmetry. Sal and Carla who both are TOTALLY TOO COOL TO CARE both end up supporting Billie and Ruth.
Mike would try to provoke Danny into hating him, because he gets off on it.
Danny would respond by saying something really earnestly loving, leaving Mike completely flaccid.
And that would be the end of their ill-advised misadventure. Danny wouldn’t be judgmental about it but somehow that would just make it even worse for Mike.
Also, he’d start committing crimes to get AG to come smack him around a bit and tie him up, and make sure she knew that she was satisfying a sexual kink of his. Entirely voluntary on her part, of course.
it can’t be ruth that that look is about. Like. come on. that’s not ‘hard to notice’, even accounting for additional reader knowledge. shes even been instructed to take care of/ look out for her by Billie.
Now, Billie being unnoticeably depressed might be a thing. for Carla.
Or maybe it just struck a chord with Carla’s past experience. WHOOOOOOOOOOOO KNOWS.
I think that line is slightly different than a lot of people are reading it. It’s not that it’s hard to notice when someone is depressed, a bunch of people throw off tons and tons of hints while trying to stay functional. It’s hard *for other people* to notice when someone’s depressed. They don’t notice or believe it because they don’t want to. Someone being unfathomably negative is a *huuge* drain, and most non-depressed people just have to bounce off of it gingerly and run away, being reflexively positive. Which just makes the depressed person think no one really cares.
My understanding is that Carla did not truly grasp what is going on with Ruth. As far as she could tell, Ruth and Billie broke up. That is it. The reason they broke up is because of the business with Mary thus, Billie asks the only other person who knew they were a couple – Carla – to check in on Ruth because she can’t.
It is only now, with Ethan indirectly spelling it out for her, does she realise that Ruth is not just suffering from a broken heart and that Billie was so insistent because she is worried about Ruth’s depression.
And to the earlier theories, if Carla did previously experienced depression, she may have experienced it in a way that was much more worn on her face and with attentive parents that caught on quick to it, so she might have just assumed that it’s fairly obvious when a person is depressed.
Yeah. The thing about depression is that no two people experience it the same way, which makes it hard to even realize someone has it in the first place; contrary to what Hollywood wants you to believe, not all depressed people are crying messes rocking in a fetal position 24/7: some are like Ruth, others are good at hiding it, some have extreme mood swings, and many more.
When I had it, to large extent nobody knew – partly because everyone writes off teenage reclusive behavior as normal moodiness and partly because I was less heart-on-my-sleeve about it than my sib and mainly because I didn’t decompensate like the stereotype. I still got decent grades, still went to work, etc. I was self-injuring and taking stupid risks and drinking at night when nobody knew but I kept that well-hidden.
I can identify with that. My family either didn’t notice or didn’t care that I was suicidally depressed all the time because I was still getting good grades and doing all my HW and staying off teh drugs.
Yeah, there is actually an huge number of depressed teens who get written off as “typically moody”. It’s a sad thing.
And as Cerberus pointed out, as long as you “function” outwardly, people will rarely care, or even notice. It, unfortunately, takes a lot for other people to understand what is happening, and even more for them to try to help.
I don’t think he is gay, as he seems perfectly comfortable having sexual relations with pretty much anybody as long as it messes with somebody honestly.
also, I love Mike, mike is a great presence in this comic.
AMBER DIDN’T HAVE A BF AMAZIGIRL DID! I wonder if mike fears for hs safety if he shagged amazigirls dood, but if the id compartmentalised as Amber had a bf, that’d be a, safe to fuck/with, and b, in keeping with mike’s kinda shitty positive growth outcome (mike is fertiliser), cos Amber-mazigirl is really not in a place for bfs. or gfs. fs. she can have fs.
… She seriously couldn’t figure out that someone in a dark room, looking at the ceiling, still in their PJ’s, who maybe hadn’t moved since you saw them last was depressed? I thought she was just being blatantly ignorant in order to avoid a situation she had no idea how to deal with.
Heck, I straight out TOLD people I was depressed and wanted to sit down and quit moving all together because I didn’t see a point in college. They had no idea what to do any more than I did, so we just agreed it sucked and kept going. Kinda assumed that was what Carla was doing. A “I can’t fix it so I’ll do what I’m asked, reassure the person who can do nothing, and move on” sort of deal. … Nope. She was just clueless. XD
People are seriously surprised their legs work now that Pokemon Go is a thing. It’s not hard for a college kid to imagine that someone stays in their room 24/7 and is “fine,” especially if they’re the type to be not-terribly-social-for-reasons themselves.
She’s in an engineering track (I think?). Not mental health or social work or the humanities or ANYTHING THAT TRAINS YOU TO DEAL WITH HUMAN BEINGS.
“I think she’s brainstorming. Sometimes *I* do that thing where I just sit there for hours motionless in a dark room, imagining how best to turn a tesla coil into a toaster.”
Also with all the social rejection she had as a kid, she may not have much experience with people other than her parents, and they might not have had to deal with depression.
I don’t think it’s hard to notice, more that it’s hard on other people to notice. They don’t want to acknowledge or think about it. It’s hard to handle. So a lot of people don’t.
“someone in a dark room, [laying in bed], still in their PJ’s” …At 8am on a weekend. While that CAN be a sign of depression, and in this case we know is, it can also just be a sign of bloody not being a morning person.
tbf i dont think carla knew ruth is a recovering alcoholic or that she has depression. her face in that panel is probably her realizing at least that ruth has depression.
she didnt know ruth was a recovering alcoholic and billie gave her basically no information about the situation, so thats kind of a stupid point to be making
But if we try and take into account what a character can realistically be expected to know, how else will we be able to come up with reasons to hate on characters?
(I know the comic is Dumbing of Age because the characters make dumb decisions but I don’t recall Carla really standing out in this field. What’s the OP’s problem with her again?)
Carla isn’t Ruth’s friend. She does not know her. She does not WANT to know her. Why would she know she’s an abused alcoholic suffering from mental health issues?
“Hey can you please please please check on this person for me? I won’t be specific, but anybody with any sort of situational/social/emotional awareness of other people should realize that this is clearly important to me, indicating there must be a REASON for you to check up on this person. Perhaps there is something wrong with them.”
“I could do that… or I could be turd hole and not ask what’s up, like any normal real human person would do.”
Or she’s upset bc no one really tries to be her friend and she doesnt like being used. Just saying, might wanna take your own advice. Like Billie’s not her friend if some random kid in your school asked you to check up on someone, would you? Or would you ignore them? I’d do the latter, I have my own problems I don’t want the problems of people I don’t know added on to that list.
Nobody tries to be her friend because she’s a huge asshole.
And yes, if somebody in my dorm said “Hey can you check up on my friend for me?” and then gave me cookies, I would actually do it. Because this isn’t some stranger on the street, this is, essentially, my neighbor asking me to do this.
What kind of asshole wouldn’t do their neighbor a favor?
actually marcie and carla arent friends so much as ppl who know each other and have had a drink together. you buy someone at the bar a drink bc “why not?” your not suddenly friends your still strangers. Things we know about carla: she likes antagonizing ppl (who in this comic doesnt?) shes loves rollerblading as a hobby. she wants ppl to know she exists. she doesnt want to do rollerderby (i think this is bc of changerooms and is super relatable). she has a soft spot for a cartoon character bc it helped her become the woman she is today. she might like her parents bc of something they did for her as a kid. but she is never shown to have friends nor is she ever shown around anybody other than like 1 or 2 pahes when she bought some ppl beer.
It’s honestly a cycle I’m an antagonizing bongo w/ 0 social skills. I have few friends bc of it. I didn’t develop the right skills bc i didn’t have a single friend until i was homeless after coming out and bc of 15 years of abuse from my parents and 3 years of abuse from ppl i thought were my friends. I didn’t have many friends bc i grew up in canadas conservative asshole where feminine boys who are actually trans girls arent something that ppl are comfortable around and dont talk to bc of it. i dont consider Carla that bad bc i can understand why she’s the way she is. Machines and gears and mechanics and physics all makes sense to her. but people dont and maybe never will and tbh thats fine? like if shes happy and healthy thats great! ntm like everyone gets to be a bongo (billie and ruth come to mind) but y’know theyre cis so its forgivable.
also like idc about my neighbours my neighbours and i have never said a word to each other idek what they look like so i wouldnt do them a favour id probably ignore them and try to survive bc im the only one who cares about myself
You mean, check up on Ruth like Carla’s been doing? Multiple times. Bringing her breakfast when she didn’t answer at first.
Billie didn’t tell her anything about Ruth’s problems. Hard for Carla to know whether Ruth’s in real trouble and faking it or whether Billie is being overly paranoid and frankly a little creepy. We know what’s actually going on, but Carla doesn’t.
People do that with their ex’s though. “We broke up so this must be the worst thing ever for them, and they’re clearly so incapable of taking care of themselves that someone else needs to check up on them.”
Made worse by the fact that Billie clearly still cares about Ruth, so Ruth probably did the dumping. Which logically would mean she doesn’t want the girl she dumped constantly checking in, and that Billie is the one who’s actually taking it badly.
Because she asked and found out from Ruth that’s what happened, in addition to Mary blackmailing her. That all happened before Billie begged her to check up on Ruth on from time to time; her first request was only to deliver the cookies, nothing else. Maybe you have the timeline mixed up a little?
Carla DOES realize there’s a reason. She DID ask. And the answer she got was that Billie and Ruth broke up because of Mary and that Ruth is detoxing. She thinks this is all because of them breaking up. Everything she’s seen from them fits perfectly with the idea “they’re both sad because they had to break up.”
I’m not sure if Mike is asking “will it create a rage preferable to sadness?” because he wants to do it to help or if he is asking because he wants to avoid helping and is considering foregoing his plans
I think mostly he’s trying to rile Ethan. Right now he’s presenting Ethan with a choice of just ignoring his awfulness, ineffectually condemning it, or engaging in the hypothetical. All three options, Mike wins.
Wait, so is Mike bi or just that much of asshole? And would he have brought ropes into the equation? Is this Mike admitting in his own edgy way to Ethan that he’s attracted to him? So many questions!!!
At least Carla is noticing now and not remaining oblivious! Some people would not even be clued in now! She’s working this out in her brain. Can’t blame her, maybe she’s just never been around a depressed person before. I know my friends never knew how to deal w/ me in my lowest depression lows, so I feel for her here. The important part is what she does next!
Little screentime, missing perfect trolling opportunities, Mike is slipping. He better watch out before someone takes his position of top asshole. Malaya and Mary are just a couple of potentials.
Mary is a much MUCH bigger asshole than Mike. Mike knows when to stop and knows the difference between being a bit of a dick and being a homophobic transphobic manipulative ass, unlike Mary. Mary is the biggest ass in this entire cast and my being a trans women and lesbian would probably put her head into the floor if she did to me what she did to Carla.
IS Mary worse than Mike? Mary, a relative stranger, taunts Carla with her body -which is wrong and indefensible -and she did it in a way that made Carla’s living space less comfortable, which is also unacceptable. There’s no argument to defend Mary (even if she didn’t know Carla was trans and was just doing that because she’s tall, “unfeminine”, and obnoxious -Mary CLEARLY knows misgendering people is wrong because she’d fly through the roof if someone did that to a cis person (at least if it was someone she liked/approved of (that is to say, herself))). But Mike was tormenting Amber (also in the place they both live) with a reflective, more torturous aspect of her own worst nightmare -one that brings up the abuse she and her mom went through -while she was already fragile, and he’s supposed be her friend. I’m not trying to say Mary’s “better than we think” or justify her behavior, but Mike… DoA doesn’t follow the comic laws of the universe, like Shortpacked did -and the things the “loveable asshole” type says can cut a hell of a lot deeper in reality than snappy insults and hurtful dialogue generally seem to in entertainment media.
There’s a difference between making people angry at you to get them to stop fighting with each other the way Dorothy did (intentionally or not) yesterday, and intentionally trying to hurt someone in a new and different way than they already are to make them forget the first way they’re hurting.
All that being said, I’m coming at this as a personal thing from the opposite direction, so my absolute of better-worse is how I see the world and not meant to attack or belittle you or your experience. I’m cisgender, but I grew up in a decidedly abusive household, and that was one of my mom’s favorite emotional (and sometimes physical) tactics -especially when I was very young.
yeah i get you ive been homeless for 3 years bc of my moms abuse and mary wouldnt consider calling a transgender woman like carla a man to be misgendering her bc shes that messed up and cruel and evil. i think theyre very similar but i could tolerate mike i can not tolerate ppl like mary.
I really love how the Walky/Carla/Dorothy fight has defused into general playfulness. I bet if they did manage to catch her, the consequences would mainly involve tickling.
I just spent an hour doing the math on this because of that comment (which made me start questioning too), so I’m leaving it all here, that you might suffer with me.
(All dimensions obtained through google and double-checking.)
Well, from how Walky’s standing, we can see that approximately 3 Walkys (thanks to the person who gave me the correct pluralization several comics ago) as measured at the hips would fit between the two doors if they were parallel to the wall. Google-fu says that an average build would give Walky approximately a fifteen inch waist and eighteen inch shoulders -Walky seems to have a shorter, slighter build, so let’s say that he’s about sixteen inches wide, which would put the doorways about 48 inches apart. We know that Amber and Dina’s door is almost against the wall to their half-bath, with enough space between the door and the wall for Dina to fit, but little enough to surprise people that she can. People keep mistaking Dina for twelve -if that’s by height alone, she’s around or just under five feet tall. Feet are about 2/13 of a person’s height, so assuming proportional feet, Dina’s are just under 9″. Therefore the door needs to be at least that far from the wall. Interior walls are about 4.5″ thick in houses -it seems reasonable to assume the same for similarly aged dorms. I can’t remember seeing any doors that opened flat against a wall (which would make sense, as a space-saver), so to be safe, I’m going to assume that the dorm alternates right- and left- handed doors that open against the wall of half-bath and closets in every room, and that the doors are roughly the same distance from the wall in every room (that is, they open far enough to not be in the way during move-in and no farther, and also something something, identical dorms bs because I can’t math this out if I don’t). All that leaves 27 inches for the half-bath. A rectangular sink has a basin 19-24″ wide (although I have seen smaller in dorms), so that fits fine, regardless of whether it’s standalone like in Ruth’s room or set into a counter. Toilets are a bit harder, depending on whether or not they have a tank. If they do, standard size is apparently 26.75″ long, which would be a tight squeeze that way since people have legs and feet, but they’d be 17″ wide, which works out okay. If they’re tankless though, they’d be 18.5″ wide and 19.5″ long, so they could fit into either wall if that were the case. So the visual I’m getting, since I can’t remember seeing any half-baths for much time although I know they’ve appeared in-comic, is that the sink is against the hallway wall, the doors can open into the half-bath (or into the rooms, although that would be problematic for the reasons described above), and the toilet is beyond the door-swing space facing the sink.
In panel 1 (this is the perspective from Joyce’s room), we can see the half bath. The door swings open into the dorm room, not the half-bath. We can also clearly see mirror and set up against the wall dividing half-bath from hallway.
Here, if we look at the bottoms of panels 3 and 4, we see a toilet with a tank, set against the same wall as the mirror. We also see Billie entering from her room, stage-left, which confirms that the wall in question is the one dividing half-bath from hallway.
And argh, my first reply is tied up waiting in moderation limbo because I put two links in it. Let’s try again with dates and you can look them up.
Panel 1 of November 16, 2011 shows sink and mirror on the hallway-side wall, and also that the doors swing open into the dorm rooms rather than into the half-bath.
Look at the bottoms of panels 3 and 4 of April 6, 2011, and you’ll see the toilet on the same side of the wall, as confirmed both by the mirror and by which side of the room Billie enters in from.
I both bless and curse you for this. The doors opening into the rooms makes sense if the half-baths are tiny -and allows for easier other door-placement, but how does the sink fit next to the toilet? Okay, let’s see… Walky’s at the edge of the doorframe, not the door, which adds an extra ~2 inches to the distance, and if he’s actually turned more at the hips so we’re seeing him at an angle that could make the doors 3.5-4 Walkys (56-64 inches) apart + 2 for the doorjamb. Net walls+ door-wall distance is still 27 inches. If we assume 60 inches apart (gonna “justify” this with the apparent number of Walky-feet-lengths between the doors -looks to be about six of them. Walky and Danny wear the same size shoe. If we assume that to be a somewhat average size 10.5, they have feet that are 65/6″ long; multiplying by 6 gives, of course, 65 inches, which is close enough to that range that I’m now going to scale up to 63″ overall length (Walky’s wearing shoes, which are longer than feet, there’s probably a bit of space between toes and edge, foot, like Walky, is not directly parallel to the wall, etc.)) This now gives us 36 inches for the half-bath. Now, for a tankless toilet, the widest part is the center of the bowl, so it could conceivably be next to a sink, if they are set such that the sink ends before the widest part of the toilet. The toilet in the image linked has a tank, though. 17″ tank and 19″ sink works, barely, but we see in your example that there is space between them, although not much, since that space is narrower than the thickness of Joyce at the hips, so it can be no wider than 6 inches. If the sink or toilet were offset in height and/or depth, this would be easy, but we see that they are not. We get a clue in Billie’s leg. In panel 2, we see that she not only has not stepped into the half-bath, but is braced on the doorframe with her lower body completely in her room -this is a relaxed position of halted motion -she did not accidentally step into the half-bath following that panel, which is important, since in the next panel, we see her knee, but her lower body will not have otherwise moved much except away -we are seeing Billie’s leg from (at most) body to knee, and that is longer than the width of the toilet tank. Bent at that angle, and based on how my own measurements change by moving to that position (since no anatomy guide I could find had that position), the toilet is therefore no wider than 13 inches. One of the smaller sink sizes I have seen is 15 inches across on the outside of the (rectangular) basin. If we use those measurements, we now have 34 inches of stuff fitting into 36 inches of space, and Willis is a genius.
When people are depressed, sometimes it’s hard for other people to notice.
I will never not be bitter about this.
On the other hand, it’s not fair to expect Carla to be able to deal with Ruth’s alcoholism & depression without Carla knowing that’s what’s going on. I don’t know what Billie intended, maybe she was just hoping that Ruth noticing someone’s checking in on her would be enough to stop her from doing anything extreme.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t have anything against Sal. But she doesn’t represent me or my personality or my interests at all.
Also, she smokes, so I do have something against her. Smoke-induced respiratory attacks. Seriously, people, if you do have to smoke (and you don’t), do it somewhere that it won’t affect other people, and that includes random passerbys who just rounded a corner and unexpectedly walked into a big cloud of awful.
It is kind of hilarious this Mike wants nothing to do with sleeping with Amber. Then again, she did make him Mummy-Edward from Twilight so that would probably turn off someone from romance with you across the multiverse.
mmmkay so when Mike says “sleep with the ex-boyfriend” is he referring to Ethan or Danny? Because both are exes…and if it’s Ethan then Ethan is very chill about the implications of sleeping with Mike.
Interesting note is that this whole “not even noticing thing” might not be about what it seems like it’s about.
Specifically, we know Billie struggles with depression. Billie’s also just been dumped by a relationship she viewed as being a sign that she wasn’t completely worthless. Billie’s feeling like she’s failing Becky. Billie’s acting somewhat erratic and begging a secondary to fulfill her job of making sure Ruth doesn’t off herself.
And all of our focus and attention and fear is all hyperfocused on Ruth who is not doing well, but is also slowly taking small steps to pull out of her pit.
Billie instead is spinning her wheels and trying to show no outward signs of her inner turmoil about everything that went down.
So basically, the person Carla might be realizing is depressed might not be Ruth or might not just be Ruth, but Billie as well.
Dunno, it could also be being played straight. I’m definitely curious to see where things go from here.
Something tells me that Carla has just learned something about depression that she never realised before. I suspect that a hurried return to Ruth is imminent.
Meanwhile, just what is Mike’s alignment? He seems able to totally subsume his sexualityto his cconscious intentions.
Confirmed atheists are: Walky and Dorothy.
Possible additional atheists are: Leslie and Carla
Most everyone else has been hinted or confirmed some flavor of Christian or Jewish, though Joe is non-practicing Jewish, so might be in and around the atheist category as well.
Ethan could easily be as well, going by the other verse. I mean, he outright explained the concept to Iesos when the latter was confused by working the sabbath.
Of course, I doubt religious beliefs are ironclad like sexual orientation. It’s entirely possible he was raised differently here (and it’s worth noting that orthodox jewish groups can be just as terrible towards the gays as fundies are, which certainly fits how his mother treated him on the matter)
I doubt Ethan’s family’s Orthodox -his folks appear to be homophobic and awful independent of their religion. Reasoning: he (even around his parents) and his dad are bare-headed, and his dad wasn’t openly wearing tzitzit, his mom’s hair was uncovered, even in public, and they were more concerned about Amber “turning him gay” than about her not being Jewish. I know there are workarounds for all of those (didn’t notice with the hair, tuck the fringes in, mom wears the wig of the ultra-Orthodox, a girl can convert to “make Jewish grandbabies”, but two men aren’t (in theory) going to be producing any….), but I feel like they’d all require too much Judaic background and exposition to be given reasonably and interestingly in-comic.
As a Jewish person, though, I’d be interested (read: horrified, yet fascinated) by a non-Christian character who’s an intolerant sh*thead for religious reasons, because you’re right -fundamentalist traditional Judaism can be just as toxic as fundamentalist traditional Christianity, or just as uncomfortable-but-able-to-evolve.
*thonks self* of course, right, there are kind of requirements there beyond belief, my mistake.
But hey, good news: Ethan’s mom might improve within the lifetime of the comic. In the other verse, she EVENTUALLY came around to Ethan banging dudes, because the alternative was to not accept her son ever having a relationship (She was like, in her 50s?)
Wait…I’m confused. I don’t think I’ve ever seen any sign that Mike is gay or bi, or frankly anything since I don’t think I’ve ever seen him interested in a girl either. So is he suggesting that he’d sleep with her ex-boyfriend only because it might hurt her, or because he actually swings that way?
Because the first makes him a purely evil person. And the second makes him a purely evil person who at least (and it is very least) can claim to have some motivation. Not that he really has any anyway since he said he never even knew she had a boyfriend and therefore can’t claim to have any physical attraction.
I dunno, Walkyverse Mike slept with people of all genders but also did it mostly to fuck with people, so I think this universe’s incarnation has a similarly ambiguously pan-ish sort of sexuality.
Is this true in all languages? It seems to hold in Latin as well, but in the sense of “I do the f*ucking [of you] and thus I am the powerful one” or “You are the one who gets f*cked [by me or others] and thus you are worthless” -I’m not sure if the sexuality can be removed from the equation and the words can just hold the connotations of malice of any sort.
That seems to be more of a “slap slap kiss” kind of turned on, than an “Ooohhh, I’m all subdued by the strong you” kinda turned on. Of course I could be reading it wrong.
I don’t think so. There was a ShortPacked! Amber/Mike Slipshine. He appeared in the anthology Slipshine, but I think he just harassed Billie into revealing she was talking about a girl.
I always thought that was a fun shipto imagine, and one that would absolutely horrify me in real life. On a different note, I wonder if Donna exists in this universe -kinda hope she’s Mike’s beloved little sister or cousin.
Are we sure Mike doesn’t know? He’s reasonably observant (has to be, to best know how to piss people off and/or hurt them) and has been friends with Amber for years, and AG tackled him, was sitting on him, and got right in his face at some point while they conversed. I can see Danny obliviousing past that -especially at that point in the comic, doubly especially with him wanting to believe in real-life superheroes so badly, but Mike? Seems a bit of a stretch.
The thing I see that surely isn’t right: does this mean Mike slept with Ethan, or at least wanted to? Because, if that’s his go-to move, and Ethan is also Amber’s ex
I mean, it could fit. That could be how Ethan found out he was gay. Even if he didn’t go along with it, he might have wanted to? And hence why he and Ethan still hang out together despite Mike being absolutely horrible?
Surely I’m reading things that Willis didn’t intend, right?
I think you’re reading into it, after all Mike would have rubbed it into Amber’s face already – which he hasn’t. That and Ethan would act more attracted to Mike, or at least nervous about him.
Plus, odds are Mike figured out way before either of them that Ethan was gay and just waited for it all to collapse around them. Or waited for the opportunity to nudge everything so it would collapse.
For some reason, when Walky said “Damn her! She runs like the wind!”, I imagined him as a British gentleman, complete with monocle, waxed moustache and top hat.
I know the general consensus here is that Willis is hinting at Billie and Ruth, but I am worried about Carla. That “ohshit is he hinting at me?!” facial expression is a bit too familiar to me.
Also, OT: Thanks to Cerberus and Jason for your advice/mentorship lately. If I can stop trembling at the thought, I intend to go to a local support group thingy next week. Mainly because our comment exchanges have been super helpful so I hope meeting more local trans folk who explicitly signed on to mentor people through the process of self-discovery might also be super helpful. I do have trans friends but it strikes me as kind of inconsiderate to draft them as help without their permission and most of them are too nice to tell me to pound sand if they don’t want the emotional labour.
*hugs or other currently preferred gesture of support*
I guess this many days later you might not see this, but in case you do, I hope it goes well. I also want you to know that your comments too are also helpful to read, similarly to Cerberus’s and Jason’s.
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btw if you're one of those rando bluesky weirdos who doesn't know me but sees me in the wild being sarcastic and don't know i'm being sarcastic because you haven't taken like 30 seconds to, like, maybe look at my user profile or something, keep walking, you're not going to score internet points here
Here's an entertaining cite at the bottom of the first page
Josh Gerstein@joshgerstein.bsky.social ⋅ 1d
JUST IN: Milwaukee Judge Hannah Dugan moves to dismiss federal criminal case against her for allegedly helping immigrant hide from ICE. Her lawyers say she's protected by official acts & judicial immunity and 10th Amendment. Doc: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
Where did Hollywood go so wrong? I thought movies were supposed to be an escape from reality, a chance to put your worries aside and not have to think about any underlying ideas or concepts. Well, not anymore.
theonion.com/you-can...
It's not a new argument, of course, but Chesterton dismissed it effectively in 1908.
"You will hear everlastingly... this argument that the rich man cannot be bribed. The fact is, of course, that the rich man is bribed; he has been bribed already. That is why he is a rich man."
Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com ⋅ 2d
Hawley dismisses Trump lining his pockets with his memecoin: "Listen, I think nobody believes that Donald Trump can be bought. I mean, what does Donald Trump need more money for?"
wilbur, savvy enough to know he's in a comic strip but still not a great actor, awkwardly lifts a muffin up into frame so that we, the audience, understand that he has a muffin right now, which is very important narratively, but he's not really selling it well as an organic, human action
confirming that the reason there's been no Galaxy Version female characters in Blokees until now is that they felt they needed to make Round Lady Thighs For Ladies
preternia @preternia.com ⋅ 14h
Josh Gerstein @joshgerstein.bsky.social ⋅ 1d
Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com ⋅ 2d
Pavel
@spavel.bsky.social ⋅ 11d
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Mike just loves fucking with people tho
in lots of ways
Like when there are nickels involved, for instance…
FEMURS, Oh oops, wrong meme
Fermurs made of nickels. Or nickel.
Or nickels made of femur?
Especially moms. Especially for a nickel.
I’m just trying to figure out how Mike would sleep with anyone he wants.
Does he just go up to them and say “You. Pants. Off. Now.”
I’ve always pictured him with H’ Jon Benjamin’s Archer voice, so that might actually be pretty effective.
You could just say H. Jon Benjamin’s voice since it’s pretty much the same whether you’re talking about Archer, McGuirk, Bob Belcher, Byron Orpheus’ master…
I don’t know what it is, but somehow I have no problem buying Bob as a sad sack and Sterling as the ultimate stud, even though they have the exact same voice.
The joke “crossover” in Archer season 4 was kind of confusing for that reason.
Whereas Coach McGuirk is a sad sack who thinks he’s a stud.
I will admit that I did not have a good reason to suspend my disbelief during that episode.
The girls at IU seem kinda easy. I mean, aside from the lesbian editor there hasn’t been a single character who’s had trouble hooking up whenever they wanted to.
They’re college kids, being perpetually horny is kinda their thing. =p
Can we not label women who enjoy sex as ‘easy’, please?
I’ve interpreted that as also including the men. Also, it’s descriptive for anyone who readily jumps on occasions to have sex – the negative connotations are only present for those who have a problem with sed behavior.
Mmm, no, I don’t buy it.
One, Palamdrone specifically said “The *girls* at IU seem kinda easy”, singling out the women as the ones being out of the norm.
Secondly, while it’s certainly possible for words to transcend their connotations, I don’t believe that’s happening in this case. “Easy” has been used for a while as a slightly less offensive version of “loose” or “slutty”–terms used to judge women for promiscuous behavior, based on a weird cultural assumption that men should be sexual aggressors and women should be withholding sex. Those negative connotations are based in the history and usage of culture and language.
To be clear, I don’t think Palamdrone intended badly but I think it’s worth pointing out when language perpetuates harmful cultural stereotypes. Instead they could have said “The students at IU all seem perpetually horny”, which is nonjudgmental and gets the same point across.
Um…if you’re easily offended, you might want to avoid webcomics…and…the internet,
If you’re easily offended by other people talking about stuff like sexism, you might want to avoid, like, real life.
When people call out discrimination, consider that they might be more than just ‘easily offended’. For my part, I believe that it’s valuable to create cultures where this is commonplace; no-one is perfect, and by being able to openly communicate about issues helps to reduce them.
Also, part of the decision to call out sexism (or discrimination in general) is contextual and based on audience. I wouldn’t bother going on, say, /b/, and calling out discrimination, because I don’t believe it would make any difference. However, I think the sort of people who read DoA are more likely to be the sort of people who will listen to constructive criticism and want to improve themselves.
Ethan hasn’t had a single date with a guy, Joe strikes out with everyone on panel outside of Roz and Penny, Billie was turned down by both Joe and Danny, Becky was turned down by Joyce, Marcie is currently in a vague “I’m not sure she’s interested in me or girls” space with Malaya, so there’s definitely a fair set of strike outs.
But, I mean, beyond that, they’re college kids. A strong majority of college kids fuck. Hell, a strong majority of people in general fuck. It’s sort of a human thing.
To be fair, Ethan never tried from what we’ve seen and perhaps if he pursued Danny it would lead to sexy times, though between those two there’s more of a romance going on.
As for Joe… it’s more that it’s comical to see him fail and not so much comical to see him succeed – it’s been stated often (mostly by Joe himself) that he’s quite popular, sexually.
Is Marcie in a vague ‘not sure’ space with Malaya or has it moved on by now? It’s been a while since we’ve seen anything on that front (then again, comic-time is slower then a turtle, so it’s understandable).
Very true. Ethan hasn’t tried to pursue anyone from what we can see in comic. And I believe Joe when he says he has lots of success (he is very handsome and Roz has said in the porn comics that he has crazy good stamina if you can shut him up).
For Marcie, last we saw was last Saturday and she was still in the vague space: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/03-the-butterflies-fly-away/birdflash/
There has been no update in comic on whether or not it has progressed from there.
It was more just me pointing out that people strike out in comic, so it’s not like this is quite the Menagea3 orgy future ending or anything like that, more a fairly normal depiction of early college sexual experimentation and exploration.
Given that Malaya was not gay in Walkyverse, it won’t go well for Marcie.
… though she was willing to experiment a bit.
Ethan not pursuing anyone seems to have more to do with his attempts to have more to his personality than just “the gay guy”, which also lead to his brief return to presenting himself as straight. It also hasn’t been very effective as he’s been shown lusting after pretty much every guy that comes into his field of view. The boy needs to get laid!
or he needs different toys
@Reltzik DW said that his characters have the same sexual orientation in all universes. Saying that, what part of Malaya having a thing for Leslie and Ultra Car makes her “not gay in the Ealkyverse”?
Sarah has had trouble, if I remember right
My poor favorite
She does, when she’s trying to act according to a set of rules I consider arcane that Merika has constructed as the way to date people.
I wonder if she’d do better just treating Jacob as a friend first, and growing close more organically. Would it be doomed to failure because we say not to do that? Would she still cock that up because she wants to bang him too badly /now/? Dunno. But I wonder.
I’d attribute it more to the fact that pathetic losers are underrepresented in the cast. Just Daisy and Howard that I’ve noticed.
(Note this is not one of those stupid “The DoA cast should be representative of the real world IU student body.” complaints. Willis should write the characters his Muse tells him to, and not write characters she doesn’t. That’s an vital element of making art that doesn’t suck.)
I’m not sure how you’re defining “pathetic losers” except perhaps as people who want sex and aren’t getting it.
Howard’s a kid. Other than her perpetual single horniness, I’m not sure why Daisy’s pathetic or a loser.
Some of the other character might well be considered so by many, it’s just that they’ve found partners – Amber, the anti-social shut in, Walky the man-child, Danny the doormat.
They’re not really, of course, but they’re exactly the type you’d expect not to get laid often. Certainly not “players”.
defining “pathetic losers” except perhaps as people who want sex and aren’t getting it.
Exactly, which I thought would be obvious from context.
I would suggest putting that term in quotes, then. The idea that people like that are actually losers has led to a lot of problems, and thus might bug people.
It created “Nice Guys.” And the groups that took that to mean that everyone must be a horrible jerk.
In the same way that women are taught that their value comes from their beauty, guys are often taught that their value comes from procuring sexual partners.
That’s not saying it’s wrong to try to have sex, as long as you are doing so with willing partners. But it has nothing to do with your manhood or “loser” status.
I don’t agree, but I’m not going argue it further here.
Well, there was the time Daisy, who appears to be an professor-type adult or grad student asked Billie to demonstrate her claim about sexual harassment by her RA, and then leaned in and kissed Billie when she complied -and then said that both that and what Ruth did (after Billie spelled out that Ruth knocked her against the wall first) was accidental, could happen to anyone, etc. Wouldn’t call that “pathetic loser” behavior, but it definitely comes across as sketchy, at best to me.
Personally always viewed Mikes voice to be kind of like Dante Bosco’s Zuko, but with a slightly deeper voice.
I hear Mike as my asshole BIL (perhaps with good reason) but idk how to describe that to y’all
Actually got a better example of the voice I was thinking of. Take Scott Menville’s Red X from Teen Titans! but without the robotic voice adjustment and slightly raspier.
Mike: like Chief Cosgrove, but with pants.
Except instead of “Cut it out” it’s “Pull it out”
Frankly, I really don’t understand Mike here. His go-to move is just be an asshole with no reason or context. Seems kinda two dimensional characterization to me, I was hoping for some development.
Someone’s in a relationship, better break it up because the concept offends me?
This universe’s Mike seems to do seemingly asshole-ish things in order to help other characters grow, albeit in a painful and nasty ways. He keeps making others learn new lessons, and has lulz in the process. But he has a brand of tough love for which he prefers to be branded as just an asshole, even if he’s more than that.
In this case sleeping with Amber’s boyfriend would have broken her up. Amber is not in a good mental state, so breaking her up would be best, as she could be potentially toxic and/or dangerous for any partner until she gets her shit at least a little bit together.
That’s… still hella uncool. Like, everything you just said.
This idea that Mike is trying to Miyagi people into bettering themselves, like telling Ethan that he should pretend to be straight, or telling Amber that she’s doomed to become her father, or calling Dorothy and Sal giant sluts because they have sex with men, well it’s fucking gross.
And, come on; “Amber is mentally ill, so she deserves to have her boyfriend cheat on her, and she totally deserves it because she might fuck things up because of a litany of untreated mental health problems” is goddamn gross.
Nobody ever said he was a good guy. Quite the opposite; he’s a massive asshole. But there is some goodness in his heart.
Maybe. He still feels like a trying-too-hard edgelord to me, but wevs.
I kinda think telling an abuse victim that they’re doomed to become their abuser is grounds for being a total scum sucking shitfucker.
When the alternative is “he watches her gradually become her abuser and then he does nothing about it,” we have a pretty messed up situation! The thing we need to hear is so rarely the thing we want to hear.
“You are doomed to become your father because you want a partner you feel safe with” is not something an abuse victim needs to hear, especially one who’s already convinced that she’s one step away from hurting everyone around her.
I can’t believe so many fucking people defend this bullshit. The fuck is wrong with you.
“…he’s a massive asshole. But there is some goodness in his heart.”
So Mike is really The Grinch?
Spencer- Oh yeah, on that point, full agree. Hell, for all people love old universe Mike, this universe’s Mike actually has the worst record for actually improving people’s situations with his “advice”. Amber and Ethan have been particularly good examples of this.
His “advice” helped drive Ethan back in the closet, encouraged Amber to not seek people out about mental health stuff, and dive even more into feeding one of her alters in a toxic way in response to the fear.
If he’s an asshole for the good of other people like a Sarah, he is frankly, awful at this.
He seems to me to pass up opportunities to terrorize Joyce, and that’s about the extent of some heart of gold that people want to carry over from the Walkyverse. In other words he’s just an asshole. I get the impression Willis likes having him around but has little to no interest in having him be three dimensional for the time being, or even at all. Many readers want everyone with major screen time to be well rounded, but the current situation is fine by me.
I was not defending him. At least not in an absolute way. None of this makes him good. Even if he has good intentions, even if he is attempting to fix people’s lives, he still goes about it in an awful, manipulative, hurtful way.
He comes from a really *nice* family so he acts out and he attempts to be the exact opposite, the jerkiest of jerks, but even in that it seems that he can’t avoid being well-intentioned deep, deep down, in a roundabout fucked-up way. He’s not good, he’s just not 100% absolute evil all the time always.
My point was just that he’s not one-dimensional at all. Which of course he isn’t, or we wouldn’t be having this discussion.
Where has it even been remotely hinted that he has good intentions.
Because that’s just something people decided was true because reasons.
Because that’s what can be figured out by studying what he’s doing. It’s his modus operandi.
So he’s always one step ahead of the rest, he’s the first to pick up when someone is fucking up. So instead of trying to stop them, he satirizes them and ridicules them, then persuades them to do the exact opposite than they should be doing so that they can see how moronic they are being.
But it’s those situations that set him off, he’s never just an asshole without prompt. The things he does always end up with someone learning a lesson. It’s not random.
Leaving aside whether Mike actually has any good intentions, the things he does do not always end with someone learning a lesson (not even the one you think they’d pick up, “Mike is not someone I want to hang out with”). Ethan didn’t come out of the closet any faster because Mike told him to stay in it (or because he got Joyce to say she thought homosexuality was a sin, for that matter). Implying that Amber was an abuser because she was dating a guy like Danny did not accomplish anything except making her feel bad. Sal shrugged off his random slut-shaming after a few strips, and Dorothy seems to have just ignored his attempt to do it to her. I don’t even think beating up Joe, telling Walky that Billie was mauled by a bear, drawing dicks on Joyce’s door, or answering Joyce’s phone with “All Hail Satan” were trying to get anyone to do anything; he was just enjoying himself.
…he got Dorothy to admit she was dating Walky! Okay, yes, his assholery accomplished something useful. Once.
So if he is secretly trying to fix people, he’s doing a terrible job.
Except for that part where he stood outside Joyce’s bedroom and constantly drew dicks on her whiteboard.
(The above post and this were meant to be in response to Dana)
And, yeah, I think people just want to assign all these deep narrative reasons to Mike. It’s just hella messed up in this circumstance because it prescribes a “deep” reason to Mike constantly being a total creep.
Like his character bio entirely consists of: “Mike is an asshole. He rooms with Walky.”
Wow, Mike has his own theodicy. I love it.
I see him similarly. My interpretation is that he does see all the awful stuff going on around him, sometimes even when others don’t, and I think he does want to see things get better for others, but for whatever reason, he thinks being awful in return is some sort of “tough love” that will show people how they’re messing things up (because it’s everyone else’s fault for not seeing what he sees). Basically, it’s an outlook of “the world is terrible and everyone around me is clueless, so I need to be terrible too until everyone else gets their act together.” Obviously, this is not a healthy way to interact with the world, for himself or anyone else.
I say this based on someone I know, so I may be projecting a bit. But it does mean I’m sympathetic towards Mike and hope someone like him can grow because I don’t think he’s truly heartless, instead harmfully unaware of what people actually need.
Or, alternatively, angry at the world for being terrible and deliberately, knowingly being a jerk, again, ans some sort of punishment/tough love.
He dresses well, he’s at an age where people haven’t yet figured out that Bad Boys aren’t actually a good idea, he can play off his personality as nihilistic or rebellious as needed, and all of the alternatives for dating are also college students so it’s not like he’s got a high bar to clear.
Plus, he’s confident and he asks, which is sometimes all you need.
It’s simple. He pays them a nickel.
I thought it was tramatic rape therapy. I don’t have the link, but it’s from Shortpacked. It’s basically that he rapes people while doing something involved with what they want to avoid. He explained it as raping someone while singing the ninja turtles theme would make you not want to watch ninja turtles anymore, because it would remind them of the tragic rape.
Yeah… that was certainly a comic that existed.
I dunno, I’m kinda glad those jokes happen less these days.
It’d work on me.
It could be that Mike is secretly the most attractive character in the entire ‘verse, but his love of hate is so strong that it gives off a “resting bongoface” vibe.
I think Mike just wants to fuck people. Amber’s reaction would just be a bonus.
Actually, I think Mike never saw a social more he didn’t want to nuke from orbit.
“Sleeping with my friends’ significant others is frowned upon? NUKE FROM ORBIT!”
“Spelling out a marriage proposal with dead cats is frowned upon? NUKE FROM ORBIT!”
“Punching people in the face while they’re on a date is frowned upon? NUKE FROM ORBIT!”
“… It’s the only way to be sure.”
The singular of ‘mores’ is ‘mos’. It’s Latin, and pronounced roughly ‘morayz’, not ‘morz’.
Mos?
Wow, that would be a hard thing to guess.
…. wait, with an ‘h’? How the hell do you pronounce that? Why would anyone put an ‘h’ in there?
I agree that that’s the Latin singular, but I don’t see it used in English. I’ve seen way too many people refer to a singular “more,” and have never seen anyone say “mos.”
I mean, it’s better than fucking without people.
Mike, king of making you fucking angry.
The phrase is “hate-fucking”.
No matter the universe, Mike is always best character.
We love Mike, not for his ability to support major plot lines with continual character input but for his ability to constantly upend stalled plots with massive bouts of assholish insight.
Carla knew she dun fucked up
Yeah, that’s the face of someone who just got hit with a solid cluehammer.
A cluehammer to the FAAAAAAACE
Ethan hurls cluehammer
Cluehammer sails right over Walky’s head (as usual)
Cluehammer smacks Carla upside her haed
I like to think Carla’s kinda dumb for not seeing the smile was fake sooner, but… well, she wanted to believe she was fine, and that goes a long way towards thinking they are if they show something like it. Plus, I probably wouldn’t do much better- fake smiles are something I’m not really used to, so it could have fooled me too if I didn’t see this outside the comic.
I agree with you on that front, and another thing to keep in mind is that not only does Carla not have a particularly personal relationship with Ruth beyond Ruth being a vaguely authoritative figure but the last interaction they had that WASN’T because of Billie’s begging was about Ruth refusing to stand her ground about defending Carla when Mary misgendered her -which Carla saw. So not only does she not know Ruth all that well, but Ruth is yet another person who should have defended her, could have done better to protect her, but didn’t, and is potentially making (albeit passively) her living space more uncomfortable -and it’s only the start of the semester. She’s got a pretty good justification to want to spend as little time as possible around Ruth, and had no reason (presumably beyond her own personal experiences and maybe Billie being worried) to assume the smile was fake.
……..
Okay, now I’m envisioning a game that’s a cross between Warhammer and Clue.
“It was the Black Orks, in the Riverbed, with the WAAAGGH!”
….
My mind is a scary, scary place.
I like it. Can I try?
“It was the Gutter Runners, in the forest, with poisoned shanking knives.”
No wait, it was the Troll Slayer, in the Cavern, with EVERYTHING!!!
Can we have a 40K edition? Ciaphas Cain, in the Eye, with the bolter!
“But, but, but, she SAID she was fine.”
Yeah she did!
The penny drops.
Meanwhile, in the Math Building, Penny suddenly falls from above and lands in front of Jason’s desk.
Jason: “Where in bloody blazes did you come from?!”
Penny: “I don’t know.“
…wanna have sex?
…YE… NO, I can’t stand you, remember?
Bollocks.
Double bollocks!
I love this whole sub-thread.
See, Ethan? If you had stayed Amber’s boyfriend just a little longer, Mike would have slept with you.
Then again, Ethan knows Mike pretty well. Despite what happened in SP, he might not be into that.
AAAAAAAH!!!! oh man. oh man oh man
Ethan: so if there were a guy who were gay but repressed about it, would you sleep with him? you know, so he’d have like a crisis about it or something?
*beat*
*cut to slipshine*
“Only if he were like 87 times better at reverse psychology than you are.”
“Also, I AM Amber’s ex.”
“549 times.”
Wait, he as in Mike or he as in Ethan?
Yes.
I wonder if 3-I will be bothered that you couldn’t give…
…a straight answer.
Wait. Does this mean Mike slept with Ethan before?
I think so. Prom night, when Amber and Ethan broke up because he realized he was gay.
Similar to shortpacked huh?
Kinda tempted to draw that scene out now
I can see it now
Ethan: amber, I think I might be gay
*Mike enters*
Ethan: yep, definitely gay =)
Depends on what Mike entered.
Pretty sure not. This sounds more like ideas that Mike’s coming up with now and repeating ad nauseum in this conversation, rather than a long-established pattern of behavior. He certainly didn’t try to break up Ethan and Joyce that way.
or he’s going for a twofer, screw with amber by screwing her ex, and screw with ethan by making him think “damn, maybe I could’a gotten in on that”
If so I’m wondering if it was before or after they broke up.
Mike specifically did not sleep with Ethan, because to do so would’ve helped Ethan realize he was gay in a less traumatic time and manner for both Ethan and Amber, thus not maximizing assholitude.
But for anyone else he absolutely would have.
say what you want about mike, he takes being an asshole seriously: self-critiques and recognizing room for improvement.
Aaaand, there’s the last horse crossing the finish line.
So last in line, it’s gonna have to tip toe into the stables, if it doesn’t want to wake the other horses.
Mike doesn’t care about screwing with people.
He just wants to have sex with a guy.
It kinda looks like he’s hitting on Ethan, but not being very good at it.
He’d have no problem if he was literally hitting him.
Sadly for Mike college romance works on slightly different rules than kindergarten.
Well, unless you are Walky of course, but he lucked out.
Or if you happen to be in Japan.
Get out
I think you mean “anime Japan” because I promise you part of the appeal of that kind of comedic violence is that nothing like it would ever happen in real life.
walky chases his girlfriend, runny. predictably, he can’t keep up. meanwhile, a trans girl waits, secretly sad
!!
…
So that’s why Ruth’s eyes looked like raisins today!
Raisin eyes are a common symptom of depression, so says Dr. Nick Riviera.
“Hello Everybody!”
“Hi, Dr. Nick!”
(I got it right, right? It’s that Dr. Nick?)
The one that’s not Dr. Hibbert, yes.
*plays Christopher Cross’ “Run Like The Wind” on the hacked Muzak*
Too true, Ethan.
I don’t see what Carla’s worried about. Ruth clearly said she was “fine.”
That level of depression-induced deceitfulness is what makes it so hard to tell!
((Kinda joking but really not.))
The lying to yourself is the worst part, along with all the other worst parts.
Mike seems to really want to be on the ball, if you know what I mean.
Because I don’t know what I mean.
I am also clueless as to what you mean by this.
In other news:
*Begins singing.*
I know
You know
That I’m not telling the truth.
Wait… I’m not sure why Carla looks awkward here. Drawing a blank.
She’s remembering Ruth.
Remembering Ruth.
I’d say “remembering Ruth” but that’s the sort of thing you say about people after they’re DEAD so CUT IT OUT!
Seriously, bad omen mojo!
“Well, shit. I know someone else who’s decided to hide herself in her room and refuse contact with others.”
Also possibly starting to worry about Billie.
I dunno, it might just be that Willis is fond of misdirection, but yeah, definitely echoing that concern for Billie. We’ve all been ignoring her way too much this arc and way too much focus has been on the Ruth side of the equation. Like, by all means, Carla should check on both of them, but it should probably be a both sort of deal.
Fortunately it seems like Sal is starting to look out for Billie a bit. Nice symmetry. Sal and Carla who both are TOTALLY TOO COOL TO CARE both end up supporting Billie and Ruth.
Totes. Yeah, that is a nice bit of symmetry there.
She suddenly got a crush on Mike
Carla clearly has not been acting with integrity and now she might have some regrets.
…Mike/Danny? Huh. That seems like it might be surprisingly stable and healthy. Or it might end with hospitalization. Could go either way.
(Just like Danny)
I would love to see this! What could Mike tell Danny that he doesn’t already hate himself for?
Danny, alone!, is immune.
And we know they both like to play with rope. Maybe being a dom would be a good outlet for him?
Methinks Danny is especially susceptible. Remember that Mike-ish treatment from his parents is how he was trained in the ways of self-hate.
In the other universe, Mike’s with a wallflower who gradually learned to stand up for herself. So yeah, it could work…
Mike would try to provoke Danny into hating him, because he gets off on it.
Danny would respond by saying something really earnestly loving, leaving Mike completely flaccid.
And that would be the end of their ill-advised misadventure. Danny wouldn’t be judgmental about it but somehow that would just make it even worse for Mike.
I love that we’re seeing more of Mike. He is best asshole.
No, William Atherton is.
Sorry!
Took quite the jump start to get those gears turning.
I wonder if Ethan thinks Mike is in the know about Amazi-girl.
We don’t know either way, but it seems likely Mike doesn’t, or he would have done something by now.
“Wait, you knew?”
“Yep. That’s why I *wasn’t* getting her into therapy.”
Mike would so not honor the identity distinction.
Also, he’d start committing crimes to get AG to come smack him around a bit and tie him up, and make sure she knew that she was satisfying a sexual kink of his. Entirely voluntary on her part, of course.
how far can walky even run?
For the honor of Cartoons? To the end of the world.
Not just as far as Dorothy.
it can’t be ruth that that look is about. Like. come on. that’s not ‘hard to notice’, even accounting for additional reader knowledge. shes even been instructed to take care of/ look out for her by Billie.
Now, Billie being unnoticeably depressed might be a thing. for Carla.
Or maybe it just struck a chord with Carla’s past experience. WHOOOOOOOOOOOO KNOWS.
I think that line is slightly different than a lot of people are reading it. It’s not that it’s hard to notice when someone is depressed, a bunch of people throw off tons and tons of hints while trying to stay functional. It’s hard *for other people* to notice when someone’s depressed. They don’t notice or believe it because they don’t want to. Someone being unfathomably negative is a *huuge* drain, and most non-depressed people just have to bounce off of it gingerly and run away, being reflexively positive. Which just makes the depressed person think no one really cares.
My understanding is that Carla did not truly grasp what is going on with Ruth. As far as she could tell, Ruth and Billie broke up. That is it. The reason they broke up is because of the business with Mary thus, Billie asks the only other person who knew they were a couple – Carla – to check in on Ruth because she can’t.
It is only now, with Ethan indirectly spelling it out for her, does she realise that Ruth is not just suffering from a broken heart and that Billie was so insistent because she is worried about Ruth’s depression.
As far as I can tell anyway, but what do I know?
two soled comments, good callz
That’s also very likely.
And to the earlier theories, if Carla did previously experienced depression, she may have experienced it in a way that was much more worn on her face and with attentive parents that caught on quick to it, so she might have just assumed that it’s fairly obvious when a person is depressed.
Yeah. The thing about depression is that no two people experience it the same way, which makes it hard to even realize someone has it in the first place; contrary to what Hollywood wants you to believe, not all depressed people are crying messes rocking in a fetal position 24/7: some are like Ruth, others are good at hiding it, some have extreme mood swings, and many more.
When I had it, to large extent nobody knew – partly because everyone writes off teenage reclusive behavior as normal moodiness and partly because I was less heart-on-my-sleeve about it than my sib and mainly because I didn’t decompensate like the stereotype. I still got decent grades, still went to work, etc. I was self-injuring and taking stupid risks and drinking at night when nobody knew but I kept that well-hidden.
I can identify with that. My family either didn’t notice or didn’t care that I was suicidally depressed all the time because I was still getting good grades and doing all my HW and staying off teh drugs.
Yeah, there is actually an huge number of depressed teens who get written off as “typically moody”. It’s a sad thing.
And as Cerberus pointed out, as long as you “function” outwardly, people will rarely care, or even notice. It, unfortunately, takes a lot for other people to understand what is happening, and even more for them to try to help.
“Sleep with her boyfriend”
“Go to move”
“Usually on the ball”
I see what you did there, Willis.
… Danny/Mike ship a-go?
(Also, there’s Carla realizing that Ruth saying she’s fine and Ruth being fine might be two very different things.)
How about a Mike/Billie ship being hinted at here?
*Carla realizing depression, putting clues together*
Mike: “What if I slept with her ex-boyfriend? Would it create a rage that would be preferable to sadness?”
Carla: “QUICK! YOU! Yes you! Go sleep with Billie! It’ll really piss our RA off! Besides rumor and bathroom graffiti says she’s easy.”
Mike: Why should I do what you –
(brain completes processing)
-Yes, ma’am! Right away, strangely-tall-lady-ma’am!
Carla is taller than Ethan? Huh. I figured they were about the same height, or Carla was just a tad less tall.
I mean she towers over Walky, but… who doesn’t already?
carla and ethan are about 6′ each?
They’re about the same height, if you discount that hat.
I didn’t notice the “Never Forget” poster. That’s great
Let’s always remember the dinosaurs’ self-sacrifice for us mammals.
Walky and regular exercise?
Given his diet, I’d be surprised if anything about him could be regular.
Man, I love when storylines overlap. And that big realization from Carla. And Mike’s self-analysis.
“I love this whole strip in general” is what I mean.
Not sure if Mike is gay…
…or just knows her boyfriend being gay is a weak spot for Amber and he wants to be that much of a dick
maybe the second one
In the Walkyverse Mike has stated, and I quote, “I’m whatever you don’t want me to be”
I don’t think he is gay, as he seems perfectly comfortable having sexual relations with pretty much anybody as long as it messes with somebody honestly.
Mike is, as per Willis, ‘whatever you don’t want him to be’, if I remember correctly xD
And, assumably, with whomever you don’t want him to be…
More like on the BALLS about this, am I right? High five! Anyone?
also, I love Mike, mike is a great presence in this comic.
AMBER DIDN’T HAVE A BF AMAZIGIRL DID! I wonder if mike fears for hs safety if he shagged amazigirls dood, but if the id compartmentalised as Amber had a bf, that’d be a, safe to fuck/with, and b, in keeping with mike’s kinda shitty positive growth outcome (mike is fertiliser), cos Amber-mazigirl is really not in a place for bfs. or gfs. fs. she can have fs.
You’re one cold motherfucker, Mike…
Cold as ten dollars worth of nickels and the high school directory.
Walky running? His name disagrees. Walky talky. Walky talk your ear off. Walky at a run is not very effective.
… She seriously couldn’t figure out that someone in a dark room, looking at the ceiling, still in their PJ’s, who maybe hadn’t moved since you saw them last was depressed? I thought she was just being blatantly ignorant in order to avoid a situation she had no idea how to deal with.
Heck, I straight out TOLD people I was depressed and wanted to sit down and quit moving all together because I didn’t see a point in college. They had no idea what to do any more than I did, so we just agreed it sucked and kept going. Kinda assumed that was what Carla was doing. A “I can’t fix it so I’ll do what I’m asked, reassure the person who can do nothing, and move on” sort of deal. … Nope. She was just clueless. XD
People are seriously surprised their legs work now that Pokemon Go is a thing. It’s not hard for a college kid to imagine that someone stays in their room 24/7 and is “fine,” especially if they’re the type to be not-terribly-social-for-reasons themselves.
She’s in an engineering track (I think?). Not mental health or social work or the humanities or ANYTHING THAT TRAINS YOU TO DEAL WITH HUMAN BEINGS.
“I think she’s brainstorming. Sometimes *I* do that thing where I just sit there for hours motionless in a dark room, imagining how best to turn a tesla coil into a toaster.”
Also with all the social rejection she had as a kid, she may not have much experience with people other than her parents, and they might not have had to deal with depression.
I don’t think it’s hard to notice, more that it’s hard on other people to notice. They don’t want to acknowledge or think about it. It’s hard to handle. So a lot of people don’t.
Carla had (still has) a lot going on herself.
“someone in a dark room, [laying in bed], still in their PJ’s” …At 8am on a weekend. While that CAN be a sign of depression, and in this case we know is, it can also just be a sign of bloody not being a morning person.
Don’t worry, Carla.
Ruth made this face. : )
That’s clearly a happy face.
The disturbing part is that’s not an abstraction or simplification imposed by the format of ascii emoticons. THAT WAS THE ACTUAL FACE.
It’s almost as if putting in no effort at all into something important like checking up on a recovering alcoholic is fucking stupid.
Carla why are you so dumb. All the time.
tbf i dont think carla knew ruth is a recovering alcoholic or that she has depression. her face in that panel is probably her realizing at least that ruth has depression.
she didnt know ruth was a recovering alcoholic and billie gave her basically no information about the situation, so thats kind of a stupid point to be making
But if we try and take into account what a character can realistically be expected to know, how else will we be able to come up with reasons to hate on characters?
(I know the comic is Dumbing of Age because the characters make dumb decisions but I don’t recall Carla really standing out in this field. What’s the OP’s problem with her again?)
To be fair, I do hate Carla, but mostly because she’s the kind of person I’d hate in real life: An asshole.
Carla isn’t Ruth’s friend. She does not know her. She does not WANT to know her. Why would she know she’s an abused alcoholic suffering from mental health issues?
“Hey can you please please please check on this person for me? I won’t be specific, but anybody with any sort of situational/social/emotional awareness of other people should realize that this is clearly important to me, indicating there must be a REASON for you to check up on this person. Perhaps there is something wrong with them.”
“I could do that… or I could be turd hole and not ask what’s up, like any normal real human person would do.”
Or she’s upset bc no one really tries to be her friend and she doesnt like being used. Just saying, might wanna take your own advice. Like Billie’s not her friend if some random kid in your school asked you to check up on someone, would you? Or would you ignore them? I’d do the latter, I have my own problems I don’t want the problems of people I don’t know added on to that list.
Nobody tries to be her friend because she’s a huge asshole.
And yes, if somebody in my dorm said “Hey can you check up on my friend for me?” and then gave me cookies, I would actually do it. Because this isn’t some stranger on the street, this is, essentially, my neighbor asking me to do this.
What kind of asshole wouldn’t do their neighbor a favor?
Carla has the entire Marcy gang as her friend. She’s sociable and liked unlike Sal.
actually marcie and carla arent friends so much as ppl who know each other and have had a drink together. you buy someone at the bar a drink bc “why not?” your not suddenly friends your still strangers. Things we know about carla: she likes antagonizing ppl (who in this comic doesnt?) shes loves rollerblading as a hobby. she wants ppl to know she exists. she doesnt want to do rollerderby (i think this is bc of changerooms and is super relatable). she has a soft spot for a cartoon character bc it helped her become the woman she is today. she might like her parents bc of something they did for her as a kid. but she is never shown to have friends nor is she ever shown around anybody other than like 1 or 2 pahes when she bought some ppl beer.
It’s honestly a cycle I’m an antagonizing bongo w/ 0 social skills. I have few friends bc of it. I didn’t develop the right skills bc i didn’t have a single friend until i was homeless after coming out and bc of 15 years of abuse from my parents and 3 years of abuse from ppl i thought were my friends. I didn’t have many friends bc i grew up in canadas conservative asshole where feminine boys who are actually trans girls arent something that ppl are comfortable around and dont talk to bc of it. i dont consider Carla that bad bc i can understand why she’s the way she is. Machines and gears and mechanics and physics all makes sense to her. but people dont and maybe never will and tbh thats fine? like if shes happy and healthy thats great! ntm like everyone gets to be a bongo (billie and ruth come to mind) but y’know theyre cis so its forgivable.
also like idc about my neighbours my neighbours and i have never said a word to each other idek what they look like so i wouldnt do them a favour id probably ignore them and try to survive bc im the only one who cares about myself
You mean, check up on Ruth like Carla’s been doing? Multiple times. Bringing her breakfast when she didn’t answer at first.
Billie didn’t tell her anything about Ruth’s problems. Hard for Carla to know whether Ruth’s in real trouble and faking it or whether Billie is being overly paranoid and frankly a little creepy. We know what’s actually going on, but Carla doesn’t.
People do that with their ex’s though. “We broke up so this must be the worst thing ever for them, and they’re clearly so incapable of taking care of themselves that someone else needs to check up on them.”
Made worse by the fact that Billie clearly still cares about Ruth, so Ruth probably did the dumping. Which logically would mean she doesn’t want the girl she dumped constantly checking in, and that Billie is the one who’s actually taking it badly.
Counterpoint: How the hell would Carla know they were dating and that they’d broken up?
She was asked to do something, and then half assed it as much as humanly possible. Simple as that.
Because she asked and found out from Ruth that’s what happened, in addition to Mary blackmailing her. That all happened before Billie begged her to check up on Ruth on from time to time; her first request was only to deliver the cookies, nothing else. Maybe you have the timeline mixed up a little?
you really hate trans women dont you?
Carla DOES realize there’s a reason. She DID ask. And the answer she got was that Billie and Ruth broke up because of Mary and that Ruth is detoxing. She thinks this is all because of them breaking up. Everything she’s seen from them fits perfectly with the idea “they’re both sad because they had to break up.”
I’m not sure if Mike is asking “will it create a rage preferable to sadness?” because he wants to do it to help or if he is asking because he wants to avoid helping and is considering foregoing his plans
I think mostly he’s trying to rile Ethan. Right now he’s presenting Ethan with a choice of just ignoring his awfulness, ineffectually condemning it, or engaging in the hypothetical. All three options, Mike wins.
Fair point
Carla’s “wait a minute… oh fuck” face in panel 5 is great
She realised that Ruth was faking being happy and will probably go check on her.
I wonder if Dina on the other side of the door also heard and maybe starts to google depression….?
I knew Carla was tall for a girl, but she’s taller than the guys too! Before I just attributed it to her being on skates.
Wait, so is Mike bi or just that much of asshole? And would he have brought ropes into the equation? Is this Mike admitting in his own edgy way to Ethan that he’s attracted to him? So many questions!!!
Per Willis, he’s just that much of an asshole.
He might be both, though being that much of an asshole is certainly his motivation
Is there such thing as a Nickelsexual?
I thought that was everyone’s mom. Y’know, as long as Mike had the nickel.
danny/mike slipshine when
Never, people won’t be able to handle that level of sexiness.
They’ve each already appeared in one. All it would take is a little Photoshop….
At least Carla is noticing now and not remaining oblivious! Some people would not even be clued in now! She’s working this out in her brain. Can’t blame her, maybe she’s just never been around a depressed person before. I know my friends never knew how to deal w/ me in my lowest depression lows, so I feel for her here. The important part is what she does next!
Mike, dont ever change.
Well I heard a passing comment.
Now I’m an unbeliever!
A large trace
Lots of doubt in mind!
I’m in doubt!
Ooooooooh…
…. an unbeliever
when I did hear her
say she’s fine
Little screentime, missing perfect trolling opportunities, Mike is slipping. He better watch out before someone takes his position of top asshole. Malaya and Mary are just a couple of potentials.
Mary is a much MUCH bigger asshole than Mike. Mike knows when to stop and knows the difference between being a bit of a dick and being a homophobic transphobic manipulative ass, unlike Mary. Mary is the biggest ass in this entire cast and my being a trans women and lesbian would probably put her head into the floor if she did to me what she did to Carla.
You can’t forget what I like to call the big 3 assholes: Ross, Ryan and Blaine
IS Mary worse than Mike? Mary, a relative stranger, taunts Carla with her body -which is wrong and indefensible -and she did it in a way that made Carla’s living space less comfortable, which is also unacceptable. There’s no argument to defend Mary (even if she didn’t know Carla was trans and was just doing that because she’s tall, “unfeminine”, and obnoxious -Mary CLEARLY knows misgendering people is wrong because she’d fly through the roof if someone did that to a cis person (at least if it was someone she liked/approved of (that is to say, herself))). But Mike was tormenting Amber (also in the place they both live) with a reflective, more torturous aspect of her own worst nightmare -one that brings up the abuse she and her mom went through -while she was already fragile, and he’s supposed be her friend. I’m not trying to say Mary’s “better than we think” or justify her behavior, but Mike… DoA doesn’t follow the comic laws of the universe, like Shortpacked did -and the things the “loveable asshole” type says can cut a hell of a lot deeper in reality than snappy insults and hurtful dialogue generally seem to in entertainment media.
There’s a difference between making people angry at you to get them to stop fighting with each other the way Dorothy did (intentionally or not) yesterday, and intentionally trying to hurt someone in a new and different way than they already are to make them forget the first way they’re hurting.
All that being said, I’m coming at this as a personal thing from the opposite direction, so my absolute of better-worse is how I see the world and not meant to attack or belittle you or your experience. I’m cisgender, but I grew up in a decidedly abusive household, and that was one of my mom’s favorite emotional (and sometimes physical) tactics -especially when I was very young.
yeah i get you ive been homeless for 3 years bc of my moms abuse and mary wouldnt consider calling a transgender woman like carla a man to be misgendering her bc shes that messed up and cruel and evil. i think theyre very similar but i could tolerate mike i can not tolerate ppl like mary.
I really love how the Walky/Carla/Dorothy fight has defused into general playfulness. I bet if they did manage to catch her, the consequences would mainly involve tickling.
Or a pie to the face?
Who else remembers Dorothy was part of Cross Country?
probably Amber.
“CURSE YOU DOROTHYYYYY!!
Anyway, I’ll see you at dinnertime, honey.”
And I just spent 5 minutes staring at panel 3, trying to figure out how there’s a half bath fit in between those two doors.
S’pect the half-bath is at the back of the rooms rather than the front.
Nope, we can see from the early strips that the rear of that wall is closet space.
Perhaps each of those rooms shares the half-bath with the rooms on the other side?
No. We know that Dorothy & Amber share a bathroom.
I just spent an hour doing the math on this because of that comment (which made me start questioning too), so I’m leaving it all here, that you might suffer with me.
(All dimensions obtained through google and double-checking.)
Well, from how Walky’s standing, we can see that approximately 3 Walkys (thanks to the person who gave me the correct pluralization several comics ago) as measured at the hips would fit between the two doors if they were parallel to the wall. Google-fu says that an average build would give Walky approximately a fifteen inch waist and eighteen inch shoulders -Walky seems to have a shorter, slighter build, so let’s say that he’s about sixteen inches wide, which would put the doorways about 48 inches apart. We know that Amber and Dina’s door is almost against the wall to their half-bath, with enough space between the door and the wall for Dina to fit, but little enough to surprise people that she can. People keep mistaking Dina for twelve -if that’s by height alone, she’s around or just under five feet tall. Feet are about 2/13 of a person’s height, so assuming proportional feet, Dina’s are just under 9″. Therefore the door needs to be at least that far from the wall. Interior walls are about 4.5″ thick in houses -it seems reasonable to assume the same for similarly aged dorms. I can’t remember seeing any doors that opened flat against a wall (which would make sense, as a space-saver), so to be safe, I’m going to assume that the dorm alternates right- and left- handed doors that open against the wall of half-bath and closets in every room, and that the doors are roughly the same distance from the wall in every room (that is, they open far enough to not be in the way during move-in and no farther, and also something something, identical dorms bs because I can’t math this out if I don’t). All that leaves 27 inches for the half-bath. A rectangular sink has a basin 19-24″ wide (although I have seen smaller in dorms), so that fits fine, regardless of whether it’s standalone like in Ruth’s room or set into a counter. Toilets are a bit harder, depending on whether or not they have a tank. If they do, standard size is apparently 26.75″ long, which would be a tight squeeze that way since people have legs and feet, but they’d be 17″ wide, which works out okay. If they’re tankless though, they’d be 18.5″ wide and 19.5″ long, so they could fit into either wall if that were the case. So the visual I’m getting, since I can’t remember seeing any half-baths for much time although I know they’ve appeared in-comic, is that the sink is against the hallway wall, the doors can open into the half-bath (or into the rooms, although that would be problematic for the reasons described above), and the toilet is beyond the door-swing space facing the sink.
Some references to help your math:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-2/01-pajama-jeans/assault/
In panel 1 (this is the perspective from Joyce’s room), we can see the half bath. The door swings open into the dorm room, not the half-bath. We can also clearly see mirror and set up against the wall dividing half-bath from hallway.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-1/05-media-rumble/halfbath/
Here, if we look at the bottoms of panels 3 and 4, we see a toilet with a tank, set against the same wall as the mirror. We also see Billie entering from her room, stage-left, which confirms that the wall in question is the one dividing half-bath from hallway.
And argh, my first reply is tied up waiting in moderation limbo because I put two links in it. Let’s try again with dates and you can look them up.
Panel 1 of November 16, 2011 shows sink and mirror on the hallway-side wall, and also that the doors swing open into the dorm rooms rather than into the half-bath.
Look at the bottoms of panels 3 and 4 of April 6, 2011, and you’ll see the toilet on the same side of the wall, as confirmed both by the mirror and by which side of the room Billie enters in from.
I both bless and curse you for this. The doors opening into the rooms makes sense if the half-baths are tiny -and allows for easier other door-placement, but how does the sink fit next to the toilet? Okay, let’s see… Walky’s at the edge of the doorframe, not the door, which adds an extra ~2 inches to the distance, and if he’s actually turned more at the hips so we’re seeing him at an angle that could make the doors 3.5-4 Walkys (56-64 inches) apart + 2 for the doorjamb. Net walls+ door-wall distance is still 27 inches. If we assume 60 inches apart (gonna “justify” this with the apparent number of Walky-feet-lengths between the doors -looks to be about six of them. Walky and Danny wear the same size shoe. If we assume that to be a somewhat average size 10.5, they have feet that are 65/6″ long; multiplying by 6 gives, of course, 65 inches, which is close enough to that range that I’m now going to scale up to 63″ overall length (Walky’s wearing shoes, which are longer than feet, there’s probably a bit of space between toes and edge, foot, like Walky, is not directly parallel to the wall, etc.)) This now gives us 36 inches for the half-bath. Now, for a tankless toilet, the widest part is the center of the bowl, so it could conceivably be next to a sink, if they are set such that the sink ends before the widest part of the toilet. The toilet in the image linked has a tank, though. 17″ tank and 19″ sink works, barely, but we see in your example that there is space between them, although not much, since that space is narrower than the thickness of Joyce at the hips, so it can be no wider than 6 inches. If the sink or toilet were offset in height and/or depth, this would be easy, but we see that they are not. We get a clue in Billie’s leg. In panel 2, we see that she not only has not stepped into the half-bath, but is braced on the doorframe with her lower body completely in her room -this is a relaxed position of halted motion -she did not accidentally step into the half-bath following that panel, which is important, since in the next panel, we see her knee, but her lower body will not have otherwise moved much except away -we are seeing Billie’s leg from (at most) body to knee, and that is longer than the width of the toilet tank. Bent at that angle, and based on how my own measurements change by moving to that position (since no anatomy guide I could find had that position), the toilet is therefore no wider than 13 inches. One of the smaller sink sizes I have seen is 15 inches across on the outside of the (rectangular) basin. If we use those measurements, we now have 34 inches of stuff fitting into 36 inches of space, and Willis is a genius.
Mike just wants to fuck a dude and is looking for an excuse.
When people are depressed, sometimes it’s hard for other people to notice.
I will never not be bitter about this.
On the other hand, it’s not fair to expect Carla to be able to deal with Ruth’s alcoholism & depression without Carla knowing that’s what’s going on. I don’t know what Billie intended, maybe she was just hoping that Ruth noticing someone’s checking in on her would be enough to stop her from doing anything extreme.
Wow that’s really ironic Mike because I’m pretty sure Ethan was following the same state of mind knowing his track record.
Heh, Dorothy is having great fun here!
And tonight’s Grav Roulette gives me… Sal.
The wrong twin.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t have anything against Sal. But she doesn’t represent me or my personality or my interests at all.
Also, she smokes, so I do have something against her. Smoke-induced respiratory attacks. Seriously, people, if you do have to smoke (and you don’t), do it somewhere that it won’t affect other people, and that includes random passerbys who just rounded a corner and unexpectedly walked into a big cloud of awful.
It is kind of hilarious this Mike wants nothing to do with sleeping with Amber. Then again, she did make him Mummy-Edward from Twilight so that would probably turn off someone from romance with you across the multiverse.
I don’t know. They didn’t get together in the last universe until after he slept with her ex, and that’s exactly what he’s suggesting here.
mmmkay so when Mike says “sleep with the ex-boyfriend” is he referring to Ethan or Danny? Because both are exes…and if it’s Ethan then Ethan is very chill about the implications of sleeping with Mike.
Ethan has always been chill with the possibility of sleeping with Mike.
He’s saying that if he knew Amber had a boyfriend he would have slept with him to break them up.
I’m guessing he doesn’t know that Danny was bi.
Well, Amber doesn’t know that either right now…
Interesting note is that this whole “not even noticing thing” might not be about what it seems like it’s about.
Specifically, we know Billie struggles with depression. Billie’s also just been dumped by a relationship she viewed as being a sign that she wasn’t completely worthless. Billie’s feeling like she’s failing Becky. Billie’s acting somewhat erratic and begging a secondary to fulfill her job of making sure Ruth doesn’t off herself.
And all of our focus and attention and fear is all hyperfocused on Ruth who is not doing well, but is also slowly taking small steps to pull out of her pit.
Billie instead is spinning her wheels and trying to show no outward signs of her inner turmoil about everything that went down.
So basically, the person Carla might be realizing is depressed might not be Ruth or might not just be Ruth, but Billie as well.
Dunno, it could also be being played straight. I’m definitely curious to see where things go from here.
I don’t think i would describe anything happening here as ‘straight’
Nonsense. It’s a bi person asking a homoromantic ace trans friend to check up on their bi ex. What’s straighter than that…
Except, you know, everything…
Yup. And if not Carla noticed it, I think we readers will see more of it soon. Billie is not doing well at all.
Carla “fuck, my brain’s totally not equipped to handle that”
Something tells me that Carla has just learned something about depression that she never realised before. I suspect that a hurried return to Ruth is imminent.
Meanwhile, just what is Mike’s alignment? He seems able to totally subsume his sexualityto his cconscious intentions.
I think the only real alignment Mike has is Chaotic Evil.
Mike is whatever you don’t want him to be.
And so the only atheist in the cast is chased with “get the unbeliever” about something entirely unrelated to religion…
Walky is atheist too, and I’m pretty sure other characters are as well.
Confirmed atheists are: Walky and Dorothy.
Possible additional atheists are: Leslie and Carla
Most everyone else has been hinted or confirmed some flavor of Christian or Jewish, though Joe is non-practicing Jewish, so might be in and around the atheist category as well.
Ethan could easily be as well, going by the other verse. I mean, he outright explained the concept to Iesos when the latter was confused by working the sabbath.
Of course, I doubt religious beliefs are ironclad like sexual orientation. It’s entirely possible he was raised differently here (and it’s worth noting that orthodox jewish groups can be just as terrible towards the gays as fundies are, which certainly fits how his mother treated him on the matter)
I doubt Ethan’s family’s Orthodox -his folks appear to be homophobic and awful independent of their religion. Reasoning: he (even around his parents) and his dad are bare-headed, and his dad wasn’t openly wearing tzitzit, his mom’s hair was uncovered, even in public, and they were more concerned about Amber “turning him gay” than about her not being Jewish. I know there are workarounds for all of those (didn’t notice with the hair, tuck the fringes in, mom wears the wig of the ultra-Orthodox, a girl can convert to “make Jewish grandbabies”, but two men aren’t (in theory) going to be producing any….), but I feel like they’d all require too much Judaic background and exposition to be given reasonably and interestingly in-comic.
As a Jewish person, though, I’d be interested (read: horrified, yet fascinated) by a non-Christian character who’s an intolerant sh*thead for religious reasons, because you’re right -fundamentalist traditional Judaism can be just as toxic as fundamentalist traditional Christianity, or just as uncomfortable-but-able-to-evolve.
*thonks self* of course, right, there are kind of requirements there beyond belief, my mistake.
But hey, good news: Ethan’s mom might improve within the lifetime of the comic. In the other verse, she EVENTUALLY came around to Ethan banging dudes, because the alternative was to not accept her son ever having a relationship (She was like, in her 50s?)
Actually seems like a joke Walky could make. I’m not convinced he didn’t think of it.
Religion has permeated our lives and languages for a long time. Not surprised there’s a few useless relics left over, bobbing around.
Let’s go to Candy Mountain! Candy Mountain, Charlie!
Never forget T^T
So Mike ships Danny/Ethan…
And you thought Amber’s Guro was fucked up.
I love you, Mike
Amber’s ex-boyfriend is WHO? Ethan? And Mike is suggesting — TO ETHAN — that he sleep with him?
Man, is this fucked up!!
Either that or Mike’s just trying to flirt with Ethan, and doing an even worse job of it than what Walky when he threw a monkey at Dorothy.
no, Danny.
Wait…I’m confused. I don’t think I’ve ever seen any sign that Mike is gay or bi, or frankly anything since I don’t think I’ve ever seen him interested in a girl either. So is he suggesting that he’d sleep with her ex-boyfriend only because it might hurt her, or because he actually swings that way?
Because the first makes him a purely evil person. And the second makes him a purely evil person who at least (and it is very least) can claim to have some motivation. Not that he really has any anyway since he said he never even knew she had a boyfriend and therefore can’t claim to have any physical attraction.
I dunno, Walkyverse Mike slept with people of all genders but also did it mostly to fuck with people, so I think this universe’s incarnation has a similarly ambiguously pan-ish sort of sexuality.
He has implied strongly in strip that he’s into submission:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/04-the-whiteboard-dong-bandit/interrogation/
I imagine that fucking with people is why most people sleep with other people, of any gender.
…. no, wait, by “fuck with people” you mean “screw them over”.
… er, meaning “dick with them”.
… okay, what sick twisted part of society’s history made it so that most of our idioms for malice are sexual in nature?
Probably the traditional horror men feel about being treated the way men treat women.
Is this true in all languages? It seems to hold in Latin as well, but in the sense of “I do the f*ucking [of you] and thus I am the powerful one” or “You are the one who gets f*cked [by me or others] and thus you are worthless” -I’m not sure if the sexuality can be removed from the equation and the words can just hold the connotations of malice of any sort.
That seems to be more of a “slap slap kiss” kind of turned on, than an “Ooohhh, I’m all subdued by the strong you” kinda turned on. Of course I could be reading it wrong.
Mike is sexually attracted to drama, as long as it will create a shitshow he’s DTF with anyone.
Acrimosexual?
I *think* he described one of his experiences in a recent slipshine, but we’d need some members to confirm.
I don’t think so. There was a ShortPacked! Amber/Mike Slipshine. He appeared in the anthology Slipshine, but I think he just harassed Billie into revealing she was talking about a girl.
Well, in Shortpacked, he stated that his sexuality was, quote, “whatever you don’t want me to be”. Seems to be based more on spite than anything else.
I think common canon is that Mike has the sexuality of a hurricane because he’s a force of nature.
Mike’s actually almost funny when he’s only talking about doing unspeakably horrible things instead of actually doing them.
And now I wonder if she realised for Ruth, or suddenly saw Ethan (or Mike ?) with billions of roses in the background.
Is…. Is there a Danny/Mike/Ethan slip??
I’d read it.
Hate to break it Mike, but Amber only has one person to solely focus her rage on and it just ain’t him.
I have a hard time reading Carla’s expression. Is she suddenly realizing Ruth might NOT be fine? Or is something else clicking?
I’m thinking it’s the former.
Pretty sure it just confirmed that nagging voice in her head that’s been telling her Ruth wasn’t really fine since she left Ruth’s room.
Sorry, Mike, I’m pretty sure that move was a one-hit wonder.
Is this the first time Mike and Carla have met? This seems important somehow.
She was shocked at the depressed thing. Noticed she was totally dropping the ball with Ruth.
“She broke up with her boyfriend”
“Ok..why are you grinning so much?”
“Cause her boyfriend is now single…i mean SHE is single..yea, yep, yep, yep, SHE is single”
We see you, Ethan.
miiiiiiiike<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<33
Carla is quickly becoming one of my favorite characters.
Cover your bases, Mike. Have sex with everyone on the floor.
Give the gift that keeps on giving: herpes.
I know that they’ll never get together in this universe, but I still ship Amber and Mike.
I always thought that was a fun shipto imagine, and one that would absolutely horrify me in real life. On a different note, I wonder if Donna exists in this universe -kinda hope she’s Mike’s beloved little sister or cousin.
Mike just really wants to sleep with Danny, huh
Except I don’t think he knows it’s Danny.
Also, any reason you don’t write your name as a “a snow ʍousɐ”?
Different device. Lazy.
I feel that weird love hate I have for mike coming back.
so from this conversation, what Carla is going to take from it is that she should sleep with Billie right
no? damn
Mike goal is to hate-fuck every single one characters
i’m glad to see that Mike is still whatever-pisses-people-off-sexual.
Wait, nobody else is going to mention that Ethan might have just given away Amber’s secret identity to Mike?
With a bit of research he could definitely find out now.
Are we sure Mike doesn’t know? He’s reasonably observant (has to be, to best know how to piss people off and/or hurt them) and has been friends with Amber for years, and AG tackled him, was sitting on him, and got right in his face at some point while they conversed. I can see Danny obliviousing past that -especially at that point in the comic, doubly especially with him wanting to believe in real-life superheroes so badly, but Mike? Seems a bit of a stretch.
The thing I see that surely isn’t right: does this mean Mike slept with Ethan, or at least wanted to? Because, if that’s his go-to move, and Ethan is also Amber’s ex
I mean, it could fit. That could be how Ethan found out he was gay. Even if he didn’t go along with it, he might have wanted to? And hence why he and Ethan still hang out together despite Mike being absolutely horrible?
Surely I’m reading things that Willis didn’t intend, right?
I think you’re reading into it, after all Mike would have rubbed it into Amber’s face already – which he hasn’t. That and Ethan would act more attracted to Mike, or at least nervous about him.
Plus, odds are Mike figured out way before either of them that Ethan was gay and just waited for it all to collapse around them. Or waited for the opportunity to nudge everything so it would collapse.
It wasn’t necessary for him to sleep with Ethan.
if you want to read that, shorpacked will cover your needs
For some reason, when Walky said “Damn her! She runs like the wind!”, I imagined him as a British gentleman, complete with monocle, waxed moustache and top hat.
Walky is too young to go to Horrible Revelation QC’s fancy dress bar.
Am I seriously the only one wondering what happened to Carla’s pants? (She was wearing jeans and now has bare legs.)
She is wearing jean short-shorts, and the shirt is just barely long enough to cover them from behind.
Or maybe Dorothy got so far ahead because she and Walky stopped for a quickie…
You weren’t, but Slartibeast was informative!
There’s the Mike I know and love to hate. Please give me more Mike.
Has Mike always been into guys in this ‘verse? Or is some sort of weird thing where he is in to whatever upsets someone?
He’s whatever you don’t want him to be.
I know the general consensus here is that Willis is hinting at Billie and Ruth, but I am worried about Carla. That “ohshit is he hinting at me?!” facial expression is a bit too familiar to me.
Also, OT: Thanks to Cerberus and Jason for your advice/mentorship lately. If I can stop trembling at the thought, I intend to go to a local support group thingy next week. Mainly because our comment exchanges have been super helpful so I hope meeting more local trans folk who explicitly signed on to mentor people through the process of self-discovery might also be super helpful. I do have trans friends but it strikes me as kind of inconsiderate to draft them as help without their permission and most of them are too nice to tell me to pound sand if they don’t want the emotional labour.
*hugs or other currently preferred gesture of support*
I guess this many days later you might not see this, but in case you do, I hope it goes well. I also want you to know that your comments too are also helpful to read, similarly to Cerberus’s and Jason’s.
Haha, does he know Ethan is Amber’s ex-boyfriend? Is he offering? xD