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Then you win a trip to the Carla Factory, where Willis dons a top hat and shows you around, while little men dressed as Hot Shot called the Ja’amba La’ambas do all the work.
What do you do when the archive runs dry? Caught up on strips, even read the Slipshines? Big comic buffer that you cannot yet claim. You know exactly who…to…blame.
Now exclaim “Damn you, Willis!”
…It occurs to me that I get a little bit silly this late at night.
Willis then explains how, rather than paying workers a living wage, he has enslaved an African tribe to work in his webcomic factory, whom he literally pays in beans.
Shit, we’ve seen what sort of contraptions one Carla can build. Can you imagine what fifty very like-minded engineering students could whip up together?
Einstein would tremble in fear, Dennis the Menace would lay sobbing on the floor, Loki would fall into a coma from sheer panic, the true power of Carla is unimaginable.
Somewhat, but it’s acceptable to refer to the MPC in general, and in the MPC it is indeed assault as the threat of violence (not just verbal!) and battery as the actual carrying out of violence.
That’s not American exceptionalism, it’s american primacy! I’m not saying we’re different because America, I’m talking about American things where it’s not necessary
Is threatening people a lesser crime than carrying out that threat for y’all too? Also I’m vaguely surprised, I could have sworn we inherited this weirdism from the British.
You did get it from England, it’s just that most (or maybe just many?) common law jurisdictions got over it, because it wasn’t particularly helpful. It’s like old offences for theft, where there were a half-dozen different types, all requiring different things to prove.
In terms of seriousness – ehh, kinda. In my state, Victoria, we’ve even mostly moved away from the language of “assault” and into a bunch of individual offences:intentionally causing serious injury; intentionally causing injury, threats to kill, threats to cause serious injury, etc.
Before that you’d have, I think, “assault causing serious injury” which may have been a common law offence (bit before my time).
In Canada, broadly speaking, the answer is “it depends”. Under some circumstances, threatening someone is assault, and in others it’s a separate offense, uttering threats. Aggravated assault requires injuring someone, which a threat generally would not do.
What this boils down to is that if someone takes a swing at you and misses, that’s still assault and you can take self-defense measures.
Don’t super care. I doubt one punch will cause lasting harm, and maybe next time she won’t try to bargain with people’s happiness and mental well-being as if she’s trading toys.
There are some countries where “it was just one punch” doesn’t work as an excuse. People do die from a single punch. That said, I’m putting this in the “punch as carthesis” category, in the same way that the “someone gets knocked out for comedy” category in films is funny rather than “welp, someone’s just been given brain damage.”
Some countries including my own country of Australia, where we have enacted “one punch laws” that carry severe penalties. The reason for this is because even single punches can be EXTREMELY dangerous. Not only might you hit the victim in a vulnerable spot that causes lasting damage, victims have also been known to hit their head while falling, resulting in concussions/bleeding that ended up killing them. Suddenly, you’re responsible for the death of a person, and even if it was justified, that tag will haunt you for life.
I hate Mary as much as the next guy here, but Billie, the LAST thing you need right now is an aggravated assault charge.
on the contrary, a sucker punch can be deadly. You hear stories about people dying from getting sucker-punched outside bars. You fall, hit your head at a wrong angle, and that’s that.
You can also hear stories of people who are blackmailed and bullied like Ruth, who end up killing themselves because they see no other escape from their tormentor.
And here Mary is, trying to convince Billie to let her do it to someone else.
Considering the words that came out of Mary’s mouth in yesterdays’ comic, and the ones that were about to come out of her mouth, no doubt suggesting they do something completely unacceptable to Carla out of a petty need for revenge, I feel this was justifiably provoked.
If that punch is reported, it’ll be explained as to why it happened. Which I do believe is information they don’t want out. So there may be no assault charge.
Some quick googling seems to support the idea that Indiana has a fighting words doctrine. Not enough of a lawyer to know if Mary strayed into that territory, but it is a mitigating factor.
I hope she does get nastier, because if she flies into a rage over this then virtually *anything* she could do would make the already-alerted residence manager come down on her like a ton of bricks. Hate crimes are crimes, and there’s nobody on the floor that would cover for her.
Mary isn’t the sort to do ‘violent rage’; she’s too passive-aggressive for that. She’s more likely to try to make Billie’s life unbearable through a dozen untraceable acts of social violence.
She has been snide, dismissive about a possible suicide attempt and about as nasty as someone can be about Billie’s GIRLFRIEND, who she Blackmailed. If I’d been in Billie’s shoes, i wouldn’t have stopped at the one punch.
And it’s what makes me really conflicted about some of the pacifist responses. Like, yeah, I’m big on pacifism, but I’m wondering if everyone is necessarily seeing just exactly what Mary is doing here and recognizing it for the extreme homicidal violence it is.
Hahaha you kidding? Nah. With something else, I could maybe believe they recognized the other problem at hand for what it was, but with pacificism in particular, I have no god damned faith in that. I’ve watched pacifists in particular screw it up since forever.
Prolly one of many reasons that while I’m very very pacifist in my daily actions and lived experiences I don’t much hang with any organized pacifist movement.
Hitting Mary so hard that Carla feels it? Sounds good to me! Though likely Carla’s reaction would be more due to “I sense a disturbance in the force, as though millions of voices cried out with joy and were silenced by orgasmic bliss.”
Also, Ruth was already in a really spot by the time this happened. There were a lot of times that she’d talked about wanting to die. “Sexy lesbian suicide pact,” anyone? It was only a matter of time.
Ruth needed help. She really did. But there was no need to out Ruth. She could have pulled Billie off to the side, rather than lifting her in the hallway like Rafiki.
I think on a certian level, Billie’s aware of that, hence her taking Carla’s side over mary. Carla may be a royal pain in the ass, but she did what she did for good reasons.
I think a key difference is that Billie hates Carla specifically, because of her personality and actions. Mary hates her generically for what category of person she is. Billie might decide she wants revenge against Carla, but she will NEVER team up with Mary to get it.
This probably isn’t going to be read but oh well.
Asexual people aren’t necessarily none-sexual in behaviour. It’s very much an individual thing- some are content to have sex with their partner, others absolutely do not want to at all ever. Same with masturbation- some aces don’t, at all, some do on occasion but feel no “drive”, and some feel a physical need that needs to be fulfilled.
Asexuality is actually pretty varied (from my understanding of it, anyway. I apologise if my understanding is at all incorrect, while I’m fairly sure what I’ve said here is accurate it’s very possible I’m wrong!)
As for Mary I could totally see her as the sort of hypocrit who would loudly tell other people that they’re bad evil sinners for the exact same behaviour that she does in private. I can easily imagine that she tells Roz her sex toys are vile and she’s corrupt for masturbation (because I can’t see Roz hiding that she does masturbate) while being okay with doing it herself as long as nobody ever knows.
Let’s not forget the time she was stark naked in the middle of the day!
Emotions aren’t always justified, sometimes we feel things even if we logically shouldn’t and just knowing that won’t turn them off. The problem happens when you let those illogical emotions run your actions, which Billy isn’t since she isn’t letting her hate of Carla allow anything bad to happen to her.
Sure. There doesn’t have to be an immediately obvious better option to feel justified in hating someone for actions you know have a high possibility of long term harm.
Like, I can’t see a better thing for Carla to have done, but for the person who went through it and their lover… yeah, that hatred is still basically fine.
It’s also why I don’t blame Raidah for hating Sarah even if there is zero justification for the bullying she put her through for a full year.
People go apeshit and hold grudges when you fuck with their loved ones or friends, even if part of them recognizes that you didn’t necessarily mean any harm or have many better options without the benefit of hindsight.
I think Billie’s aware on some level that what Carla did is probably for the good in the long run, and that’s why she’s willing to defend Carla against Mary. In the short run, though, it’s still an open wound that hurts like hell, and I don’t blame her for feeling shitty towards Carla.
Homophobia, biphobia, and transphobia are violence against queer people. It’s not “being kind of a shithead”. It’s contributing to a culture that believes killing these people is okay.
Punching people may be a more traditional form of violence, but it shouldn’t be the only one you have a problem with.
I mean. You remember those comics where Joyce is at church and one of the congregation is like “I don’t condone what Ross did but have you seen Becky’s haircut?” That’s basically you right now.
Not that it isn’t cathartic as hell to see fictional Mary getting fictionaly punched, but isn’t this situation that example from the other side?
“I don’t condone Billie’s violence, but what Mary said… ”
Maybe Billie was right, maybe she was wrong, but either way, it’s a lot easier to justify violence when it’s your side doing it. Generally speaking, we are all the protagonist from our own point of view.
On the other hand, Mary for all intents and purposes might as well have ran directly into Billie’s extended fist. It is Really unwise to push someone standing on an edge.
The rage that led Billie to punch Mary is completely justified, and provoked by Mary herself spewing vile, bigoted hateful garbage. Hitting her may have been wrong, but it’s completely understandable. So understandable as to be downright excusable. You’d have to be a saint to successfully fight the urge to do that.
Carla, on the other hand, was noisy and annoying for maybe 20 minutes, tops. Ruining her skates, risking serious bodily harm to her, and throwing transphobic slurs at her was neither right nor even slightly understandable.
Billie’s response went an inch too far, Mary’s went fucking miles
Can we just retire the fucking “side” horseshit when it comes to institutional oppression?
Like, I know, or rather I hope because I like thinking well of people despite what many would think given my earned cynicism, this was some inartful phrasing on your part, but I’m so so sick of the societal construction where oppression is a sports competition or battle where there are equally matched “sides” who have proportionate power and actions.
Like, first of all, it reduces oppression to a game and all the evil that carries with it. Where it’s all about which side earns the most point rather than the reality which is there’s a group dedicated to the full elimination and dehumanization of an entire group of people and there’s a ragtag group of folks trying to defend themselves against that who are mostly united by being targeted by the first group.
Second of all it erases the reality of the situation and what it’s plugging into in order to set up a bullshit false equivalence between mismatched sides. Like in this case, we’re reducing a person actively arguing for the right to abuse and harass another person to death to “mean words” in order to make it seem like Billie punched Mary because Mary was rude to her or mouthy and not because she made light of the fact that she nearly drove her girlfriend to suicide and asked for permission to do the same to someone else when she asked her to stop.
And that’s also what kind of bothers me about LimeSheep’s initial response to Wack’d.
Mary is not just being a shithead here. She’s not just being an asshole. She’s openly asking for the right to be allowed to kill someone in a socially acceptable manner because the person being targeted isn’t valued by society. And she’s asking this after she’s already ruined the life of someone the person being asked loved as well as themselves.
Violence has already occurred. No it did not come at the barrel of a gun like Toedad or at the end of a fist like Billie. But it is equally deadly to the former and very nearly cost at least one life this weekend.
And when that gets erased that bothers me because:
A) I’ve survived that shit where someone tried to drive me to suicide by actively trying to ruin my life because I was “inconvenient” to them. I’ve survived that multiple times.
B) I’m a teacher and mentor to trans kids and I see how often that sends my kids to inpatient for hospitalization.
And C) It’s the main way my people are being casually eliminated on a genocidal scale. Like, fuck, this is currently method number one of transphobic bigots for “solving the trans problem” and it’s especially beloved because there’s acres of deniability. After all, there’s no blood on their hands, the kids just weren’t “strong enough” and were so “troubled after all” with their “delusions”.
Fuckers actively try and make it more and more difficult to exist in public, make our existences more and more targeted, harass us more and more any time we try and reach out to our support networks and our kids are denied even the most low-key methods of trying to resolve their dysphoria, even totally reversible and minimal things like trying out a new name and pronoun at school or going on puberty blockers to try and avoid going through the wrong puberty and the unmitigated hell that is.
It leads to staggering suicide rates that are then used to further discredit us because we’re so “unhappy” even after we come out.
All to terrorize us into being silent so they can go back to pretending that a gender essentialist worldview makes any damn sense and that there’s a wealth of separation between men and women (with non-binary folks neatly excised).
And this is not a non-sequitur to bring up, because it is literally what Mary asks for in Panel 4. It’s her stated intention and that’s not an uncommon stated intention in our world. We’re the “freak” in the crosshair, just as gay folks were in the 80s.
Mary’s stated intention is to kill Carla with harassment like so many trans folks have been. It’s the context of her request. That’s not just “being a shithead”. That’s not just “saying mean things”.
And it doesn’t mean one is a transphobic bigot to not notice that. It just means that our casual elimination is so socially normalized that most people don’t even recognize it when they see it recreated in comic form.
Mary is, by implication, asking for permission to succeed with Carla where she failed with Ruth – i.e. she’s asking for permission to bully someone to death.
To be perfectly frank, given all Mary’s done thus far, I’m amazed at Billie’s restraint.
Sure, Mary isn’t holding a weapon, but her actions are no less violent than Toedad’s – they’re just less direct. Instead of using a physical weapon, she manipulates a situation to try to get someone totally alone and then harasses them until they feel life isn’t worth winning. Her end game here is Carla is dead. Not upset, not expelled, not miserable, dead. And what she’s asking for is permission to play her little game with someone else’s life (because that’s what it is to her) with impunity. She is asking Billie’s permission to kill someone, and she thinks Billie will be okay with it because of her anger at Ruth, because the scariest thing about Mary’s mindset is that she genuinely believes everyone is as homicidal and hateful as she is.
Billie’s punch here is IMO just as justified as Joyce’s punch out of Toedad.
See, this is why I scroll down the comments going, “Has Cerberus said something about this yet?” You make me think and you make me reconsider my privilege on so many levels. Thank you.
Do not see the sneer quotes around “her”? Hell, the ones around “girlfriend” as well.
Implying your relationship isn’t real and then trying to suggest violence (or something else terrible) against another person? Right after mocking your suicidal girlfriend?
That shit would make me so angry I’d wake up from a fucking coma to punch her for it. I would hesitate to say that makes it right, except I cannot in good faith claim to feel that it’s wrong
i agree mary is saying terrible things and i dont blame billie for wanting to punch her. hell, i dont even blame her for actually doing it. shes still gonna be my favorite character after this. but that doesnt mean its right, its still definitely not an okay thing to do.
the people i do think are in the wrong here are people who seem to legitimately think its just fine to hit mary because of that, or people who jump on anyone who disagrees, like happened here. me not being okay with physical violence does not, in any way, mean i condone anything marys done.
i also think its wrong that lower on this page wack’d suggested i and anyone else who disagrees with him on this point should be punched in the face too, but what do i know. im just an actual person or whatever.
Far enough, but there’s a huge difference between “being happy an awful character in fiction got punched in the face”, and “feeling you should punch people in the face when you’re mad in real life”.
It’s kinda safe to assume people cheering about Mary getting punched are doing the former. The fact that no, you shouldn’t hit people like that is kind of a big part of why it’s so enjoyable. Billie’s doing what we aren’t supposed to do, but really want to.
The way your original comment preemptively complained about people enjoying the catharsis as if they going to turn around and do that in real life came across poorly.
What Fart Captor said with a special emphasis on your point being fair enough (especially with regards to your right to feel off put by the physical violence or the cavalier attitude to it).
There’s a catharsis to this that makes emotions about this complex. And I think it’s cathartic because very frequently for those most marginalized, we’re asked an undue and extreme burden of calmness and civility in the face of overwhelming violence.
Like, black activists unable to even raise their voices without being dismissed while protesting the modern day lynchings of their number by police without even the dignity of a fake investigation.
Or trans people being asked to be polite and understanding and meek and invisible so as not to scare folks meanwhile our right to pee is subject to humiliating public debate, our children are driven to over 50% suicide rates, and our women of color are murdered at extreme rates.
Or any of the creepy fascist shit that’s been out in force lately with actual nazis holding open rallies and marches and terrorizing folks with impunity, making them fear for their very lives, meanwhile the people they target aren’t even allowed to defend themselves when the nazis attack without being labeled the instigators.
In life, we’re supposed to swallow violence that punches down with the grace of Gandhi or Jesus and never ever entertain our worst natures that might want to deck someone like Mary who actively tries to kill us while not even giving us the respect of humanity. Lest we fulfill the stereotypes against us as violent or off-kilter.
And that has a psychological cost, usually in the form of intense anxiety and depression.
As you note, it’s not right to punch Mary. It’s not something any of us would do in life and some folks are definitely likely to get creepy in their support of Billie’s punch and that carries resonance in an age where those labeled “deserving” of abuse tend to be hit hard with said abuse.
But, it’s complicated, because of that greater cultural context and it’s why I don’t even know how I feel about the punch.
You k now what? As a pacifist for pretty much my entire adult life:
Just fucking stop it. Seriously, stop it. Violence without dire need is wrong. But you know what fucking comfortable people always fucking do when, both in fiction and in real life, when someone who isn’t, especially someone who’s marginalized, deploys violence against violence? This. This fucking horse shit. Once more, pacificism is used, not to try to reduce violence in the world, but as a fucking platform to position our own righteousness while clucking our tongues at the marginalized for daring to meet force with force. To the detriment of the marginalized, and the benefit of their oppressors – as ever, and always. Yes, violence is wrong. Putting aside that most people recognize that, putting this much god damned effort into the one lashing out against systemic hatred that wants her, personally, dead while doing and saying nothing about that systemic violence, is complete and utter horse shit.
Now, maybe these things affect you and you’re just not seriously considering what you’re doing. But it plays into a fucking culture where everything we, as folks suffering under massive inequalities do has to be analyzed and dissected – any behavior short of being Messiah (in both senses), bodhisatva, junzi, and guru simultaneously is cause for essays on how what you’ve done is wrong, while ignoring the giant fucking problem you just lashed out against. I have watched this for far too fucking long.
Do not. fucking. do this. You can say what Billie did was wrong. But focusing on it without acknowledging the violence against her AT ALL, is fucking absurd. To then complain about how “I don’t think what Mary did is okay either” after is just… What planet are you from? There /isn’t/ a god damned epidemic of people punching each other ALL THE TIME over cissexist or heterosexist bullshit (Christ, I kinda wish we felt confident enough to do so as a group). Billie’s battery /does/ merit comment, even focus, but that length? Without the ackowledgement? Frankly it just seems like you didn’t even think that violence against Billie, Ruth, and Carla was WORTH acknowledging. “But it’s not new!” Well, neither is fucking punching people. What it makes it look like, is you wanted to cluck your tongue (at those savages, is a common subtext, though admittedly not as applicable here).
sorry lailah but i think the only thing ive “learned here” is that this is not the kind of place i want to be
congrats! the guy who literally said i should be punched in the face didnt do that, but you managed it.
“Yes, violence is wrong.”
funny how a couple people got pretty fucking upset when i said that much, then, isnt it!
“putting this much god damned effort into the one lashing out”
maybe you didnt notice, but i made one comment about not liking the fans reactions, and everything else has directly been replies. im “putting this much effort” into the topic because thats what the conversation everyones been pursuing is about.
“Now, maybe these things affect you and you’re just not seriously considering what you’re doing.”
no, no, keep doing the thing where you assign me motivations all on your own. it was working way better for you.
“You can say what Billie did was wrong.”
okay, great. so whats the problem here, again?
“But focusing on it without acknowledging the violence against her AT ALL, is fucking absurd.”
i didnt, but okay.
“Billie’s battery /does/ merit comment, even focus, but that length?”
again, the length is just because multiple people are involved in the conversation and so it continued. honestly saying it merits comment and focus, considering thats all i gave it, doesnt come off as remotely sincere
“Frankly it just seems like you didn’t even think that violence against Billie, Ruth, and Carla was WORTH acknowledging. “But it’s not new!” Well, neither is fucking punching people.”
i did acknowledge it, its not the topic of the conversation, and i shouldnt have to go into a rant about how much i hate mary in order to comment on someone hitting her.
all i said was i dont like how the comment section glorifies it when mary gets hit. this isnt exactly the first time its happened. it turned into this. youve got stellar reading comprehension and seem to have a really good imagination when it comes to my motives.
so you know, maybe fuck off.
i should be able to say violence is wrong without fucking this happening.
“right, the part where 75% of the comments excuse assault because the victim’s a shithead. im not ready mr krabs”
Aside from factual inaccuracy, yanno what this ain’t?
This is, quite pointedly, not a recognition of the violence that Mary’s directed against Carla, Ruth, and Billie. It positions Mary as just someone who’s maybe said something wrong.
Even expounding on it, you’re still just kinda putting it as ‘saying wrong things’. You say you acknowledged it. No. You’re quite pointedly not. At every point, you have framed what Mary has done as not violent. For instance, “mary is saying terrible things”. True, but it’s framed to not place those as VIOLENT things. If you had meant to, then it does not come across in your speech AT ALL.
And no. No, you should just ‘get to say violence is wrong without this happening’. You do not get to fucking wipe out the violence it’s in response to. That is *EXACTLY* what I’m talking about. You do not, as a comfortable person, get to just cluck your tongue and forget that there are people who have to fear violence. This is *EXACTLY* what I hate about my people. If it drives you to go, then okay. But I am not going to ‘fuck off’. I have watched too many people talk about how violence is totally unjustified… but only when it’s being used in service of something decent, in response to violence. Never against the violence that started it.
“You do not, as a comfortable person, get to just cluck your tongue and forget that there are people who have to fear violence. This is *EXACTLY* what I hate about my people.”
yeah, i was being sarcastic when i said you should keep going with that
it might be easier for you if you didnt assign motivation to strangers with zero information and just kind of assume their life matches up with whatever vague idea you have
“it might be easier for you if you didnt assign motivation to strangers with zero information and just kind of assume their life matches up with whatever vague idea you have
you know, the thing that should be obvious”
Yeaaaah, sorry, friendo, but in the absence of your life story floating around to justify your positions, we SORT OF HAVE TO ASSUME that you actually mean the things you say.
We are assigning motivations to you based on the arguments you are making. Maybe you should examine why what you’re saying is leading us to believe these things about you.
A political activist friend of mine often says “Violence applied against fascism is not violence.” It’s a complicated anti-liberal statement but more and more often I see its validity in the real world.
This reminds me of Tim Minchin’s “Pope Song” about Ratzinger covering for pedophiles. The final verse addresses people who may be offended by the song:
“But if you find me more offensive than the possibility
that The pope protected priests when they were getting fucking fiddly
Then listen to me, motherfucker, this here is a fact
You are just as morally misguided as that motherfucking
Power-hungry, self-aggrandised bigot in the stupid fucking hat”
People who find Billie more offensive than Mary… are either not thinking it through, or are putting a steep discount on the welfare of all the decent people Mary has deliberately hurt.
This might actually be relevant if only anyone had actually said this.
I enjoyed seeing this in a cartoon context just as much as the next person, and I don’t actually blame Billie for it or think she will get more than a slap in the wrist, even if Mary decides to risk admitting she just tried to bully one vulnerable person into teaming up with her to bully another vulnwrable person.
However, cheering violence on, even in jest, and using the kind of language you would expect violent people to use ( “she slipped”, “she walked into my fist”), then using strawman arguments to claim people are wrong to be bothered by this flippant response to violence, is a lot worse than I expected from this comment section. When you want to claim the moral highground you don’t get to splash around in the cess pool ” just for the lulz”
that in particular is pretty much the entirety of what i had a problem with in the first place.
i seriously dont understand how it devolved into all this
Awkward unfortunate phrasing and intersecting cultural contexts that bring up a lot of issues surrounding pacifism and violence as relates to systems of oppression?
Eh, for what it’s worth, I’d like to offer you some *appropriate gestures of support* including in the form of *hugs* if that’s the style that is appropriate to you.
and im sorry it sounded like i was downplaying what mary did. i felt like if i didnt say something about it itd be even worse, but i didnt want to go into the actual actions because my problem was with the commenters. i dont think i could accurately sum up how bad it actually is in a couple words.
I understand and appreciate the apology offered. I definitely do the same from time to time of trying to stem what I see as a bad path of comment trends, so I very much identify with what you were trying to do.
I haven’t seen a single commenter simply bashing anyone for being against violence.
I have seen strong responses against people trying to state that what Mary’s doing is not violence.
Let me rephrase that: There are people who are trying to say that Mary ACTIVELY AND DELIBERATELY attempting to make other humans COMMIT SUICIDE as “not violence”. Trying to get away with such pedantism as “legal terms” and whatnot; without considering that the people they are talking to are facing such harassment on a regular basis IN REAL LIFE:
“And C) It’s the main way my people are being casually eliminated on a genocidal scale. Like, fuck, this is currently method number one of transphobic bigots for “solving the trans problem” and it’s especially beloved because there’s acres of deniability. After all, there’s no blood on their hands, the kids just weren’t “strong enough” and were so “troubled after all” with their “delusions”.
Fuckers actively try and make it more and more difficult to exist in public, make our existences more and more targeted, harass us more and more any time we try and reach out to our support networks and our kids are denied even the most low-key methods of trying to resolve their dysphoria, even totally reversible and minimal things like trying out a new name and pronoun at school or going on puberty blockers to try and avoid going through the wrong puberty and the unmitigated hell that is.
It leads to staggering suicide rates that are then used to further discredit us because we’re so “unhappy” even after we come out.”
Do you honestly think that talking about legal definitions means a damn thing in such a context? Do you? I don’t. I see this as actions of violence, born of prejudice and hatred and bigotry. It’s violence, and what’s worse, it’s violence punching -down-, for the sake of acquiring a feeling of power.
And let’s not forget of course, that the more they get away with this shit, the more they also get away with the “punch in face” type of violence.
But yeah, sure, ignore the context that Mary in panel 4 essentially stated that she is going to try and kill Carla in a way that leaves her hands clean. You know, “legally speaking”.
Because I can assure you, I haven’t seen a single comment applauding Billie’s punch that was unaware of this context.
I don’t see a single strawman. I would be careful about using that word, since, apparently, that’s a bannable offense if used incorrectly(!!!)
A new commenter came in and attacked everyone here because they are okay with Mary being punched. They deliberately tried to start a fight, then whined forever when it happened.
And while they apologized for not taking Mary’s actions into account, they still have not apologized for intentionally attacking everyone here.
Every single response to people being offended was to attack them even more. Not a single bit of awareness of others.
This was not a guy who just came in and said what you said about the violence jokes, which is perfectly reasonable. It is someone who wanted a fight.
For me: I totally understand why Billie punched Mary. Given what Mary is actively trying to do here, it is not a moral wrong by my morality (my morality is that physical violence is acceptable in defense of self or someone else – what drove Billie to punch Mary is Mary’s implied threat against Carla’s life, so I really have a hard time saying Billie punching Mary is “wrong”, per se. I’m not a hardcore pacifist – self-defense and defense of others is fine in my book, and Billie is defending Carla here. I understand others’ mileage may vary).
To be perfectly clear: I’m not applauding Billie’s punch because it’s Mary she’s punching. I’m applauding Billie’s punch because Mary was asking for permission to murder, and because Billie knows Mary well enough to know fully well that anything short of a punch would be taken as Billie giving permission but just not wanting to come out an say it (see also that comic a few months back where Mary was assuming that Ruth’s moral code was a fake show for everyone around her).
Mary has been shown to have means, motive, and ability to engage in this sort of attack-by-bullying. She came very close to succeeding with Ruth. Certainly no court of law would convict her for attempted murder for what she’s done so far or for murder if she succeeded (although IIRC some jurisdictions up here in Canada will charge for manslaughter in such cases but even still I’ve never heard of anyone ever being convicted over it, usually a big hue and cry is raised over what a promising life the person who harassed someone to death has)- but her end game there was Ruth dies. Her end game here was Carla dies.
To be perfectly frank: Mary is a fucking serial killer in the making, and her weapon of choice is the victim’s own mind. She was asking for permission to target Carla as the next focus of her harassment. She was asking permission to kill. Billie’s punch? Defense of another. You’re not gonna get me to condemn that – in my book, it’s not wrong.
Mary was blackmailing Ruth and being smug about her being on suicide watch. She was also trying to negotiate rights to harm another person. Punching a person might not be RIGHT, but I can’t say I feel bad for someone as actively cruel as Mary getting hit, either.
Excuse Might be the wrong word. Most Of the comments I’m seeing say that it’s satisfying but still recognize it as assault. I agree that seeing a ball of spite, hatred and bigotry get hit is satisfying, but I’ll also admit that it’s legally concerning.
Morally Speaking it’s up to personally philosophy.
my percentage might be a little high, but im not really tempted to go through and count. mary has been an awful person, and i get that its satisfying to see her punished for that. i dont think theres anything wrong with that, as long as people do recognize that just because its cathartic doesnt mean its okay.
but there are definitely people who think it really is perfectly fine here too, and its pretty unsettling to read those
I have gone through the comments and counted, and my figure for the number of people saying it’s perfectly fine for Billie to punch Mary is zero. At which point I’m forced to ask, who exactly are you talking about?
LimeSheep: Before I start, let me just say that I’ve read through the replies to your original comment, including how you clarify your position. And I hope that my response will be relatively thoughtful.
I am a pacifist and have been since I was 15 (after a shameful episode of my life). First of all, that doesn’t mean I don’t want to punch people. It means I quite often really do, but I make damn well sure I actually don’t do it…
Well, as damn well sure as I can. Truth be told, in my adult life, I have never really been in a position where I’ve been particularly tempted to actually do it in the heat of the moment. I often fantasize about it after the fact (and when I am safely out of punching distance); but in those few cases where I get extremely provoked, it has only provoked me into shouting.
And now comes the important part: Because compared to about 98% of the world’s population, I have had a really lucky adult life. Being tempted to should at people in real life is pretty rare (shouting at people on the internet is less rare). For one thing, I’ve been able to check every single damn box for not being systematically oppressed at my entire life.
Such as not being born in a real dictatorship, for example. I have avoided that. And because of that, my ignorance of how that must feel is so vast, I could not possibly think that I could have an informed opinion of an uprising against it. It would be arrogant to the extreme of me to try and preach to such people that they should try to remove the tyrants through peaceful methods.
I may not condone it… But I could not really condemn it either. I do not think I have the right to do that.
In more domestic terms, I have also avoided abusive relationships. A friend of mine (who sadly passed away only a few days ago) once was in an abusive marriage, and her family told her to stick to it because it was the Christian way, and a wife should submit to her husband, dontcha know? She mercifully avoided to one day lose it and stab the asshole (simply leaving him instead)… but even if she had, I would have had a hard time trying to chide her for it.
And then of course, I have avoided being all the minorities and the systematic discrimination and violence they face every single day even in the “developed” countries. Cerberus’ post goes into detail how they have it, so no need for me to repeat that part.
I guess in short, while I am against violence, I do have a harder time condemning people that punches “up” rather than down. People that commit violence to stop being stomped on, rather than committing violence in order to stomp on other people.
And having a fictional character commit a “punching up” type of violence… Well, if people (especially the people that are regularly punched down) enjoys that sort of fantasy while acknowledging it’s a fantasy… I think there are worse things in life. Especially when I happen to know that in real life, some of those people are doing some really good -non-violent- work to stop the violence against them. Heck, I was even momentarily satisfied myself, before starting to think how this will probably backfire hard on Billie.
You, of course, do not have to agree with me on this, even after reading my reasons. It is only my opinion, after all. I just hope I managed to convey it respectfully to you.
You both are basically people I aspire to be and am not. You guys are incredible and I am very glad I have the privilege of reading your thoughts and comments here.
I would sit in a lecture hall or classroom and listen to you talk about pretty much anything for as long as you were still willing to talk. (and this is coming from someone who at least within my own circles of friends and acquaintances is notoriously bad with classrooms and school settings)
Oh man… Be really, really careful what you wish for, because I can ramble SO DAMN HARD! And as long as I get enough berry-flavoured tea to prevent my throat from getting sore, I can go on forever and ever and ever and ever and ever…
Mind you, I’d be delighted to meet Cerberus one day, if only to see her face as she thinks “I thought the emperor of the internet would look more regal….”
Billie punching Mary isn’t a good thing because I don’t believe in violence and it could get Billie into terrible trouble. However, Mary is LITERALLY A BLACKMAILER WHO DROVE SOMEONE TO NEAR-SUICIDE. I remind you, Sherlock Holmes considered that worthy of murder.
Mary has committed felonies and was threatening to gaslight a transwoman.
A punch may be bad but she has dodged legal punishments and social ones.
Well, Charles Augustus Milverton was Sherlock Holmes’ least favorite person in the world. He even loathed the man more than Moriarty due to the inherent danger of blackmail in a society as rigid as Victorian England.
Sherlock Holmes AND Hercule Poirot if we’re being real here. In fact, the one person Hercule Poirot personally killed was the fully-developed version of Mary. (Book being referenced: Curtain.)
Is “Stop being evil or we’ll report it” really blackmail? Mary called it that, but if your only demand is that the “victim” stop doing the bad thing isn’t that really just an offer not to report?
Blackmail is such an ugly word. I prefer extortion…
but no, seriously, yeah, it’s blackmail, but with pretty much everything that makes blackmail wrong stripped out. The ends are good, it’s not drudging up anything from an otherwise innocuous past, and it’s got a clearly defined border.
I consider it to be more on par with “Stop stealing my toys or I’ll tell mom/dad*.”
Or for that matter “Stop stealing your siblings toys, or you’re grounded” from the parent.
Or a yellow card from a referee. “You keep this up, and you’ll get the red one.”
In other words, I think it’s much more of a warning against continued negative behaviour, rather than blackmail; which is in itself negative behaviour done for personal gain.
*Combining the two into a gender-neutral term proved difficult. First I got “mad”, which wouldn’t really work. And then I got “dom”…. After that I gave up.
I’d like to postulate Billie needs to see Carla as in the wrong even if Carla was actually right. We don’t know that Ruth has to go home to her uncle other than the possibility of financial reasons–which is an if rather than a certainty. Billie wants Carla to be wrong, though, because if she ISN’T wrong then Billie’s “help” actually made Ruth’s life worse rather than better. That their romance wasn’t actually some justification of Billie’s basic decency but her making Ruth’s situation potentially worse.
Actually, that’s kind of my point that Ruth can seek other methods of staying in college or just LEAVE. Billie needs very much to believe that’s it’s only the RA-ship which was important.
Also, not looking forward to the potential return of that weird group of TERF Mary fans who tried to argue that Carla was a violent male written by a violent male and they both love beating on women as shown by Mary being pied in the face.
Or the weird pieces likely to be written about the awfulness of Billie’s assault while ignoring that Mary actively tried to drive her girlfriend to suicide by attempting to blackmail and harass the both of them*.
*Not excusing the assault, just not looking forward to weird Mary fans using this as an excuse to try and wax poetic about their weird alternate readings of the comic’s events.
I actually had to drop an anti-anxiety med because it was increasing my depression at a time where my happy pills are working overtime just keeping me from the edge.
Seriously, fuck 2016. I can’t wait for this nightmare to end.
I like to think that panel 5 is Willis, reading the stream of new comments, and doing so with any of them. And I’d pick all of the above from Shiro, but that’s me.
Yeah I realized that Rutee was by no means best gal in Tales by a huge margin anymore. I mean, I skipped a bunch of entries, but.
Though it feels weird to comment now too, since there’s not much space for punning given what I usually say. It doesn’t suit the gravitas and I’m just not that clever.
I guess you could say I just don’t have enough love for my pun-try.
NICE!
(I mean Billy will probably get shit for assault and all but…)
and fffuuuuuuck you Mary for assuming everyone is a transphobe like you and that they’ll take any opportunity to shit on a trans woman. I’m happy when you’re wrong and I’m especially happy that it’s in favor of a trans woman
To torture and abuse and make suicidal just like Ruth.
And the worst part is it’s not even to make herself happy. She’s not even a Mike, getting joy out of the suffering of others. She’s just in it because she thinks it makes her righteous. Because she views destroying those she views as unclean as her godly duty and that which makes her better and more deserving than anyone else.
Not to mention Billie more or less dragged Carla into the situation. I think most people here would have done something similar if a stranger we were badgered into caring for suddenly declared they wanted to die.
I’m really glad Billie stood up for Carla. I was worried she wouldn’t after how she’s been acting. I also hope that the punch doesn’t come back to bite her in the ass.
Also, is the last speech bubble the correct way to say that? I keep wanting to say it’s “…I’d rather have fifty…”, but perhaps it works either way? If either of us is incorrect, it would be me as I am from the south and our grammar isn’t the best in some areas. :\
It works either way! “I’d rather fifty Carla’s exist than one Mary” or “I would rather have fifty Carla’s than have one Mary,” would be two other ways of expressing the same idea. So Billie could have said what she did or “…I’d rather have fifty” as you suggested.
Huh. And here all this time I thought differently. I wonder what else I’m grammatically wrong about (besides my use of “gonna” and “yall” and the hundreds of little things I know are wrong, but do anyway including my reply )?
although, just thought of something. It’s harder to convey tone than actual words when you’re re-telling an incident, and far easier to assert that your tone was misread than that you said something different than your accuser heard.
“CARLA put this in the open and made it more complicated because she was WORRIED about Ruth. YOU’RE just a bongo who needs her head surgically extracted from her ass.”
Gonna go on the record as saying that anyone who terms this “violence” or “assault” while claiming Mary’s previous actions are not, or anyone who claims this reaction is unwarranted or disproportionate, needs to be punched in the face.
I strive towards pascifism. And I agree with you. People like Mary thrive on dancing on a line they don’t believe you’ll cross. Sometimes the only way to stop them is to knock them back over onto their side.
gonna go on the record as saying youre a creepy piece of shit, i havent seen anyone claim marys actions havent been fucking awful, and yes its pretty obviously wrong to physically attack people.
but thanks for saying i need to be punched in the face
Ummmmm, then I’m happy for you and all but uh. Plenty of fucking people said Mary was justified in everything before saying she belonged in the boys dorm. Motherfucking /plenty/ of them. Wack’d has an extremely specific target set here. If you’re not in it, great, but getting offended on their behalf without knowing they exist is a good way to mark yourself as ignorant and not worth paying attention to in this regard.
Do you know what it /looks like/ when you do this shit? It doesn’t look like, and maybe I missed it, you can really say “my bad, didn’t realize how what I said appeared.” It has /all/ been about “how dare anyone think I condone what Mary did.” and “clearly you want everyone who disagrees with you injured.”
So you know… that’s how I dare. Because your reaction is “How dare you”, and then only when prompted.
No, he did not literally say that. He did not even figuratively say that. He said all of a class of people, who are doing a very specific thing, are fucking up, albeit in such a way as to deserve being hit. This is not, in fact, saying that everyone who disagrees with him shouldn’t be punched.
And yeah, I know, you don’t get that and think you haven’t done it. That’s the fucking refrain from pacifists. It’s a part (but only a part) of why it’s often so hard to actually sell minority groups on actual pacifism.
Total derail on this thread, but that last line of yours resonates a lot.
And I think it’s because pacifism isn’t often sold as a moral position for the marginalized but as a necessity and as a trap. We’re expected to be meek and the perfect pacifists, always above the fray, turning the other cheek, and so on.
And if we don’t our anger is dismissed. When black folks riot as another unarmed child is shot dead, when trans groups get salty with politicians that fundraise on how all trans people are child molestors, when latinx individuals get angry with Trump, when folks fight back against literal nazis, it’s used to invalidate the arguments of all marginalized folks everywhere.
And that treatment of pacifism as expectation rather than aspiration makes it feel a bit awkward in one’s heart even when we live by it due to necessity far more than the folks that claim to it as a philosophy.
And that’s especially true when it is explicitly used as a trap to discredit any effort for change (see rich cis white gays whining when black trans groups due any type of civil disobedience while routinely celebrating an anniversary celebration of a riot or the way pacifist Christianity and a revisionist view of MLK is used to diminish any genuine protest by black individuals against racism as “uppity” and proving that black people are violent in their natures*.
*This idea that one must be pacifist or otherwise live up to a stereotype that everyone like you is violent is a chain I definitely wear around my neck as a trans woman even though I am white. And definitely sours me to the philosophy as an expectation rather than aspiration.
Lailah, you are being the worst kind of pedant right now.
Wack’d said that “anyone who terms this “violence” or “assault” while claiming Mary’s previous actions are not… needs to be punched in the face.”
Considering that assault has a legal definition that implies a threat of violence, or more colloquially, actual violence, and violence is colloquially understood to be physical harm, any person not overwrought with metaphorical outrage could easily argue that Mary hasn’t used any violence or assault.
This does not make her one bit less of a terrible person. I fucking hate her guts, and other than my concern for Billie, was perfectly happy to see her get punched, even though I do NOT condone such in real life.
However, you need to understand that both Lime and I deserve a punch in the face, according to Wack’d, because we don’t subscribe to their overly broad and metaphorical usage of certain words. That’s it.
If you think that not subscribing to those definitions is problematic enough that we deserve to get punched for it, then I really hope Wack’d has a punch lined up for you too.
I don’t want to pretend I can analyze why I’m a pacifist. I don’t remember how it started. It may have been that chain too, idk. I can’t even claim I noticed this myself. Someone else pointed it out to me. And reading back through primary and secondary sources, as well as actually watching shit happen, made it increasingly clear that it’s what’s going on.
It’s even worse in other situations. At least there’s no subtext that Billie’s a savage. That is absolutely a thing that comes up, barely restrained, when talking about even the slightest bit of violence from, as you said, black lives matter or other racial protests black people have been part of. God forbid we bring up native americans or actual africans. And boy howdy, that’s a treat from White People that never gets old. But Billie gets to skip it, merciful christ.
Like, I get how it’s easy to not recognize that what Mary’s doing is violent. Much of it, the /worst/ of it, is what we agreed upon in advance is ‘expression’ when the rules were written and taught. Sure, Mary was overtly violent already, in the ways we agreed upon, but when she was doing /that/, it was minor – it seemed even moreso given that it was accomplished indirectly (and through cartoon antics). Her violence is very real – it absolutely helps get people killed. But we wrote it into a box we labelled nonviolent from the start, not recognizing (or perhaps, caring) what its effects were.
So I get why pacifists can have a hard time here. And if it weren’t informed by watching them fuck up with guns n’ killing violence, the shit we agreed was violence in advance when the rules were first written, I might be more sympathetic. But it ain’t. In its era, nonviolent direct action was criticized by that same group for still being direct action (read: inconveniencing people). It’s NEVER enough. The standards are higher on us than they were on the earthly incarnation of the deity they (mostly, in America) worship.
So when the violence of ‘Mary’ (but really, any of a dozen RL bigots, some of whom you’ve named, and why did you name her, she googles her name. Do you want AnTERFs? Because that’s how you get AnTERFs. ) is glossed over, well, I ain’t buying it as just that. I’m really not. Like, nobody actually INTENDS to put harsher standards on, you know, us. I don’t believe for a second they MEAN to. But fuck me sideways if they AREN’T. And I’m really tired of pacifism as just that. Pacifism that begins and ends with “you, marginalized person, can’t throw a punch.” Pacifism that begins and ends with “y’all shouldn’t be occupying your land.”
You could argue Mary hasn’t been violent. But given that she’s aware, and unrepentant, that what she’s done nearly caused someone to kill themselves, and is actively arguing to be allowed to keep doing it, you would be inaccurate.
Hell, in Mary’s case in the particular, there isn’t even the convenient fiction that the perpetrator wasn’t aware of the consequences of their actions. She damn well knew her actions could kill people. She seems to have sought that end, and certainly not cared at all about it. But you know, I kinda /expect/ this. It’s not in the clear box we labelled as ‘violent’ when we wrote… well, different rules, actually. I know why this is a thing. You’re wrong, but if it were limited to that, it wouldn’t bug me. But it ain’t, sadly.
I’m wondering, tho, at what point y’all realize that there was a fucking conga line, like, every time Mary has seen any face time at all wrt Carla that said Mary was justified *except* when she outright said Carla was a boy (and the comments were closed that day, so you get no points for avoiding it then, TERFs). Like, do you not know that was a THING? Wack’d may have been prematurely concerned here, but uh. That’s been a thing. There’s a reason he jumped to that, specifically. He was kinda /there/. I /saw him comment/. Maybe you were too. I’m sure as hell not going to drag on someone for an sn change. But if you were, you sorta fuckin’ forgot that.
Hell, other people mentioned even worse: “Also, not looking forward to the potential return of that weird group of TERF Mary fans who tried to argue that Carla was a violent male written by a violent male and they both love beating on women as shown by Mary being pied in the face.”
Mary getting excused? Actually excused, not ignored? That’s a /thing/. There’s a reason that came up.
BIG part of why I have a knee-jerk eyeroll impulse whenever someone goes, “But violence is wrong! Pacifism! Jesus! Ghandi!” is, aside from the fact that neither Jesus nor Ghandi were against self defense (and, despite what self-professed pacifist Christians like to spew, Jesus once flipped a table and chased people around a fucking temple with a whip – John 2:13-2:16, look it up if you don’t believe me – so he wasn’t a complete pacifist. Plus, cultural context at the time makes turning the other cheek a fuckload more of a fuck-you than most people think it was), people are usually using it as an excuse to not examine the cultural context of what’s going on.
Like, BLM protests last year. I saw so many pearl-clutching white folks going on and on about pacifism and peacefulness and what have you to completely erase the fact that the cops were showing up right off the gate in full riot gear and actively antagonizing the crowd so they’d have an excuse to fire bean bags and tear gas into the crowds.
Or, hell, when I was a kid to make it more personal: People would talk at me about pacifisim if I hit someone once and completely ignore the fact that I hit him because I was cornered and surrounded and they were in the process of trying to beat the shit out of me and I knew from previous experience that if I just turtled I’d get told I didn’t try hard enough to stand up for myself.
I could go on but: Bleating about “pacifism” has far more often been used as a disingenous way to move the discussion back to what the marginalized person did “wrong” to deserve their treatment and away from the violence of the privileged. Like when Ruth was hospitalized and people couldn’t stop talking about the dick slap, like that totally justified Mary trying to drive her to suicide.
And ultimately that’s a big part of why I’m not morally a pacifist. As a marginalized person, I can’t rely on power structures like the police or when I was a kid, the teachers in my school. I can’t rely on my peers, either – I know they’ll tend to blame me rather than help. I often can’t rely on anyone but myself (there are two people I know from experience have my back, but they can’t be with me always). I am not socially savvy enough to manipulate my way out of the situation. That leaves violence if I’m in danger. And, yes, it’s a tool of last resort in my tool box – but my toolbox for dealing with dangerous situations is almost empty, so I’m not going to throw it away. Ultimately, I am not selfless enough to want to become a martyr by refusing to use an effective tool on moral principle. If a man jumps me in the parking lot, I am going to elbow him in the face. If a guy assaults me at a party, I’m going to stomp on his instep. If a group of men is trying to coerce me into getting into their car for reasons unknonw, I’m going to break one of the fingers of the hand grabbing me so I can run. (All of these are real-life examples for me, by the way). And, no, I’m not going to report any of those incidents, because I know from experience that the cops are at best unhelpful.
When it boils down to it, I am not brave or self-sacrificing or selfless or principled enough to be a martyr. I’m a survivor. I am wolverine-nasty and mule-stubborn and powered by spite at times. When push comes to shove, I want to live, and I’ll do what I judge to give me the best shot at living.
Asking me to be a pacifist and arguing that violence is wrong in all cases, to me, comes off as telling me, I should’ve just gotten into the car with those strange men. I should’ve let the guy in the parking lot do what he wanted. I should have put up with the bruises on my breasts from the guy at the party. I can go on. And no, that’s bullshit.
When our society wakes up to the fact that I’m a person who should be defended as much as anyone else, then I’ll entertain pacifism. Until then, I’ve got me and two other people in my life who I trust enough to rely on, and they can’t be with me all the time. So I’ll do what is needed to survive. If that means breaking an instep, elbowing a rib, dislocating a finger, or gouging an eye, so fucking be it. Because, when it boils down to it, I’m not a martyr. And it’s really unfair to expect me to be some saint of a martyr when I’m just a person. Worse, it’s unfair to require me to be some saint of a martyr in order to be considered a person.
That said, Lailah: You make a much better case for pacifism than any of the pearl-clutchers I’ve ever met.
honestly I fell like Limesheep and Lailah are missing a very important point. They are acting as if billie’s punch is completely unwarranted because Mary never physically laid a hand on someone.
Now look at the reality of this situation. Mary drove Ruth to the brink of suicide and is trying to get clearance to do it again.
THIS IS MURDER BY PROXY
and I don’t care HOW much of a glorious pacifist you are if you are going to stand by and say that a punch to the face of an attempted serial murderer isn’t justified then you are suffering from some severe mental illness.
As a pacifist, I strive to avoid undue violence. However, I still very much enjoy seeing due violence. Billie’s actions today fall into the latter category.
That may have just been one of the most sublime sensation of schadenfreude that I’ve ever experienced. Also basically says, “I’m not like you bongo, and neither is anyone else on this floor. Go stew in your hate juices in silence. And remember, there’s more where that came from.”
You know, I realize it’s only because we don’t wanna bog down the comic in too much awful, but let’s take a moment to reflect on how lucky these girls are that Mary is the only one of her kind on the floor.
unless my memory is wrong, Billy was at least a bit like that to different targets when she was in high school. Or am I reading that part of her implied backstory wrong?
I got the distinct impression that Billie was a bit of a cliquey Mean Girl in high school, and its a fact that she bullied Walky at the time, but stuffing Walky into a locker really doesn’t compare to the kind of shit Mary does.
Only because Walky’s pretty resilient. And because it was off-camera and frankly a bit too much of a stereotype for school bullying.
Don’t dismiss the physical, violent bullying too lightly, just because the more subtle psychological kind was ignored too often. Both can easily give even well-adjusted kids long term trauma or worse, if applied to those who are already depressed or otherwise struggling.
I’m not saying Billie wasn’t a bully, or that it wasn’t bad. Only that Mary’s variety of bullying seems orders of magnitude worse.
Because Billie and Walky are still friends, I have a hard time picturing Billie’s bullying of Walky being this persistent, targeted, seek-and-harass type of behavior that would feel more comparable to Mary’s.
I can only picture it as a lot of “DAMN IT WALKY, I’M TOO POPULAR TO BE SEEN WITH NERDS LIKE YOU! ARGH!”, followed by Walky being stuffed into a locker. They may be the same age, but to me it feels like it would have been a very similar dynamic to “ARGH, MY LOSER LITTLE BROTHER KEEPS FOLLOWING ME EVERYWHERE”.
It’s not great, sure, but it’s also not deliberate, targeted harassment with the intent of making someone feel terrible and powerless. Most importantly, Billie grew out of it. Even if she were a much worse bully back then than I imagine, she isn’t now. She’s still angry and mean sometimes, but she’s no Mary.
It’s just, i’m remembering what happened when she met someone who she was -friends- with back then. How did she treat those she thought beneath her? And she was pining for those days till recently
I like Walky, because i see myself in him sometimes, but he’s not what I would call resilient. Joyce is having everything she ever knew and loved crushed in front of her face and revealed as ugly lies and she still has enough fortitude to keep shipping her friends and (given that it has not been shown as an issue) keep up with her classwork. Walky on the other hand is having a nervous breakdown over one bad grade. I get the reasons behind and it happens to me, but i don’t consider myself resilient either
Panel 1: I think Billie’s softness of eyes and language is really interesting here. Like, for a brief moment, her anger has somewhat subsided even though this must be deeply painful and infuriating of an interaction (especially as Billie likely blames herself for being caught in the first place and thus giving Mary the ammo she used against Ruth).
And in that moment, she’s being real and forgiving, being Christian in the classical sense of turning one’s cheek and practicing forgiveness against those who’ve sinned against you. And she gives Mary a leash yes, an ultimatum yes, but a potential free pass.
Mary can get away scot free with all the evil she has perpetrated so far, walk away no harm, no foul, so long as she doesn’t continue to try and escalate and abuse in the ways she has this past week.
And Mary, overgrown baby that she is, acts like a teenager being scolded by their parent to clean their room and whines about it. Which, yeah, is entirely in keeping with her character, but I’m much more interested in that attempt by Billie to genuinely be the bigger person.
And it’s especially interesting, because in our society, that’s a role that’s expected of the marginalized. It’s what assholes still get angry at Carla for not doing and thus “escalating things” or “instigating”.
Marginalized folks are expected to take the high road, forgive and forget their dehumanization, and try their best to tie things off and prevent further bad blood. To swallow the indignity without even the satisfaction of a genuine apology.
And that’s really slammed home by the fact that Mary has been openly dismissive to Billie’s face, even expecting her to be happy about Mary’s attempt to kill her girlfriend and acting like a spoiled kid weaseling out of a grounding at ever point. And yet, Billie’s eyebrows soften and she makes the offer. Just to leave folks alone. Not even be nice. Not even apologize.
Just stop doing more damage. And even that’s too much for Mary.
I read Billie’s face and body language differently. She’s just given Mary a damn good talking to. Now, Billie thrives in conflict far more than I do, but as someone with depression I recognize that moment as one where you just don’t have the energy to be angry anymore, and all you can do is wrap up the argument and walk away.
Fortunately, much like Dina faced with the possibility of holding hands and looking up dinosaurs, it’s pretty easy to refuel Billie’s batteries with the addition of further bullshit.
I don’t think Mary really believes she did that. Even after Billie’s rant Mary’s still using “girlfriend” in quotes, as though what Billie and Ruth had together wasn’t real. As far as Mary’s concerned Billie’s just mad because she thinks someone–Satan, society, whoever–will reward her for being so.
Mary brought pain to a sinner, which puts her closer to God. Or something like that, I think. It was either addressed in comic like a year+ ago, or in the comments.
Since Holmes was brought up upthread (or is it “downthread”) — it’s worth noting that “the most winning woman” Holmes ever knew (I have to assume he meant attractive to him in some way, as it’s never to my knowledge explored outside fanfic) was a serial child-poisoner who did it for the insurance money. Evil in pleasing packages, and all that.
Mary’s still a person with the range of expressions that entails. She doesn’t normally look cute because she wears her hate on her face. For this one panel, she’s instead friendly and in a sense seductive. It’s a gentle look with big pupils and a hint of a smile.
She’s trying to look cute to sell what she is saying. No reason she can’t pull that much off. Nothing wrong with finding the pitch attractive, so long as there’s no mistaking the poisonous offer it means to mask.
Oh good, it’s not just me… To be honest, I always thought Mary was pretty, but then she turned out to be, well, Mary. There’s no better way of putting it.
And, you know, Billie can probably see Carla helped, even if it was personally unsatisfying for her. Maybe even go so far as to respect Carla as a person who, while massively self-involved, isn’t devoid of empathy or careless with people’s lives or going out of her way to hurt anyone. Unlike certain people who so inspire revulsion that being publicly beaten doesn’t give them the tiniest bit of support or sympathy.
Panel 2: Oh hai, Billie’s last thread of patience, didn’t see you blasting off again, there.
But seriously. To make that offer, to be the bigger person and to have the other be like, pfft, as if, is such a slap in the face and if Mary was smarter she would recognize that “what” as the rattle of a rattlesnake warning the hiker to back the fuck off now.
Panels 3 and 4: Oh man, I have so much to say and it really all begins and ends with oh my fucking lord is Mary a flaming pile of feces.
First up, Mary is still bargaining. Still! Even after being caught out. Even after knowing that her little bullshit is having real painful, nearly fatal consequences in people’s lives. Even after being given an out. She’s still angling to hurt others as if it’s all a game.
And that’s the central problem with Mary. To Mary, all the lives of others are just a game. Just a sea of NPCs for the central conflict of Mary’s soul and a set piece to show her righteousness. That they may have individual lives, individual tales, that they may matter, doesn’t penetrate.
Because they are not Mary. They are not Mary’s tribe.
And yeah, that’s sociopathic, but it’s sociopathic by design. This way of thinking that others are merely set pieces, that life is just a game of good versus evil for who gets the most points is something we see in Toedad and Carol and John.
It’s intentional and an aspect of that particular flavor of Christianity that births works like the Left Behind books and the larger conservative ideology it spawns from. It’s a myopia that Fred Clark tends to write about a lot: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2004/08/06/lb-dr-dives-is-bored/
Viewing people as things to quote Granny Weatherwax. That’s where true evil begins and ends.
For me, I think it’s a four way tie between those two, plus two of death’s speeches. One from Reaper Man Ditto, though I’d put two of death’s speeches(“There is no hope but us. There is no mercy but us. There is no justice. There is just us …
What can the harvest hope for, if not for the care of the reaper man?”)
And the slightly modified (For the movie!) exchange from Hogfather
“Death: You think so? Then take the universe and grind it down to the finest powder and sieve it through the finest sieve and THEN show me one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy. And yet… you try to act as if there is some ideal order in the world. As if there is some… some rightness in the universe by which it may be judged.
Susan: But people have got to believe that, or what’s the point?
Death: You need to believe in things that aren’t true. How else can they become?”
Reaper Man is one of my favourites. Quite possibly because it was the first book Pratchett wrote after collaborating with Neil Gaiman on Good Omens. You can tell that Pratchett learned a lot from Gaiman about making good characters, and making a story that is still enjoyable to read even when the gags have worn thin.
In fact, when my grandmother passed away, I quoted the passage about the people in the village that believed that a person was not truly dead until all the ripples they made had faded away.
What’s interesting about Weatherwax and Vimes (and I think it’s something that Cerberus pointed out previously!) is that their concepts of ‘good’/evil are.. not necessarily 100% compatible with each other.
Which I kind of love because it shows fantastic people can A) Still morally disagree on things.
B) Makes you wonder what would have happened *if they had ever wound up on opposite sides of an issue*.
My personal take on Vimes and Weatherwax, using the D&D alignement system:
Vimes actually is, at heart, neutral good. Or rather, he wishes he could be neutral good. But he also knows himself well enough that he doesn’t trust himself to go down that path, because he’s afraid that he’ll end up using more and more dubious methods for fighting what he perceives to be evil; maybe even to the point where he’ll end up hurting or killing someone who did not deserve it.
So he forces himself, each and every day, to instead be lawful good. He makes it a point to remember that without due process, without carefully deliberated actions, then he’ll be no more than a one-man lynch mob with a badge and a sword (aka “The Beast”). He watches himself closer than even Vetinari and Carrot watch him. He believes that he can do more good if he sticks to the law than if he doesn’t, even if he doesn’t always want to.
Of course, sometimes said beast does get unchained…
Granny, on the other hand, would be wavering between neutral and chaotic good. She may not be one much for laws, but she -is- one for rules; rules that are not written down, but which nevertheless reach deeper and harder than laws ever could… Of course, even then, they might be broken, and if so, they’ll damn well be broken good and hard! *evil grin*
And I think they’d probably agree a lot on the nature of evil. Vimes would certainly understand what she means with her “evil begins with thinking of people as things” concept; remembering how landlords of slums are “upstanding citizens” while the people living in them are barely better regarded than cockroaches. I think the disagreement would not so much be the nature of evil, as their approach to fighting it.
And while they never met, Granny certainly had a begrudging approval of Vimes trying out secret policemen because sometimes, there are secret crimes. Not to mention how Vimes would use Nobbs and Detritus and decoy coppers while the smart one actually got his job done.
“You are also a hypocrite and you don’t actually mean those things you’ve said. Watch as I demonstrate by pointing out an exception you are willing to make and thereby justify and validate my own opinion of myself as a not-horrible person.”
*plays a piece of the score from Back to the Future Part I, specifically the music that played behind what just might be the greatest punch-out in cinematic history*
Precious cinnamon bun Joyce, after one long afternoon of her world falling apart pillar by pillar, marches up to ToDead and clocks him five feet away into a neck brace?
I hate to bring in the inevitablity theory of fiction, or suspension of disbelief, however you wanna term it, but. Of course Mary’s gonna barter for her favorite victim. It’d be out of character for Mary to let Billie walk away without at least getting one win. And once she does that, you want Billie to, what, exactly? Just let that slide?
Hell, Billie’s not even being an ally at this moment. She explicitly says she hates Carla. And Mary’s given plenty of other reasons for the punch beyond just threatening her–she’s also, in that same panel, invalidating Billie’s relationship and trying to put the blame for what happened to Ruth on someone else.
It’s a tough line to skirt, honestly. I’m not gonna argue that Mary’s repeated attempts to use Carla as a bargaining chip hasn’t opened the door for some unfortunate tropes. But I think Willis has been doing a good job of, if nothing else, giving Carla agency in these situations, even if she occasionally needs folks to stand up for her.
Ehhh, it’s a hard line to skirt, but not because of theory of fiction. Willis even thought he was invoking this basic idea. Now, I’m pretty great with the comic, but he still ultimately chose to put this one on paper. So if someone else isn’t satisfied for a reason he’s entirely cognizant of existing in advance, that…. doesn’t really change that all that much.
Like, Billie’s internal monologue is important, I think, to why Willis wrote it. Mary’s done a lot, but Billie still snapped then, not earlier, when the focus was on herself. And yeah, tbh I can believe that’s just Billie snapping at her weaselling little bargaining attempts.
But like… Willis himself looks like he thought it might kinda come off that way. So if someone else arrives at that conclusion… more power to them, the text supports it?
The idea is, trans stories should be done by trans people b/c as a rule cis people don’t do a great job at it. It gets cringey, and yes, can often become about, or /is/ about, the cis people doing the right things, and not about the trans people. And I think, at the end of the day, that /is/ a criticism with some force where the trans girl is a side character. It’s true that the side character got to be the main character of that plotline earlier, but partially misses the point, and she’s certainly not /now/.
I, personally, disagree. It’s partially ‘I would love that fantasy world’ (as said below), and mostly “They’re not listening to us anyway, they might listen to cis people. But there’s the logic. And I /do/ think the criticism has some force. I /do/ also think the characters would do this, and don’t necessarily think Willis should have done it any differently, but.
Or maybe, just a little differently. Make Carla as main a gal as Billie. That’d be pretty awesome, she’s hilarious.
That said, I think I can see where you’re coming from, though I think it’s diminished quite a bit because Carla has already come to her own defense and thoroughly and would be more than happy to throw down (but only with sweet pranks) with Mary when (and let’s be honest, it’s a when not an if) Mary ignores this and goes after Carla anyways.
Eh, it is. When the thing that gets you to punch someone is “someone else”, it ultimately is that narratively. Like, Willis does seem to care about characters doing what they’d do, so I’m not bothered, but other people aren’t obligated to care about /that/ either. the end result matters /too/. while I don’t care, other people can.
Like, Willis even said “is that too crowdplease-y?” It’s not like the idea is weird. I don’t mind, but Kole can.
Er, like I said above, I’m pretty sure it’s far more “the little shit wants to keep doing it” and not a god damn thing about Carla, but not being privy to an internal monologue, it’s valid to come to the ‘ally points’ idea as a narrative device.
I can see where it would be taken that way, but… I think the premise was that Billie isn’t lashing out to defend Carla. At least, not directly.
However, if you look back in the archives, the reason why Ruth broke up with Billie is because of Carla. Mary was verbally abusing and being outright transphobic, Ruth attempted to intervene but got shut down with Mary’s blackmail threats, essentially leaving Carla to the she-wolf and reasserting that she’s an “acceptable loss” again/still. From that breakup, Ruth began her rapid downward spiral, which lead to Billie begging Carla to check on her, which lead to where we are now with the head RA getting involved and Ruth seemingly on her way out the door back to the hell that is her grandfather’s home.
Billie is lashing out at Mary because in her pathological need to attack “the abomination”, she involved someone else and destroyed them as collateral damage in her “holy war”, and considers her actions not only ‘justified’ in the eyes of her hateful God, but funny.
Getting punched in the face was due to Mary continuing to act like the hateful and arrogant HyuckHyuck she represents (my convenient term that I use for Trump or really any GOP supporters), but essentially telling Billie “Hey, I’ll keep doing what I was doing that caused all this drama to begin with, and you’ll totally love it”.
If Ruth and Billie’s “We’re not together!” charade were still going on and it was only Carla getting shit from Mary, no one would be jumping in to help her if they could at all avoid doing so… especially not Billie. Carla was just a convenient active catalyst that agitated the God-Warrior and made Ruth realize how selfish she was being by letting said God-Warrior get her way.
Panels 3 and 4 continued: And secondly, oh man where to start on this list of awful.
I mean, there’s bartering for Carla as if Carla was a Magic card that was up for trade rather than an independent person who has dealt with so many Marys in her life that she’s literally in done mode 24/7.
There’s the attempt to hand-wash her central role in driving Ruth to the brink of death and pin the blame on someone with less power as if Billie was a complete moron. Oh, yeah, it was actually Carla who’s most to blame. This bit of gaslighting isn’t insulting, right?
There’s the slight victory gloat inherent in “why she’s leaving” as if that was actually something set in stone rather than still potentially in motion. Like, ha ha, I’ve knocked one down on my hit list, so c’mon, gimme number 2, it’s not like you actually like her.
There’s the quotation marks weighing like stones around “her” cause casual transphobia and Mary go together like peanut butter and jelly.
There’s the quotation marks around “girlfriend” because in Mary’s eyes, she still does not fundamentally respect Billie or her relationship and doesn’t remotely view it as real. Which, yes, is openly homophobic and vile, but it’s also the worst thing to do when paired with the one above. Like, if you actually wanted Billie to “hand you Carla”, maybe don’t remind her how you’re casual dismissal of her gender goes hand-in-hand with your casual dismissal of the reality of queer relationships.
And there’s turning around as if they are equals and Billie didn’t just call her the fuck out. Cause Mary can’t even fake having shame for what she did and Billie knows that and thus is completely out of fucks.
Panel 5: And on that note, Mary is an idiot for taunting this particular bear, because Billie doesn’t just take shit lying down. Fuck, even when Ruth was bullying her so bad she was having a mental breakdown, she still fought back.
So you really think a Billie who has nothing to lose and a whole lot of anger breeding inside of them isn’t going to take that smug pile of bullshit from the woman who nearly killed her girlfriend and forced her to rely on Carla is just going to meekly put up with it?
Fuck no.
I’m not going to necessarily cheer this moment, but I’m not going to weep for it or condemn it either, especially not during an election season that has emboldened violent* shitheads like Mary in the worst possible way.
*Yes, I don’t care that Mary hasn’t ever punched anyone. Trying to drive people to suicide, intentionally slamming people with blatant bigotries in the hope of causing emotional pain, trying to actively remove people’s support networks? These are violent actions, whether people recognize them as such or not.
Panel 6: Billie hates Carla (or rather is incredibly pissed at Carla) because Carla blundered like a wrecking ball and “ruined” the status quo Billie was more than okay with.
And that’s not just about Billie losing the secret domesticity with Ruth (though seeing her relationship with Alice, I suspect that might be Billie’s most comfortable style of relationship) nor about being called incredibly rudely on some of her more codependent and unhealthy aspects of her relationship with Ruth.
But more about her putting Ruth at terrible risk of “sir”, because Carla didn’t stop to think that not everyone has great parents who love and support them.
And that’s super justified to be pissed at that, because Carla didn’t think before leaping in and making the choice for the both of them, aggressively outting them in the process.
But it’s a mistake made out of trying to do the right thing, which Billie recognizes even if she despises it.
Mary on the other hand? Is actively trying to do the wrong thing. Is the arson who set Ruth’s house of raggedy dry tinder and gasoline ablaze, requiring loose cannon Carla to drench it in water. Who still, when being called out for the attempted murder by suicide of her girlfriend is still asking for a new victim to torment like it doesn’t even matter.
So fuck yeah, Billie will take an army of Carlas versus one Mary in the same way that anyone will accept a million idiot people who care over someone who tries to exploit the caring of others to her own advantage.
usually a term of respect for men. In this case though, it’s our name for Ruth’s abusive grandfather/guardian, as he apparently makes her call him that as seen in a comic where he yelled at her over the phone.
Yeah, I’m worried about Billie here. The dorm has some sort of rules against violence and Mary, who probably has the entire handbook memorized, will go to the RM immediately quoting chapter and verse of which rules were broken and what Billie’s punishment should be.
Mary’s a shithead, but Billie may be the one who suffers.
That depends on Agatha. Her look isn’t one of surprise. It’s one more akin to “Well, that took longer than expected”. She might be willing to state that Mary started it or even that she faked it. Additionally, Mary probably would not report it. Not only will it expose her for her blackmail and abuse of fellow residents, she had already been assaulted once without reporting it (the dick-face slap incident).
Maybe, but I don’t see Agatha going out of her way to tell anyone about what happened, and as far as we know, she’s the only witness.
That being said, the school knows about Billie’s issues and thus her current volatility. Agatha could say “Yes, Billie hit Mary” but also follow that up with an explanation of “Billie and I were talking in the hallway and Mary came up to us both uninvited and was taunting her about Ruth, and then she said she was going to keep being mean to Carla”.
Billie gets suspended and has a mark against her record for being violent, but likely will be allowed to come back once she pays fines and serves a mandatory sentence of more therapy sessions as well as anger management. She’s granted a bit of leniency because she was known as being unstable at the time and has a witness who spoke on her behalf that she didn’t go looking for a fight, and her actions were just a poor choice due to her recently discovered condition. Mary on the other hand will be put on the top of the list to be moved out of that dorm and into another one as soon as possible, and may or may not be warned in no-uncertain terms that multiple people have accused her of making their living environment hostile, and she will have to consider other housing options at the end of this year as she will not be invited back to the dorms.
How about one Mary obviously forgot? Matthew 7:12 “In everything, therefore, treat people the same way you want them to treat you, for this is the Law and the Prophets.” Cause I haven’t exactly seen her applying the golden rule lately. Unless she’s secretly a masochist who acts like a bongo specifically so people will socially despise her or be driven to hurt her.
This is not going to go well, considering Mary is the kind to use this hard core against Billie
Mind, I’m hoping Mary tries to get revenge, only to not only get Billie’s blackmail details on her revealed, but stuff the entire floor knows, and gets Mary barred permanently from campus and ostracized
Either that or for Mary’s neck to have snapped from the punch
Willis you made one very hateable character is what I’m saying
says a lot that we as a group arguably hate her more than we hate the guy from the party. I think the balance would shift if Joyce attempted suicide because of the trauma though. The no-death rule says nothing about attempts
If I remember right folks have some creatively thorough feelings to what Slashface Ryan deserves and most involve being feed into a chipper shredder ala Fargo.
Oh, and to be clear, nobody that matters is mourning Ryan – he’s sufficiently a tertiary character that even an on-screen death wouldn’t dominate the comic with mourning.
There is plenty of hatred to go around. Ryan probably leads my own personal list, but Mary, Blaine, Toedad, and Leland are up there. Also Faz, though he’s not important enough to top the others. Even Ryan’s lackeys probably beat Faz.
As I write this, I am realizing that all of the characters I have listed have faced physically violent consequences to their actions. Even Faz was tied up and duct tape put over his mouth, and all the others have been punched and/or kicked and/or choked.
The list of people I hate in this comic is pretty short. Blaine, Toedad, Carol, Sir, and whatever the hell Ethan’s Mom is named. Only two of these have seen consequences, and sadly, none has actually stopped yet.
Ethan’s mom would be at the top of my list if the others on the list weren’t all so violent because she hits close to home. Either Conservative Jew like myself or a Reform Jew being massively homophobic for reasons that don’t even seem to be anything but personal disgust with homosexuality makes less sense than fundamentalists to me. It’s like, we’re already ignoring 75% of the Laws, why did you have to dredge up this stinker?
To the extent that you hear more hate for Mary than Ryan, I think it says that she has 71 appearances and he has 29. People might hate Pol Pot even more, but it doesn’t come up too often.
David Willis my birthday isn’t for another 8 months, and here you go giving me something early. Maybe this is for Christmas? I don’t care. Watching Mary get slugged was the best thing ever.
“Have her for what?” would perhaps have been a more diplomatic response. I’d certainly like to hear Mary’s answer to that question. Though if you’ve spent an hour with her, or people like her, you already know she’ll never answer. What possible answer can she give that doesn’t, on some level, acknowledge that she just talked about Carla like Carla was a slave?
She’d probably try to make Carla get violent towards her as a way to get her into trouble or something along those lines. Just like she’s doing here, but I have the feeling that strategy isn’t going to cut it anymore.
Cause, see Carla is “intruding” on Mary’s space and “making a mockery” of the Lord’s “plan for men and women”. It’s the subtext to pretty much most public conversations about where trans folks “belong” or what is “right”.
Mary wants to torture Carla until the problem “disappears” ala Ruth. And if it did. If Carla was a less combative sort of trans girl with a less robust support system or if she had a moment of weakness and expired, Mary would be doing the same dance she’s doing now and not feel one iota of shame for killing a human being.
Cause to that type of person, we trans people aren’t human beings worthy of life. We’re a “problem to be solved”, to be made to go away, one way or another.
Sadly Mary is a very familiar flavor of person to me and one I’ve had the misfortune of falling under the very direct attention of more than once.
If you say she would admit that’s what she wants, I believe it. Though it’s hard to imagine someone so entirely beyond even the appearance of civil behavior, Mary has surprised me before. . .
Also a parent of a trans kid. I home school my kid for now to help him avoid the Mary’s out there until he is in a better place and able to deal with them himself. I am full-well aware that people like her exists. I also don’t mind seeing one of them get a little karmic justice. Best part is that this one is fictional so I can enjoy it guilt free.
Is it something that happened to her alt universe original version? Cause in that case, that sucks because that means that kid had Mary for a mom and then grew up to torture more people, fueled by her ideas
Okay, so over in the Walkyverse, Mary got pregnant, to illustrate she’s a hypocrite about pre-marital sex. Basically it got used as a punishment.
The kid doesn’t have to deal with Mary as a mom, though. Aborted it. Though she DID pop one out with a doctor later in It’s Walky (Peter Paul. I thought that was clever).
She hooked up with a guy at a.party, attempted to destroy Billie’s credibility with her boyfriend (who was an old schoolfriend of Mary’s) because Billie spotted them and knew how hypocritical she’d been and Mary didn’t want to get called on her BS, fell pregnant – then had an abortion. So no children hurt in this tale, and it did force Mary far enough out of her own backside for her to give some possibly genuine apologies…
But yeah, still kinda pregnancy as punishment. But IIRC according to the commentary it was when Willis was writing the follow-up encounter in which we learnt about the abortion that he first really stepped out of his own head and considered that other people in other circumstances might make different choices and have different reasons for them to him… so it was probably quite a big growing step for him as a writer and a person…
Rather than answer, I’ll point you to a couple of the very old comics that can answer your questions. Then you can decide whether to check them or not:
[Links quite naturally contain SPOILERS for Mary storylines in Roomies! and It’s Walky! Clicker beware! Links also contain Mary, so double-beware!]
Carla might be the reason Ruth is leaving but Mary tortured her in the first place and as for Carla herself, Billie can’t be too mad at herconsidering Carla did do what she thought was the right thing even if Billie hates it but thing is Billie is the one that got her involved in the first place.
No to be honest I think I’m a broken record because I probably made this point before.
i don’t even bother to check if I’ve said something before. If it was a good point then, it’s a good point now until other evidence precludes it. Hell, I must have posted my idea that Mary has acted the role of fundie for so long that there is no face under the mask anymore at least ten times on the last page
Enjoy the strip while you can, folks, because I’m willing to bet a fair amount of money (as in up to 75 cents) that tomorrow’s strip will -not- be anywhere near as pleasing. Willis does tend to taketh away the hardest right after he’s giveneth*.
*Yes, I know I’m butchering ye olde English here. I regret nothing!
Given the position of her noodly right arm in panel 5, I’d read it as Mary had turned around to face Billie in panel 4, and the punch spun her back around the other way
Really? Did Mary really just try to bargain with Billie for the continued ability to harass Carla for being trans?
I don’t think this has anything to do with religious beliefs anymore. Not even the most anti-trans bigot is that dedicated – there’s just something about Carla/trans people that really sets Mary off. Like, on a personal level.
Yup, she sure did. And sadly, a lot of anti-trans bigots are that dedicated. Sadly, a lot of anti-trans bigots are even more dedicated than that: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Cathy_Brennan
There’s a whole squadron of dedicated anti-trans bigots (TERFs, Kiwi Farms, 8chan raid boards) who love to make a game out of identifying vulnerable trans kids in unsafe environments and trying to harass and out them to the point where they take their own lives. Some of these sites even have “confirmed kill counters” where they celebrate how many suicides they’ve directly contributed to.
Trans kids are especially good fodder for these groups because they tend to be heavily marginalized so there’s not a lot of social pushback, there’s a lot of narratives where you can pretend to be a concerned citizen who “just cares a lot about their mental health” and “snapping them out of their delusions”, and because they tend to already be on the raggedy edge due to dysphoria and social oppression, thus are easier to kill.
The overall intention though is the same across the board. Make the trans folks dead or so terrorized they don’t exist in public so you can continue pretending they don’t exist.
There’s a lot of attention to the punch, for good reason as it’s a very Billie approach to the type of shit Mary is throwing.
But it’s worth noting that Mary’s actions, Mary’s words are hella violent as well. Her actions minimizing the reality of Carla’s gender, the reality of Billie and Ruth’s relationship, playing light with the fact that she nearly drove a person to death because of who they are, asking for the right to do that again against a new target. These are violent actions. These are far more monstrous than a punch to the face. They are things that leave staggeringly high body counts in their wakes.
Are what breeds mountains of dead queer kids who grow up believing that being who they are is a road marked with pain, abuse, and an inevitable early end.
And what’s interesting is how that is shadowed and erased because it’s a violence that is more socially acceptable. It’s the violence of Scrooge’s ledger book, casting out the impoverished family into the frozen December streets to die somewhere bloodlessly in shadow where blame becomes fuzzy to pinpoint.
To quote Pratchett again, it’s the murder by pieces that Moist van Lipwig is accused of performing during his scams, worsening the lives of countless individuals by tiny amounts in the wake of his lack of awareness of the consequences of his actions.
And it’s something that is frequently not even thought of as wrong, as simply the status quo as it fits the narratives and oppressions that already exist like a key into a lock. To try and drive a mentally ill and queer person to suicide? To mock that to their loved ones? It’s monstrous, but it’s a “normal” type of monstrous. A civilized type of monstrous like selling people in the 1700s or saying AIDS is “God’s punishment” in the 1980s.
And that shouldn’t be lost in this moment, because it’s why Billie punched and why that’s shocking.
Because the marginalzed aren’t supposed to punch back. Aren’t supposed to react to their ritualistic dehumanization with genuine violence. That’s wrong. As wrong as someone performing even a fraction of what Mary did in the opposite direction. It makes those in power uncomfortable because the right thing for the marginalized to do, what we are trained to do is to accept it graciously and politely agitate for our rights (in a non-uppity way) until we all naturally agree we were all for them all along.
And that’s why it’s cathartic to a degree. Because if these two were men and Mary had merely impugned Ruth’s honor, this punch would be socially more acceptable to celebrate, because it would fit our narratives of men “fighting for women’s honor” and so on. Because it wouldn’t feel out of place with what we expect this sort of interaction to go.
And that’s worth taking a second to examine, because it’s important. It’s especially important as we expect groups to react with preternatural calm to situations we would never in a million years tolerate as dominant group members.
And that resonates with me because Mary’s bullshit? Mary’s begging for Carla to “have”. I recognize it in the weekly crocodile tear think piece casually asking if we can continue to unnecessarily torture trans kids to death so that all the cis people can take the time to “get used to things” and not worry that some poor cis kid somewhere might accidentally think they are trans for a few weeks without hating themselves.
It’s what’s nearly cost me four of my trans kids in suicide attempts this year (for context, there are 6 trans students at my school that I know about).
And I don’t want to see that overshadowed simply because Billie’s punch is violent in the classical easier to recognize sense.
Frankly, clucking our tongues about it almost always feels wasteful, especially done by outsiders. Like, stealing bread to eat is also wrong, but it’s not really wrong for the thief, so much as wrong for the thief to /need/ to. I’m not going to get /mad/ at the thief.
This is a little less dire, and it’s wrong to but like. It’s more wrong that people are driven to where this is even remotely necessary. Where this is even remotely justified. Mary is looking for carte blanche to drive Carla to her death. Violence without NEED is wrong, but traditionally, violence in response to violence is generally acceptable, if not preferable. I don’t want Billie to do it (I don’t honestly even get any catharsis out of it, having asked very good friends not to hurt people before). Billie hurting Mary is wrong.
But jesus fuck, we’re spending far too much fucking time on it.
I don’t necessarily worry about Carla too much in this regard. She has two things going for her.
1) She generally doesn’t seem to give a smurf (yeah, that’s my favorite censor for the f-bomb). She has gotten to the point where she accepts that there are people that hate her for existing. She is beyond hiding and trying to not draw attention to herself in the hopes that the bigots forget about her. She will get up in their face about it. Mary isn’t asking for an easy target.
2) Mary’s also not asking for a powerless target. If push actually came to shove, Carla’s family is rich. Universities tend to take the opinions of rich people very seriously, especially if they have some sort of grievance (if for no other reason than that the rich can actually afford to sue the school). There is no way that anyone of authority is picking Mary’s side over Carla’s.
Yeah, as transphobic as universities can be, Carla has zillionaire parents who could make a VERY serious headache for them. Especially if they’re alumni/investors/donors or they have political/media contacts (almost certainly). If nothing else, they have the finances and time to keep the school tied up in court until they’re ruined financially. The school may be transphobic, but Carla’s parents, if push comes to shove, could feasibly sue the school off the map.
Now, whether or not they WOULD is a different matter, but it’s definitely a thought to make the dean squirm.
Thank you Cerberus for this comment. Also, I am incredibly sorry about the loss of those four kids. And for what this election year is putting yourself and the queer community through. I don’t always respond to your deeper comments, even when I think I should to offer support, because I have a very hard time expressing my thoughts normally, let alone through a medium such as text. And well, I empathize. Not just sympathize but empathize with a lot of that pain. And I hate that some people are forced to endure that much pain that their ways of coping fail them, and that a society makes it that way. And I’m a part of the privileged class that makes it that way. Cis, male, straight, white. I try to help, I try to support. But it never seems to amount to anything. I’ve lost some of the few friends I had to the kind of bullshit that’s been going on for years but seems to be getting even worse since the election started. It’s wrong, wrong on so many levels and I feel powerless to help those I care about, those I love. And I just, just wanted to say that I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
Though I did just find out that administration tried to bury without notice the fact that one of my trans kid’s parents asked all our staff to keep an eye to make sure he doesn’t leave campus as he’s a suicide risk and it only didn’t get buried without action because one of the teachers knew as well and leaked it, so now I’m in full burn everything down mode.
That is just fucking unconscionable on every possible level. How the hell are people who would do that even allowed in the same building where decisions regarding children get made, much less actually making them?
Oh thank goodness. I didn’t see the “nearly”. Umm…is it ok if I apologize for going on my little rant? I, uh, kinda feel like it was unnecessary. And it appears that I messed up in reading your comment in the first place. I was just, feeling really depressed and mistakenly reading that four of your trans students had died made me, well need to express support and open up a bit at the same time. Like I said, I’m not the best at expressing myself. So, so sorry about misreading that comment.
Nah, I identify a lot with that rant. This election season is hella rough for a lot of marginalized folks and fucking with mental health of folks in a bad way. And yeah, the scares of the kids have been rough this year, especially since the latest was two weeks ago and there’s some administration fuckwittery making it harder to support.
Honestly, I’m kinda ready to just snooze alarm right out of this year.
Indeed. Mary appears to cling to being a butthole as a way of life, pretty much like Billie did to her alpha-cheerleader ways until she got put in her place by Ruth.
At the moment, I think the DoA character most urgently in need of psychological counseling is Mary. (And that’s from a person who thinks that psychological counseling is about as helpful as homeopathy.) She definitely needs supervision.
Speaking as someone training to be a psychological counsellor (or, as it’s referred to here, a psychotherapist, or just a counsellor) Mary would not be helped by counselling. Counselling can perhaps be compared to physiotherapy- the trained specialist can work out where the problems lie and help you to work through it, but it’s useless if you’re not willing to admit that you need to do the exercises.
(To clarify, with counselling, the counsellors role is to understand where the problems lie and guide the client’s understanding and progress to help them make their own changes to their thinking and life.)
Mary would not admit to herself there is a problem, therefore she would view counselling as a waste of time and use it to back up what she already believes.
Needless to say I wouldn’t be devoting hours of time and effort and a decent amount of money if I didn’t 100% believe that counselling is useful. Hell, the effect that it’s had on my own life- as someone from an immensely traumatic childhood- is the reason I’m pursuing this path. But you only ever get out of it what you’re willing to put in.
Maybe it’s been discussed before, but is there any particular reason Mary says the name Carla? She seems the type to get a special twisted joy out of denying Carla’s gender by intentionally using her birth name.
I don’t think Mary would know her birth/dead name honestly. I mean how could she? But I bet Mary would make assumptions like the name her parents gave her being ‘Carl’ or whatever and she’d try and throw that in her face. (Though it’s her love of UltraCar being the reason she seems to have chosen ‘Carla’).
Because Mary doesn’t know Carla’s dead name. If she did, it’d be all she uses ever, because that’s what her type does. That said, I’m willing to throw down money that the bold bits she has when she says Carla is because she’s saying that name in the snidest most mocking way possible as if it was some sad pet name.
Mind you, I -am- slightly surprised that Mary wouldn’t just take away the -a in Carla, regardless of whether she really believed that that was the “birth name”.
Well, you wouldn’t want to accidentally use the wrong name while actively misgendering someone. I mean, there’s no need to be rude when you’re casually dismissing the humanity of your intended target for elimination.
I follow someone’s blog and they’ve come out and started transitioning in the past two years. Getting my pronouns right is turning out to be harder than I ever imagined.
It might be that Willis is doing it because he wants to show us just how horrible the actions of people can be without using slurs as evidence of the horribleness. That it’s perfectly possible to f.ex. be racist and still not use the n-word; because racism is so very much more than that. It feels less like the horribleness is hammered into our head that way.
Throwing around slurs like there’s no tomorrow would not really work, I think. It would make the characters too cartoon-style evil; and defeat the purpouse of having this comic being a mirror of what is going on in real life.
Because unlike cartoon-style evil, all the horrible characters in this comic do believe they’re good people. They are the heroes of their own stories. Ryan doesn’t say “I’m raping bongoes because I’m evil, MOWAHAHAHA!”, he says “I’m just having a bit of fun, I’m entitled to that, right?”*. Blain thinks that Amber is the problem, not him and his abuse of her. He would never even consider it abuse. And so on.
For the most part, using slurs is something that “only” self-proclaimed villains do in much of media. If you use slurs, you’re a villain. But you’re the hero, so you can’t do that. And how do you know you’re the hero? Because you’re not using slurs! What a wonderful circle of self-affirmation through complete lack of introspection.
*OK, so Ryan would also throw in the bongo slur at some point, so I guess he doesn’t make for a great example.
On the other hand, Mary has finally flushed away all pretense of being a Christian. She’s just a vile bully who needs to victimise someone in order to function. No amount of carrying around a Bible or spouting Scripture can offset such behaviour.
Eh I don’t know about that. A fair number of christians can run an ‘ends justify the means’ type deal as they grapple for souls. As in the idea of the eternal afterlife matters much more than this life. It doesn’t matter if your LGBT kid is miserable in this life so long as their eternal life is saved from hell. If that means putting them through conversion therapy, so be it. Sure they /might/ kill themselves but it’s at least a /chance/ at being ‘saved’. Their damnation becomes more of a chance then a certainty if they ‘remain’ LGBT or act on their ‘unnatural urges’ which ‘spit on God’s plan’.
It’s okay to sacrifice one person or heck many people in the war for God, in the war for America’s/the rest of the world’s ‘salvation’.
Imagine it was three panels of Mary punching, kicking, elbowing Billy, then the one panel of Billy hitting Mary. I wouldn’t call it “excessive response”.
Mary’s violence on the first few panels wasn’t physical – it was worse.
Sorry, but she’s still a Christian. The “No True Christian” cop-out is no less of a cop-out when applied to someone genuinely awful.
You can say she’s a bad Christian, or that she’s not the same kind of Christian as you are, but you can no more say she’s not a Christian than you can say she’s not an American, no matter how reasonable it is to want to distance yourself from her.
Groups you are part of and identify with have awful people like Mary in them. Telling yourself they’re not really part of said group is lying to yourself, and giving yourself an excuse not to examine yourself or those around you to see if there’s any trace of that same or similar awfulness there that might be unpleasant to acknowledge or deal with.
I actually slow clapped here in meat space after reading this. Good jorb, Billie! I don’t usually condone violence, but I’ll make an exception in this case.
But in the end, I think, Billie punching Mary is a thing of passion. By punching her she’s not really setting a wrong right, or making a statement (not directly, not intentionally I think); Billie is reacting thoughtlessly, Is it understandable? Sure. Do we all as rational beings know that violence is rarely a definitive solution? Yeah.
At some emotional level we all know why shes doing it (and personally I am of the opinion that while violence might not be a solution it can sure help getting things underway, although we’re all better without), surely we’ve been in her shoes, one way or another. Personally I don’t know if I could have reacted different. I don’t know if I would wanted to. I might had reacted worse than her, all in all.
The moment violence + gender themes + suicide in any shape or form + a plethora of issues mix…
Where does one draw the line between reading too much and reading too little into something? A comic, of all things.
The sociologist in me wants to say you can never read too much into anything as everything that is a product of a culture can be a reflection of a culture or resonate with an aspect of culture.
I mean, in the end its not so much about what’s happening in the comic, but how it makes us feel about it. By that I’m not saying the narrative doesn’t matter, but someone else can easily see this strip, laugh and click next in a few days.
I really had to think hard as to why Billie should hate Carla. Being angry at someone for something they did that seems to make your life worse is not the same thing as hatred.
Can’t say it was a smart move to hit Mary – gets her ammunition – but I’m really hard put to imagine a different response. Obviously, she doesn’t get words. Billie just told her “quit hurting people or else…” and she tries to involve Billie in hurting Carla?
The do not a a mike and a boom box at hand to let the whole floor hear what she’s saying, they can’t throw her out of the dorm and as Mary’s violence is s thing of words it’d take rather some time to get her removed by authorities even if you can convince them at all. If words are not sufficient to stop her, what *are* the options to stop her?
And you have to stop her. She won’t stop on her own.
“I really had to think hard as to why Billie should hate Carla. Being angry at someone for something they did that seems to make your life worse is not the same thing as hatred.”
Well, there are two options:
1) Billie sort of knows this, but she’s not in a place where she’s going to bother with the distinction, especially not when the Asshole of Assholes has just pissed her off severely.
2) Billie is in such a bad place that she truly does hate Carla right now, and can’t even see that Carla did at least try to do something good. Really strong emotions are often not very rational, after all.
Considering how much time she spent professing to hate Walky for his nerdiness, I would lean to #2. We are all very lucky that someone at least taught her not to be a dick to LGBT+ and POC because she can make people’s life a living hell and rationalize it away.
And let’s not forget that Billie still hates herself. A lot. She still sees herself as toxic, she still sees herself as nothing… At least, she sees herself as nothing without Ruth. As long as she had Ruth and kept Ruth alive, she felt like she was accomplishing at least one good thing; one good thing in a sea of feeling worthless.
So a third option might just be that she is projecting some of the hatred of herself onto Carla. She hates that Carla pointed out that Ruth was dying and that Billie -still clinging faintly to her “head cheerleader, problem solver” persona- was not actually doing anything at all about it.
I wonder what the reactions (of both Mary and here in the comments) would have been if panel 5 had Billie quote “Revenge is mine, says the Lord” rather than punching her.
As English is not my first language, anyone could explain me the meaning of the last panels’s “I’d rather fifty her than you”?
I just don’t get it…
[inserte confusion face here]
Billie means that while she doesn’t like Carla, she’d rather deal with Carla fifty times over than deal with Mary – that her anger at Carla pales to insignificance compared to her anger at Mary, or that Mary is magnitudes worse than Carla.
Guys. The NSFW image changed. Anybody see that? THE NSFW IMAGE CHANGED! Somebody who has money go on Slipshine right now and confirm that there is another awesome comic I can’t see until I get money!
I saw there’s a page up for what appears to be a new comic called “Welcome to the Fuck Zone” that was uploaded today. Don’t have a membership, so that’s all the info I’ve got.
been peddling my theory that she’s been acting like a bigot for so long that she has forgotten or suppressed any other way to interact with the world around her. She could look in the mirror and not see Mary, but The Virgin Mary.
Just when you think Mary can’t get any worse, she starts bargaining for a pass to harm another person apparently for Christian sport. Ugh.
I often council pacifism, or at least nonviolence as a default, for the privileged classes. To ask marginalized people to just stand there and take it is so fucking self-serving it deserves a punch in the face. This is a purposeful inconsistency on my part, because the privileged have standing, position, and resources to engage in violence (economic, emotional, and physical) all the time and get away with it. And they always. Punch. Down.
It’s worth remembering that the classic examples of non-violent resistance were marginalized people. For good reason. Non-violent resistance is a powerful, effective tactic. Especially in cases where any violent resistance will excuse more repression. There are philosophical reasons, but there are very practical ones too.
And the key is resistance. Not non-violence or pacifism as ends in themselves, but as part of resistance.
hey idiot. She drove one person to the brink of suicide and then while relishing in that triumph tries to gloat about doing the same thing to a SECOND person. This isn’t “because i don’t like them” situation
Being a jerk about someone else’s pain, or even causing it for sport, will sooner or later get you punched. Actual human beings can take just so much and then. Clutch your pearls and fall to your fainting couch if you like, but don’t expect other people to act surprised or join you in your sanctimony.
There’s such a thing as separation between fiction and reality. And as much as any queer or trans person would LOVE to punch a bigot whose already helped drive one of theirs to the brink of suicide and wants to move onto others, that’s not something that’s likely to happen all too often in real life because, you know, WE GET FUCKING MURDERED
So, sorry, we’ll take the catharsis where we can and cheer on Mary getting decked in the face because she has been thoroughly cruel and terrible throughout DoA, even if we don’t agree with violence in most circumstances. Harassing and threatening to harass people to the brink of suicide should not be something without consequences. And openly declaring your intentions and trying to get someone to be your accomplice? Yeah, no.
As satisfying as all that is Billie is risking possible expulsion for hitting another student. Agatha would likely tell Chloe that Mary was threatening Carla which would nullify the advantage, but if Mary can easily goad Billie into violence the next time she could set her up in a situation where she’d attack and have no leverage.
Considering how Mary previously had mocked Billie’s suicidal girlfriend and said she got what she deserved, and she’s only NOW getting punched, I wouldn’t call this easily goading her.
man, can you imagine how boring life would be if we could only watch stuff where people acted in accordance with our irl moral standards? We don’t have to, because fundie alt media exists and it is in turns boring and terrifying
while I don’t agree with their moral standards, I don’t think anyone’s is really the authority on what true moral standards are. There’s always edge cases. So I use moral standards to mean personal moral standards. Like how I am too disgusted with Johnny Depp to ever buy anything that would give that slimeball a single grimy cent
Billie did indeed cross a line! If that’s the first or even most serious line you see being crossed in these last few comics, though, you are not paying too much attention.
Mary being a long way on the other side of any moral line, whether she’s technically committed crimes or not. (Which she has – blackmail is seriously illegal.)
What Mary did is a series of incredibly serious crimes. A crime that Billie was trying to offer not to report if she stops committing them, when she tried to convince Billie to allow her one victim.
While continuing to harass Billie and say unconscionable things about Carla.
Billie crossed a line? Not really, although it might be a crime–that part is true!
Mary gleefully danced across said line while cackling evilly years ago. And she’s quite the serious criminal, too.
I’m still creeped out beyond words by Mary practically begging to be allowed a victim to persecute. That’s so sick and wrong that I can’t really even properly express my feelings about it in a sensible or coherent way.
The woman is sick and damaged and you wonder just how dangerous she might get without the outlet of social violence for her drive to hurt others.
At least she calls Carla Carla. She’s still awful but sadly I can think of far worse people. Those people want the same things as Mary–people to lord power over, people to abuse, the ability to be self righteous–but the lengths they’ll go to in order to achieve those ends are actually, often, just as bad and often worse.
EH the way Carla’s emphasized in Mary’s speech bubbles leads me to believe she’s enunciating it in a like she’s making fun of it? Given that she also puts girlfriend and her in quotes, I really don’t think she’s not being slightly less cruel by using Carla’s name.
Also she likely does not know Carla’s dead name but if she did, would deffo be all over that
It doesn’t work like that. Personalities like Mary’s will interpret it as “persecuted for righteousness’s sake” and will wear the bruise as a badge of honour.
That’s battery. Making threats–y’know, what Mary was doing–is assault.
Also she punched an attempted murderer. Specifically calling out her gender instead of literally any relevant factor is… odd.
I’ve been reading comments from pinja, LimeSheep others. And while some of them are refusing to see the social violence Mary has committed, many are just disturbed by the use of language and jokes that draw from things abusers say. Cerberus was a bit disturbed by it too. Keep the jokes to anime references and other innocent things people, not abuse jokes. It crosses a line.
Wow, this is the first strip that’s made me realize who Mary actually is. This does not reflect well on my empathy or humanity, or ability to remember things I’ve read a bazillion times.
Mary is the killer from Agatha Christie’s Curtain. Not her best work by any means, but that killer… exactly Mary, as an adult and fully-formed and experienced in her particular method of serial killing. Alternatively, Mary is Iago without even the thin justification that particular serial killer had. (Iago at least believed he’d been passed over for promotion to justify his murderous-by-proxy campaign.)
There’s an episode of Dexter where he finds a psychiatrist who occasionally maneuvers one of his patients into suicide. He’s a serial-killer by… therapy? Or something. Anyway what Dexter does to that guy should make Mary feel lucky to get off with a bruise.
I think it’s because her beliefs inoculate her against criticism. She’s doing God’s work, so anyone getting mad at her or criticising bet for it must be doing the devil’s.
The same logic is also used to quash any doubt from within. That’s not her conscience, it’s the devil trying to dissuade her from her Righteous Path.
Hell, in awful religious communities like the WBC, being hatred for their beliefs is what they expect. If you’re doing God’s work, of course the devil and those under his sway will oppose you. That’s how you know you’re doing it right.
It’s a self-perpetuating mindset, once it’s entrenched.
Carla can be an incredible ass, and what she did was….
Well, what she did was right, and she did it for the right reasons, but in the wrong way.
So, I’d definitely prefer more people who kinda care, to someone who twists things around so that they’re always in the right because they go up against people they disagree with.
Am I entirely comfortable with Billie punching Mary? No.
Would I do the same if I were in her place? Likely not.
Do I think this has solved anything long-term? No.
That being said…
Do I fault Billie for what she did? Also no.
Was it hoth necessary and cathartic for someone to stand up to Mary like that? DAMN RIGHT IT WAS
Wow, Billie’s probably gonna get in trouble. I don’t think Mary’s afraid of physical violence when Billie’s already got a troublemaking record. Buuuuuut on the other hand, she also had a ton of witnesses who would all more than happily say that Mary provoked her, so, she might just come out alright.
Now all that aside … *ahem* Willis, remember that book you mentioned of the most satisfying punches in the strip? 83
You know something that would be REALLY satisfying? (For me, anyway)
That rather than just have her straight up punched or suffer a cruel and unusual death, because violence can make things worse in the future, is that someone just straight up tells her the truth: that what she’s doing is evil, goes against everything Christianity stands for, and if anyone’s going to hell, it’s her.
It’d also be interesting to see what her reaction would be: whether she’d do her twitchy eye roll, finally feel some remorse, or get royally pissed off because deep down she knows it’s true.
So, did you ever watch The Crow? SPOILER WARNING FOR THOSE WHO HAVEN’T (I’ll try to make it so generic as possible)!
Remember at the end, where that guy got to feel the pain of those he’d killed? That is my ultimate magic revenge fantasy against the biggest of arseholes. And that includes the mental pain they’ve caused too. If Mary could truly feel, if only for a few seconds, exactly what it really feels like to be the target of her vile bigotry…
…I think of it as both the most cruel -and- most humane way to get revenge against them.
Panel four would have to be one of the most chilling things I’ve read on this strip. I mean there have been worse things to happen but theres mostly always been some sort of reasoning or twisted logic eg Blaines need to control, Toedads attempting to “protect” even Ryans attempts at gaining power over women
But this, the look on her face, the “let me have just her” is just…I dunno more freaky then anything else I’ve read on here (my opinion only)
I think Billie’s been building to something like this since Ruth was taken away. She’s been in an ugly mood ever since and it’s been building within her since then. Mary was, unfortunately, the person that pushed the right buttons that finally triggered the explosion.
perhaps the word would be fortunate really. Better that she hit someone like Mary than being set off by someone cutting her in line or trying to stop her self-destructive tendencies.
I disagree about something like this being inevitable.
Billie’s been very angry and shouty lately, but I don’t see it escalating at all, unless you forget that it’s been less than 24 hours since Ruth was then to the health center.
The angriest she got was when she snapped at Joyce this morning, and while it certainly sounded like a threat, I felt it was more of a description of what she thought would need to happen for Joyce to understand how she felt. Which happened to be a bit threatening.
In any case, I don’t think there was ever any real danger of Billie losing it and punching anyone else. Shouting and angry comments, sure, but only Mary is awful enough to say the kind of shit that would make Billie angry enough to hit someone.
Hell, I’d even give Mike more credit than to make that kind of comment to Billie’s face.
I”d normally agree, but she is scaring me lately. Not because of this, but other comics. The ones where she plans to interfere with Ruth’s treatment, certain she knows what’s best for her. She is getting increasingly irrational and, while I sympathize and find her funny, she was never too logical to begin with.
You can still agree. I’m not saying that Billie’s dealing with her anger or her other feelings in a completely (or in some cases even slightly) healthy way.
I’m only saying that she’s not just going to go off completely at random and get violent at some minor irritant.
If she ends up trying to see Ruth, and someone stops her, I could imagine she might take a swing at them. I just don’t think that the people around her have to worry about anything worse than angry yelling.
I certainly don’t see any evidence of her rage just building steadily on its own. She was furious when she shouted at Carla last night, but when Dotty, and later Walky talked to her in the morning, she was merely cranky, and wisely waved them both off because she knew she wasn’t in a good state to talk about it at the time.
She screamed at Joyce long after, but that was because Joyce tried to talk to her when she didn’t want to, and on top of that brought up the worst subject possible. Not that she deserved getting her head bit off like that, but it was a mistake that was perfect in its unhelpfulness all the same.
The argument she got into with Sarah later (when they’d reached class) was back down to just cranky again.
Finally, in this conversation with Mary – the person who Billie has the most reason to be absolutely furious with – she’s been remarkably calm and restrained until the last two panels here.
Random people who have the decency not to be an persistent, venomous asshole to someone who’s already in a bad mood (and who aren’t standing between Billie and Ruth) have nothing to fear from her.
So many serious issues here, and some very interesting posts and points of view. But I am not going to touch on any of that, it has been covered by people far more eloquent than I.
All I can say is that I want, sooooo badly, to make a face joke, particularly after being handed a gold plated opportunity. But I can’t, it’s too easy, and too obvious, so I will refrain, no matter how difficult it is (-internal voice: “but, but, faaaaa . . .” ).
I will say, however, that it is a good thing that she didn’t hit Mary square in the jaw. With the chin she has, it would have cut Billie’s hand open like a knife. I mean, look at it, that chin could cut glass.
Anyone here read Invisible Man lately? I just finished and now Mary’s making me wonder if someone can be live a role so long that they become invisible even to themselves. She’s just been a spiteful fundie for so long that it has become almost her entire being.
and no, that does not mean I have sympathy for her. She could have stepped outside of her own head at any time just like Joyce did. She let herself become invisible. She would think of it as becoming more Christ-like.
I do not weep for her, I weep for the person she could have been and the children she will probably brainwash. And I weep much more for Carla, Ruth, Billie and all the other people she has hurt before this.
Given her posture, I’m 99% sure she’s looking down at Mary.
The expression looks to me like a mixture of disbelief, disgust, and anger, which would sense, since she’s been standing right there for all of the horrible things Mary’s been saying to Billie.
It definitely doesn’t read as “Holy crap Billie, you just hit her!” to me
My immediate thought was, to the letter, “ABOUT DAMN TIME!”
However, the more realistic side of me knows that the powers that be probably won’t care whether or not the punch was justified.
And to all the people here who are up in arms because punching people is wrong:
I am a staunch proponent of the scientific process, and I have seen no conclusive evidence that Mary is, in fact, a person. I keep waiting to see Mary display a single redeeming quality to prove that she is human, but nope. It never comes.
In conclusion, your argument that punching people is wrong is irrelevant because Mary is clearly Skeletor.
I like how Mary is constantly incapable of understanding the mind of anyone less despicable than herself. And by “like”, I mean “just shut up Mary you hate-filled blabbering rectum”.
and now I want someone to put her where spewing rectums belong and give her a swirly.
Actually, not really. Why in G-d’s name do people make that funny?! It’s basically bullies waterboarding kids with filthy toilet water! That’s just so fucked up and I can’t believe I ever found it funny. I can’t believe I did not realize this till i wrote this comment
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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 ⋅ 1d
Hawley dismisses Trump lining his pockets with his memecoin: "Listen, I think nobody believes that Donald Trump can be bought. I mean, what does Donald Trump need more money for?"
wilbur, savvy enough to know he's in a comic strip but still not a great actor, awkwardly lifts a muffin up into frame so that we, the audience, understand that he has a muffin right now, which is very important narratively, but he's not really selling it well as an organic, human action
confirming that the reason there's been no Galaxy Version female characters in Blokees until now is that they felt they needed to make Round Lady Thighs For Ladies
preternia @preternia.com ⋅ 8h
Josh Gerstein @joshgerstein.bsky.social ⋅ 1d
Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com ⋅ 1d
Pavel
@spavel.bsky.social ⋅ 10d
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Agatha is just along for the ride
Maybe she’ll keep cheerfully pointing out the obvious.
“Hey! That was a right cross! I bet that hurt! Did that hurt Mary?”
well damn, now i wish
you draw fast enough to squeeze in a bonus strip tomorrow.
There’s still a second Patreon strip for this month…
This is now my headcanon
You just want Agatha pointing out the obvious in all the strips forever. Admit it.
Obviously. So I’ve got you doing it at least.
And thus a meta meme is born.
Looks more like a right hook
I thought the same, based on shoulder alignment on the follow-through.
“now if you said Trump, it’d kinda be a toss-up”
(also, Carla overhears and manufactures forty-nine more of herself)
A horrid person as victim does not justify horrid actions.
The problem is that everyone has different ideas of what constitute horrid actions.
I’m guessing there’ll be a lot of pearl clutching over this non-event.
I don’t see how; didn’t Billie move out of Ruth’s room?
…I’ll see myself out D:
“(also, Carla overhears and manufactures forty-nine more of herself)”
I hope not. I’m not sure the world could handle the awesome that would be fifty Carlas.
I like her expression. She’s not shocked, or excited, or outraged. “Yes, that’s a thing that happened.”
She looks angry to me. But definitely focused on Mary.
Well, it’s not to say she has no reaction at all, but it’s pretty understated for having just seen someone punched out.
Exactly what I was going to note – she’s sternly angry, and she’s looking at the target of said anger.
She’s officially my favorite of this strip.
Well there goes that.
“Ex cheerleader, cereal killer”
I thought that was the wild Dinasaurus Rex, who preys on unsuspecting cereal?
I guess Dinasaurus Rex is an opportunistic cerealist
Now, that’d actually make for a damn good slasher flick!
Suddenly, 50 Carla’s come out of nowhere. Billie regrets everything.
This is why this comments section needs an upvote capability.
This would be a very different comic if Walky kept buying 50 packs of Carlas.
Ya gotta keep trying until you get the gold foil one!
Then you win a trip to the Carla Factory, where Willis dons a top hat and shows you around, while little men dressed as Hot Shot called the Ja’amba La’ambas do all the work.
What do you do when the archive runs dry?
Caught up on strips, even read the Slipshines?
Big comic buffer that you cannot yet claim.
You know exactly who…to…blame.
Now exclaim “Damn you, Willis!”
…It occurs to me that I get a little bit silly this late at night.
Willis then explains how, rather than paying workers a living wage, he has enslaved an African tribe to work in his webcomic factory, whom he literally pays in beans.
Willy Wonka was all kinds of messed up.
are any of them a shiny?
Shit, we’ve seen what sort of contraptions one Carla can build. Can you imagine what fifty very like-minded engineering students could whip up together?
Einstein would tremble in fear, Dennis the Menace would lay sobbing on the floor, Loki would fall into a coma from sheer panic, the true power of Carla is unimaginable.
Bloom n, the Living City that expands and absorbs everything into its biotechnological amalgamation.
Clearly there isn’t enough room to host all the 50 Carlas beds
They’re gonna need their own wing
They’re actually just the Zooma sisters (big family) and they’re annoyingly perky and upbeat
Welp, that’s assault.
What assault? I didn’t see anything. I’m sure Agatha didn’t either.
“She ran into my fist; she ran into my fist 10 tens.”
It’s the Reed Hall Tango!
Someone PLEASE write this.
SHE HAD IT COMIN’
POP! SIX! SQUISH! UH UH. CICERO! LIPSCHITZ!
Mary just happened to walk into that fist swinging!
Battery. Assault is verbal.
That all depends.
Either way, this is both:
1. Immensely satisfying;
2. Worrisome
Willis needs to draw satisfying punches every once in awhile.
Why’s it always the face though? That’s a good way to hurt your hand, like Joyce did. The gut’s a bigger, softer target. Less likely to hurt yourself.
And yet one of my initial thoughts was: “Dammit Billie, what took you so long to deck her across the face?!”
Nah, right now we’re still at Immensely Satisfying.
Worrisome can wait until reality ensues.
Thank you.
That depends on the state and local laws.
Somewhat, but it’s acceptable to refer to the MPC in general, and in the MPC it is indeed assault as the threat of violence (not just verbal!) and battery as the actual carrying out of violence.
Yech, yech. I just realized I responded to pedantry with pedantry. No, I responded to pedantry in response to pedantry with pedantry. yeeeeech.
*cough* Americanexceptionalism *cough*
As an Australian criminal law lecturer, may I just say”yeah, nah, mate, we mostly just use assault for both these days. You beauty. No wuckers”.
Canada also, as it happens. Got into a big argument with people about the definitions of assault back when Mary got hit with a pie.
That’s not American exceptionalism, it’s american primacy! I’m not saying we’re different because America, I’m talking about American things where it’s not necessary
Is threatening people a lesser crime than carrying out that threat for y’all too? Also I’m vaguely surprised, I could have sworn we inherited this weirdism from the British.
You did get it from England, it’s just that most (or maybe just many?) common law jurisdictions got over it, because it wasn’t particularly helpful. It’s like old offences for theft, where there were a half-dozen different types, all requiring different things to prove.
In terms of seriousness – ehh, kinda. In my state, Victoria, we’ve even mostly moved away from the language of “assault” and into a bunch of individual offences:intentionally causing serious injury; intentionally causing injury, threats to kill, threats to cause serious injury, etc.
Before that you’d have, I think, “assault causing serious injury” which may have been a common law offence (bit before my time).
In Canada, broadly speaking, the answer is “it depends”. Under some circumstances, threatening someone is assault, and in others it’s a separate offense, uttering threats. Aggravated assault requires injuring someone, which a threat generally would not do.
What this boils down to is that if someone takes a swing at you and misses, that’s still assault and you can take self-defense measures.
MPC?
Model penal code, I believe.
Mmhm.
That’s correct under civil law (torts). Many states’ criminal laws define criminal assault as contact.
Well, if you want to be pedantic, Mary can claim a fair amount of threats (assault) leading up to that physical attack (battery), so
“Both?”
“Both.”
“Yes, both is good.”
Don’t super care. I doubt one punch will cause lasting harm, and maybe next time she won’t try to bargain with people’s happiness and mental well-being as if she’s trading toys.
There are some countries where “it was just one punch” doesn’t work as an excuse. People do die from a single punch. That said, I’m putting this in the “punch as carthesis” category, in the same way that the “someone gets knocked out for comedy” category in films is funny rather than “welp, someone’s just been given brain damage.”
Some countries including my own country of Australia, where we have enacted “one punch laws” that carry severe penalties. The reason for this is because even single punches can be EXTREMELY dangerous. Not only might you hit the victim in a vulnerable spot that causes lasting damage, victims have also been known to hit their head while falling, resulting in concussions/bleeding that ended up killing them. Suddenly, you’re responsible for the death of a person, and even if it was justified, that tag will haunt you for life.
I hate Mary as much as the next guy here, but Billie, the LAST thing you need right now is an aggravated assault charge.
I’ll just leave this here as bait for pedants and clutchpearls: “No horse ever needed stealin’ as much as some people need killin’.”
on the contrary, a sucker punch can be deadly. You hear stories about people dying from getting sucker-punched outside bars. You fall, hit your head at a wrong angle, and that’s that.
You can also hear stories of people who are blackmailed and bullied like Ruth, who end up killing themselves because they see no other escape from their tormentor.
And here Mary is, trying to convince Billie to let her do it to someone else.
Good point. I am not sure I agree with the assault but at least you have a good rational.
I don’t generally condone violence.
Considering the words that came out of Mary’s mouth in yesterdays’ comic, and the ones that were about to come out of her mouth, no doubt suggesting they do something completely unacceptable to Carla out of a petty need for revenge, I feel this was justifiably provoked.
Or the audible scare quotes around Carla’s pronoun in today’s comic…oh yeah, Mary deserves this.
If that punch is reported, it’ll be explained as to why it happened. Which I do believe is information they don’t want out. So there may be no assault charge.
Some quick googling seems to support the idea that Indiana has a fighting words doctrine. Not enough of a lawyer to know if Mary strayed into that territory, but it is a mitigating factor.
Sadly US colleges can kick you out without resort to the law.
“She slipped on a bar of soap.”
Sorry for stepping on your line, Stephen; I didn’t go down far enough.
Nice reference.
I didn’t get it, but I want to. Anyone?
“The Dirty Dozen”.
That looks like a vulgar display of power, if I ever see one.
“Fighting words.”
Only if the jury votes to convict.
Agatha: What punch? I didn’t see nothin’.
She slipped on a bar of soap.
Loved that episode.
Downton Abbey?
M*A*S*H, in which Hawkeye’s crap reservoir vis-a-vis Frank Burns overflowed and Frank slipped on a bar of soap, so said all present witnesses.
She threated carla then tripped into the door.
The tent flap slammed on her.
“Why’s Mary suddenly secreting strawberry jam? That must not be healthy.”
Junji Ito’s “Grease”
those who read it and suffered with me will get the joke
God that was satisfying.
Proof that: (A) there IS a Great Pumpkin, and (B) he got my letter.
Happy Halloween, everybody!
Yay! Willis gave us violence against Mary for All Hallow’s Eve!
He DID remember!
I’d rather stub my toe with her instead of cut off my whole leg with you you bongo!
ive started typing out bongos instead of being censored now…..
Pavlov would be proud XD
Wait til you say it aloud in meatspace. I swear that one filter has done wonders for helping excise that word from my vocabulary.
I am waiting for Willis to change the autocorrect, so when people type “bongo”, it changes to the female dog word.
Holy shit, Bat… Er, Amazi-Girl!
satisfying punches: the webcomic returns
Mary’s about to get nastier now, isn’t she.
I’d pray that I’m wrong, but I know Willis is listening.
I hope she does get nastier, because if she flies into a rage over this then virtually *anything* she could do would make the already-alerted residence manager come down on her like a ton of bricks. Hate crimes are crimes, and there’s nobody on the floor that would cover for her.
Mary isn’t the sort to do ‘violent rage’; she’s too passive-aggressive for that. She’s more likely to try to make Billie’s life unbearable through a dozen untraceable acts of social violence.
Overdue
Tyrest’s ruling.
I was just about to post that but you beat me to it.
WRECK HER SHIT, BILLIE
WRECK AND RULE!!!
RIP AND TEAR
Transphobia doesn’t play well with Billie.
…I guess Mary deserved that punch? I dunno, Billie’s a little extreme today.
She has been snide, dismissive about a possible suicide attempt and about as nasty as someone can be about Billie’s GIRLFRIEND, who she Blackmailed. If I’d been in Billie’s shoes, i wouldn’t have stopped at the one punch.
Yeah, I’m not really one for violence, but given that Billie is, this was about as much provocation as you can possibly shove at a person.
No, you’re right. Mary didn’t deserve that punch.
She deserves a whole hell of a lot WORSE. Several times over.
She’s bargaining over whom she’s allowed to hurt.
This.
“Your lover deserved to die. The hell do you care about them anyway? Hey, wanna help me make someone’s life hell?”
Like, yeah, violence is wrong, but to most people that’s going to be okay. That’s not really an ‘extreme’ reaction.
Yeah.
And it’s what makes me really conflicted about some of the pacifist responses. Like, yeah, I’m big on pacifism, but I’m wondering if everyone is necessarily seeing just exactly what Mary is doing here and recognizing it for the extreme homicidal violence it is.
Hahaha you kidding? Nah. With something else, I could maybe believe they recognized the other problem at hand for what it was, but with pacificism in particular, I have no god damned faith in that. I’ve watched pacifists in particular screw it up since forever.
Prolly one of many reasons that while I’m very very pacifist in my daily actions and lived experiences I don’t much hang with any organized pacifist movement.
I thought Mary would get hit sooner than this
She did get a dick slapped onto her face by Ruth that one time. Good times.
Now Billie, that was wrong. You have to pivot your hips as you swing, get your whole weight behind the punch.
But if she used her hips, Carla’s head would’ve popped out like one of those punching robot things!
That would be a good trick.
Hitting Mary so hard that Carla feels it? Sounds good to me! Though likely Carla’s reaction would be more due to “I sense a disturbance in the force, as though millions of voices cried out with joy and were silenced by orgasmic bliss.”
Hit her so hard that Walkyverse Mary feels it (like one of those involuntary eye twitches).
Wait… Mary is getting knocked out of the frame. Is she about manifest in the real world?
just in time for the election. lets see her reaction to hillary and trump
She already has, she has an entire church dedicated to her!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_Satan
Excuse you, that organization is far too above associating with Mary.
How dare you sully the good name.of the Church of Satan.
Aw, crap.
Violence is such a great way to solve problems.
They can’t cause more problems if all their bones are broken!
Applied at the right time in the right amount, it can be very effective.
When you’re dealing withsomeone like Mary, it really is
*continues the 007 spin with Tom Jones “(Strikes Like) Thunderball”…*
“So, you’re still conscious huh, pal? I guess I have to work on my right hook.”
Hey! I know this one! “You’re TRYING to make me look bad!”
“Aren’t cha?!”
SELF DEFENSE!
“She made a threatening gesture, and I applied such force as I deemed necessary to protect myself”
We all saw the orphanage attack her.
And the moment we all been waiting for!
Is Billy like… justified in hating Carla? I mean what was the alternative? Billy an d Ruth killing themselves? Was that the better option, Billy?
Billie is in full everyone sucks mode. So don’t think she really hates Carla – she just hates that she stepped in, potentially getting Ruth fired.
There were ways she could have gotten Ruth help without publicly outing her.
Carla isn’t much for subtetly.
Absolutely.
Also, Ruth was already in a really spot by the time this happened. There were a lot of times that she’d talked about wanting to die. “Sexy lesbian suicide pact,” anyone? It was only a matter of time.
Ruth needed help. She really did. But there was no need to out Ruth. She could have pulled Billie off to the side, rather than lifting her in the hallway like Rafiki.
You mean like she did in Billie’s room, when she told her about Ruth wanting to die and Billie blew it off?
Yeah, there might have been a better way to handle it, but spur of the moment, in a panic, with Billie being a jerk about it? We can settle.
I think on a certian level, Billie’s aware of that, hence her taking Carla’s side over mary. Carla may be a royal pain in the ass, but she did what she did for good reasons.
I think a key difference is that Billie hates Carla specifically, because of her personality and actions. Mary hates her generically for what category of person she is. Billie might decide she wants revenge against Carla, but she will NEVER team up with Mary to get it.
The enemy of her enemy can still go fuck herself.
Not that either of them would, since Carla is ace and something tells me Mary doesn’t masturbate. But, you know, metaphorically.
This probably isn’t going to be read but oh well.
Asexual people aren’t necessarily none-sexual in behaviour. It’s very much an individual thing- some are content to have sex with their partner, others absolutely do not want to at all ever. Same with masturbation- some aces don’t, at all, some do on occasion but feel no “drive”, and some feel a physical need that needs to be fulfilled.
Asexuality is actually pretty varied (from my understanding of it, anyway. I apologise if my understanding is at all incorrect, while I’m fairly sure what I’ve said here is accurate it’s very possible I’m wrong!)
As for Mary I could totally see her as the sort of hypocrit who would loudly tell other people that they’re bad evil sinners for the exact same behaviour that she does in private. I can easily imagine that she tells Roz her sex toys are vile and she’s corrupt for masturbation (because I can’t see Roz hiding that she does masturbate) while being okay with doing it herself as long as nobody ever knows.
Let’s not forget the time she was stark naked in the middle of the day!
Emotions aren’t always justified, sometimes we feel things even if we logically shouldn’t and just knowing that won’t turn them off. The problem happens when you let those illogical emotions run your actions, which Billy isn’t since she isn’t letting her hate of Carla allow anything bad to happen to her.
Kinda, but I read her last comment as acknowledging that Carla wasn’t completely wrong
Carla messed up, but she at least meant well. Mary wouldn’t know a good intention if it punched her in the face (faaaaaaaace).
Sure. There doesn’t have to be an immediately obvious better option to feel justified in hating someone for actions you know have a high possibility of long term harm.
Like, I can’t see a better thing for Carla to have done, but for the person who went through it and their lover… yeah, that hatred is still basically fine.
This.
It’s also why I don’t blame Raidah for hating Sarah even if there is zero justification for the bullying she put her through for a full year.
People go apeshit and hold grudges when you fuck with their loved ones or friends, even if part of them recognizes that you didn’t necessarily mean any harm or have many better options without the benefit of hindsight.
I don’t think she necessarily hates Carla. She’s certainly very angry with her, but I don’t think we’ve seen any evidence of hatred yet.
I mean, unless you’re gonna take Mary’s word for it.
Except this exact comic, goddamn.
I really need to remember to read it word for word before commenting.
Sometimes, I open up the comic in a different tab just so I can double-check the wording without scrolling up and down.
Carla’s an idiot.
No, she isn’t. Carla’s actions were reasonable, well-intended, and correct given what she knew.
I think Billie’s aware on some level that what Carla did is probably for the good in the long run, and that’s why she’s willing to defend Carla against Mary. In the short run, though, it’s still an open wound that hurts like hell, and I don’t blame her for feeling shitty towards Carla.
YOU GAD KNOCKED DA FUGGOUT!
DAAAAYUUUUM!
right, the part where 75% of the comments excuse assault because the victim’s a shithead. im not ready mr krabs
Excuse what? I didn’t see anything. Who spends valuable eyeball time watching Mary?
Homophobia, biphobia, and transphobia are violence against queer people. It’s not “being kind of a shithead”. It’s contributing to a culture that believes killing these people is okay.
Punching people may be a more traditional form of violence, but it shouldn’t be the only one you have a problem with.
im not okay with mary being punched in the face, so i must think transphobia isnt that bad. thanks for the analysis, wackd
[Insert All Violence Is Wrong PSA Here]
I mean. You remember those comics where Joyce is at church and one of the congregation is like “I don’t condone what Ross did but have you seen Becky’s haircut?” That’s basically you right now.
the fuck is the matter with you
He has an appreciation for the kind of awful thing Mary was about to suggest they do to Carla.
I don’t need to know what it actually would have been to guarantee you that punch was justified. Practically an involuntary muscle reaction.
Not that it isn’t cathartic as hell to see fictional Mary getting fictionaly punched, but isn’t this situation that example from the other side?
“I don’t condone Billie’s violence, but what Mary said… ”
Maybe Billie was right, maybe she was wrong, but either way, it’s a lot easier to justify violence when it’s your side doing it. Generally speaking, we are all the protagonist from our own point of view.
On the other hand, Mary for all intents and purposes might as well have ran directly into Billie’s extended fist. It is Really unwise to push someone standing on an edge.
No, it really isn’t.
The rage that led Billie to punch Mary is completely justified, and provoked by Mary herself spewing vile, bigoted hateful garbage. Hitting her may have been wrong, but it’s completely understandable. So understandable as to be downright excusable. You’d have to be a saint to successfully fight the urge to do that.
Carla, on the other hand, was noisy and annoying for maybe 20 minutes, tops. Ruining her skates, risking serious bodily harm to her, and throwing transphobic slurs at her was neither right nor even slightly understandable.
Billie’s response went an inch too far, Mary’s went fucking miles
Can we just retire the fucking “side” horseshit when it comes to institutional oppression?
Like, I know, or rather I hope because I like thinking well of people despite what many would think given my earned cynicism, this was some inartful phrasing on your part, but I’m so so sick of the societal construction where oppression is a sports competition or battle where there are equally matched “sides” who have proportionate power and actions.
Like, first of all, it reduces oppression to a game and all the evil that carries with it. Where it’s all about which side earns the most point rather than the reality which is there’s a group dedicated to the full elimination and dehumanization of an entire group of people and there’s a ragtag group of folks trying to defend themselves against that who are mostly united by being targeted by the first group.
Second of all it erases the reality of the situation and what it’s plugging into in order to set up a bullshit false equivalence between mismatched sides. Like in this case, we’re reducing a person actively arguing for the right to abuse and harass another person to death to “mean words” in order to make it seem like Billie punched Mary because Mary was rude to her or mouthy and not because she made light of the fact that she nearly drove her girlfriend to suicide and asked for permission to do the same to someone else when she asked her to stop.
And that’s also what kind of bothers me about LimeSheep’s initial response to Wack’d.
Mary is not just being a shithead here. She’s not just being an asshole. She’s openly asking for the right to be allowed to kill someone in a socially acceptable manner because the person being targeted isn’t valued by society. And she’s asking this after she’s already ruined the life of someone the person being asked loved as well as themselves.
Violence has already occurred. No it did not come at the barrel of a gun like Toedad or at the end of a fist like Billie. But it is equally deadly to the former and very nearly cost at least one life this weekend.
And when that gets erased that bothers me because:
A) I’ve survived that shit where someone tried to drive me to suicide by actively trying to ruin my life because I was “inconvenient” to them. I’ve survived that multiple times.
B) I’m a teacher and mentor to trans kids and I see how often that sends my kids to inpatient for hospitalization.
And C) It’s the main way my people are being casually eliminated on a genocidal scale. Like, fuck, this is currently method number one of transphobic bigots for “solving the trans problem” and it’s especially beloved because there’s acres of deniability. After all, there’s no blood on their hands, the kids just weren’t “strong enough” and were so “troubled after all” with their “delusions”.
Fuckers actively try and make it more and more difficult to exist in public, make our existences more and more targeted, harass us more and more any time we try and reach out to our support networks and our kids are denied even the most low-key methods of trying to resolve their dysphoria, even totally reversible and minimal things like trying out a new name and pronoun at school or going on puberty blockers to try and avoid going through the wrong puberty and the unmitigated hell that is.
It leads to staggering suicide rates that are then used to further discredit us because we’re so “unhappy” even after we come out.
All to terrorize us into being silent so they can go back to pretending that a gender essentialist worldview makes any damn sense and that there’s a wealth of separation between men and women (with non-binary folks neatly excised).
And this is not a non-sequitur to bring up, because it is literally what Mary asks for in Panel 4. It’s her stated intention and that’s not an uncommon stated intention in our world. We’re the “freak” in the crosshair, just as gay folks were in the 80s.
Mary’s stated intention is to kill Carla with harassment like so many trans folks have been. It’s the context of her request. That’s not just “being a shithead”. That’s not just “saying mean things”.
And it doesn’t mean one is a transphobic bigot to not notice that. It just means that our casual elimination is so socially normalized that most people don’t even recognize it when they see it recreated in comic form.
THIS. EXACTLY.
YES THIS.
Like, FFS.
Mary is, by implication, asking for permission to succeed with Carla where she failed with Ruth – i.e. she’s asking for permission to bully someone to death.
To be perfectly frank, given all Mary’s done thus far, I’m amazed at Billie’s restraint.
Sure, Mary isn’t holding a weapon, but her actions are no less violent than Toedad’s – they’re just less direct. Instead of using a physical weapon, she manipulates a situation to try to get someone totally alone and then harasses them until they feel life isn’t worth winning. Her end game here is Carla is dead. Not upset, not expelled, not miserable, dead. And what she’s asking for is permission to play her little game with someone else’s life (because that’s what it is to her) with impunity. She is asking Billie’s permission to kill someone, and she thinks Billie will be okay with it because of her anger at Ruth, because the scariest thing about Mary’s mindset is that she genuinely believes everyone is as homicidal and hateful as she is.
Billie’s punch here is IMO just as justified as Joyce’s punch out of Toedad.
Life isn’t worth living not winning ffs. It’s Oh God Early and I haven’t caffeined yet.
See, this is why I scroll down the comments going, “Has Cerberus said something about this yet?” You make me think and you make me reconsider my privilege on so many levels. Thank you.
The fact that you only chose to comment on the punch and not any of the terrible things Mary said doesn’t really say anything good.
it says im not okay with punching people, maybe?
mary being an opportunistic transphobe fuck isnt exactly new, theres not much to say about it on this strip
Billie being self-destructive, physical and impulsive isn’t new either.
Do not see the sneer quotes around “her”? Hell, the ones around “girlfriend” as well.
Implying your relationship isn’t real and then trying to suggest violence (or something else terrible) against another person? Right after mocking your suicidal girlfriend?
That shit would make me so angry I’d wake up from a fucking coma to punch her for it. I would hesitate to say that makes it right, except I cannot in good faith claim to feel that it’s wrong
i agree mary is saying terrible things and i dont blame billie for wanting to punch her. hell, i dont even blame her for actually doing it. shes still gonna be my favorite character after this. but that doesnt mean its right, its still definitely not an okay thing to do.
the people i do think are in the wrong here are people who seem to legitimately think its just fine to hit mary because of that, or people who jump on anyone who disagrees, like happened here. me not being okay with physical violence does not, in any way, mean i condone anything marys done.
i also think its wrong that lower on this page wack’d suggested i and anyone else who disagrees with him on this point should be punched in the face too, but what do i know. im just an actual person or whatever.
Far enough, but there’s a huge difference between “being happy an awful character in fiction got punched in the face”, and “feeling you should punch people in the face when you’re mad in real life”.
It’s kinda safe to assume people cheering about Mary getting punched are doing the former. The fact that no, you shouldn’t hit people like that is kind of a big part of why it’s so enjoyable. Billie’s doing what we aren’t supposed to do, but really want to.
The way your original comment preemptively complained about people enjoying the catharsis as if they going to turn around and do that in real life came across poorly.
What Fart Captor said with a special emphasis on your point being fair enough (especially with regards to your right to feel off put by the physical violence or the cavalier attitude to it).
There’s a catharsis to this that makes emotions about this complex. And I think it’s cathartic because very frequently for those most marginalized, we’re asked an undue and extreme burden of calmness and civility in the face of overwhelming violence.
Like, black activists unable to even raise their voices without being dismissed while protesting the modern day lynchings of their number by police without even the dignity of a fake investigation.
Or trans people being asked to be polite and understanding and meek and invisible so as not to scare folks meanwhile our right to pee is subject to humiliating public debate, our children are driven to over 50% suicide rates, and our women of color are murdered at extreme rates.
Or any of the creepy fascist shit that’s been out in force lately with actual nazis holding open rallies and marches and terrorizing folks with impunity, making them fear for their very lives, meanwhile the people they target aren’t even allowed to defend themselves when the nazis attack without being labeled the instigators.
In life, we’re supposed to swallow violence that punches down with the grace of Gandhi or Jesus and never ever entertain our worst natures that might want to deck someone like Mary who actively tries to kill us while not even giving us the respect of humanity. Lest we fulfill the stereotypes against us as violent or off-kilter.
And that has a psychological cost, usually in the form of intense anxiety and depression.
As you note, it’s not right to punch Mary. It’s not something any of us would do in life and some folks are definitely likely to get creepy in their support of Billie’s punch and that carries resonance in an age where those labeled “deserving” of abuse tend to be hit hard with said abuse.
But, it’s complicated, because of that greater cultural context and it’s why I don’t even know how I feel about the punch.
You k now what? As a pacifist for pretty much my entire adult life:
Just fucking stop it. Seriously, stop it. Violence without dire need is wrong. But you know what fucking comfortable people always fucking do when, both in fiction and in real life, when someone who isn’t, especially someone who’s marginalized, deploys violence against violence? This. This fucking horse shit. Once more, pacificism is used, not to try to reduce violence in the world, but as a fucking platform to position our own righteousness while clucking our tongues at the marginalized for daring to meet force with force. To the detriment of the marginalized, and the benefit of their oppressors – as ever, and always. Yes, violence is wrong. Putting aside that most people recognize that, putting this much god damned effort into the one lashing out against systemic hatred that wants her, personally, dead while doing and saying nothing about that systemic violence, is complete and utter horse shit.
Now, maybe these things affect you and you’re just not seriously considering what you’re doing. But it plays into a fucking culture where everything we, as folks suffering under massive inequalities do has to be analyzed and dissected – any behavior short of being Messiah (in both senses), bodhisatva, junzi, and guru simultaneously is cause for essays on how what you’ve done is wrong, while ignoring the giant fucking problem you just lashed out against. I have watched this for far too fucking long.
Do not. fucking. do this. You can say what Billie did was wrong. But focusing on it without acknowledging the violence against her AT ALL, is fucking absurd. To then complain about how “I don’t think what Mary did is okay either” after is just… What planet are you from? There /isn’t/ a god damned epidemic of people punching each other ALL THE TIME over cissexist or heterosexist bullshit (Christ, I kinda wish we felt confident enough to do so as a group). Billie’s battery /does/ merit comment, even focus, but that length? Without the ackowledgement? Frankly it just seems like you didn’t even think that violence against Billie, Ruth, and Carla was WORTH acknowledging. “But it’s not new!” Well, neither is fucking punching people. What it makes it look like, is you wanted to cluck your tongue (at those savages, is a common subtext, though admittedly not as applicable here).
So you know, maybe learn here.
sorry lailah but i think the only thing ive “learned here” is that this is not the kind of place i want to be
congrats! the guy who literally said i should be punched in the face didnt do that, but you managed it.
“Yes, violence is wrong.”
funny how a couple people got pretty fucking upset when i said that much, then, isnt it!
“putting this much god damned effort into the one lashing out”
maybe you didnt notice, but i made one comment about not liking the fans reactions, and everything else has directly been replies. im “putting this much effort” into the topic because thats what the conversation everyones been pursuing is about.
“Now, maybe these things affect you and you’re just not seriously considering what you’re doing.”
no, no, keep doing the thing where you assign me motivations all on your own. it was working way better for you.
“You can say what Billie did was wrong.”
okay, great. so whats the problem here, again?
“But focusing on it without acknowledging the violence against her AT ALL, is fucking absurd.”
i didnt, but okay.
“Billie’s battery /does/ merit comment, even focus, but that length?”
again, the length is just because multiple people are involved in the conversation and so it continued. honestly saying it merits comment and focus, considering thats all i gave it, doesnt come off as remotely sincere
“Frankly it just seems like you didn’t even think that violence against Billie, Ruth, and Carla was WORTH acknowledging. “But it’s not new!” Well, neither is fucking punching people.”
i did acknowledge it, its not the topic of the conversation, and i shouldnt have to go into a rant about how much i hate mary in order to comment on someone hitting her.
all i said was i dont like how the comment section glorifies it when mary gets hit. this isnt exactly the first time its happened. it turned into this. youve got stellar reading comprehension and seem to have a really good imagination when it comes to my motives.
so you know, maybe fuck off.
i should be able to say violence is wrong without fucking this happening.
“right, the part where 75% of the comments excuse assault because the victim’s a shithead. im not ready mr krabs”
Aside from factual inaccuracy, yanno what this ain’t?
This is, quite pointedly, not a recognition of the violence that Mary’s directed against Carla, Ruth, and Billie. It positions Mary as just someone who’s maybe said something wrong.
Even expounding on it, you’re still just kinda putting it as ‘saying wrong things’. You say you acknowledged it. No. You’re quite pointedly not. At every point, you have framed what Mary has done as not violent. For instance, “mary is saying terrible things”. True, but it’s framed to not place those as VIOLENT things. If you had meant to, then it does not come across in your speech AT ALL.
And no. No, you should just ‘get to say violence is wrong without this happening’. You do not get to fucking wipe out the violence it’s in response to. That is *EXACTLY* what I’m talking about. You do not, as a comfortable person, get to just cluck your tongue and forget that there are people who have to fear violence. This is *EXACTLY* what I hate about my people. If it drives you to go, then okay. But I am not going to ‘fuck off’. I have watched too many people talk about how violence is totally unjustified… but only when it’s being used in service of something decent, in response to violence. Never against the violence that started it.
“You do not, as a comfortable person, get to just cluck your tongue and forget that there are people who have to fear violence. This is *EXACTLY* what I hate about my people.”
yeah, i was being sarcastic when i said you should keep going with that
I wish you gave me a reason to think you were doing something else. Actually and truly wish.
so you know, I guess neither of us gets what we want.
it might be easier for you if you didnt assign motivation to strangers with zero information and just kind of assume their life matches up with whatever vague idea you have
you know, the thing that should be obvious
“it might be easier for you if you didnt assign motivation to strangers with zero information and just kind of assume their life matches up with whatever vague idea you have
you know, the thing that should be obvious”
Yeaaaah, sorry, friendo, but in the absence of your life story floating around to justify your positions, we SORT OF HAVE TO ASSUME that you actually mean the things you say.
We are assigning motivations to you based on the arguments you are making. Maybe you should examine why what you’re saying is leading us to believe these things about you.
A political activist friend of mine often says “Violence applied against fascism is not violence.” It’s a complicated anti-liberal statement but more and more often I see its validity in the real world.
Excuse me but… are you actually defending that hateful shithead from just punishment?
This reminds me of Tim Minchin’s “Pope Song” about Ratzinger covering for pedophiles. The final verse addresses people who may be offended by the song:
“But if you find me more offensive than the possibility
that The pope protected priests when they were getting fucking fiddly
Then listen to me, motherfucker, this here is a fact
You are just as morally misguided as that motherfucking
Power-hungry, self-aggrandised bigot in the stupid fucking hat”
People who find Billie more offensive than Mary… are either not thinking it through, or are putting a steep discount on the welfare of all the decent people Mary has deliberately hurt.
This might actually be relevant if only anyone had actually said this.
I enjoyed seeing this in a cartoon context just as much as the next person, and I don’t actually blame Billie for it or think she will get more than a slap in the wrist, even if Mary decides to risk admitting she just tried to bully one vulnerable person into teaming up with her to bully another vulnwrable person.
However, cheering violence on, even in jest, and using the kind of language you would expect violent people to use ( “she slipped”, “she walked into my fist”), then using strawman arguments to claim people are wrong to be bothered by this flippant response to violence, is a lot worse than I expected from this comment section. When you want to claim the moral highground you don’t get to splash around in the cess pool ” just for the lulz”
Yeah, the jokes that reference excuses abusers make for excusing physical abuse are gross as fuck.
that in particular is pretty much the entirety of what i had a problem with in the first place.
i seriously dont understand how it devolved into all this
Awkward unfortunate phrasing and intersecting cultural contexts that bring up a lot of issues surrounding pacifism and violence as relates to systems of oppression?
Eh, for what it’s worth, I’d like to offer you some *appropriate gestures of support* including in the form of *hugs* if that’s the style that is appropriate to you.
thank you
and im sorry it sounded like i was downplaying what mary did. i felt like if i didnt say something about it itd be even worse, but i didnt want to go into the actual actions because my problem was with the commenters. i dont think i could accurately sum up how bad it actually is in a couple words.
I understand and appreciate the apology offered. I definitely do the same from time to time of trying to stem what I see as a bad path of comment trends, so I very much identify with what you were trying to do.
Again, *hugs* offered.
Ditto. Thank you for putting this into words – way too many of the regulars are bashing anyone who’s against violence, and it really makes me mad.
I haven’t seen a single commenter simply bashing anyone for being against violence.
I have seen strong responses against people trying to state that what Mary’s doing is not violence.
Let me rephrase that: There are people who are trying to say that Mary ACTIVELY AND DELIBERATELY attempting to make other humans COMMIT SUICIDE as “not violence”. Trying to get away with such pedantism as “legal terms” and whatnot; without considering that the people they are talking to are facing such harassment on a regular basis IN REAL LIFE:
“And C) It’s the main way my people are being casually eliminated on a genocidal scale. Like, fuck, this is currently method number one of transphobic bigots for “solving the trans problem” and it’s especially beloved because there’s acres of deniability. After all, there’s no blood on their hands, the kids just weren’t “strong enough” and were so “troubled after all” with their “delusions”.
Fuckers actively try and make it more and more difficult to exist in public, make our existences more and more targeted, harass us more and more any time we try and reach out to our support networks and our kids are denied even the most low-key methods of trying to resolve their dysphoria, even totally reversible and minimal things like trying out a new name and pronoun at school or going on puberty blockers to try and avoid going through the wrong puberty and the unmitigated hell that is.
It leads to staggering suicide rates that are then used to further discredit us because we’re so “unhappy” even after we come out.”
Do you honestly think that talking about legal definitions means a damn thing in such a context? Do you? I don’t. I see this as actions of violence, born of prejudice and hatred and bigotry. It’s violence, and what’s worse, it’s violence punching -down-, for the sake of acquiring a feeling of power.
And let’s not forget of course, that the more they get away with this shit, the more they also get away with the “punch in face” type of violence.
But yeah, sure, ignore the context that Mary in panel 4 essentially stated that she is going to try and kill Carla in a way that leaves her hands clean. You know, “legally speaking”.
Because I can assure you, I haven’t seen a single comment applauding Billie’s punch that was unaware of this context.
I don’t see a single strawman. I would be careful about using that word, since, apparently, that’s a bannable offense if used incorrectly(!!!)
A new commenter came in and attacked everyone here because they are okay with Mary being punched. They deliberately tried to start a fight, then whined forever when it happened.
And while they apologized for not taking Mary’s actions into account, they still have not apologized for intentionally attacking everyone here.
Every single response to people being offended was to attack them even more. Not a single bit of awareness of others.
This was not a guy who just came in and said what you said about the violence jokes, which is perfectly reasonable. It is someone who wanted a fight.
Yes this.
For me: I totally understand why Billie punched Mary. Given what Mary is actively trying to do here, it is not a moral wrong by my morality (my morality is that physical violence is acceptable in defense of self or someone else – what drove Billie to punch Mary is Mary’s implied threat against Carla’s life, so I really have a hard time saying Billie punching Mary is “wrong”, per se. I’m not a hardcore pacifist – self-defense and defense of others is fine in my book, and Billie is defending Carla here. I understand others’ mileage may vary).
To be perfectly clear: I’m not applauding Billie’s punch because it’s Mary she’s punching. I’m applauding Billie’s punch because Mary was asking for permission to murder, and because Billie knows Mary well enough to know fully well that anything short of a punch would be taken as Billie giving permission but just not wanting to come out an say it (see also that comic a few months back where Mary was assuming that Ruth’s moral code was a fake show for everyone around her).
Mary has been shown to have means, motive, and ability to engage in this sort of attack-by-bullying. She came very close to succeeding with Ruth. Certainly no court of law would convict her for attempted murder for what she’s done so far or for murder if she succeeded (although IIRC some jurisdictions up here in Canada will charge for manslaughter in such cases but even still I’ve never heard of anyone ever being convicted over it, usually a big hue and cry is raised over what a promising life the person who harassed someone to death has)- but her end game there was Ruth dies. Her end game here was Carla dies.
To be perfectly frank: Mary is a fucking serial killer in the making, and her weapon of choice is the victim’s own mind. She was asking for permission to target Carla as the next focus of her harassment. She was asking permission to kill. Billie’s punch? Defense of another. You’re not gonna get me to condemn that – in my book, it’s not wrong.
Mary was blackmailing Ruth and being smug about her being on suicide watch. She was also trying to negotiate rights to harm another person. Punching a person might not be RIGHT, but I can’t say I feel bad for someone as actively cruel as Mary getting hit, either.
Excuse Might be the wrong word. Most Of the comments I’m seeing say that it’s satisfying but still recognize it as assault. I agree that seeing a ball of spite, hatred and bigotry get hit is satisfying, but I’ll also admit that it’s legally concerning.
Morally Speaking it’s up to personally philosophy.
my percentage might be a little high, but im not really tempted to go through and count. mary has been an awful person, and i get that its satisfying to see her punished for that. i dont think theres anything wrong with that, as long as people do recognize that just because its cathartic doesnt mean its okay.
but there are definitely people who think it really is perfectly fine here too, and its pretty unsettling to read those
I have gone through the comments and counted, and my figure for the number of people saying it’s perfectly fine for Billie to punch Mary is zero. At which point I’m forced to ask, who exactly are you talking about?
LimeSheep: Before I start, let me just say that I’ve read through the replies to your original comment, including how you clarify your position. And I hope that my response will be relatively thoughtful.
I am a pacifist and have been since I was 15 (after a shameful episode of my life). First of all, that doesn’t mean I don’t want to punch people. It means I quite often really do, but I make damn well sure I actually don’t do it…
Well, as damn well sure as I can. Truth be told, in my adult life, I have never really been in a position where I’ve been particularly tempted to actually do it in the heat of the moment. I often fantasize about it after the fact (and when I am safely out of punching distance); but in those few cases where I get extremely provoked, it has only provoked me into shouting.
And now comes the important part: Because compared to about 98% of the world’s population, I have had a really lucky adult life. Being tempted to should at people in real life is pretty rare (shouting at people on the internet is less rare). For one thing, I’ve been able to check every single damn box for not being systematically oppressed at my entire life.
Such as not being born in a real dictatorship, for example. I have avoided that. And because of that, my ignorance of how that must feel is so vast, I could not possibly think that I could have an informed opinion of an uprising against it. It would be arrogant to the extreme of me to try and preach to such people that they should try to remove the tyrants through peaceful methods.
I may not condone it… But I could not really condemn it either. I do not think I have the right to do that.
In more domestic terms, I have also avoided abusive relationships. A friend of mine (who sadly passed away only a few days ago) once was in an abusive marriage, and her family told her to stick to it because it was the Christian way, and a wife should submit to her husband, dontcha know? She mercifully avoided to one day lose it and stab the asshole (simply leaving him instead)… but even if she had, I would have had a hard time trying to chide her for it.
And then of course, I have avoided being all the minorities and the systematic discrimination and violence they face every single day even in the “developed” countries. Cerberus’ post goes into detail how they have it, so no need for me to repeat that part.
I guess in short, while I am against violence, I do have a harder time condemning people that punches “up” rather than down. People that commit violence to stop being stomped on, rather than committing violence in order to stomp on other people.
And having a fictional character commit a “punching up” type of violence… Well, if people (especially the people that are regularly punched down) enjoys that sort of fantasy while acknowledging it’s a fantasy… I think there are worse things in life. Especially when I happen to know that in real life, some of those people are doing some really good -non-violent- work to stop the violence against them. Heck, I was even momentarily satisfied myself, before starting to think how this will probably backfire hard on Billie.
You, of course, do not have to agree with me on this, even after reading my reasons. It is only my opinion, after all. I just hope I managed to convey it respectfully to you.
Fuck, you put it way better than I did. This, all the this.
Also *hugs*.
“Fuck, you put it way better than I did”
Wait, isn’t that just as physically impossible as breaking the speed of light?
Also, *hugs back*. ALWAYS *hugs back*.
You’re a motherfucking goddess, Cerberus, and don’t you forget it!
You both are basically people I aspire to be and am not. You guys are incredible and I am very glad I have the privilege of reading your thoughts and comments here.
I would sit in a lecture hall or classroom and listen to you talk about pretty much anything for as long as you were still willing to talk. (and this is coming from someone who at least within my own circles of friends and acquaintances is notoriously bad with classrooms and school settings)
Oh man… Be really, really careful what you wish for, because I can ramble SO DAMN HARD! And as long as I get enough berry-flavoured tea to prevent my throat from getting sore, I can go on forever and ever and ever and ever and ever…
Mind you, I’d be delighted to meet Cerberus one day, if only to see her face as she thinks “I thought the emperor of the internet would look more regal….”
I greatly appreciate the both of you and your views and opinions on just about everything I have had the chance to hear them on.
I’d love any opportunity to continue to be privy to those opinions and thoughts.
You will always be regal to me, sir.
Also, appropriate levels of supports and *hugs* to those who need them.
I see this less as assault and more as Newton’s Third Law: “Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.”
I’ve been waiting for that since day one. That was so satisfying it gives me an urge for a post climax smoke
Holy christ, I say ironically, what a sick and twisted sad sack of a human being Mary is.
I think, mayhaps, that Billie might be a wee bit done with Mary’s brand of bullshit.
Considering that Mary’s the actual root of the separation that caused the suicidality that made Carla intervene/”narc”, yeah, probably.
That use of “wee” has caused me to picture Billie with a Scots accent. “Try dat agin lassie, ‘en I’ll tear yer head ov fer ye.”
See now I’m picturing Billie-or perhaps Carla-enlisting the aid of the Nac Mac Feegles.
Mary would probably be dumb enough to call them “Fairies”, too.
BAM! RIGHT IN THE KISSER.
Well, bear enough.
NEAR.
So bear, yet so far.
Bear with me here.
This joke will quickly become in bearable.
That was grisly.
these puns are ursinine.
And here I was aiming for the polar opposite.
Will: So not just a bear miss, then?
Trouble is really bruin now.
But… who could bear to kiss Mary, anywho?
“Pow!” -Engineer
Billie punching Mary isn’t a good thing because I don’t believe in violence and it could get Billie into terrible trouble. However, Mary is LITERALLY A BLACKMAILER WHO DROVE SOMEONE TO NEAR-SUICIDE. I remind you, Sherlock Holmes considered that worthy of murder.
Mary has committed felonies and was threatening to gaslight a transwoman.
A punch may be bad but she has dodged legal punishments and social ones.
I don’t see a R.A around, it’s free reign to do whatever you want right now.
Ah, about time someone other than drug addicts asked ‘WWSHD?’
WWSHD?
wazzat?
Like ‘what would Jesus do?’ – but Sherlock Holmes
which Holmes are we talking about? Cause some of them are bigger jerks than others
Well, Charles Augustus Milverton was Sherlock Holmes’ least favorite person in the world. He even loathed the man more than Moriarty due to the inherent danger of blackmail in a society as rigid as Victorian England.
Sherlock Holmes AND Hercule Poirot if we’re being real here. In fact, the one person Hercule Poirot personally killed was the fully-developed version of Mary. (Book being referenced: Curtain.)
As satisfying as it is in the moment…I feel like Billie’s blackmail power just got weaker.
But I guess only if Billie gives a shit about consequences currently.
Is “Stop being evil or we’ll report it” really blackmail? Mary called it that, but if your only demand is that the “victim” stop doing the bad thing isn’t that really just an offer not to report?
Blackmail is such an ugly word. I prefer extortion…
but no, seriously, yeah, it’s blackmail, but with pretty much everything that makes blackmail wrong stripped out. The ends are good, it’s not drudging up anything from an otherwise innocuous past, and it’s got a clearly defined border.
I consider it to be more on par with “Stop stealing my toys or I’ll tell mom/dad*.”
Or for that matter “Stop stealing your siblings toys, or you’re grounded” from the parent.
Or a yellow card from a referee. “You keep this up, and you’ll get the red one.”
In other words, I think it’s much more of a warning against continued negative behaviour, rather than blackmail; which is in itself negative behaviour done for personal gain.
*Combining the two into a gender-neutral term proved difficult. First I got “mad”, which wouldn’t really work. And then I got “dom”…. After that I gave up.
You were speaking, Mary, but all I read was “Billie, please punch me in the face really hard.”
“I could of sworn that you asked me to punch you in the face. Agatha, what did you hear?”
“Dunno. Everything she says sounds like ‘Punch me in the face’, tbh.”
I’d like to postulate Billie needs to see Carla as in the wrong even if Carla was actually right. We don’t know that Ruth has to go home to her uncle other than the possibility of financial reasons–which is an if rather than a certainty. Billie wants Carla to be wrong, though, because if she ISN’T wrong then Billie’s “help” actually made Ruth’s life worse rather than better. That their romance wasn’t actually some justification of Billie’s basic decency but her making Ruth’s situation potentially worse.
If only because Billie kept Ruth from getting help because she believed in a non-doctorial based treatment of “love.”
It’s been said Ruth can’t afford college without being an RA – tuition, room and board, and other student costs are expensive.
Also, it’s her grandfather, not her uncle who makes her life hell.
has that ever actually been stated, i thought that was just a theory
Billie yelled it in Carla’s face for one. We have no good reason to doubt her:http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/04-it-all-returns/funny/
Her grandfather certainly doesn’t sound like the type to pay for it (or at least not all of it).
Actually, that’s kind of my point that Ruth can seek other methods of staying in college or just LEAVE. Billie needs very much to believe that’s it’s only the RA-ship which was important.
Also, not looking forward to the potential return of that weird group of TERF Mary fans who tried to argue that Carla was a violent male written by a violent male and they both love beating on women as shown by Mary being pied in the face.
Or the weird pieces likely to be written about the awfulness of Billie’s assault while ignoring that Mary actively tried to drive her girlfriend to suicide by attempting to blackmail and harass the both of them*.
*Not excusing the assault, just not looking forward to weird Mary fans using this as an excuse to try and wax poetic about their weird alternate readings of the comic’s events.
I think I missed the first group entirely. Damn, why are people like that even reading this comic?
Preemptive hugs, hot chocolate, and cuddly stuffed animals of your choice? Take care of yourself
Yeah, my mental health is in a weird terrible place right now. I mostly blame this election season.
So the offer of things is much appreciated.
I know that feel, the world is more depressing than usual lately.
I actually had to drop an anti-anxiety med because it was increasing my depression at a time where my happy pills are working overtime just keeping me from the edge.
Seriously, fuck 2016. I can’t wait for this nightmare to end.
I’ll volunteer to make the chocolate cheesecake with raspberry sauce on top.
I like to think that panel 5 is Willis, reading the stream of new comments, and doing so with any of them. And I’d pick all of the above from Shiro, but that’s me.
Hopefully there will be a wahmbulance ready to assist those suffering from crocodile tears
motherfucking jesus, I missed everything from the first group and I could not be happier about it. Thanks Willis.
No seriously, thanks. Sorry for everyone who had to deal with it.
This, seconded hard.
(Also I started playing Zestiria last week or so, yay Lailah)
Yeah I realized that Rutee was by no means best gal in Tales by a huge margin anymore. I mean, I skipped a bunch of entries, but.
Though it feels weird to comment now too, since there’s not much space for punning given what I usually say. It doesn’t suit the gravitas and I’m just not that clever.
I guess you could say I just don’t have enough love for my pun-try.
Geez, Mary. You walked into Billie’s fist pretty hard there. You should watch where you’re going.
So clumsy
Hopefully she doesn’t do it ten times.
Ugh. In retrospect, this was too close for comfort to the kind of childish justifications used by real-life abusers to justify violence.
I feel kinda gross about it now, and I’m sorry
NICE!
(I mean Billy will probably get shit for assault and all but…)
and fffuuuuuuck you Mary for assuming everyone is a transphobe like you and that they’ll take any opportunity to shit on a trans woman. I’m happy when you’re wrong and I’m especially happy that it’s in favor of a trans woman
Oh, look how wide those eyes get. Manipulative little monster. She thinks she sees an opening and goes right for it.
Also, have Carla for what, exactly? Must Mary have some target, someone whose life to make miserable, before she can be happy?
To torture and abuse and make suicidal just like Ruth.
And the worst part is it’s not even to make herself happy. She’s not even a Mike, getting joy out of the suffering of others. She’s just in it because she thinks it makes her righteous. Because she views destroying those she views as unclean as her godly duty and that which makes her better and more deserving than anyone else.
i think she does get joy out of it. The satisfaction of being “better” than everyone else and “doing the lord’s work”.
At the end of the day, Billie has to realize on some levels that Carla probably saved Ruth’s life by blowing the whistle.
I’m pretty sure she has, or at least has accepted that Carla didn’t have the information or preparation she would have needed to handle it better.
She’s still mad, obviously, but she knows who the real villain is.
i dunno. We have seen the sheer levels of denial that she is capable.
Not to mention Billie more or less dragged Carla into the situation. I think most people here would have done something similar if a stranger we were badgered into caring for suddenly declared they wanted to die.
‘Has to’? Oh how naive.
Talk about satisfying punches.
How did Mary vocalize those quotation marks around “her”?
Spite.
Mary always finds a way to be as awful as humanly possible. Always.
I read it as dripping with sarcasm, the way someone talks when they want to make it clear they don’t believe what they’re saying.
Punctuation marks indicate how something is said. That’s what they’re for.
She may well have said “quote-her-unquote”.
I’m imagining a sneering, sarcastic tone.
I’m really glad Billie stood up for Carla. I was worried she wouldn’t after how she’s been acting. I also hope that the punch doesn’t come back to bite her in the ass.
Also, is the last speech bubble the correct way to say that? I keep wanting to say it’s “…I’d rather have fifty…”, but perhaps it works either way? If either of us is incorrect, it would be me as I am from the south and our grammar isn’t the best in some areas. :\
You can omit the ‘have’, yes. It might not be grammatically correct, but I’ve heard people say it that way.
It works either way! “I’d rather fifty Carla’s exist than one Mary” or “I would rather have fifty Carla’s than have one Mary,” would be two other ways of expressing the same idea. So Billie could have said what she did or “…I’d rather have fifty” as you suggested.
Huh. And here all this time I thought differently. I wonder what else I’m grammatically wrong about (besides my use of “gonna” and “yall” and the hundreds of little things I know are wrong, but do anyway including my reply
)?
Just remember, Bluewind: English does not have rules. It has guidelines. Some of them very loose.
Usually, punches comes back in peopel’s faces, not their arses
Given her attitudes, I’m somewhat surprised that Mary didn’t go with straight up misgendering Carla rather than simply insinuating it.
Those quotes around the “her” are just as bad, though.
Yeah, she might as well be making air quotes with her fingers there. It’s not actually an improvement if the intent is just as obvious
although, just thought of something. It’s harder to convey tone than actual words when you’re re-telling an incident, and far easier to assert that your tone was misread than that you said something different than your accuser heard.
Not to mention the quotes around “girlfriend”.
she’s thinking she’s being clever and getting around the rules
YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
“CARLA put this in the open and made it more complicated because she was WORRIED about Ruth. YOU’RE just a bongo who needs her head surgically extracted from her ass.”
What is Mary even trying to accomplish anymore.
Probably not a good idea to punch in front of a witness though.
She’s going for the consolation price, aka getting a de facto silent support for singling and harassing Carla.
Gotta say, Biblical Santa would probably be proud of that attempt at temptation. If he existed.
…Satan. not Santa. Santa obviously exists.
She really thinks everyone else thinks just like she does.
It’s relatively common.
Gonna go on the record as saying that anyone who terms this “violence” or “assault” while claiming Mary’s previous actions are not, or anyone who claims this reaction is unwarranted or disproportionate, needs to be punched in the face.
I strive towards pascifism. And I agree with you. People like Mary thrive on dancing on a line they don’t believe you’ll cross. Sometimes the only way to stop them is to knock them back over onto their side.
gonna go on the record as saying youre a creepy piece of shit, i havent seen anyone claim marys actions havent been fucking awful, and yes its pretty obviously wrong to physically attack people.
but thanks for saying i need to be punched in the face
Did you never do that, or did you? You gotta pick just one.
Ummmmm, then I’m happy for you and all but uh. Plenty of fucking people said Mary was justified in everything before saying she belonged in the boys dorm. Motherfucking /plenty/ of them. Wack’d has an extremely specific target set here. If you’re not in it, great, but getting offended on their behalf without knowing they exist is a good way to mark yourself as ignorant and not worth paying attention to in this regard.
He’s not even /slightly/ exaggerating.
im talking about today, and this comment was absolutely about me. you can see our other interaction closer to the top of the comments
Yeah you’ve just been a fucking wonderful pacifist who’s done nothing wrong today, I know.
Also, on the actual OP:
Do you know what it /looks like/ when you do this shit? It doesn’t look like, and maybe I missed it, you can really say “my bad, didn’t realize how what I said appeared.” It has /all/ been about “how dare anyone think I condone what Mary did.” and “clearly you want everyone who disagrees with you injured.”
So you know… that’s how I dare. Because your reaction is “How dare you”, and then only when prompted.
“clearly you want everyone who disagrees with you injured.”
uh, because he literally said he does.
and i dont really get the rest of your reaction here at all. i havent done that.
No, he did not literally say that. He did not even figuratively say that. He said all of a class of people, who are doing a very specific thing, are fucking up, albeit in such a way as to deserve being hit. This is not, in fact, saying that everyone who disagrees with him shouldn’t be punched.
And yeah, I know, you don’t get that and think you haven’t done it. That’s the fucking refrain from pacifists. It’s a part (but only a part) of why it’s often so hard to actually sell minority groups on actual pacifism.
Total derail on this thread, but that last line of yours resonates a lot.
And I think it’s because pacifism isn’t often sold as a moral position for the marginalized but as a necessity and as a trap. We’re expected to be meek and the perfect pacifists, always above the fray, turning the other cheek, and so on.
And if we don’t our anger is dismissed. When black folks riot as another unarmed child is shot dead, when trans groups get salty with politicians that fundraise on how all trans people are child molestors, when latinx individuals get angry with Trump, when folks fight back against literal nazis, it’s used to invalidate the arguments of all marginalized folks everywhere.
And that treatment of pacifism as expectation rather than aspiration makes it feel a bit awkward in one’s heart even when we live by it due to necessity far more than the folks that claim to it as a philosophy.
And that’s especially true when it is explicitly used as a trap to discredit any effort for change (see rich cis white gays whining when black trans groups due any type of civil disobedience while routinely celebrating an anniversary celebration of a riot or the way pacifist Christianity and a revisionist view of MLK is used to diminish any genuine protest by black individuals against racism as “uppity” and proving that black people are violent in their natures*.
*This idea that one must be pacifist or otherwise live up to a stereotype that everyone like you is violent is a chain I definitely wear around my neck as a trans woman even though I am white. And definitely sours me to the philosophy as an expectation rather than aspiration.
Lailah, you are being the worst kind of pedant right now.
Wack’d said that “anyone who terms this “violence” or “assault” while claiming Mary’s previous actions are not… needs to be punched in the face.”
Considering that assault has a legal definition that implies a threat of violence, or more colloquially, actual violence, and violence is colloquially understood to be physical harm, any person not overwrought with metaphorical outrage could easily argue that Mary hasn’t used any violence or assault.
This does not make her one bit less of a terrible person. I fucking hate her guts, and other than my concern for Billie, was perfectly happy to see her get punched, even though I do NOT condone such in real life.
However, you need to understand that both Lime and I deserve a punch in the face, according to Wack’d, because we don’t subscribe to their overly broad and metaphorical usage of certain words. That’s it.
If you think that not subscribing to those definitions is problematic enough that we deserve to get punched for it, then I really hope Wack’d has a punch lined up for you too.
I don’t want to pretend I can analyze why I’m a pacifist. I don’t remember how it started. It may have been that chain too, idk. I can’t even claim I noticed this myself. Someone else pointed it out to me. And reading back through primary and secondary sources, as well as actually watching shit happen, made it increasingly clear that it’s what’s going on.
It’s even worse in other situations. At least there’s no subtext that Billie’s a savage. That is absolutely a thing that comes up, barely restrained, when talking about even the slightest bit of violence from, as you said, black lives matter or other racial protests black people have been part of. God forbid we bring up native americans or actual africans. And boy howdy, that’s a treat from White People that never gets old. But Billie gets to skip it, merciful christ.
Like, I get how it’s easy to not recognize that what Mary’s doing is violent. Much of it, the /worst/ of it, is what we agreed upon in advance is ‘expression’ when the rules were written and taught. Sure, Mary was overtly violent already, in the ways we agreed upon, but when she was doing /that/, it was minor – it seemed even moreso given that it was accomplished indirectly (and through cartoon antics). Her violence is very real – it absolutely helps get people killed. But we wrote it into a box we labelled nonviolent from the start, not recognizing (or perhaps, caring) what its effects were.
So I get why pacifists can have a hard time here. And if it weren’t informed by watching them fuck up with guns n’ killing violence, the shit we agreed was violence in advance when the rules were first written, I might be more sympathetic. But it ain’t. In its era, nonviolent direct action was criticized by that same group for still being direct action (read: inconveniencing people). It’s NEVER enough. The standards are higher on us than they were on the earthly incarnation of the deity they (mostly, in America) worship.
So when the violence of ‘Mary’ (but really, any of a dozen RL bigots, some of whom you’ve named, and why did you name her, she googles her name. Do you want AnTERFs? Because that’s how you get AnTERFs.
) is glossed over, well, I ain’t buying it as just that. I’m really not. Like, nobody actually INTENDS to put harsher standards on, you know, us. I don’t believe for a second they MEAN to. But fuck me sideways if they AREN’T. And I’m really tired of pacifism as just that. Pacifism that begins and ends with “you, marginalized person, can’t throw a punch.” Pacifism that begins and ends with “y’all shouldn’t be occupying your land.”
You could argue Mary hasn’t been violent. But given that she’s aware, and unrepentant, that what she’s done nearly caused someone to kill themselves, and is actively arguing to be allowed to keep doing it, you would be inaccurate.
Hell, in Mary’s case in the particular, there isn’t even the convenient fiction that the perpetrator wasn’t aware of the consequences of their actions. She damn well knew her actions could kill people. She seems to have sought that end, and certainly not cared at all about it. But you know, I kinda /expect/ this. It’s not in the clear box we labelled as ‘violent’ when we wrote… well, different rules, actually. I know why this is a thing. You’re wrong, but if it were limited to that, it wouldn’t bug me. But it ain’t, sadly.
I’m wondering, tho, at what point y’all realize that there was a fucking conga line, like, every time Mary has seen any face time at all wrt Carla that said Mary was justified *except* when she outright said Carla was a boy (and the comments were closed that day, so you get no points for avoiding it then, TERFs). Like, do you not know that was a THING? Wack’d may have been prematurely concerned here, but uh. That’s been a thing. There’s a reason he jumped to that, specifically. He was kinda /there/. I /saw him comment/. Maybe you were too. I’m sure as hell not going to drag on someone for an sn change. But if you were, you sorta fuckin’ forgot that.
Hell, other people mentioned even worse: “Also, not looking forward to the potential return of that weird group of TERF Mary fans who tried to argue that Carla was a violent male written by a violent male and they both love beating on women as shown by Mary being pied in the face.”
Mary getting excused? Actually excused, not ignored? That’s a /thing/. There’s a reason that came up.
Just on a thing of what Lailah said:
BIG part of why I have a knee-jerk eyeroll impulse whenever someone goes, “But violence is wrong! Pacifism! Jesus! Ghandi!” is, aside from the fact that neither Jesus nor Ghandi were against self defense (and, despite what self-professed pacifist Christians like to spew, Jesus once flipped a table and chased people around a fucking temple with a whip – John 2:13-2:16, look it up if you don’t believe me – so he wasn’t a complete pacifist. Plus, cultural context at the time makes turning the other cheek a fuckload more of a fuck-you than most people think it was), people are usually using it as an excuse to not examine the cultural context of what’s going on.
Like, BLM protests last year. I saw so many pearl-clutching white folks going on and on about pacifism and peacefulness and what have you to completely erase the fact that the cops were showing up right off the gate in full riot gear and actively antagonizing the crowd so they’d have an excuse to fire bean bags and tear gas into the crowds.
Or, hell, when I was a kid to make it more personal: People would talk at me about pacifisim if I hit someone once and completely ignore the fact that I hit him because I was cornered and surrounded and they were in the process of trying to beat the shit out of me and I knew from previous experience that if I just turtled I’d get told I didn’t try hard enough to stand up for myself.
I could go on but: Bleating about “pacifism” has far more often been used as a disingenous way to move the discussion back to what the marginalized person did “wrong” to deserve their treatment and away from the violence of the privileged. Like when Ruth was hospitalized and people couldn’t stop talking about the dick slap, like that totally justified Mary trying to drive her to suicide.
And ultimately that’s a big part of why I’m not morally a pacifist. As a marginalized person, I can’t rely on power structures like the police or when I was a kid, the teachers in my school. I can’t rely on my peers, either – I know they’ll tend to blame me rather than help. I often can’t rely on anyone but myself (there are two people I know from experience have my back, but they can’t be with me always). I am not socially savvy enough to manipulate my way out of the situation. That leaves violence if I’m in danger. And, yes, it’s a tool of last resort in my tool box – but my toolbox for dealing with dangerous situations is almost empty, so I’m not going to throw it away. Ultimately, I am not selfless enough to want to become a martyr by refusing to use an effective tool on moral principle. If a man jumps me in the parking lot, I am going to elbow him in the face. If a guy assaults me at a party, I’m going to stomp on his instep. If a group of men is trying to coerce me into getting into their car for reasons unknonw, I’m going to break one of the fingers of the hand grabbing me so I can run. (All of these are real-life examples for me, by the way). And, no, I’m not going to report any of those incidents, because I know from experience that the cops are at best unhelpful.
When it boils down to it, I am not brave or self-sacrificing or selfless or principled enough to be a martyr. I’m a survivor. I am wolverine-nasty and mule-stubborn and powered by spite at times. When push comes to shove, I want to live, and I’ll do what I judge to give me the best shot at living.
Asking me to be a pacifist and arguing that violence is wrong in all cases, to me, comes off as telling me, I should’ve just gotten into the car with those strange men. I should’ve let the guy in the parking lot do what he wanted. I should have put up with the bruises on my breasts from the guy at the party. I can go on. And no, that’s bullshit.
When our society wakes up to the fact that I’m a person who should be defended as much as anyone else, then I’ll entertain pacifism. Until then, I’ve got me and two other people in my life who I trust enough to rely on, and they can’t be with me all the time. So I’ll do what is needed to survive. If that means breaking an instep, elbowing a rib, dislocating a finger, or gouging an eye, so fucking be it. Because, when it boils down to it, I’m not a martyr. And it’s really unfair to expect me to be some saint of a martyr when I’m just a person. Worse, it’s unfair to require me to be some saint of a martyr in order to be considered a person.
That said, Lailah: You make a much better case for pacifism than any of the pearl-clutchers I’ve ever met.
honestly I fell like Limesheep and Lailah are missing a very important point. They are acting as if billie’s punch is completely unwarranted because Mary never physically laid a hand on someone.
Now look at the reality of this situation. Mary drove Ruth to the brink of suicide and is trying to get clearance to do it again.
THIS IS MURDER BY PROXY
and I don’t care HOW much of a glorious pacifist you are if you are going to stand by and say that a punch to the face of an attempted serial murderer isn’t justified then you are suffering from some severe mental illness.
Firstly Lailah actually did point to Mary’s actions as violence.
Secondly, Asshole is not a mental illness.
it’s a matter of differing morals. You have your intense opinion on it, but personally i believe assault should be legal if the person is a jerk.
And I think someone who calls someone else a “piece of shit” for stating an opinion you disagree with has lost any attempt at the moral high ground.
Seriously, dude. For someone who abhors violence, you seem to enjoy trying to start verbal fights.
As a pacifist, I strive to avoid undue violence. However, I still very much enjoy seeing due violence. Billie’s actions today fall into the latter category.
That may have just been one of the most sublime sensation of schadenfreude that I’ve ever experienced. Also basically says, “I’m not like you bongo, and neither is anyone else on this floor. Go stew in your hate juices in silence. And remember, there’s more where that came from.”
You know, I realize it’s only because we don’t wanna bog down the comic in too much awful, but let’s take a moment to reflect on how lucky these girls are that Mary is the only one of her kind on the floor.
unless my memory is wrong, Billy was at least a bit like that to different targets when she was in high school. Or am I reading that part of her implied backstory wrong?
I got the distinct impression that Billie was a bit of a cliquey Mean Girl in high school, and its a fact that she bullied Walky at the time, but stuffing Walky into a locker really doesn’t compare to the kind of shit Mary does.
Only because Walky’s pretty resilient. And because it was off-camera and frankly a bit too much of a stereotype for school bullying.
Don’t dismiss the physical, violent bullying too lightly, just because the more subtle psychological kind was ignored too often. Both can easily give even well-adjusted kids long term trauma or worse, if applied to those who are already depressed or otherwise struggling.
I’m not saying Billie wasn’t a bully, or that it wasn’t bad. Only that Mary’s variety of bullying seems orders of magnitude worse.
Because Billie and Walky are still friends, I have a hard time picturing Billie’s bullying of Walky being this persistent, targeted, seek-and-harass type of behavior that would feel more comparable to Mary’s.
I can only picture it as a lot of “DAMN IT WALKY, I’M TOO POPULAR TO BE SEEN WITH NERDS LIKE YOU! ARGH!”, followed by Walky being stuffed into a locker. They may be the same age, but to me it feels like it would have been a very similar dynamic to “ARGH, MY LOSER LITTLE BROTHER KEEPS FOLLOWING ME EVERYWHERE”.
It’s not great, sure, but it’s also not deliberate, targeted harassment with the intent of making someone feel terrible and powerless. Most importantly, Billie grew out of it. Even if she were a much worse bully back then than I imagine, she isn’t now. She’s still angry and mean sometimes, but she’s no Mary.
It’s just, i’m remembering what happened when she met someone who she was -friends- with back then. How did she treat those she thought beneath her? And she was pining for those days till recently
I like Walky, because i see myself in him sometimes, but he’s not what I would call resilient. Joyce is having everything she ever knew and loved crushed in front of her face and revealed as ugly lies and she still has enough fortitude to keep shipping her friends and (given that it has not been shown as an issue) keep up with her classwork. Walky on the other hand is having a nervous breakdown over one bad grade. I get the reasons behind and it happens to me, but i don’t consider myself resilient either
Deesh! That was so hardcore that mary kind of left her rectangle for a moment.
Can I change my vote for hottest lady based on that punch?
Hey, Ms. Moral, you kinda got a little unabashedly evil there.
I mean, you sorta always were, but with more open self-awareness this time.
Comic Reactions:
Panel 1: I think Billie’s softness of eyes and language is really interesting here. Like, for a brief moment, her anger has somewhat subsided even though this must be deeply painful and infuriating of an interaction (especially as Billie likely blames herself for being caught in the first place and thus giving Mary the ammo she used against Ruth).
And in that moment, she’s being real and forgiving, being Christian in the classical sense of turning one’s cheek and practicing forgiveness against those who’ve sinned against you. And she gives Mary a leash yes, an ultimatum yes, but a potential free pass.
Mary can get away scot free with all the evil she has perpetrated so far, walk away no harm, no foul, so long as she doesn’t continue to try and escalate and abuse in the ways she has this past week.
And Mary, overgrown baby that she is, acts like a teenager being scolded by their parent to clean their room and whines about it. Which, yeah, is entirely in keeping with her character, but I’m much more interested in that attempt by Billie to genuinely be the bigger person.
And it’s especially interesting, because in our society, that’s a role that’s expected of the marginalized. It’s what assholes still get angry at Carla for not doing and thus “escalating things” or “instigating”.
Marginalized folks are expected to take the high road, forgive and forget their dehumanization, and try their best to tie things off and prevent further bad blood. To swallow the indignity without even the satisfaction of a genuine apology.
And that’s really slammed home by the fact that Mary has been openly dismissive to Billie’s face, even expecting her to be happy about Mary’s attempt to kill her girlfriend and acting like a spoiled kid weaseling out of a grounding at ever point. And yet, Billie’s eyebrows soften and she makes the offer. Just to leave folks alone. Not even be nice. Not even apologize.
Just stop doing more damage. And even that’s too much for Mary.
I read Billie’s face and body language differently. She’s just given Mary a damn good talking to. Now, Billie thrives in conflict far more than I do, but as someone with depression I recognize that moment as one where you just don’t have the energy to be angry anymore, and all you can do is wrap up the argument and walk away.
Fortunately, much like Dina faced with the possibility of holding hands and looking up dinosaurs, it’s pretty easy to refuel Billie’s batteries with the addition of further bullshit.
That’s fair. I can see that interpretation as well.
A reasonable take on it.
Kind of regretting taking away Billie’s reason to care what happens to her, now, aren’t you, Mary?
I don’t think Mary really believes she did that. Even after Billie’s rant Mary’s still using “girlfriend” in quotes, as though what Billie and Ruth had together wasn’t real. As far as Mary’s concerned Billie’s just mad because she thinks someone–Satan, society, whoever–will reward her for being so.
Mary brought pain to a sinner, which puts her closer to God. Or something like that, I think. It was either addressed in comic like a year+ ago, or in the comments.
God help me, I think Mary looks really cute in panel 4, if you ignore the word balloons and their contents.
WHY IS THIS HAPPENING TO ME
Nope, I agree too.
…then I read the crap she said and urgh.
She’s “Aesthetically Pleasing”?
Like.
Way, WAY out of context, maybe. In silence.
Sorry, I thought the silence and lack of bigotry was implied.
I agree that she does look adorable as well. Though very conflicted on feeling like this for a horrible character.
Definitely a cute Mary face… which is an unpleasant acknowledgement, especially in juxtaposition with what she is actually saying in that moment.
To think that’s the kind of shit that makes her smile.
I read it as more of a deliberate mask she was throwing on while she tried to bargain with Billie.
Not that she can hide her contempt even while making a “we’re not so different, you and I” speech
It might very be a deliberate artistic choice. Terrible people can totally *appear* cute.
That… and what Will said in reply to me.
Since Holmes was brought up upthread (or is it “downthread”) — it’s worth noting that “the most winning woman” Holmes ever knew (I have to assume he meant attractive to him in some way, as it’s never to my knowledge explored outside fanfic) was a serial child-poisoner who did it for the insurance money. Evil in pleasing packages, and all that.
Mary’s still a person with the range of expressions that entails. She doesn’t normally look cute because she wears her hate on her face. For this one panel, she’s instead friendly and in a sense seductive. It’s a gentle look with big pupils and a hint of a smile.
She’s trying to look cute to sell what she is saying. No reason she can’t pull that much off. Nothing wrong with finding the pitch attractive, so long as there’s no mistaking the poisonous offer it means to mask.
Oh good, it’s not just me… To be honest, I always thought Mary was pretty, but then she turned out to be, well, Mary. There’s no better way of putting it.
And, you know, Billie can probably see Carla helped, even if it was personally unsatisfying for her. Maybe even go so far as to respect Carla as a person who, while massively self-involved, isn’t devoid of empathy or careless with people’s lives or going out of her way to hurt anyone. Unlike certain people who so inspire revulsion that being publicly beaten doesn’t give them the tiniest bit of support or sympathy.
Panel 2: Oh hai, Billie’s last thread of patience, didn’t see you blasting off again, there.
But seriously. To make that offer, to be the bigger person and to have the other be like, pfft, as if, is such a slap in the face and if Mary was smarter she would recognize that “what” as the rattle of a rattlesnake warning the hiker to back the fuck off now.
Panels 3 and 4: Oh man, I have so much to say and it really all begins and ends with oh my fucking lord is Mary a flaming pile of feces.
First up, Mary is still bargaining. Still! Even after being caught out. Even after knowing that her little bullshit is having real painful, nearly fatal consequences in people’s lives. Even after being given an out. She’s still angling to hurt others as if it’s all a game.
And that’s the central problem with Mary. To Mary, all the lives of others are just a game. Just a sea of NPCs for the central conflict of Mary’s soul and a set piece to show her righteousness. That they may have individual lives, individual tales, that they may matter, doesn’t penetrate.
Because they are not Mary. They are not Mary’s tribe.
And yeah, that’s sociopathic, but it’s sociopathic by design. This way of thinking that others are merely set pieces, that life is just a game of good versus evil for who gets the most points is something we see in Toedad and Carol and John.
It’s intentional and an aspect of that particular flavor of Christianity that births works like the Left Behind books and the larger conservative ideology it spawns from. It’s a myopia that Fred Clark tends to write about a lot:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2004/08/06/lb-dr-dives-is-bored/
Viewing people as things to quote Granny Weatherwax. That’s where true evil begins and ends.
I always enjoy your comic reactions when they show up. They’re generally always really insightful.
.. That you have referenced perhaps one of my favorite Pratchett books in doing so this time is just icing.
(Yay Weatherwax.)
That and the Vimes Theory of Economic Unfairness might be my two favorite lines from his books.
For me, I think it’s a four way tie between those two, plus two of death’s speeches. One from Reaper Man Ditto, though I’d put two of death’s speeches(“There is no hope but us. There is no mercy but us. There is no justice. There is just us …
What can the harvest hope for, if not for the care of the reaper man?”)
And the slightly modified (For the movie!) exchange from Hogfather
“Death: You think so? Then take the universe and grind it down to the finest powder and sieve it through the finest sieve and THEN show me one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy. And yet… you try to act as if there is some ideal order in the world. As if there is some… some rightness in the universe by which it may be judged.
Susan: But people have got to believe that, or what’s the point?
Death: You need to believe in things that aren’t true. How else can they become?”
Reaper Man is one of my favourites. Quite possibly because it was the first book Pratchett wrote after collaborating with Neil Gaiman on Good Omens. You can tell that Pratchett learned a lot from Gaiman about making good characters, and making a story that is still enjoyable to read even when the gags have worn thin.
In fact, when my grandmother passed away, I quoted the passage about the people in the village that believed that a person was not truly dead until all the ripples they made had faded away.
The Vimes theory of economic unfairness is incredibly useful to me and I don’t even read books for fun.
It’s such a good distillation of how poverty gets entrenched.
Nice post.
ps
I love Granny Weatherwax and Commander Vimes. I love Prachette’s Disk World series.
What’s interesting about Weatherwax and Vimes (and I think it’s something that Cerberus pointed out previously!) is that their concepts of ‘good’/evil are.. not necessarily 100% compatible with each other.
Which I kind of love because it shows fantastic people can A) Still morally disagree on things.
B) Makes you wonder what would have happened *if they had ever wound up on opposite sides of an issue*.
My personal take on Vimes and Weatherwax, using the D&D alignement system:
Vimes actually is, at heart, neutral good. Or rather, he wishes he could be neutral good. But he also knows himself well enough that he doesn’t trust himself to go down that path, because he’s afraid that he’ll end up using more and more dubious methods for fighting what he perceives to be evil; maybe even to the point where he’ll end up hurting or killing someone who did not deserve it.
So he forces himself, each and every day, to instead be lawful good. He makes it a point to remember that without due process, without carefully deliberated actions, then he’ll be no more than a one-man lynch mob with a badge and a sword (aka “The Beast”). He watches himself closer than even Vetinari and Carrot watch him. He believes that he can do more good if he sticks to the law than if he doesn’t, even if he doesn’t always want to.
Of course, sometimes said beast does get unchained…
Granny, on the other hand, would be wavering between neutral and chaotic good. She may not be one much for laws, but she -is- one for rules; rules that are not written down, but which nevertheless reach deeper and harder than laws ever could… Of course, even then, they might be broken, and if so, they’ll damn well be broken good and hard! *evil grin*
And I think they’d probably agree a lot on the nature of evil. Vimes would certainly understand what she means with her “evil begins with thinking of people as things” concept; remembering how landlords of slums are “upstanding citizens” while the people living in them are barely better regarded than cockroaches. I think the disagreement would not so much be the nature of evil, as their approach to fighting it.
And while they never met, Granny certainly had a begrudging approval of Vimes trying out secret policemen because sometimes, there are secret crimes. Not to mention how Vimes would use Nobbs and Detritus and decoy coppers while the smart one actually got his job done.
“You are also a hypocrite and you don’t actually mean those things you’ve said. Watch as I demonstrate by pointing out an exception you are willing to make and thereby justify and validate my own opinion of myself as a not-horrible person.”
That’s her thought process precisely.
Agatha is all. “Um… maybe I should get the RA… no, wait.”
omg.. much catharsis
S M O T E ! ! !
[Insert Overly Long Gag Here]
AND THE CROWD GOES WILD
*plays a piece of the score from Back to the Future Part I, specifically the music that played behind what just might be the greatest punch-out in cinematic history*
Well, I guess if Mary is going to constantly bait people into hitting her, at some point she was bound to push someone far enough to actually do it.
So, which of the two is more satisfying:
Billie punching Mary
or
Amazi-Girl punching Blaine
Must we make it a competition?
Guys… are we forgetting the REAL winner here?
Precious cinnamon bun Joyce, after one long afternoon of her world falling apart pillar by pillar, marches up to ToDead and clocks him five feet away into a neck brace?
*ToeDad. Why can’t you let me be, autocorrect?
I like your way, too.
Yeah, that one’s unbeatable.
Now that’s what I call divine intervention.
ah yes right back to cis allies getting ally points, my favorite trope
I hate to bring in the inevitablity theory of fiction, or suspension of disbelief, however you wanna term it, but. Of course Mary’s gonna barter for her favorite victim. It’d be out of character for Mary to let Billie walk away without at least getting one win. And once she does that, you want Billie to, what, exactly? Just let that slide?
Hell, Billie’s not even being an ally at this moment. She explicitly says she hates Carla. And Mary’s given plenty of other reasons for the punch beyond just threatening her–she’s also, in that same panel, invalidating Billie’s relationship and trying to put the blame for what happened to Ruth on someone else.
It’s a tough line to skirt, honestly. I’m not gonna argue that Mary’s repeated attempts to use Carla as a bargaining chip hasn’t opened the door for some unfortunate tropes. But I think Willis has been doing a good job of, if nothing else, giving Carla agency in these situations, even if she occasionally needs folks to stand up for her.
Ehhh, it’s a hard line to skirt, but not because of theory of fiction. Willis even thought he was invoking this basic idea. Now, I’m pretty great with the comic, but he still ultimately chose to put this one on paper. So if someone else isn’t satisfied for a reason he’s entirely cognizant of existing in advance, that…. doesn’t really change that all that much.
Like, Billie’s internal monologue is important, I think, to why Willis wrote it. Mary’s done a lot, but Billie still snapped then, not earlier, when the focus was on herself. And yeah, tbh I can believe that’s just Billie snapping at her weaselling little bargaining attempts.
But like… Willis himself looks like he thought it might kinda come off that way. So if someone else arrives at that conclusion… more power to them, the text supports it?
i can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic or sincere. I can think up reasons for both
The idea is, trans stories should be done by trans people b/c as a rule cis people don’t do a great job at it. It gets cringey, and yes, can often become about, or /is/ about, the cis people doing the right things, and not about the trans people. And I think, at the end of the day, that /is/ a criticism with some force where the trans girl is a side character. It’s true that the side character got to be the main character of that plotline earlier, but partially misses the point, and she’s certainly not /now/.
I, personally, disagree. It’s partially ‘I would love that fantasy world’ (as said below), and mostly “They’re not listening to us anyway, they might listen to cis people. But there’s the logic. And I /do/ think the criticism has some force. I /do/ also think the characters would do this, and don’t necessarily think Willis should have done it any differently, but.
Or maybe, just a little differently. Make Carla as main a gal as Billie. That’d be pretty awesome, she’s hilarious.
ok. yeah. That was why I was thinking it could be sarcastic. Thanks for the analysis
I dunno, is it still “getting ally points” when you despise the person you’re fighting for?
That said, I think I can see where you’re coming from, though I think it’s diminished quite a bit because Carla has already come to her own defense and thoroughly and would be more than happy to throw down (but only with sweet pranks) with Mary when (and let’s be honest, it’s a when not an if) Mary ignores this and goes after Carla anyways.
Eh, it is. When the thing that gets you to punch someone is “someone else”, it ultimately is that narratively. Like, Willis does seem to care about characters doing what they’d do, so I’m not bothered, but other people aren’t obligated to care about /that/ either. the end result matters /too/. while I don’t care, other people can.
Like, Willis even said “is that too crowdplease-y?” It’s not like the idea is weird. I don’t mind, but Kole can.
Er, like I said above, I’m pretty sure it’s far more “the little shit wants to keep doing it” and not a god damn thing about Carla, but not being privy to an internal monologue, it’s valid to come to the ‘ally points’ idea as a narrative device.
I mean, I kinda like the fantasy of a world where cis people actually care about us enough to commit to direct action.
I can see where it would be taken that way, but… I think the premise was that Billie isn’t lashing out to defend Carla. At least, not directly.
However, if you look back in the archives, the reason why Ruth broke up with Billie is because of Carla. Mary was verbally abusing and being outright transphobic, Ruth attempted to intervene but got shut down with Mary’s blackmail threats, essentially leaving Carla to the she-wolf and reasserting that she’s an “acceptable loss” again/still. From that breakup, Ruth began her rapid downward spiral, which lead to Billie begging Carla to check on her, which lead to where we are now with the head RA getting involved and Ruth seemingly on her way out the door back to the hell that is her grandfather’s home.
Billie is lashing out at Mary because in her pathological need to attack “the abomination”, she involved someone else and destroyed them as collateral damage in her “holy war”, and considers her actions not only ‘justified’ in the eyes of her hateful God, but funny.
Getting punched in the face was due to Mary continuing to act like the hateful and arrogant HyuckHyuck she represents (my convenient term that I use for Trump or really any GOP supporters), but essentially telling Billie “Hey, I’ll keep doing what I was doing that caused all this drama to begin with, and you’ll totally love it”.
If Ruth and Billie’s “We’re not together!” charade were still going on and it was only Carla getting shit from Mary, no one would be jumping in to help her if they could at all avoid doing so… especially not Billie. Carla was just a convenient active catalyst that agitated the God-Warrior and made Ruth realize how selfish she was being by letting said God-Warrior get her way.
Panels 3 and 4 continued: And secondly, oh man where to start on this list of awful.
I mean, there’s bartering for Carla as if Carla was a Magic card that was up for trade rather than an independent person who has dealt with so many Marys in her life that she’s literally in done mode 24/7.
There’s the attempt to hand-wash her central role in driving Ruth to the brink of death and pin the blame on someone with less power as if Billie was a complete moron. Oh, yeah, it was actually Carla who’s most to blame. This bit of gaslighting isn’t insulting, right?
There’s the slight victory gloat inherent in “why she’s leaving” as if that was actually something set in stone rather than still potentially in motion. Like, ha ha, I’ve knocked one down on my hit list, so c’mon, gimme number 2, it’s not like you actually like her.
There’s the quotation marks weighing like stones around “her” cause casual transphobia and Mary go together like peanut butter and jelly.
There’s the quotation marks around “girlfriend” because in Mary’s eyes, she still does not fundamentally respect Billie or her relationship and doesn’t remotely view it as real. Which, yes, is openly homophobic and vile, but it’s also the worst thing to do when paired with the one above. Like, if you actually wanted Billie to “hand you Carla”, maybe don’t remind her how you’re casual dismissal of her gender goes hand-in-hand with your casual dismissal of the reality of queer relationships.
And there’s turning around as if they are equals and Billie didn’t just call her the fuck out. Cause Mary can’t even fake having shame for what she did and Billie knows that and thus is completely out of fucks.
Panel 5: And on that note, Mary is an idiot for taunting this particular bear, because Billie doesn’t just take shit lying down. Fuck, even when Ruth was bullying her so bad she was having a mental breakdown, she still fought back.
So you really think a Billie who has nothing to lose and a whole lot of anger breeding inside of them isn’t going to take that smug pile of bullshit from the woman who nearly killed her girlfriend and forced her to rely on Carla is just going to meekly put up with it?
Fuck no.
I’m not going to necessarily cheer this moment, but I’m not going to weep for it or condemn it either, especially not during an election season that has emboldened violent* shitheads like Mary in the worst possible way.
*Yes, I don’t care that Mary hasn’t ever punched anyone. Trying to drive people to suicide, intentionally slamming people with blatant bigotries in the hope of causing emotional pain, trying to actively remove people’s support networks? These are violent actions, whether people recognize them as such or not.
Panel 6: Billie hates Carla (or rather is incredibly pissed at Carla) because Carla blundered like a wrecking ball and “ruined” the status quo Billie was more than okay with.
And that’s not just about Billie losing the secret domesticity with Ruth (though seeing her relationship with Alice, I suspect that might be Billie’s most comfortable style of relationship) nor about being called incredibly rudely on some of her more codependent and unhealthy aspects of her relationship with Ruth.
But more about her putting Ruth at terrible risk of “sir”, because Carla didn’t stop to think that not everyone has great parents who love and support them.
And that’s super justified to be pissed at that, because Carla didn’t think before leaping in and making the choice for the both of them, aggressively outting them in the process.
But it’s a mistake made out of trying to do the right thing, which Billie recognizes even if she despises it.
Mary on the other hand? Is actively trying to do the wrong thing. Is the arson who set Ruth’s house of raggedy dry tinder and gasoline ablaze, requiring loose cannon Carla to drench it in water. Who still, when being called out for the attempted murder by suicide of her girlfriend is still asking for a new victim to torment like it doesn’t even matter.
So fuck yeah, Billie will take an army of Carlas versus one Mary in the same way that anyone will accept a million idiot people who care over someone who tries to exploit the caring of others to her own advantage.
*slow clap*
Excuse my English but what is “sir”?
usually a term of respect for men. In this case though, it’s our name for Ruth’s abusive grandfather/guardian, as he apparently makes her call him that as seen in a comic where he yelled at her over the phone.
What Scar Man said:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-1/05-media-rumble/sir/
Oh God I totally missed the point there. By a mile.
I think it’s an easy point to miss. I mean that comic was what, over 5 years ago now?
I honestly only knew it because I came across that comic while randomly going through comics trying to use the tags to remind myself who Carol was
Sometimes it’s the simplest of things, thanks.
Violence sometimes is necessary but this will backfire on Billie big time, damned if it wasn’t satisfying though
Mary is gonna find a way to boo-boo kitty face her way out of this, I know it…
I dunno, it hasn’t on pretty much anyone else yet.
Yeah, I’m worried about Billie here. The dorm has some sort of rules against violence and Mary, who probably has the entire handbook memorized, will go to the RM immediately quoting chapter and verse of which rules were broken and what Billie’s punishment should be.
Mary’s a shithead, but Billie may be the one who suffers.
That depends on Agatha. Her look isn’t one of surprise. It’s one more akin to “Well, that took longer than expected”. She might be willing to state that Mary started it or even that she faked it. Additionally, Mary probably would not report it. Not only will it expose her for her blackmail and abuse of fellow residents, she had already been assaulted once without reporting it (the dick-face slap incident).
Maybe, but I don’t see Agatha going out of her way to tell anyone about what happened, and as far as we know, she’s the only witness.
That being said, the school knows about Billie’s issues and thus her current volatility. Agatha could say “Yes, Billie hit Mary” but also follow that up with an explanation of “Billie and I were talking in the hallway and Mary came up to us both uninvited and was taunting her about Ruth, and then she said she was going to keep being mean to Carla”.
Billie gets suspended and has a mark against her record for being violent, but likely will be allowed to come back once she pays fines and serves a mandatory sentence of more therapy sessions as well as anger management. She’s granted a bit of leniency because she was known as being unstable at the time and has a witness who spoke on her behalf that she didn’t go looking for a fight, and her actions were just a poor choice due to her recently discovered condition. Mary on the other hand will be put on the top of the list to be moved out of that dorm and into another one as soon as possible, and may or may not be warned in no-uncertain terms that multiple people have accused her of making their living environment hostile, and she will have to consider other housing options at the end of this year as she will not be invited back to the dorms.
Man, eventually we’re gonna run out of satisfying punches… But that day is not today.
Only if we run out of punchable faces. Willis can always make more
Violence solves all problems.
Which verse are you, I need to know if you’re saying this while Optimus is still bothering you or not
It solves enough
I get the distinct impression that Mary isn’t the most popular character right now, but I might be reading too much into it.
Hmm, it’s a stretch, but I think you might be on to something there.
This might ruin her chances of being voted most popular character for 2016.
And she was so close to the top too! This really is a major setback.
I can tell that you are really upset about this prospect.
Would you like me to read some Bible verses for you to calm you down, perhaps?
How about one Mary obviously forgot? Matthew 7:12 “In everything, therefore, treat people the same way you want them to treat you, for this is the Law and the Prophets.” Cause I haven’t exactly seen her applying the golden rule lately. Unless she’s secretly a masochist who acts like a bongo specifically so people will socially despise her or be driven to hurt her.
This is not going to go well, considering Mary is the kind to use this hard core against Billie
Mind, I’m hoping Mary tries to get revenge, only to not only get Billie’s blackmail details on her revealed, but stuff the entire floor knows, and gets Mary barred permanently from campus and ostracized
Either that or for Mary’s neck to have snapped from the punch
Willis you made one very hateable character is what I’m saying
says a lot that we as a group arguably hate her more than we hate the guy from the party. I think the balance would shift if Joyce attempted suicide because of the trauma though. The no-death rule says nothing about attempts
No, we don’t. I don’t even understand what would give you that impression.
oh. sorry, I was projecting my own opinions.
Still working on this empathy business
If I remember right folks have some creatively thorough feelings to what Slashface Ryan deserves and most involve being feed into a chipper shredder ala Fargo.
yeah. I was projecting my own feelings about the situation. Sorry about that
And on the wood chipper comment, I’d say It’d have to be feet first.
I would make an exception to the no-death rule for Mary, though
Well, as I said yesterday, the reason for that rule was that the mourning of that death would take over the comic, IIRC.
Nobody’s mourning Mary…
Oh, and to be clear, nobody that matters is mourning Ryan – he’s sufficiently a tertiary character that even an on-screen death wouldn’t dominate the comic with mourning.
There is plenty of hatred to go around. Ryan probably leads my own personal list, but Mary, Blaine, Toedad, and Leland are up there. Also Faz, though he’s not important enough to top the others. Even Ryan’s lackeys probably beat Faz.
As I write this, I am realizing that all of the characters I have listed have faced physically violent consequences to their actions. Even Faz was tied up and duct tape put over his mouth, and all the others have been punched and/or kicked and/or choked.
The list of people I hate in this comic is pretty short. Blaine, Toedad, Carol, Sir, and whatever the hell Ethan’s Mom is named. Only two of these have seen consequences, and sadly, none has actually stopped yet.
Ethan’s mom would be at the top of my list if the others on the list weren’t all so violent because she hits close to home. Either Conservative Jew like myself or a Reform Jew being massively homophobic for reasons that don’t even seem to be anything but personal disgust with homosexuality makes less sense than fundamentalists to me. It’s like, we’re already ignoring 75% of the Laws, why did you have to dredge up this stinker?
Also, I think her name is Rachel.
To the extent that you hear more hate for Mary than Ryan, I think it says that she has 71 appearances and he has 29. People might hate Pol Pot even more, but it doesn’t come up too often.
David Willis my birthday isn’t for another 8 months, and here you go giving me something early. Maybe this is for Christmas? I don’t care. Watching Mary get slugged was the best thing ever.
“Have her for what?” would perhaps have been a more diplomatic response. I’d certainly like to hear Mary’s answer to that question. Though if you’ve spent an hour with her, or people like her, you already know she’ll never answer. What possible answer can she give that doesn’t, on some level, acknowledge that she just talked about Carla like Carla was a slave?
She’d probably try to make Carla get violent towards her as a way to get her into trouble or something along those lines. Just like she’s doing here, but I have the feeling that strategy isn’t going to cut it anymore.
You’re not wrong, but I was more looking for what Mary could actually say in response to that question. In public.
Have her to destroy.
Cause, see Carla is “intruding” on Mary’s space and “making a mockery” of the Lord’s “plan for men and women”. It’s the subtext to pretty much most public conversations about where trans folks “belong” or what is “right”.
Mary wants to torture Carla until the problem “disappears” ala Ruth. And if it did. If Carla was a less combative sort of trans girl with a less robust support system or if she had a moment of weakness and expired, Mary would be doing the same dance she’s doing now and not feel one iota of shame for killing a human being.
Cause to that type of person, we trans people aren’t human beings worthy of life. We’re a “problem to be solved”, to be made to go away, one way or another.
Sadly Mary is a very familiar flavor of person to me and one I’ve had the misfortune of falling under the very direct attention of more than once.
If you say she would admit that’s what she wants, I believe it. Though it’s hard to imagine someone so entirely beyond even the appearance of civil behavior, Mary has surprised me before. . .
This was worth following Dumbing for Age from the beginning. This one comic.
For all the Trans kids. WE SEE YOU.
Being the parent of a Trans child, Thank You David.
*hugs* Thank you.
Also a parent of a trans kid. I home school my kid for now to help him avoid the Mary’s out there until he is in a better place and able to deal with them himself. I am full-well aware that people like her exists. I also don’t mind seeing one of them get a little karmic justice. Best part is that this one is fictional so I can enjoy it guilt free.
No Day, But Today
I’m no fan of violence, really, but this is satisfying (and much better than using pregnancy as a punishment).
do I want to know the story behind that one?
Is it something that happened to her alt universe original version? Cause in that case, that sucks because that means that kid had Mary for a mom and then grew up to torture more people, fueled by her ideas
(Spoiler-Ish for Walkyverse?)
Okay, so over in the Walkyverse, Mary got pregnant, to illustrate she’s a hypocrite about pre-marital sex. Basically it got used as a punishment.
The kid doesn’t have to deal with Mary as a mom, though. Aborted it. Though she DID pop one out with a doctor later in It’s Walky (Peter Paul. I thought that was clever).
She hooked up with a guy at a.party, attempted to destroy Billie’s credibility with her boyfriend (who was an old schoolfriend of Mary’s) because Billie spotted them and knew how hypocritical she’d been and Mary didn’t want to get called on her BS, fell pregnant – then had an abortion. So no children hurt in this tale, and it did force Mary far enough out of her own backside for her to give some possibly genuine apologies…
But yeah, still kinda pregnancy as punishment. But IIRC according to the commentary it was when Willis was writing the follow-up encounter in which we learnt about the abortion that he first really stepped out of his own head and considered that other people in other circumstances might make different choices and have different reasons for them to him… so it was probably quite a big growing step for him as a writer and a person…
Rather than answer, I’ll point you to a couple of the very old comics that can answer your questions. Then you can decide whether to check them or not:
[Links quite naturally contain SPOILERS for Mary storylines in Roomies! and It’s Walky! Clicker beware! Links also contain Mary, so double-beware!]
http://www.itswalky.com/comic/geez-slow-down/
http://www.itswalky.com/comic/hows-it-going/
Aw, dang, I shoulda realized that posting links would make me too slow on that. Oh, well.
Definitely. I’m really glad Willis has grown out of that crap.
best thing i’ve seen today
THANK YOU
Carla might be the reason Ruth is leaving but Mary tortured her in the first place and as for Carla herself, Billie can’t be too mad at herconsidering Carla did do what she thought was the right thing even if Billie hates it but thing is Billie is the one that got her involved in the first place.
No to be honest I think I’m a broken record because I probably made this point before.
i don’t even bother to check if I’ve said something before. If it was a good point then, it’s a good point now until other evidence precludes it. Hell, I must have posted my idea that Mary has acted the role of fundie for so long that there is no face under the mask anymore at least ten times on the last page
*Bittersweet Symphony begins playing*
Of all the songs that tends to get stuck in my brain for a few hours, that’s one of the better ones.
Oh man oh man oh man…
Enjoy the strip while you can, folks, because I’m willing to bet a fair amount of money (as in up to 75 cents) that tomorrow’s strip will -not- be anywhere near as pleasing. Willis does tend to taketh away the hardest right after he’s giveneth*.
*Yes, I know I’m butchering ye olde English here. I regret nothing!
Oh that was one heck of a satisfying panel right there
That was a nice sucker punch by Billie.
Is it even a sucker punch if they’re looking right at you when you do it?
She’s punching Mary from behind, so yes.
Given the position of her noodly right arm in panel 5, I’d read it as Mary had turned around to face Billie in panel 4, and the punch spun her back around the other way
Yeah, her arm weirded me out too before I realized it was her arm falling in front of her (where you can see it in panel six)
Nope, she was turning back and had a chance to see it coming, before the pinch rotated her back around.
Mary just had no idea bad she is at reading these kind of situations, does she?
Really? Did Mary really just try to bargain with Billie for the continued ability to harass Carla for being trans?
I don’t think this has anything to do with religious beliefs anymore. Not even the most anti-trans bigot is that dedicated – there’s just something about Carla/trans people that really sets Mary off. Like, on a personal level.
Yup, she sure did. And sadly, a lot of anti-trans bigots are that dedicated. Sadly, a lot of anti-trans bigots are even more dedicated than that:
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Cathy_Brennan
There’s a whole squadron of dedicated anti-trans bigots (TERFs, Kiwi Farms, 8chan raid boards) who love to make a game out of identifying vulnerable trans kids in unsafe environments and trying to harass and out them to the point where they take their own lives. Some of these sites even have “confirmed kill counters” where they celebrate how many suicides they’ve directly contributed to.
Trans kids are especially good fodder for these groups because they tend to be heavily marginalized so there’s not a lot of social pushback, there’s a lot of narratives where you can pretend to be a concerned citizen who “just cares a lot about their mental health” and “snapping them out of their delusions”, and because they tend to already be on the raggedy edge due to dysphoria and social oppression, thus are easier to kill.
The overall intention though is the same across the board. Make the trans folks dead or so terrorized they don’t exist in public so you can continue pretending they don’t exist.
Halloween truly is a day of miracles
…Not gonna lie, I would love 50 Carlas. If I could get fifty people to cosplay as one person, it would be as Carla.
I’m picturing a 3 monkeys in a trench coat situation (but with 50 people in one costume)
That’s exactly where I went too.
I’m now imagining a clone Carla army singing Bjork’s “Army of Me”.
Rambly thought on violence.
There’s a lot of attention to the punch, for good reason as it’s a very Billie approach to the type of shit Mary is throwing.
But it’s worth noting that Mary’s actions, Mary’s words are hella violent as well. Her actions minimizing the reality of Carla’s gender, the reality of Billie and Ruth’s relationship, playing light with the fact that she nearly drove a person to death because of who they are, asking for the right to do that again against a new target. These are violent actions. These are far more monstrous than a punch to the face. They are things that leave staggeringly high body counts in their wakes.
Are what breeds mountains of dead queer kids who grow up believing that being who they are is a road marked with pain, abuse, and an inevitable early end.
And what’s interesting is how that is shadowed and erased because it’s a violence that is more socially acceptable. It’s the violence of Scrooge’s ledger book, casting out the impoverished family into the frozen December streets to die somewhere bloodlessly in shadow where blame becomes fuzzy to pinpoint.
To quote Pratchett again, it’s the murder by pieces that Moist van Lipwig is accused of performing during his scams, worsening the lives of countless individuals by tiny amounts in the wake of his lack of awareness of the consequences of his actions.
And it’s something that is frequently not even thought of as wrong, as simply the status quo as it fits the narratives and oppressions that already exist like a key into a lock. To try and drive a mentally ill and queer person to suicide? To mock that to their loved ones? It’s monstrous, but it’s a “normal” type of monstrous. A civilized type of monstrous like selling people in the 1700s or saying AIDS is “God’s punishment” in the 1980s.
And that shouldn’t be lost in this moment, because it’s why Billie punched and why that’s shocking.
Because the marginalzed aren’t supposed to punch back. Aren’t supposed to react to their ritualistic dehumanization with genuine violence. That’s wrong. As wrong as someone performing even a fraction of what Mary did in the opposite direction. It makes those in power uncomfortable because the right thing for the marginalized to do, what we are trained to do is to accept it graciously and politely agitate for our rights (in a non-uppity way) until we all naturally agree we were all for them all along.
And that’s why it’s cathartic to a degree. Because if these two were men and Mary had merely impugned Ruth’s honor, this punch would be socially more acceptable to celebrate, because it would fit our narratives of men “fighting for women’s honor” and so on. Because it wouldn’t feel out of place with what we expect this sort of interaction to go.
And that’s worth taking a second to examine, because it’s important. It’s especially important as we expect groups to react with preternatural calm to situations we would never in a million years tolerate as dominant group members.
And that resonates with me because Mary’s bullshit? Mary’s begging for Carla to “have”. I recognize it in the weekly crocodile tear think piece casually asking if we can continue to unnecessarily torture trans kids to death so that all the cis people can take the time to “get used to things” and not worry that some poor cis kid somewhere might accidentally think they are trans for a few weeks without hating themselves.
It’s what’s nearly cost me four of my trans kids in suicide attempts this year (for context, there are 6 trans students at my school that I know about).
And I don’t want to see that overshadowed simply because Billie’s punch is violent in the classical easier to recognize sense.
The only thing wrong with violence against Mary is that there isn’t enough of it
*applause*
Frankly, clucking our tongues about it almost always feels wasteful, especially done by outsiders. Like, stealing bread to eat is also wrong, but it’s not really wrong for the thief, so much as wrong for the thief to /need/ to. I’m not going to get /mad/ at the thief.
This is a little less dire, and it’s wrong to but like. It’s more wrong that people are driven to where this is even remotely necessary. Where this is even remotely justified. Mary is looking for carte blanche to drive Carla to her death. Violence without NEED is wrong, but traditionally, violence in response to violence is generally acceptable, if not preferable. I don’t want Billie to do it (I don’t honestly even get any catharsis out of it, having asked very good friends not to hurt people before). Billie hurting Mary is wrong.
But jesus fuck, we’re spending far too much fucking time on it.
I don’t necessarily worry about Carla too much in this regard. She has two things going for her.
1) She generally doesn’t seem to give a smurf (yeah, that’s my favorite censor for the f-bomb). She has gotten to the point where she accepts that there are people that hate her for existing. She is beyond hiding and trying to not draw attention to herself in the hopes that the bigots forget about her. She will get up in their face about it. Mary isn’t asking for an easy target.
2) Mary’s also not asking for a powerless target. If push actually came to shove, Carla’s family is rich. Universities tend to take the opinions of rich people very seriously, especially if they have some sort of grievance (if for no other reason than that the rich can actually afford to sue the school). There is no way that anyone of authority is picking Mary’s side over Carla’s.
Yeah, as transphobic as universities can be, Carla has zillionaire parents who could make a VERY serious headache for them. Especially if they’re alumni/investors/donors or they have political/media contacts (almost certainly). If nothing else, they have the finances and time to keep the school tied up in court until they’re ruined financially. The school may be transphobic, but Carla’s parents, if push comes to shove, could feasibly sue the school off the map.
Now, whether or not they WOULD is a different matter, but it’s definitely a thought to make the dean squirm.
Thank you Cerberus for this comment. Also, I am incredibly sorry about the loss of those four kids. And for what this election year is putting yourself and the queer community through. I don’t always respond to your deeper comments, even when I think I should to offer support, because I have a very hard time expressing my thoughts normally, let alone through a medium such as text. And well, I empathize. Not just sympathize but empathize with a lot of that pain. And I hate that some people are forced to endure that much pain that their ways of coping fail them, and that a society makes it that way. And I’m a part of the privileged class that makes it that way. Cis, male, straight, white. I try to help, I try to support. But it never seems to amount to anything. I’ve lost some of the few friends I had to the kind of bullshit that’s been going on for years but seems to be getting even worse since the election started. It’s wrong, wrong on so many levels and I feel powerless to help those I care about, those I love. And I just, just wanted to say that I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
She did say “nearly”, so I’m hoping those four were only attempts and that they’ve gotten help.
Still really damn awful, though. That is not something anyone should go through, especially not kids.
I didn’t lose them thank Bob otherwise I’d be an inconsolable rambling wreck right now. But it’s been way more of a scare than I’d like.
Though I did just find out that administration tried to bury without notice the fact that one of my trans kid’s parents asked all our staff to keep an eye to make sure he doesn’t leave campus as he’s a suicide risk and it only didn’t get buried without action because one of the teachers knew as well and leaked it, so now I’m in full burn everything down mode.
That is just fucking unconscionable on every possible level. How the hell are people who would do that even allowed in the same building where decisions regarding children get made, much less actually making them?
It was absolutely heart-rendingly infuriating.
Oh thank goodness. I didn’t see the “nearly”. Umm…is it ok if I apologize for going on my little rant? I, uh, kinda feel like it was unnecessary. And it appears that I messed up in reading your comment in the first place. I was just, feeling really depressed and mistakenly reading that four of your trans students had died made me, well need to express support and open up a bit at the same time. Like I said, I’m not the best at expressing myself. So, so sorry about misreading that comment.
Nah, I identify a lot with that rant. This election season is hella rough for a lot of marginalized folks and fucking with mental health of folks in a bad way. And yeah, the scares of the kids have been rough this year, especially since the latest was two weeks ago and there’s some administration fuckwittery making it harder to support.
Honestly, I’m kinda ready to just snooze alarm right out of this year.
Punching Mary is terrible.
Mary can get up from a punch.
The more I think about this strip, the more sinister Mary becomes.
“Billie. You’re a bully, I’m a bully…. we want the same things. Join me, and together we will rule the dorm as transphobes!”
Indeed. Mary appears to cling to being a butthole as a way of life, pretty much like Billie did to her alpha-cheerleader ways until she got put in her place by Ruth.
At the moment, I think the DoA character most urgently in need of psychological counseling is Mary. (And that’s from a person who thinks that psychological counseling is about as helpful as homeopathy.) She definitely needs supervision.
Speaking as someone training to be a psychological counsellor (or, as it’s referred to here, a psychotherapist, or just a counsellor) Mary would not be helped by counselling. Counselling can perhaps be compared to physiotherapy- the trained specialist can work out where the problems lie and help you to work through it, but it’s useless if you’re not willing to admit that you need to do the exercises.
(To clarify, with counselling, the counsellors role is to understand where the problems lie and guide the client’s understanding and progress to help them make their own changes to their thinking and life.)
Mary would not admit to herself there is a problem, therefore she would view counselling as a waste of time and use it to back up what she already believes.
Needless to say I wouldn’t be devoting hours of time and effort and a decent amount of money if I didn’t 100% believe that counselling is useful. Hell, the effect that it’s had on my own life- as someone from an immensely traumatic childhood- is the reason I’m pursuing this path. But you only ever get out of it what you’re willing to put in.
Jeez that’s a lot of comments…
WOOHOO MARYPUNCH
If it weren’t so vile it would almost be funny that Mary seems to genuinely still believe that bullying Carla is a thing that will go well for her.
It turns out all her harassment is just a smokescreen for checking out all of Ruttech’s R&D projects as paid corporate espionage.
Maybe it’s been discussed before, but is there any particular reason Mary says the name Carla? She seems the type to get a special twisted joy out of denying Carla’s gender by intentionally using her birth name.
Mary doesn’t know Carla’s dead name. There’s no reason she should.
I don’t think Mary would know her birth/dead name honestly. I mean how could she? But I bet Mary would make assumptions like the name her parents gave her being ‘Carl’ or whatever and she’d try and throw that in her face. (Though it’s her love of UltraCar being the reason she seems to have chosen ‘Carla’).
Because Mary doesn’t know Carla’s dead name. If she did, it’d be all she uses ever, because that’s what her type does. That said, I’m willing to throw down money that the bold bits she has when she says Carla is because she’s saying that name in the snidest most mocking way possible as if it was some sad pet name.
Mind you, I -am- slightly surprised that Mary wouldn’t just take away the -a in Carla, regardless of whether she really believed that that was the “birth name”.
Well, you wouldn’t want to accidentally use the wrong name while actively misgendering someone. I mean, there’s no need to be rude when you’re casually dismissing the humanity of your intended target for elimination.
I’d follow up some more on this, except that whatever I’d write as I attempted to top that will probably end up with me punching the screen.
And that includes me knowing that what I just wrote would be completely sarcastic.
I follow someone’s blog and they’ve come out and started transitioning in the past two years. Getting my pronouns right is turning out to be harder than I ever imagined.
Or just making up a name. Or just avoiding saying it, and using a derogatory slur instead.
But it seems that Willis doesn’t want to go there. There are too many chances where a slur makes the most sense that he seems to have shied away from.
PURE SPECULATION TIME (again):
It might be that Willis is doing it because he wants to show us just how horrible the actions of people can be without using slurs as evidence of the horribleness. That it’s perfectly possible to f.ex. be racist and still not use the n-word; because racism is so very much more than that. It feels less like the horribleness is hammered into our head that way.
Throwing around slurs like there’s no tomorrow would not really work, I think. It would make the characters too cartoon-style evil; and defeat the purpouse of having this comic being a mirror of what is going on in real life.
Because unlike cartoon-style evil, all the horrible characters in this comic do believe they’re good people. They are the heroes of their own stories. Ryan doesn’t say “I’m raping bongoes because I’m evil, MOWAHAHAHA!”, he says “I’m just having a bit of fun, I’m entitled to that, right?”*. Blain thinks that Amber is the problem, not him and his abuse of her. He would never even consider it abuse. And so on.
For the most part, using slurs is something that “only” self-proclaimed villains do in much of media. If you use slurs, you’re a villain. But you’re the hero, so you can’t do that. And how do you know you’re the hero? Because you’re not using slurs! What a wonderful circle of self-affirmation through complete lack of introspection.
*OK, so Ryan would also throw in the bongo slur at some point, so I guess he doesn’t make for a great example.
Well, that might have been an excessive response.
On the other hand, Mary has finally flushed away all pretense of being a Christian. She’s just a vile bully who needs to victimise someone in order to function. No amount of carrying around a Bible or spouting Scripture can offset such behaviour.
Eh I don’t know about that. A fair number of christians can run an ‘ends justify the means’ type deal as they grapple for souls. As in the idea of the eternal afterlife matters much more than this life. It doesn’t matter if your LGBT kid is miserable in this life so long as their eternal life is saved from hell. If that means putting them through conversion therapy, so be it. Sure they /might/ kill themselves but it’s at least a /chance/ at being ‘saved’. Their damnation becomes more of a chance then a certainty if they ‘remain’ LGBT or act on their ‘unnatural urges’ which ‘spit on God’s plan’.
It’s okay to sacrifice one person or heck many people in the war for God, in the war for America’s/the rest of the world’s ‘salvation’.
Honestly Billy is being retrained in her response here.
Imagine it was three panels of Mary punching, kicking, elbowing Billy, then the one panel of Billy hitting Mary. I wouldn’t call it “excessive response”.
Mary’s violence on the first few panels wasn’t physical – it was worse.
Sorry, but she’s still a Christian. The “No True Christian” cop-out is no less of a cop-out when applied to someone genuinely awful.
You can say she’s a bad Christian, or that she’s not the same kind of Christian as you are, but you can no more say she’s not a Christian than you can say she’s not an American, no matter how reasonable it is to want to distance yourself from her.
Groups you are part of and identify with have awful people like Mary in them. Telling yourself they’re not really part of said group is lying to yourself, and giving yourself an excuse not to examine yourself or those around you to see if there’s any trace of that same or similar awfulness there that might be unpleasant to acknowledge or deal with.
“Let me have just her” is the kind of thing you’d expect the literal devil to say, Mary.
Who the hell actually talks that way?
Ah, but you see, she’s stealing souls for the Lord.
Totally different ball game.
It’s freaking wild combined with that ‘doe eyed’ expression.
I actually slow clapped here in meat space after reading this. Good jorb, Billie! I don’t usually condone violence, but I’ll make an exception in this case.
Right. I’ll just go change my pants. See y’all next strip.
Don’t worry, Mary. It only hurts so much because it’s twenty years of multi-dimensional karmic justice coming back full force.
YES!
But in the end, I think, Billie punching Mary is a thing of passion. By punching her she’s not really setting a wrong right, or making a statement (not directly, not intentionally I think); Billie is reacting thoughtlessly, Is it understandable? Sure. Do we all as rational beings know that violence is rarely a definitive solution? Yeah.
At some emotional level we all know why shes doing it (and personally I am of the opinion that while violence might not be a solution it can sure help getting things underway, although we’re all better without), surely we’ve been in her shoes, one way or another. Personally I don’t know if I could have reacted different. I don’t know if I would wanted to. I might had reacted worse than her, all in all.
The moment violence + gender themes + suicide in any shape or form + a plethora of issues mix…
Where does one draw the line between reading too much and reading too little into something? A comic, of all things.
The sociologist in me wants to say you can never read too much into anything as everything that is a product of a culture can be a reflection of a culture or resonate with an aspect of culture.
But then, I may be a wee biased in this regard.
I mean, in the end its not so much about what’s happening in the comic, but how it makes us feel about it. By that I’m not saying the narrative doesn’t matter, but someone else can easily see this strip, laugh and click next in a few days.
Definitely!
I really had to think hard as to why Billie should hate Carla. Being angry at someone for something they did that seems to make your life worse is not the same thing as hatred.
Can’t say it was a smart move to hit Mary – gets her ammunition – but I’m really hard put to imagine a different response. Obviously, she doesn’t get words. Billie just told her “quit hurting people or else…” and she tries to involve Billie in hurting Carla?
The do not a a mike and a boom box at hand to let the whole floor hear what she’s saying, they can’t throw her out of the dorm and as Mary’s violence is s thing of words it’d take rather some time to get her removed by authorities even if you can convince them at all. If words are not sufficient to stop her, what *are* the options to stop her?
And you have to stop her. She won’t stop on her own.
“I really had to think hard as to why Billie should hate Carla. Being angry at someone for something they did that seems to make your life worse is not the same thing as hatred.”
Well, there are two options:
1) Billie sort of knows this, but she’s not in a place where she’s going to bother with the distinction, especially not when the Asshole of Assholes has just pissed her off severely.
2) Billie is in such a bad place that she truly does hate Carla right now, and can’t even see that Carla did at least try to do something good. Really strong emotions are often not very rational, after all.
Considering how much time she spent professing to hate Walky for his nerdiness, I would lean to #2. We are all very lucky that someone at least taught her not to be a dick to LGBT+ and POC because she can make people’s life a living hell and rationalize it away.
And let’s not forget that Billie still hates herself. A lot. She still sees herself as toxic, she still sees herself as nothing… At least, she sees herself as nothing without Ruth. As long as she had Ruth and kept Ruth alive, she felt like she was accomplishing at least one good thing; one good thing in a sea of feeling worthless.
So a third option might just be that she is projecting some of the hatred of herself onto Carla. She hates that Carla pointed out that Ruth was dying and that Billie -still clinging faintly to her “head cheerleader, problem solver” persona- was not actually doing anything at all about it.
Mary totally deserved that punch.
[One Punch Man theme starts playing] Hero! Instead, I’ll knowing nobody knows my name
Get IN there, Billie.
Is it really that hard to understand, Mary???
Mary should be glad that Billy didn’t draw a penis on her hand first.
am I the only one who wonders how mary speaks in apostrophes
does she just do the apostrophe hand gesture thing to signify how much of a fucking transphobic prick she is
transphobic and homophobic*
Just watch a typical video* of people doing air quotes, but with your eyes closed. Should be pretty easy to hear the quote marks slip into place.
Like this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_cAS-mvV20
It’s actually very easy to envision. She merely speaks normal and takes an overly sarcastic and snotty tone when saying “girlfriend” and “her”.
I wonder what the reactions (of both Mary and here in the comments) would have been if panel 5 had Billie quote “Revenge is mine, says the Lord” rather than punching her.
Punch again!
I broke my lurkerdom just to say this:
FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE!
No words……should have sent a poet…
As English is not my first language, anyone could explain me the meaning of the last panels’s “I’d rather fifty her than you”?
I just don’t get it…
[inserte confusion face here]
Read it as “I would rather have fifty of her than one of you”.
Billie means that while she doesn’t like Carla, she’d rather deal with Carla fifty times over than deal with Mary – that her anger at Carla pales to insignificance compared to her anger at Mary, or that Mary is magnitudes worse than Carla.
Billy would prefer to have 50 people like Carla (who she hates) than just one person like Mary. (who she hates more.) Hope that helps.
Guys. The NSFW image changed. Anybody see that? THE NSFW IMAGE CHANGED! Somebody who has money go on Slipshine right now and confirm that there is another awesome comic I can’t see until I get money!
I saw there’s a page up for what appears to be a new comic called “Welcome to the Fuck Zone” that was uploaded today. Don’t have a membership, so that’s all the info I’ve got.
Only one page, W&D.
Billie is my favoritest! =D
Ah, sweet catharsis
Can someone please draw Billie in a one punch man costume? Thanks
Get ‘er! Get ‘er! Kick her ass!
… this felt very satisfying.
Oops! Billie’s hand slipped…what a shame!
THANK YOU
Ahh. What a merry Halloween gift for us. We should stop by the Willis House every year.
Don’t just let her slip out of it – she’s in perfect boot range – give her another!
It’s like Mary’s wired to always say the most horrible thing possible.
been peddling my theory that she’s been acting like a bigot for so long that she has forgotten or suppressed any other way to interact with the world around her. She could look in the mirror and not see Mary, but The Virgin Mary.
Main-Player-Character? Model-Penal-Code? Multi-Profession-Career?
Most Passionate Character? Most Pleasing Comment?
SATISFYING PUNCH
Just when you think Mary can’t get any worse, she starts bargaining for a pass to harm another person apparently for Christian sport. Ugh.
I often council pacifism, or at least nonviolence as a default, for the privileged classes. To ask marginalized people to just stand there and take it is so fucking self-serving it deserves a punch in the face. This is a purposeful inconsistency on my part, because the privileged have standing, position, and resources to engage in violence (economic, emotional, and physical) all the time and get away with it. And they always. Punch. Down.
It’s worth remembering that the classic examples of non-violent resistance were marginalized people. For good reason. Non-violent resistance is a powerful, effective tactic. Especially in cases where any violent resistance will excuse more repression. There are philosophical reasons, but there are very practical ones too.
And the key is resistance. Not non-violence or pacifism as ends in themselves, but as part of resistance.
“It’s okay to assault people as long as it’s someone I don’t like”
-Everyone in this fucking comment section
Lol, white liberalism again.
hey idiot. She drove one person to the brink of suicide and then while relishing in that triumph tries to gloat about doing the same thing to a SECOND person. This isn’t “because i don’t like them” situation
Being a jerk about someone else’s pain, or even causing it for sport, will sooner or later get you punched. Actual human beings can take just so much and then. Clutch your pearls and fall to your fainting couch if you like, but don’t expect other people to act surprised or join you in your sanctimony.
Not actually a popular opinion, as you’d know if you had bothered to read those comments you think you’re commenting on.
lol
There’s such a thing as separation between fiction and reality. And as much as any queer or trans person would LOVE to punch a bigot whose already helped drive one of theirs to the brink of suicide and wants to move onto others, that’s not something that’s likely to happen all too often in real life because, you know, WE GET FUCKING MURDERED
So, sorry, we’ll take the catharsis where we can and cheer on Mary getting decked in the face because she has been thoroughly cruel and terrible throughout DoA, even if we don’t agree with violence in most circumstances. Harassing and threatening to harass people to the brink of suicide should not be something without consequences. And openly declaring your intentions and trying to get someone to be your accomplice? Yeah, no.
Billie punching Mary and the comments section disliking Mary fall on the same side of the “because”.
One didn’t happen because of the other. Both happen because she’s evil and dangerous.
Finally
there are so many satisfying punches in this webcomic.
It’s about goddamn time someone slugged that C**T. Oh I feel so good right now.
how come bongo is censored but the c-word is not?
Na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na,
BILLIE!
As satisfying as all that is Billie is risking possible expulsion for hitting another student. Agatha would likely tell Chloe that Mary was threatening Carla which would nullify the advantage, but if Mary can easily goad Billie into violence the next time she could set her up in a situation where she’d attack and have no leverage.
Considering how Mary previously had mocked Billie’s suicidal girlfriend and said she got what she deserved, and she’s only NOW getting punched, I wouldn’t call this easily goading her.
Man, I am against violence irl, but since this is fiction, this was very satisfying
man, can you imagine how boring life would be if we could only watch stuff where people acted in accordance with our irl moral standards? We don’t have to, because fundie alt media exists and it is in turns boring and terrifying
They have a… different… way of using the phrase “moral standards” than the actual meaning of the words, though.
while I don’t agree with their moral standards, I don’t think anyone’s is really the authority on what true moral standards are. There’s always edge cases. So I use moral standards to mean personal moral standards. Like how I am too disgusted with Johnny Depp to ever buy anything that would give that slimeball a single grimy cent
Nice hook!
Now if Billie had only handled her initial confrontation with Ruth as well, timelines would probably have turned out significantly different.
What Billy did is a crime. A crime that should be reported. I dislike Mary, but Billy crossed the line.
Billie did indeed cross a line! If that’s the first or even most serious line you see being crossed in these last few comics, though, you are not paying too much attention.
Well, she had to cross the line to reach Mary.
Mary being a long way on the other side of any moral line, whether she’s technically committed crimes or not. (Which she has – blackmail is seriously illegal.)
What Mary did is a series of incredibly serious crimes. A crime that Billie was trying to offer not to report if she stops committing them, when she tried to convince Billie to allow her one victim.
While continuing to harass Billie and say unconscionable things about Carla.
Billie crossed a line? Not really, although it might be a crime–that part is true!
Mary gleefully danced across said line while cackling evilly years ago. And she’s quite the serious criminal, too.
I’m not fond of violence, but man, that was asked for
I’m still creeped out beyond words by Mary practically begging to be allowed a victim to persecute. That’s so sick and wrong that I can’t really even properly express my feelings about it in a sensible or coherent way.
The woman is sick and damaged and you wonder just how dangerous she might get without the outlet of social violence for her drive to hurt others.
At least she calls Carla Carla. She’s still awful but sadly I can think of far worse people. Those people want the same things as Mary–people to lord power over, people to abuse, the ability to be self righteous–but the lengths they’ll go to in order to achieve those ends are actually, often, just as bad and often worse.
EH the way Carla’s emphasized in Mary’s speech bubbles leads me to believe she’s enunciating it in a like she’s making fun of it? Given that she also puts girlfriend and her in quotes, I really don’t think she’s not being slightly less cruel by using Carla’s name.
Also she likely does not know Carla’s dead name but if she did, would deffo be all over that
Aaaand now Billie is gonna get expelled.
Good job, everyone.
Has anyone made a Greatest Hits montage of DoA yet?
This isn’t assault. This is a lesson about words having consequences.
It doesn’t work like that. Personalities like Mary’s will interpret it as “persecuted for righteousness’s sake” and will wear the bruise as a badge of honour.
Isn’t “persecution for righteousness’s sake” Mary’s whole thing? I’m not sure she agrees that those it happens to are blessed.
Or maybe she does and she’s giving them blessings!
I’d say its both
It is assault. Billy punched a woman.
The whole last few weeks have been about “assault”.
Sal slamming Amazi-Girl to the floor.
Sal punching Leland.
Amazi-girl attacking Ryan.
Seems like a theme to me.
That’s battery. Making threats–y’know, what Mary was doing–is assault.
Also she punched an attempted murderer. Specifically calling out her gender instead of literally any relevant factor is… odd.
…the consequences being assault?
In the words of domestic abusers, acid attackers and honour killers everywhere.
Lol at the comparison; it’s like calling firefighters and fire the same just because they wreck buildings.
I’ve been reading comments from pinja, LimeSheep others. And while some of them are refusing to see the social violence Mary has committed, many are just disturbed by the use of language and jokes that draw from things abusers say. Cerberus was a bit disturbed by it too. Keep the jokes to anime references and other innocent things people, not abuse jokes. It crosses a line.
The “victim” was literally asking to be allowed to abuse at least one person.
1) Mary being a butthole doesn’t mean it’s not assault
2) Pinja is right, the phrasing of Cybersnark’s comment has some really gross parallels that are worth avoiding
Wow, this is the first strip that’s made me realize who Mary actually is. This does not reflect well on my empathy or humanity, or ability to remember things I’ve read a bazillion times.
Mary is the killer from Agatha Christie’s Curtain. Not her best work by any means, but that killer… exactly Mary, as an adult and fully-formed and experienced in her particular method of serial killing. Alternatively, Mary is Iago without even the thin justification that particular serial killer had. (Iago at least believed he’d been passed over for promotion to justify his murderous-by-proxy campaign.)
There’s an episode of Dexter where he finds a psychiatrist who occasionally maneuvers one of his patients into suicide. He’s a serial-killer by… therapy? Or something. Anyway what Dexter does to that guy should make Mary feel lucky to get off with a bruise.
AT LAST. I’m not much for violence but Mary had it coming for YEARS.
I know there are twisted people in this world, but how the fuck does Mary think how she views the world is normal.
I think it’s because her beliefs inoculate her against criticism. She’s doing God’s work, so anyone getting mad at her or criticising bet for it must be doing the devil’s.
The same logic is also used to quash any doubt from within. That’s not her conscience, it’s the devil trying to dissuade her from her Righteous Path.
Hell, in awful religious communities like the WBC, being hatred for their beliefs is what they expect. If you’re doing God’s work, of course the devil and those under his sway will oppose you. That’s how you know you’re doing it right.
It’s a self-perpetuating mindset, once it’s entrenched.
I get why Billie hates Carla but boy is Carla getting a bad rap. That said, I’m so glad Billie did this.
Carla is kind of a jerk, to be fair.
Hate might be a little strong, but I don’t think I’d much enjoy having her around.
Everyone would rather have 50 of Carla than 1 of Mary.
Sentiment undercut by a Mary avatar…
We’re in the same boat.
Wish I’d sold short on Mary futures last summer.
Yay Billie!
yesss still carla.
I just don’t understand why Billie won’t do the Christian thing and let Mary blackmail people. Mary’s basically Jesus, here.
Carla can be an incredible ass, and what she did was….
Well, what she did was right, and she did it for the right reasons, but in the wrong way.
So, I’d definitely prefer more people who kinda care, to someone who twists things around so that they’re always in the right because they go up against people they disagree with.
Damnit Billie, Only Sarah, Joyce, Sal and Amber are allowed to hit people. There will be no outsourcing of punching on the Girl’s Floor.
I’m sure had they heard the shit Mary spewed, they would understand.
That’s a good point.
…there’s a lot of punching in this comic, for something that’s not an action story.
Am I entirely comfortable with Billie punching Mary? No.
Would I do the same if I were in her place? Likely not.
Do I think this has solved anything long-term? No.
That being said…
Do I fault Billie for what she did? Also no.
Was it hoth necessary and cathartic for someone to stand up to Mary like that? DAMN RIGHT IT WAS
Wow, Billie’s probably gonna get in trouble. I don’t think Mary’s afraid of physical violence when Billie’s already got a troublemaking record. Buuuuuut on the other hand, she also had a ton of witnesses who would all more than happily say that Mary provoked her, so, she might just come out alright.
Now all that aside … *ahem* Willis, remember that book you mentioned of the most satisfying punches in the strip? 83
Mary has blackmailed herself. She can’t go to the authorities about anything given all her crime.
You know something that would be REALLY satisfying? (For me, anyway)
That rather than just have her straight up punched or suffer a cruel and unusual death, because violence can make things worse in the future, is that someone just straight up tells her the truth: that what she’s doing is evil, goes against everything Christianity stands for, and if anyone’s going to hell, it’s her.
It’d also be interesting to see what her reaction would be: whether she’d do her twitchy eye roll, finally feel some remorse, or get royally pissed off because deep down she knows it’s true.
More likely, she’d dismiss them as doing the Devil’s work, because they know deep down Mary’s right. /Mary thoughts over.
So, did you ever watch The Crow? SPOILER WARNING FOR THOSE WHO HAVEN’T (I’ll try to make it so generic as possible)!
Remember at the end, where that guy got to feel the pain of those he’d killed? That is my ultimate magic revenge fantasy against the biggest of arseholes. And that includes the mental pain they’ve caused too. If Mary could truly feel, if only for a few seconds, exactly what it really feels like to be the target of her vile bigotry…
…I think of it as both the most cruel -and- most humane way to get revenge against them.
I share your ultimate magic revenge fantasy.
sounds like Ghost Rider’s Penance Stare. Is it survivable?
I guess that depends on how much pain you’ve inflicted on people.
it sounds like by the time they would need magic to substitute for their shriveled sense of empathy, it would be deadly
FINALLY
NEEDS MORE FINALITY!
Panel four would have to be one of the most chilling things I’ve read on this strip. I mean there have been worse things to happen but theres mostly always been some sort of reasoning or twisted logic eg Blaines need to control, Toedads attempting to “protect” even Ryans attempts at gaining power over women
But this, the look on her face, the “let me have just her” is just…I dunno more freaky then anything else I’ve read on here (my opinion only)
I think Billie’s been building to something like this since Ruth was taken away. She’s been in an ugly mood ever since and it’s been building within her since then. Mary was, unfortunately, the person that pushed the right buttons that finally triggered the explosion.
perhaps the word would be fortunate really. Better that she hit someone like Mary than being set off by someone cutting her in line or trying to stop her self-destructive tendencies.
I disagree about something like this being inevitable.
Billie’s been very angry and shouty lately, but I don’t see it escalating at all, unless you forget that it’s been less than 24 hours since Ruth was then to the health center.
The angriest she got was when she snapped at Joyce this morning, and while it certainly sounded like a threat, I felt it was more of a description of what she thought would need to happen for Joyce to understand how she felt. Which happened to be a bit threatening.
In any case, I don’t think there was ever any real danger of Billie losing it and punching anyone else. Shouting and angry comments, sure, but only Mary is awful enough to say the kind of shit that would make Billie angry enough to hit someone.
Hell, I’d even give Mike more credit than to make that kind of comment to Billie’s face.
I”d normally agree, but she is scaring me lately. Not because of this, but other comics. The ones where she plans to interfere with Ruth’s treatment, certain she knows what’s best for her. She is getting increasingly irrational and, while I sympathize and find her funny, she was never too logical to begin with.
You can still agree. I’m not saying that Billie’s dealing with her anger or her other feelings in a completely (or in some cases even slightly) healthy way.
I’m only saying that she’s not just going to go off completely at random and get violent at some minor irritant.
If she ends up trying to see Ruth, and someone stops her, I could imagine she might take a swing at them. I just don’t think that the people around her have to worry about anything worse than angry yelling.
I certainly don’t see any evidence of her rage just building steadily on its own. She was furious when she shouted at Carla last night, but when Dotty, and later Walky talked to her in the morning, she was merely cranky, and wisely waved them both off because she knew she wasn’t in a good state to talk about it at the time.
She screamed at Joyce long after, but that was because Joyce tried to talk to her when she didn’t want to, and on top of that brought up the worst subject possible. Not that she deserved getting her head bit off like that, but it was a mistake that was perfect in its unhelpfulness all the same.
The argument she got into with Sarah later (when they’d reached class) was back down to just cranky again.
Finally, in this conversation with Mary – the person who Billie has the most reason to be absolutely furious with – she’s been remarkably calm and restrained until the last two panels here.
Random people who have the decency not to be an persistent, venomous asshole to someone who’s already in a bad mood (and who aren’t standing between Billie and Ruth) have nothing to fear from her.
that makes sense.
Fart Captor, I thought you knew that your role was to write thoughtful things that I nevertheless disagreed with.
Now you’re writing thoughtful things that I agree with instead. Why are you doing this to me?!?
Spite, of course! Take big spiteful heap of thoughtful agreement
CURSE YOU, FART CAPTOR!
So many serious issues here, and some very interesting posts and points of view. But I am not going to touch on any of that, it has been covered by people far more eloquent than I.
All I can say is that I want, sooooo badly, to make a face joke, particularly after being handed a gold plated opportunity. But I can’t, it’s too easy, and too obvious, so I will refrain, no matter how difficult it is (-internal voice: “but, but, faaaaa . . .” ).
I will say, however, that it is a good thing that she didn’t hit Mary square in the jaw. With the chin she has, it would have cut Billie’s hand open like a knife. I mean, look at it, that chin could cut glass.
Too easy and too obvious has not stopped commenters before. It certainly hasn’t stopped me.
Also, today I sang the “Slaughter Your World” song to a co-worker.
WHOOMP! There it is.
Almost as satisfying as Springer punching Prowl. :3
Anyone here read Invisible Man lately? I just finished and now Mary’s making me wonder if someone can be live a role so long that they become invisible even to themselves. She’s just been a spiteful fundie for so long that it has become almost her entire being.
and no, that does not mean I have sympathy for her. She could have stepped outside of her own head at any time just like Joyce did. She let herself become invisible. She would think of it as becoming more Christ-like.
I do not weep for her, I weep for the person she could have been and the children she will probably brainwash. And I weep much more for Carla, Ruth, Billie and all the other people she has hurt before this.
I can’t tell, but in the last panel, is Agatha looking at Billie and Ruth with surprise, or is she frowning in anger at Ruth’s comment?
Given her posture, I’m 99% sure she’s looking down at Mary.
The expression looks to me like a mixture of disbelief, disgust, and anger, which would sense, since she’s been standing right there for all of the horrible things Mary’s been saying to Billie.
It definitely doesn’t read as “Holy crap Billie, you just hit her!” to me
My immediate thought was, to the letter, “ABOUT DAMN TIME!”
However, the more realistic side of me knows that the powers that be probably won’t care whether or not the punch was justified.
And to all the people here who are up in arms because punching people is wrong:
I am a staunch proponent of the scientific process, and I have seen no conclusive evidence that Mary is, in fact, a person. I keep waiting to see Mary display a single redeeming quality to prove that she is human, but nope. It never comes.
In conclusion, your argument that punching people is wrong is irrelevant because Mary is clearly Skeletor.
Skeletor was harmless and stupid. And he had way more humanity than Mary. Hell, in the 2003 cartoon, he even had a more reasonable motive than Mary.
No, Mary is Iago if he was dumber and too chickenshit to admit how much pleasure they take in destroying hearts and minds.
She’s admitting it right there!
Admitting what where?
Recoil and whine, you swine…
Not that I condone violence just for the sake of violence, but this felt so, so right. Inmediate vicarious relief, I suppose. Well done, Willis.
This was immensely satisfying to look at, but I’m afraid of the consequences.
Saaaaame.
Talk shit-Get hit.
That was so satisfying.
I like how Mary is constantly incapable of understanding the mind of anyone less despicable than herself. And by “like”, I mean “just shut up Mary you hate-filled blabbering rectum”.
and now I want someone to put her where spewing rectums belong and give her a swirly.
Actually, not really. Why in G-d’s name do people make that funny?! It’s basically bullies waterboarding kids with filthy toilet water! That’s just so fucked up and I can’t believe I ever found it funny. I can’t believe I did not realize this till i wrote this comment
Hey Mary!
…
…
Turn the other cheek