A YA F/F fantasy comic about Sonya, a lost skier trying to survive a snowy wilderness and find her way back to her village; and Kyra - a fire spirit trying to fix the home that she let fall apart around her.
Dumbing of Age
David M Willis
Joyce has been homeschooled her entire life until now, when she's suddenly a freshman in college! Things don't go well.
Whomp!
Ronnie
A depressed, portly, hirsute anime fan stumbles through life in the ever-pursuit of chicken nuggets and other life-shortening indulgences.
Alice and the Nightmare
Misha Krivanek
Alice finally attends University to learn to collect the dreams of humans, meet new friends, and deal with a pesky reflection along the way.
Cassiopeia Quinn
Gunwild, Psudonym
A cute, pantsless thief is pursued across the stars by a buttoned-up military officer in the spacey, laser-filled future.
Girl Genius
Phil Foglio, Kaja Foglio
In a time when the Industrial Revolution has become an all-out war, Mad Science rules the World...with mixed success.
Fireweeds Moors
Gato Iberico
A cat-headed man and a girl with a sandwich hankering accidentally end up in a myth-infused country where magic chalices are a really big thing.
Love Not Found
Gina Biggs
Abeille is on a quest to find someone who wants to do it the old-fashioned way in a time when touching has become outdated.
Cut Time
Juby
Rel and her trusty avian friend Fugue are on a quest to save a world that's lost track of time. Follow them and their new recruits, in a story written with help from the stars.
Stand Still, Stay Silent
Minna Sundberg
A few generations after the end of the world, a small, poorly financed research crew is sent out to rediscover whatever is left of the forbidden old world in the south.
Guilded Age
T Campbell, John Waltrip, Florence Machina
Welcome to the saga of the working-class adventurer! Enjoy the complete story with new annotations daily!
Cyanide & Happiness
Explosm
Satire, dark humor and surreal humor.
Caramel Corn
Potchimew
Sarah is the only human left in a world full of mythical creatures and monsters. All she wants to do is live a quiet life, but everything changes when she meets her guardian angel, Jacob.
Godslave
Meaghan Carter
Edith has been thrown into the dangerous world of modern-day Egyptian mythology. Fighting monsters and dealing with family drama of godly proportions.
Widdershins
Kate Ashwin
A series of light-hearted Victorian-era adventure stories featuring grumpy bounty hunters, accidental thiefkings, and more, in England's magical capital city Widdershins!
Sister Claire
Yamino
In the troubled aftermath of a great war between Witches and her fellow Nuns, novice Sister Claire just wants a purpose.
Devil's Candy
Rem, Bikkuri
A lush fantasy about boy genius Kazu Decker, the girl he constructed for his 9th grade science project, and the world of devils and monsters they live in.
Lilith's Word
inkPangur
If you had the power to make any wish come true using just one word, what would you say?
The Lonely Vincent Bellingham
Diana Huh
Vincent is an unkind man looking to disappear, and finds himself in the care of a vampire and her two wicked children.
Paranatural
Zack Morrison
Superpowered middle schoolers fight evil spirits in their rural hometown. Come for the jokes, stay for the cast, the creatures, and the mystery that ties them all together!
The Sanity Circus
Windy
Magic, monsters and mysteries await in the odd city of Sanity. It's up to Attley and a colorful group of characters to find out just what is going on.
Astral Aves
Moon Cabal
A fantasy coming-of-age following the adventures of Astra The Black and friends, as they navigate the mysterious world around them. It's politics, adventure, and the supernatural; oh, and crazy hair.
Never Satisfied
Taylor Robin
Lucy Marlowe, a magician's apprentice, competes against other apprentices for an important, magical, Goverment Job.
Jailbird
Charlie Davis
An all-ages comic about a recently escaped prisoner's struggle to understand the outside world, and vice-versa. Also, a magic cape!
The Witch Door
Anni K.
Katariina Lehto discovers her neighbor is a witch called Jousia Muotka. Jousia introduces Katariina to the strange people and places beyond the witch door...
Goodbye to Halos
Valerie Halla
Cuddles, gay flirting, weird feelings, and magic-fueled knife fights - it's an adventure across the queer multiverse!
[un]Divine
Ayme
A highschool senior thought giving up his soul for a demon was a good idea. It wasn't.
Go Get a Roomie
Clover
Experience the queer journey of an upbeat hippie and the friendships she makes along the way! A tale of self-discovery and love of many forms.
Anarchy Dreamers
Emily Ree
Sparkly undead kids fight society's worst Nightmares in this pastel-punk urban fantasy coming-of-age!
Knights Errant
J.R. Doyle
Wilfrid's humble quest for revenge becomes bigger and bloodier by the day.
Starhammer
J.N. Monk, Harry Bogosian
A teen girl inherits a powerful alien artifact and proceeds to make a series of increasingly poor decisions
Wychwood
Varethane
When Tiara's pyrokinesis is finally noticed, she is captured by a magical research organization for study. If she cooperates, she could be helping to save humanity from a dire threat - but can she trust them?
Tigress Queen
Allison Shaw
A barbarian warlord and a pampered prince try to avoid a marriage alliance that could end decades of violence.
Hazy London
Scotty
A story about messy relationships. From friendly foes to crazy families. Nothing is black and white, just full of color. But, all colors can get a little hazy...
Nerf Now!!
Josué Pereira
A cute webcomic about fanservice, video games, and... love. Mostly video games, though.
Awaken
Koti Saavedra/Flipfloppery
Superpowers, monsters and conspiracies. Piras, the spoiled Dameschi heir, fights to recover his identity after becoming a terrorist!
The Automan's Daughter
Mike Stamm
Aisha Osman and her uncle Siddig outwit bikers, spies and kidnappers while gearing up for a showdown with the formidable Widowmaker mecha.
Sam & Fuzzy
Sam Logan
Troubled by gangster rodents, lovesick vampire stalkers, or confused ninja assassins? Don't panic! Sam and Fuzzy are here to help. (For a reasonable fee.)
This is Not Fiction
Nicole Mannino
What do you do when the person you're in-love with is an anonymous romance novelist? Get your best friend to hire your worst enemy for help!
Between Failures
Jackie Wohlenhaus
The low stakes adventures of an assorted group of 20 somethings trapped in the declining years of American retail. They are naughty and say lots of swears.
Lighter Than Heir
Melissa Albino
A young Volant woman joins the military in an effort to upstage her war-hero father.
El Goonish Shive
Dan Shive
WARNING: This comic often ignores the Laws of Physics
Real Science Adventures
Brian Clevinger
Spin off stories and other adventures from the world of Atomic Robo!
Monsterkind
Taylor C
Wallace Foster, a young, bright-eyed human social worker, has his entire world view rocked when he's suddenly relocated into a city primarily inhabited by monsters.
Star Trip
Gisele Weaver
Jas is a human taken from her home planet on a trip across the galaxy she will never forget.
Empowered
Adam Warren
A sexy superhero comedy (except when it isn't) about the never-ending struggles of a plucky but very unlucky young superheroine.
Star Impact
Jack McGee
A young, energetic woman fights her way up in the world of super-powered boxing after discovering the mighty gloves of her missing idol!
Sufficiently Remarkable
Maki Naro
Two young women living in Brooklyn discover that you're always coming of age.
Ghost Junk Sickness
Studio CARTRIDGE, Laura Lee
Two hunters try to survive and end up being pushed to pursue a deadly bounty dubbed "The Ghost".
Atomic Robo
Brian Clevinger, Scott Wegener
The robot punches monsters and bad robots and one time he was a cowboy.
Wilde Life
Pascalle Lepas
Oscar decided to rent an old haunted house, and that's when things got weird...
Demon's Mirror
Harry Bogosian
Based loosely off of "The Snow Queen", a story by Hans Christian Andersen, we see things take a different turn as the demons become central characters, and the side characters stick around. Yup, that's the only differences. Enjoy!
Monster Pulse
Magnolia Porter Siddell
Four kids run afoul of a creepy secret organization's experiments, which turn their body parts into fighting monsters. Part sentimental coming-of-age story, part monster-training shonen manga, with just a bit of sci-fi body horror.
The End
August Brown, Cory Brown
Two aliens crash a sci-fi convention and accidentally take seven nerds on an adventure that spans the galaxy!
Kiwi Blitz
Mary Cagle (Cube Watermelon)
Steffi thinks she can use her kiwi mech to become a superhero. This idea turns out to be very stupid.
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and a chance it will get worse, but not wanting to die…… fear of it for instance can help you stay alive. i dunno. I just know my low pain tolerance has helped keep me going.
As one who’s been there, being dead is boring. Someone really needs to fix the UI so that the buttons on the viewer are at least visible if not labeled. Seriously is “zoom in” and “zoom out” all that freaking hard to do? You had 13 billion years to get it right.
It’s not so much about there being a chance of it getting better or worse as long as you’re alive, but that if you’re dead, there is definitely NO chance that things will improve.
I like people like you… at least based on this one comment, further judgement is reserved for basis on future comments depending on persistence of relevant memory.
Vote Billie for “Crazy Diamond”. For all of me you can skip the poet, piper, and prism, and go straight to binging the sparkle and shine back to Ruth’s eyes.
Billie thinks Ruth is saying that she doesn’t want to die because of the depression, it’s actually because Mary is standing in front of her with a uzi.
I think it’s because they had an unspoken suicide pact; they were holding on because what Mary had done needed to be addressed. But now that there’s no reason for spite here, Ruth is scared, and depressed, and unsure of help, so her brain made a logical, if irrational, jump to ‘we completed the mission, now we’re going to go through with it oh god I didn’t think we would do it’.
This is how it sometimes ends up working when you’ve been battling depression for awhile while mired in the bottom of that deep dark hole. You can feel numb for years and so it can be a genuine shock to cry, to want to live, to genuinely start imagining a future and yourself in it rather than just trying to force yourself through each and every day.
So, to see Ruth at that step, clawing out of that hole and genuinely, for the first time in this entire comic, not want to die. That means something. That means a lot. I’m so happy for this asshole.
Yup. Sadness/crying are actually not specifiers of depression or measures of its severity because they occur equally in people that are or are not depressed. Anhedonia, the inability to feel joy, is a diagnostic symptom.
That’s what my textbook says, anyway. Personally I felt my emotions weathering away until I felt numb most of the time. But that’s the trouble with brain diseases, they’re as complex as people’s brains.
FWIW, I’ve experienced all of this, except the recovery part. I’ll be going to the doctor in a couple weeks, and hopefully I won’t ‘neglect’ to mention my depression again. (That would be the anxiety kicking in; I have both, and talking to authority figures flares my anxiety to the point I can’t think or remember things. )
XD It’ll be on paper this time. ^^; I actually took a list of “what hurts” and “what doesn’t work right” with me last time, but I put my anxiety and depression at the bottom of the list, and I realized after I got home my doctor might have thought it was caused by everything else, which is why he didn’t ask, and of course, I forgot. ^^; A physical therapist he had me see was able to resolve my chronic neck/back pain, and I’ll be able to tell him the omeprazole really didn’t seem to do shit for the gastro issues, so it’ll be basically the only thing left on the list. ^^;
at the risk of throwing unsolicited advice at you: is it possible
that sending them an email or note or leaving a voicemail might
circumvent your anxiety?
I thought I might have bipolar when I was a teen, because I utterly loathed myself and didn’t want to be alive to the extent that it felt more like I was.actively choosing not to top myself at any given moment rather than actually living – but I still had feels. And the happy times kinda felt more like I was bungee jumping and on a massive adrenaline kick than something balanced, sustainable, reliable…
When I was older I decided I had ‘just” been suffering from a form of learned helplessness/self-hatred rather than chemical depression. Then after a hellish year when my SAD kicked up a notch from ‘whaddaya mean, people don’t hibernate?’ to ‘why exactly am I still alive? It would be so EASY to just do something about that…’ I worked out that, nah, I still feel things when I’m depressed – might not process it particularly well and the intrusive thoughts might try to twist everything up and make good things bad – but I don’t do numb. Back then I just literally didn’t know how to be happy and that’s why it felt so unstable. (Plus if the happy is caused by being with friends doing something nice, but you cannot see a single likeable thing about yourself, it’s hard not to think that your friends are only being your friends coz if they tell you to go away and leave them alone and you kill yourself they would feel bad; it makes it hard to believe those positive feelings are actually founded on something real, trustworthy, etc. Pretty certain being able to point at being happy and explain why this makes you a pathetic fool and a burden to people you care about is kinda indicative of deep-seated depression – although this is not a diagnostic criteria!)
Also, now I know intrusive thoughts are a real, actual thing and that makes it a lot easier to knock them down. When you’ve never heard of them and have them constantly hounding, jeering, mocking and twisting things, when they know your arguments before they’re fully formed… it’s not good.
I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to pin down what it was that I had. I saw this and this which matched that, but I know that medical student’s disease is a real thing, so could I really trust my analysis, but who else has any perspective on my life, on and on and on. I had a hundred imaginary conversations with a hundred imaginary psychiatrists, and it was one big neurotic circlejerk that went nowhere.
In the end I had a friend that told me wanting to die doesn’t occur to healthy people, it only occurs if you are very ill. And ill people should see the doctor. And I did, and things are better.
Yep. There is large overlap in the brain regions associated with painkillers, emotional pain and physical pain. So when someone says something hurts emotionally, they’re not just being a wuss- neurology has discovered its pretty similar to more traditional pain.
It’s hard to explain for those who haven’t been that deep in the hole, but this is actually very likely a really really good sign that she’s finally starting to unlock her emotions and slow her brain down enough to think again and that’s a critical first step towards genuinely getting better rather than just surviving.
By the way, did you take your nickname from Kingdom Hearts’ Riku. Or somewhere else? Is it actually your real name and I’m too bloody ignorant to know this?
It was Kingdom Hearts inspired, I used to use darkriku666 or something edgey like that back in middle school though for some reason when I started commenting on shortpacked I ended up just going for Riku instead of literally any other name I’d be using now as an adult
I wouldn’t say I”ve been down that hole, but I’ve always credited my fear of even thinking about my death or injury with keeping away self-harming thoughts when I was at my worst
Somewhere at a truck stop outside Bloomington, a lone driver broods over a coffee with a thousand yard stare.
“You know,” he says to nobody in particular, “I’ve got this funny feeling I shouldn’t be doing this job anymore.”
For my own part, I would say it is possible. We humanoids sometimes seek out that kind of thing in our choices of entertainment. We also like to be safely scared through horror movies or roller coasters.
Whoa… What a powerful comic. I was planning to make a chock-full-of-jokes promo to the new podcast episode that Cerberus and I have made, but joking around feels a bit wrong now…
It’s also now on iTunes, Stitcher, and TuneIn as well, so you can also subscribe through those, though most of the discussion has been happening on the good Emperor’s blog.
And there’s a kick to the gut that I wasn’t expecting. But at the same time, it’s a kick to feels in a good way. And the shock on Billie’s face in the final panel really helps to hammer the feels home.
It’s great that she’s got the will to live back, but this is exactly what I say when I have one of my death and/or change-related panic attacks and it is really freaky.
Oh no. Billy think’s Ruth is now not broken enough to be safely around her. i don’t know what to think here. On the one hand, they are an unhealthy codependent relationship. On the other hand, the way Billy might try to aggressively push Ruth away “for her own good” is not going to help either of them.
I take comfort in the assurance that no one dies in this comic is all I”m saying
I think that’s actually super likely. After all, if Ruth is healthy, in her mind, she can be poisoned by her touch, so best for her to run away to “protect” Ruth’s recovery, especially since Ruth “doesn’t need her anymore” as evidenced in her mind by Ruth getting support from sources that are not just her.
And it’s why I’m glad to remember that Billie also has mandatory therapy scheduled in her near future.
oh thank god. Though I’m a generally conflict-averse person and even i get passive-agressive with my therapists when they just don’t seem to get it and ignore their suggestions. I imagine someone like Billy would do a lot of that
I could see that. I feel that a big part of Billie’s personality (or at least her issues) is that she tends to measure her self-worth in what she can do for other people (or at least that’s something I struggle with and why I relate pretty strongly to Billie sometimes. She may see protecting/taking care of Ruth as the best quality she possesses.
My (equally subjective, if not even more so) interpretation is that Ruth finally grabs for Billie’s help here; quite literally too. Billie’s still a bit in shock over watching Ruth display raw emotions again, but the way Ruth is pleading her, grabbing her, looking her in the eyes… To me, this says “I need you I need you I need you!”.
I guess the question is… Does Billie see it this way? She might, or she might see it your way. And if she sees it your way, then yes, she might run away, so to speak.
If she sees it my way… Well, after running on a stream of perpetual anger for a few hours, she decided to use that anger to something constructive.
And getting one over on Mary might have given her some of that old feeling that she can actually be helpful to people, not just being poison. If she has gained* some self-respect in the process, she might just decide to try and help Ruth properly now. Not just keeping the arterial wound from bleeding, but actually help to close the wound.
*at first I wrote “regained”, but now that I think about it, it’s unlikely that she ever had much real self-respect. At most, she had a self-esteem that was tied into her thinking she was something that she was not.
I’m actually really uncomfortable now. I’m worried that seeing Ruth basically accidentally having the exact same type of panic attack (down to the same words) is going to give me a panic attack, since they are triggered by thinking about my own death or other major scary changes
One day at a time, just pretending that each day I spend happy and productive is a single kick to Steve Bannon’s shrivelled little balls while shouting “L’Chaim”!
That’s what I’ve been using too! The thought that every day me and my kids are alive and present in the world and not dying like they want is a fact that is pissing off a neo-nazi somewhere into apoplexy.
thanks. I copied it from you guys. Gay people on Tumblr were saying they were going to live and thrive to spite Mike Pence and when I started getting scared of Bannon and sad, I decided to do that with him.
Dana: They are, but the real show is only about three to five minutes long every episode; and in between there is a lot of stuff that is pretty much irrelevant to the wacky adventures of Spider and Imp!
no, but I’m good. I’ve been taught a variety of coping methods over the years and i just got back on a good medication schedule. I’m starting to get over just the shock of the words and reminding myself they are common words.
kick whoever you want, but why not go for Trump? I’m going for Bannon specifically because I’m Jewish and he’s a fucking Nazi who would just love to see me scared and sad. Well fuck him
That reminds me of a joke from back when Canada had a truly terrible and hated Prime Minister (Brian Mulroney, who was the one who brought in NAFTA, and who also at one point after he left actually tried to sue the country for defamation or slander or something, ha ha. Dick.).
Adapted for the current situation:
Q: If Trump and [Trump crony of choice] are standing on top of a cliff, who do you push off first, and why?
A: [Crony]; because business before pleasure.
Here’s another one, again, adapted from the Mulroney/Clinton era:
Q: What’s eighteen inches long and hangs between Trump’s legs?
A: [Crony]’s tie.
Heh, the Devil cannot abide mockery. Let’s see if we can generate some angry 3 am tweets! XD
(I’m going to try to be careful with my wording here. I hope I don’t accidentally trigger you.)
If you feel like you need to take a break from the comments section for this strip, it’s fine. Taking care of yourself is important, and we won’t judge you. If you have any coping strategies that help you avoid or get through your panic attacks go ahead and use them if you’re worried about what you’ve already seen.
*hugs* and other comforting thoughts if you want them
My initial reaction was nothing but tears, and that really hasn’t changed in the last five minutes I’ve been staring at this strip.
What has changed is the reason for those tears.
At first, this is so sad. Like, holy shit, I didn’t cry at the end of Marley and Me (is that still a worthwhile standard?) but this has me in tears.
After continuing to look at it, those tears turned into tears of joy. Ruth doesn’t want to die, and that’s a massive step in the right direction.
And we have progress! Nothing quite like looking back on something and realizing how BAD it was or how CLOSE you got to doing something to scare the bejeezus out of yourself. I’ve been there.
I’m guessing this is the kind of storyline you get when you have a really long time to think about what you wish you did instead of killing Ruth that one time.
i know, but i read a little bit of early Roomies!, and it’s better than that. Shortpacked! is about as progressive as mainstream fare, while Dumbing of Age is just leagues above it
It’s extra fun to go back and read them in the archives, where Willis put in his own more recent comments, which are mainly cringing at his former self.
well, it taught me that the fundies in his comics are not exaggerated. on the other hand, it also taught me they are not irredeemable (Willis is case in point)
So, Cerberus, if you don’t mind answering a question sure to provoke a long ass analytical response, can I ask how you’d handle these kids (at least the ones on the cast page) if you were there teacher?
Not at the question, but because I’m actually dealing with that right now. Two of my trans kids attempted suicide this month and three others are holding on to the edge with their teeth and a whole bunch of my other kids are scared and having trouble wanting to hold on to the future after the election.
So, I’ve been doing a lot of triage on a lot of kids who really struggle with wanting not to die and that’s so far looked like passing along a lot of suicide resources, putting up suicide hotline information on my board as a permanent fixture, emphasizing survival as resistance and that it’s okay to just focus on self-care.
I’ve also been increasing my check-ins with students and increasing the amount of time I’m visibly available for drop-ins as well as working closely with social area staff to clamp down much stronger on bullying than they have been in the last few months and being more present in those locations to come down strong on kids thinking it funny to “tease” the suicidal kids and mock their traumas and pain.
On top of that, I’ve genuinely assigned self-care work for homework, especially on classes right before a weekend and have increased the number of labs that are focused more on fun than unit relevance, though not so much it interferes with class progression and asking individual students what they feel they can handle/want during this period of recovery.
I’ve also been taking a lot of employment risks countering our head of school’s shitty handling of a sexual assault on campus as the psychological fallout of that in terms of students’ feelings of safety and ability to fight depression has been immense and the students in crisis desperately need to see someone fighting on their behalf (in my mind at least, having someone fight for a person sends a message to that person that their feelings and well-being are valuable and worth preserving).
I also work to create safe spaces for marginalized students, including say… bi girls with mental health issues, so they have a place they can go off to and see their existence celebrated and valued in a way it isn’t most places and thus not letting the real-world Marys of the world (including our new Vice President-elect) get them down.
And I say things very like Billie in the first and fourth panels. That, yeah, things suck, but they won’t always suck. That friends of mine have been in pits like theirs and made it out. That the pit isn’t always going to be pitch black and covered in spikes. That I will fight for them with my dying breath. That they matter. That I want them to believe that.
And then I go home and hope… that the next day includes the same number of them.
Oh geez, I’m sorry if the question brought up bad feelings at work. I hope your students continue to improve and that they get through this okay. At least they have a wonderful teacher.
It’s just the situation that exists (I’m “lucky” in that I have a wealth of terrible life experiences and close loved ones with terrible life experiences to draw on for what to do in these sorts of situations to help, because I can draw on real life experience for what tends to work, what tends to not work).
And mostly, the most frustrating bit right now is my head of school is trying to do some penny-ante retaliatory shit to manufacture a cause to fire me over as if I don’t have a paper trail as long as my arm on all the ways he failed to properly handle a sexual assault incident and other harassment issues on campus and as if I’m an idiot who hasn’t had to deal with hostile (hopefully short-lived, because he doesn’t realize it yet, but several other teachers have actually filed title ix complaints against him for hostile work conditions) administrators trying to find a reason to get rid of the meddlesome tr**y.
Seriously, he can’t get replaced soon enough. Literally every one of his employees (and several of the parents) has turned on him over this whole shitstorm and thinks he handled it poorly and has offered to support me if he does decide to push his luck and try and fire me.
According to the teachers suing him right now, fairly good, so it’s just a waiting game for now. I think the reason he’s flailing at me is that he’s becoming aware of the lawsuits (I think, I’m not entirely sure what it’s called when you’ve got a Title IX case on someone) and foolishly thinks I’m behind them because I’ve been openly critical of his handling of the situation.
Which, I’m not sure how he thinks transparent bullying and retaliation attacks would make a lawsuit less likely to succeed if I was to be behind them, but then I’m not nearly so white and male to earn a six-figure salary being a complete fucking idiot.
That’s pretty much my viewpoint, so my current strategy is to hold firm on defending my students and calling out the behavior he did to endanger students’ safety and refusing to be intimidated into silence, offering him the ropes out of this mess publicly and in writing, countering his little schemes in writing, forwarding myself all copies of damning documents, rebooting my old methods of surviving discrimination by being so flawless they can’t find anything to “gotcha” me on, and continuing to build allies through the company and let them know what is happening so he can’t operate in the shadows.
Basically, make myself too much of a nuisance for him to take out before he is taken out or “encouraged to retire”. Oh, and also making sure students know what I’m doing, at least on the broad level, so they and more importantly their parents have a good idea of what happened to the beloved teacher who fought for their kids if he actually does decide to continue trying to play hardball.
In short, since I’ve lost my fear after the election, I think I’ve become somewhat terrifying.
Sounds like you’ve got all your bases covered, and hopefully he has a quick route out of his job. School boards don’t tend to be happy when admins open them up to lawsuits.
Doing this stuff has so long been my normal that I don’t think I ever really appreciate that it isn’t most people’s normal. It’s like, what? Most people’s typical weekend isn’t babysitting a friend so they don’t kill themselves or helping a mentee fight their organization to get a sexual assault or hate crime taken seriously?
Cerberus, if you’re still checking this page – is there anything someone in the California Bay Area can do to help your kids, other than donating to Southern Poverty Law Center or something similarly useful-but-generic? Please email me at cphoenix at gmail if there’s a way I can help.
Well, if you’re trans, we desperately need more folks for the Trans Lifeline. Additionally, organizations like the API Wellness Center, the Transgender Law Center (who may end up helping me if my head of school is stupid enough to push this issue), Lyon-Martin Health Services, and the Pacific Center for Human Growth (they have a bunch of queer youth and nonbinary trans youth services I direct my kids to) could always use donations to keep trucking.
More materially specific to my kids… I’ll have to think on that one a bit more, but I’ll definitely try and reach out after I’ve mused on this one for a bit.
Honestly Cerberus, I’d say you’re a Saint and that those kids of yours are lucky to have you as a teacher and guide. Also, I normally don’t like wishing ill on others but in this case I’m making one of my frequently increasing exceptions, here’s hoping that admin prick gets brought down hard. To hell with the bastard.
Cerberus, I am so, so, so deeply grateful that you’re in this world and doing such fearsome good. Thank you, just because, and all appropriate gestures of support and celebration because, damn, every minute you do this is a triumph over all those shallow needy greedy bigots looking to do harm. Thank you.
Thank you for standing up for and helping your students. I hope you can get tenure someday. Faculty directory description: [teaching subject matter] and literally fucking saving students’ lives.
I am indeed out to my students and this head of school even made me do a public email to all the teachers stating I was trans when I first came out to work so I’m like ultra mega extreme out. It’s always something that feels important to me as trans and queer youth often need to see themselves reflected in the teacher body to feel safer coming out and queer youth also need to know about the teacher who will guarantee have their back.
But it was a hard thing to fight for and I’ve gotten discriminated out of jobs in the past for wanting to be out and I’ve had to recloset myself to survive because people have a passive resistance to the idea of a trans teacher, seeing it as somehow unseemly.
But I can say that at least for me, taking the risk and prioritizing being out was worth it to me and not having to hide who I am everyday when I go to work is critically important to my mental health. But yeah, I wouldn’t judge you at all if you looked at the risks and decided differently.
Um, Billie, I feel the feels and all, but I think I still need to point out that, for all that it may have worked for you in the other universe, punching Mary in the face and counter-blackmailing her probably does not actually qualify as an actual “fix”.
Are you kidding? Mary can do absolutely nothing without being brought down just as quickly, and it really isn’t in Mary’s character to let that happen.
While it may not have been the most… temperate response, I’d say that punching Mary in the face and counter-blackmailing her fixed it all up pretty well.
No, seriously. Billie may have temporarily stymied Mary (and I’m not even sure about that; if “knowing what’s good for her” were in Mary’s skillset, she wouldn’t have pushed Billie to the point that she got punched in the face in the first place), but Mary isn’t at all the sort to stop scheming just because one of her schemes has been foiled.
And Billie’s done nothing to repair the damage Mary has already caused. She hasn’t “fixed everything“, she’s applied a leaky temporary patch.
I don’t blame her for wanting to reassure Ruth that she’s got everything under control, but I’m concerned that she may actually believe that. Stupid overconfidence is in-character. <- (I was going to link a strip there, but it’s one of the ones where the bongo filter breaks the URL.)
Once she gets over the shock of learning the entire floor was against her and eating from the palm of her hand as she thought, Mary will certainly start figuring out how to regain the upper hand.
But for the moment, she’s toothless, especially with respect to Ruth. There’s going to be trouble when she figures out Becky is still around, but that’s a tomorrow problem.
And remember, almost all of the extensive prep work is generally to make sure the rocket will be as safe as it could possibly be for the trip. Pretty sure we can live with a 99% safe rocket ready in a week, instead of a 99.999% safe rocket ready in three months, right?
Let’s not get TOO far – even if Carla were cool with the chance of Mary dying, I doubt Ruttech wants to give her parents or church the chance to sue them out the nose.
IDGI. Why would anyone looking for Mary even think she had the remotest connection with the fluffy cloud of tiny bits of steel (mostly) floating down just off the Eastern Seaboard?
B) Carla ain’t infallible – someone somewhere she probably has something that will tie her to it
C) Carla’s not a killer. Hell, she isn’t even violent. She vocally objected to RESTRAINING Amazi-Girl (who had already professed to being a violent stalker) when she thought Sal was going to hit her.
I mean, that’s kinda reductionist. She did ensure Mary’s credibility was tarnished and her reputation in irreparable infamy, plus now there’s a solid group of people willing and able to corroborate her story should something come up. Most of Ruth’s scandals are already out in the open anyway, so Mary’s more or less out of any plausible dirt on her anyway. Billie isn’t in a position to ensure Ruth doesn’t get fired at this point. And, I mean, there are witnesses to her punching Mary, and given the faculty we’ve seen so far I’d think they’d be willing to listen.
So, I mean, there’s some strings left hanging, and ultimately the final decision is up to administration. But, Billie did effectively nullify the Mary problem, which was the Big Stink I think in this issue.
Panel 1: Goddamnitt Willis, stop using Billie to subtweet my general response to most of my students this last week (minus the hugs)! >:(
Panel 2: This is so genuinely sweet. Billie here, telling her she fixed everything, that Ruth doesn’t have to be afraid, that she’s here supporting her, that she took care of the blackmailing piece of shit that put her in here…
It’s a line that would be seen in an action movie when the steely voiced protagonist visits the hospital bed of the disposable love interest or plucky sidekick.
And that emphasis on “for you” strikes home. She really would talk to an entire hall and cut off the angles of a harasser just to make a strong statement to her girlfriend. And it’s sweet, but it’s also worrying, because we know that Billie is co-dependent and is hurting about not being the thing that single-handedly saved Ruth. And I just feel so bad for her that she can’t see all the good she’s already doing for her girlfriend and how this is all part of a very necessary and timely recovery*.
*Not least of all because part of her might not be wanting this to be the right course of action, because then it means (in her head at least) that Carla’s extremely dangerous and reckless stunt may have actually been the relatively best call after all.
Panels 3-5: I’ve had two major moments like this.
One was after I finally fought my way into having access to hormones and therapy and after finally getting in, filling out the forms on my depression (and hitting the top bracket for most), and receiving my first anti-depressant (which was the literal worst, my current one is much better). Just having taken that step… it was powerful, it felt like I had a tomorrow. Not a long tomorrow, but a day or two beyond what I could focus on before and I wept like a little baby because I finally for a moment started to feel what it was like to not want to die for a second.
That feeling luckily came back more and more as I got on anti-depressants that worked and my hormones started making my body feel less painful to regard.
The second was relatively recently, less than a year ago, after years of shit. I was with my enbyfriend and I started fantasizing about a future. About a real and far off future I wanted to see, that I could envision myself having instead of just focusing on day to day survival.
So I identify with Ruth, yeah, but I also see this as an amazing sign that that smile isn’t a warning of an upcoming attempt. That she really is actually starting to recover and it’s going to be on Billie to see if she can adapt to a relationship that is actually healthy or if the toxicity and abuse was what she thought she deserved.
Ruth’s moment of clarity is exactly how i react after months of stress. Not those words, but a breakdown of my defences to allow for hugs while i let loose all of the thoughts i have at that exact moment. Sometimes with the added repetition of the same phrase. Always while crying.
This comic hit home is what I’m saying.
Hrm… I wonder if Ruth has a terminal diagnosis that no one knows about which was the real reason for her depression and the distance she tried to keep between herself and others…
Right up until he thinks they might be ace and tries to ‘cure’ them anyways. At which point Malaya goes from getting along to ‘I just met you and you already deserve a swift punch in the face’.
I’d like to think that if that show were on today, that episode would have gone differently, but as it is, at least he tends not to get all huffy when somebody gets sick of his shit and hits him.
damn this makes me want to cry, I battle with depression so I know how hard it is and well plenty of others probably know what Ruth is going through as well.
Wow, this hit hard. My fear of death is the only thing that has prevented me from killing myself over the years. And I have quite literally repeated that phrase just like that more times then I would like to count.
I know that feeling. Every time I thought about ending my life, I always got afraid of the host of horrible places I would go on the other side, or even worse that there wouldn’t be ANYTHING. I’d just be gone; poof, kaput. And that fear gave way to resolve: I’m not dying pathetic and alone.
Yeah the idea of just simple non-existence terrifies me…and while it sucks (And I tend to have panic attacks over it at least once a week it seems) I am sorta happy I have that fear as I would be long dead if I didn’t.
Billie, Becky, Walky and Bagge: “GLAD YOU ARE ABLE TO FEEL SOMETHING AND THAT YOU HAVE MANAGED TO LIFT YOURSELF SO MUCH THAT YOU ARE ABLE SCRAPE TOGETHER AN OUNCE OF BASIC SURVIVAL INSTINCT. WE DON’T WANT YOU TO DIE EITHER, NOW EXCUSE US AS WE ARE FREAKING THE FUDGE OUT!!”
This was me just a couple weeks ago. Now I’m on some pretty stellar meds finally.. after years of trying. Thank God because that crap was getting old… so tired of being tired and sad.
I just want to hug Ruth so much.
For me, this was an entirely happy comic, showing immense and unprecedented-for-Ruth progress.
I probably think about depression too often, it didn’t frighten me or hurt my heart, it made me happy for Ruth. It’s a very rough and scary new feeling for her, to be attached to life, but it’s SO MUCH BETTER than the place she’s been for years before.
Yup, been the Billie in this situation before. The onslaught of depression grinds things down so much, but sometimes some moment of clarity comes through, “I can focus on other things” as Ruth says, and the sheer terror of what you were determined to lose just a short while before hits you.
The Electorial Collage will vote for the President on Dec. 19th.
The Electorial Collage can change their minds. They do not have to vote for the candidate they originally chose to run against each other in the general election.
This has happened in our history 3 times before. A presidential canidate conceded the election in spite of having the popular vote because the Electorial college didn’t give them enough votes.
However, when she conceded she had only 110, 000 votes over him. They are pouring in still from the overseas and absentee votes and number over a million votes more than Trump.
Based on the advisors that Trump is choosing, we can hope and pray that the Electorial College make it number 4: and cast their votes for Hillary. I hope.
Also – if they don’t, Louisiana folks, you have a senate race coming up. Vote in that. It can, if not flip the Senate, at least add one more opponent for Trump.
Well, that’s exactly why they should. If Trump can stir up a credible threat of civil war in a few months of running for office, imagine what he’ll do in four years in that office.
The rift in US politics has been around far, far longer than Trump’s presidential campaign. Trump won with nearly half the votes. We have a system in place that mostly works. Destroying the system to avoid one bad president would not be a very good trade.
No he did not win. She has over 1million popular votes more than he does. But that is not the final word. The system is that the Electorial College votes for the president on Dec. 19th. And that is part of the system. And 3x in our history, they have changed their minds and voted for a different canidate than their original choice. It did not destroy the system then and wont now.
I’m not going to get in to whether this will happen or whether or not its a good thing, but if you’re set on this idea, I recommend contacting your electors and to let them know what’s at stake for you.
I can remember when the count of the Electorial Votes were done on the air live. Each delegate being called on, alphabetically by vote to announce their vote. No cheating under those circumstances. Wonder why we allowed them to stop it?
Oh well, maybe because we are loosing rights a little here. and a little there.
I would really very strongly recommend you simultaneously contact your electors if you want them to vote a certain way and prepare for what is going to happen if they don’t elect her (which, being real, is probably the outcome – the electoral college vote is and has been for decades a formality. Doesn’t mean they can’t call up a little used tool for controversial purpose (Harper did it here in Canada when he prorogued parliament twice in as many years, both to avoid confidence votes he thought he’d lose), but does mean that it is very unlikely.
Rather than pinning your hopes on a long shot, I’d urge you and others to prepare with 2018 and 2020 in mind. Here in Canada, the Tories are stealing Trump’s playbook (with Kellie Leitch, who like Trump is less an ideologue and more of a demagogue who will say whatever she thinks will mobilize the neofascists and get her base out to vote – except unlike Trump she is both capable of self-restraint and highly calculating so I think if anything she’s more dangerous than Trump because she doesn’t have his thin skin and tendency to talk himself into scandals impulsively), so those of us on the left who are able to learn from lessons in other jurisdictions are going, “Oh holy fuck no” and starting our prep now.
One thing the right-wingers have been better at than left-wingers over the past 40 years or so in Canada is pragmatism. The far right has never let perfect be the enemy of good enough: When they realized that if the right-wing parties united, they could get majorities with about 1/3 of the vote, the Reformers set on a 10 year quest to unite with the centre-right PC party. The PC party, for its part thought (wrongly) that they could keep the white supremacists in line and saw it as an opportunity for a broader voting base and therefore more power so they agreed to it. The Reformites (the Canadian equivalent of the Tea Party, but older and craftier) been slowly and steadily marching the resulting Conservative party to the right on things like immigration, religious freedom, and women’s rights. The Left, for its part, tends to stand on principle – so rather than finding common ground between NDP and Liberals (y’know, things like not wanting people to starve in the street, wanting single-payer health care, liking things like equality and multiculturalism, and so on and so forth), they instead stand on principle and refuse to compromise, even to form coalition governments. It’s a piss-off for me because by refusing to compromise “on principle”, we allow the right do get away with fucking murder – Harper and his 10 years in power despite usually barely more than a quarter of the popular vote comes to mind here.
And a lot of that has to do with our voting system (please can we some day eventually have proportional representation instead of the awful that is First Past The Post?) but a lot also has to do with the Left’s tendency towards dogmatism instead of incrementalism in Canada.
Rant ahoy:
Like hell – people on the Left in Canada get pissed off at incrementalism, but incrementalism is how shit gets done in politics in Canada and probably everywhere else which is not an autocracy, unless a Supreme Court decision is involved. Pierre Elliot Trudeau decriminalized same-sex relations back in the 60s here in Canada and we only finished the marriage equality fight last decade, but that shit got done and it got done because of (not in spite of) incrementalism.
Maybe because I’m involved on highly-political international standardization committees in meatspace – but holy fuck you want to get something done when there are people in a committee that are dead-set against you? You compromise. Find the thing you absolutely need, find something you can afford to bend on – offer the thing you can afford to bend on in exchange for the thing you need. Then everyone else on the committee starts to learn where you’re coming from and empathize with your needs and wants – and even if they don’t agree with you, they start to see where you’re coming from on shit and they understand that you’re a reasonable person who is willing to make shit work. It’s fucking negotiation and it’s how politics works.
But we seem to be headed back to an era of absolutism in the public mind and they want politicians to always and forever have the same public political opinion and NEVER COMPROMISE EVER and I’m just sitting here like fuck no you don’t want your side to do that because you know what happens when a committee has an obstructionist asshole who takes a hard no on absolutely everything they don’t think is perfect and who thinks “collaboration” means “everyone does it my way”? Do you know what everyone else on the committee does? Roll their eyes while Asshole is bloviating, let Asshole have their say, and then completely ignore Asshole’s point, even if it is a valid and legitimate one, unless someone else also decides to champion it because Asshole is not going to bend, Asshole is not going to contribute positively, and there is no point in trying to concede anything to Asshole because they are unwilling to concede anything in return because they think it’s their way or the highway and they either don’t know or don’t accept that their-way-or-the-highway is not how committees work. So what the rest of us do is accept that Asshole is going to be a hard no always and forever and concentrate on getting enough positive votes to over-rule Asshole in order to keep the thing moving. THAT’S what happens to your side and your POV when you demand your rep take a hard line always and forever and never bend: Everyone else on the committee figures out that you’re an obstructionist and marks you in the “not worth trying” column.
And it sounds callous because it is. But the committee only has so much time, we’ve got 20 other things to talk about that day as well and we only have an hour to devote to this thing so as much as we’d like to all hold hands and sing Kumbaya together, bending over backwards to satisfy a dedicated obstructionist is not something that gets anything accomplished – in fact, it plays into the obstructionist’s hands because sooner or later, they’re going to decide to be all, “This has taken so long obviously there is no common ground and we should drop it forever and give up,” when they’re the reason it’s been taking so long in the first place because they’re unwilling to even try to find common ground!
Quite frankly: We don’t have time to put up with a one-man obstructionist tantrum (“man” used intentionally because every obstructionist ass I’ve ever encountered has been a cishet white man who is personally offended by the fact, everyone else here also gets a vote and who thinks Gish Gallop and Ad Hominem are valid rhetorical strategies), and anyone who’s ever been involved in anything political for longer than about 6mo already knows for damn sure that if you do play along, sooner or later they’re going to use the delays caused by you playing along to try to delay and throw up road blocks even further – and people outside the committee will think they have a point because they don’t see the daily goings-on and know that everyone else has already found the common ground and we’re just trying for unanimity that will never happen.
Leaving aside the personality and power politics of the Obstructionist Ass and focusing on the practical get-shit-done side of things: “I don’t want this to pass, it’s a bad thing, I don’t think there’s a point to it, rawr rawr rawr rawr rawr rant rant rant rant rant blather blather blather blather blather maybe if I talk long enough over enough people they’ll give up on this” is not something anyone can work with. It is not constructive. It doesn’t contribute anything to the discussion. Even if your opponents want to compromise with you and cooperate, you’re not giving them anything that they can work with because when you rant for twenty minutes straight across thirty different topics, it’s impossible to figure out what’s actually important to you.
“I see that your goal here is [good thing], and I want to work for [good thing], but I have concerns about [bad thing] and [bad thing]. In the draft’s current form, I’d have to vote negative on it. If we remove/rephrase sections XX.XX through YY.YY, that would be something I could vote for.” (often followed by, “Okay, you don’t like my phrasing. What about we keep this part [that deals with my chief concern], because that addresses [reiteration of chief concern] and then the rest is the original phrasing? Would that be okay for you? I could live with that.”) is how shit gets done, and it’s how you don’t mark yourself out as an obstructionist asshole who will refuse to work for anything you didn’t think up yourself. Finally, it’s how, if you do hit a point where you have to take a hard line, you get other people to sit up and take notice. Cuz if you take a hard line on everything, people decide that’s just you’re personality and you’d take a hard line over whether that punctuation mark should be a comma or a semicolon (no really that is a thing our resident obstructionist took a hard line on). If you have a reputation for being reasonable and willing to collaborate and you take a hard line, it makes people think, “Maybe this is more important than I think, because So-and-so is usually willing to find a common ground. This must really matter to them – I should figure out why.”
Using a US political analogy: Republicans playing obstructionist doesn’t even make headlines anymore. Elizabeth Warren’s fillibuster got prime-time live news coverage internationally. Why? Republicans are That Guy. They’re the obstructionist ass everyone expects to be an obstructionist ass. Elizabeth Warren, on the other hand, has a reputation for cooperation and compromise. That she was the one taking a hard line made people sit up and take notice.
My point: I think the Left in Canada needs to learn to accept a degree of pragmatism in our leaders. Because in political entities – like governments, committees, etc, pragmatism gets shit done, and idealism does not. The conservatives in Canada have been better at left-wingers at being pragmatic for several decades, and we’re seeing that in a roll-back of worker’s protections, health care cuts, increasing attacks on religious freedom and voting rights, and so on and so forth.
And I could go onto a whole rant about what kind of obstructionist jackass idealism turns you into in committee work, but suffice to say: If you have ever encountered That Person who refuses to work constructively towards something in a group project, who wants to be the dictator and have everyone else be their minions and gets very fucking offended when they are reminded, yet again, that other people get a turn to speak, too, and that majority vote rules on the committee, you know what I’m talking about.
FYI: For clarity: You don’t compromise on the things that are dealbreakers – the “needs”.
But the wants? Fuck yes I compromise on those in committee if they get the needs done.
I need this standard to pass with A. B is nice to have. If it comes down to it, I will sacrifice some or all of B to get A.
This is how politics & negotiation work. You just make sure that for everything you concede, the other side concedes something too.
But some things legit are deal-breakers – and that’s when you take the hard line, and if people know you’re usually willing to compromise, they pay attention to your hard line a lot more than if you’re one of the blowhards who doesn’t know the meaning of the word “collaboration.”
Yep – and sorry for the rant. I just had a particularly irritating meeting last week with my committee that I’m apparently still more pissed off over than I thought I was.
(one of the things that is sure to hit my rage button is to metaphorically insist the Earth is flat when we know it’s round, objective facts say it’s round, you can get evidence easily that it’s round and oh hey as it happens we’re sitting in low Earth orbit right now looking at the round fucking earth as we orbit around it right at this very fucking moment as you’re insisting it’s flat. Like aaargh! Contrary evidence is literally sitting right in front of you and you’re insisting you’re right as if it’s not there at all! You are entitled to your own opinion but not your own facts and the facts are the Earth is fucking round – and the meeting last week was basically one hour of me insisting the Earth is fucking round and this is objective fact and no up for debate and our Resident Blowhard insisting the roundness of the Earth is up for interpretation. No, objective reality facts are not a thing I’m going to compromise on, sorry).
I am a non-feminine assigned-female person in STEM who is bi, trans and autistic from a region oft-referred to as “Canada’s Bible Belt, and most of my interests and hobbies are male-dominated. Self-restraint is both necessity and survival mechanism.
Of course the problem down here isn’t the Democrats being inflexible and unwilling to compromise, it’s the Republican right that’s raised obstruction to an ideological principle.
Tied I suspect to Reagan’s casting of government as the problem: Republicans run on needing to cut government because government can never do anything right. When they then break government by refusing compromises, that just proves their theory right. Voters continue to support them because government is obviously a failure and need to get out of the way.
Democrats can counter this by making government actually work for people, but given our system it’s very hard to do so without overwhelming majorities in the face of unyielding opposition. It’s a vicious circle.
Yes totally – in Canada, the left wing usually gets at least 60% of the vote, but because vote-splitting and a refusal to work together, the Conservatives had control for 10 years and the only reason they didn’t win again was because the voters chose strategic voting.
(see also why I have a big problem with FPTP – FPTP requires strategic voting if you want someone with non-awful opinions to get in because it favors the largest single minority as opposed to reflecting what a majority of voters want in a multi-party system like Canada’s)
But this is a big example of Canada’s politics being fundamentally different from USian. USian, the fight is less one of political strategy and more one of fighting voter suppression initiatives and mobilizing the Left.
In Canada, the Left is pretty mobile and engaged – but we’re deeply divided there are three or four (depending on whether you count the BQ) federal left-wing parties, which together get between 60-75% of the vote each election, but the Conservatives are the largest single minority, so they have a larger amount of control than they should do in the political discourse here. Up here, the issue is in getting the Left to work together for electoral reform so that the government which is assembled will resemble a lot more what people vote for.
Reading down to my comment, it now seems like I should reinforce that that was supposed to be some sort of dark humor and not making light of a shitty, shitty place to be.
And that look Billie has is the one of someone who realized the full extent of how much pain someone she loves was really in. It finally sunk in to her.
Goddamnit, every new comic I it here and think “Ive literally lived this situation” Getting to ‘I dont want to die’ is harder than anyone thinks. Willis, Thanks for writing this. Youve done right by a dude who was committed for a suicide attempt.
All of this has been a painfully and terrifyingly realistic look at depression. I mean, I’m glad David Willis managed to get it so spot-on- although I imagine that the research was unpleasant, to put it mildly. It’s kind of good to see the accurate representation- if, as I said, immensely painful.
I’m glad it exists and is being read. But fuck, reading it is kind of unpleasant.
This was not a moment I experienced when emotion started coming back but the intensity is something I definitely did as mentioned yesterday.
If Ruth’s recovery trajectory is anything like mine is, now that her brain knows how to do anxiety, it’ll be like it’s a toddler who just discovered you can make a noise by banging a spoon against a pot. By which I mean: THOCK THOCK THOCK THOCK THOCK repeat until it gets old to her brain (which is going to be looong after anxiety attacks are old for Ruth). Emotional regulation kind of went completely out the window for me for a good year ish after I started recovering (and even then, it was spotty for at least another year). What I’m saying is: She’s in for a bumpy ride. :\
Everyone is different. I started having suicidal ideation in my 30’s. I’m not anhedonic but I’ve never had an “I don’t want to die” moment. I’ve just managed to convince myself that it would be a bad idea to try. Too many ways it could go wrong, and at least one family member who would possibly follow. The pain and the impulse are like a window that suddenly opens for anything from minutes to weeks, then closes again. I don’t even know if there’s a word for that.
Mr Willis, is it at all possible to put a trigger warning on this comment? It unnerved me a little bit, and from the comments section, I’m not the only one. Thank you!
On the other hand, this was fantastic storytelling, and it really gets you *taps chest* right here, so bravo. Thank you for showing that the road to recovery doesn’t happen in 5 strips.
Her dad is an absent-to-the-point-of-negligence businessman with whom she has barely any direct contact and attempts to make up for it with money. Mom isn’t any better.
The look of panic in panel 4. I keep coming back to it. It grips me by the bones. I think because that amount of anxiety is familiar to me. Well done, and also owmyheart.
The past 4 pages remind me so much of earlier this year when I admitted myself to hospital after wanting to commit suicide…
-The unusual cheeriness that comes not from the drugs or the group therapy or the pudding, but from the separation from your problems, the quieting of that voice in your head as you are cut off from everything in your life that is making it go to shit. Because that’s what you want. You don’t want to die. You want everything making your life a living hell to stop, from the voice in your head to the daily responsibilities like your job your relationships or just struggling to eat and sleep. And that flimsy bubble you find yourself in while in that hospital, where everyone around you is there to just stop yourself from harming yourself, make sure you get through each day, and you get fed and you actually go to sleep and you fucking take care of yourself.
-The distrust in that cheeriness, in that happiness. You feel it now, but you know it’s going to go away. It always does. You can’t trust it. Those group therapy sessions aren’t helping. They can’t keep you at max dosage of your antidepressents forever. And you know, sooner or later, you’re gonna have to get back out there and you’re gonna be one shitty day, one spit in the face by life from being right back to what got you in the mess. You can’t lay in this hospital bed, having the nurses check in with you every half hour, having meals brought to you 3 times a day, watching a movie on your laptop or playing your 3DS forever. You’re gonna have to face that fucking monster that is your life eventually. And that terrifies you.
-And when that terror comes, when pieces of your life seep back into your little bubble you’re in, everything hits you like a fucking wave. All that anxiety, all that depression, what you were about to do, the fear you’re going to end up right back where you started, everything. And that true terror in panel 4, that is real. That is exactly how I felt when I had to deal with the abusive professor that put me in this spot again. When I had to deal with the abuse of my mother. When I had to deal with my uncertain future and my crippling debt and my lack of resources, I broke down to just this: I don’t want to die. i want this to go away. I want to be able to live my life. I don’t want the monsters that plague me to win. And I don’t want to slit my wrists to end it all. And I have no idea how I can do one without doing the other. And please someone just fucking help me. Just fucking make it all go away and don’t let me fucking die. Please…
Man this hits hard in the feels. I remember having an epiphany like this, it, but it was more internal. Sometimes my body ‘freezes'(I cannot move my body, and if it is moving it is twitching and shaking uncontrollably) and I have not been able to find a reason despite talking about it to many different doctors.
Anyway during one of my worst freezing episodes I started having trouble breathing, and apathetically thought that it would be better if I just lost the ability to breath and get everything over with. When I did lose the ability to breath I panicked and managed to move my body enough to get to the door connecting me to my brothers room. Having them come in somehow helped me get my breath under control.
Long story short, feeling panic at the thought of your death is a good reminder of the fact that you do want to live. It can give you the power to push on even if the situation around you do not feel like they are not improving.
Over the past few days I’ve been going “gee, I’m glad she’s doing better and I’m glad other people are able to relate to her but that’s really not my experience with recovery”
But oh boy! There’s my experience. I’ve been coming in an out of that for a while, and while it’s an improvement from my prior nonexistence it is fucking terrifying to realize how fucked up you’ve been and how close you’ve come to death, and to know that you may fall back there again. “Please don’t let me die” indeed.
bllllgghhlglglh ;___;
Been there, been there, BEEN THERE. Depression cuts you into little chunks of what used to be one mind, and none of the chunks realize they’re not talking to each other anymore. You feel tiny and alone, and something that isn’t /you/ is hauling you toward death, and you don’t know how to tell it to stop.
Back when I was about 15 I attempted to commit suicide (it was a cry for attention) and I don’t know if its the passage of time but seeing Ruth in this strip makes me feel like what I went through was absolutely nothing (in comparison to the hurt she’s feeling)
Its a strange feeling looking at this strip and then (trying) to remember the feelings I had at that time, the difference between me now and me then is the difference between night and day which means that I think I should be feeling empathy towards Ruth (and Billie) but I can’t seem to as its seems so…for lack of a better word foreign to me, sadness absolutely, hope definitely but not empathy
So once again a very good strip with no easy answers
The timing of this is so uncanny, because literally last night, as I was walking down the road in the snow, i had this SAME THOUGHT… and for once i meant it. I’ve spent the last twenty three hours since then, thinking to myself, for once i want to live. It’s disturbing how much Ruth and Billie remind me of me and my exwife (in their promoting the worst of each other) Except it was only in GETTING AWAY from her that I managed to have this revelation… Idk maybe i’m going too much into this just thought to point out the uncanniness.
I sincerely hope I’m never in a position I have to reassure someone like that. I’d probysay something like “well, just for the next 80 years or so, I can’t promise anything after that.”
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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 ⋅ 10h
Josh Gerstein @joshgerstein.bsky.social ⋅ 1d
Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com ⋅ 1d
Pavel
@spavel.bsky.social ⋅ 11d
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sometimes not wanting to die is more important than wanting to live.
As long as you’re alive, then there’s a chance that things will get better.
and a chance it will get worse, but not wanting to die…… fear of it for instance can help you stay alive. i dunno. I just know my low pain tolerance has helped keep me going.
If it gets bad, I offer this resource. It’s talked me off many a ledge in the past:
http://www.metanoia.org/suicide/
Also *hugs* freely offered.
to be honest lately i have been craving hugs, but online it is….. not the same even if the intention is good.
Curse you screen and physical distance!
They’re working on the peripherals for that.
just so long as your mom doesn’t make it to costly hanners.
*creeper time* where are you? Maybe one of us can organize hugs
lmao why do I feel like was fitting that the icon thing is Joyce, that Joyce would say something like that at one point
Now I am picturing a Hug-Exchange app as the next big thing in the gig economy.
It’s okay, maybe this gif will help.
As one who’s been there, being dead is boring. Someone really needs to fix the UI so that the buttons on the viewer are at least visible if not labeled. Seriously is “zoom in” and “zoom out” all that freaking hard to do? You had 13 billion years to get it right.
There’s also a chance things will get worse.
Yeah, but if you’re that far gone, then any reason to keep going is a good one, right?
It’s not so much about there being a chance of it getting better or worse as long as you’re alive, but that if you’re dead, there is definitely NO chance that things will improve.
Dum vita est, spas est – Where there’s life, there’s hope.
Don’t cry, Sarah Jane…
It’s the human POST screen when you start a computer. If that still works, everything else can be fixed.
I like people like you… at least based on this one comment, further judgement is reserved for basis on future comments depending on persistence of relevant memory.
im tired it took me way to long to realize that what i was thinking of was pots not post
Sad face
This whole thing has been depressing.
Good job! True Art Is Angsty, after all.
Ruth’s eyes grew to Joyecian levels in those first few panels.
Yeah, but they didn’t come with a smile.
I was initially thinking you meant as in the literature of James Joyce, but then…
:'[
same
…and THERE’S the feels!
and then tomorrow billie is told that visiting hour is over.
and then the mass production evas show up
And then Dorothy is mind-controlled by the Head Alien II.
And then the Soul Gems of all of Madoka’s friends become corrupted, and they all turn into witches.
And then Marine La Pen becomes President of France.
TOO MUCH FEELS!!!
No pressure Billie
I mean, my heart breaks for Ruth too, but it’s a hell of a thing to put on Billie.
Yes.
It’s a hell of a pressure to put on someone who are themselves emotionally healthy.
So how much pressure would Billie feel? Probably enough to either get crushed, or turn into a diamond.
Vote Billie for “Crazy Diamond”. For all of me you can skip the poet, piper, and prism, and go straight to binging the sparkle and shine back to Ruth’s eyes.
*plays David Bowie’s “Never Let Me Down” on the hacked Muzak*
*sneaks in to cue up “Never Gonna Give You Up”.
*applauds* Roll that Rick!
Playing “Shine on Brightly,” by Procol Harum.
This…this hit really close to home. I remember thinking the same thing as Ruth and looking about as scared
I had this moment earlier this week!
Veni veni venias~
… ne me mori facias!
Semper ubi sub ubi!
SEPHIROTH!
Billie thinks Ruth is saying that she doesn’t want to die because of the depression, it’s actually because Mary is standing in front of her with a uzi.
I think it’s because they had an unspoken suicide pact; they were holding on because what Mary had done needed to be addressed. But now that there’s no reason for spite here, Ruth is scared, and depressed, and unsure of help, so her brain made a logical, if irrational, jump to ‘we completed the mission, now we’re going to go through with it oh god I didn’t think we would do it’.
This is how it sometimes ends up working when you’ve been battling depression for awhile while mired in the bottom of that deep dark hole. You can feel numb for years and so it can be a genuine shock to cry, to want to live, to genuinely start imagining a future and yourself in it rather than just trying to force yourself through each and every day.
So, to see Ruth at that step, clawing out of that hole and genuinely, for the first time in this entire comic, not want to die. That means something. That means a lot. I’m so happy for this asshole.
Ruth has replaced her desire for a suicide pact with Billie for a desire for Billie to not let her die. That’s a definite improvement.
Yes! “I don’t want to die” is much better than “someday, when people have forgotten about me, I’ll slip away quietly”!!!!!
Way better!
Yup. Sadness/crying are actually not specifiers of depression or measures of its severity because they occur equally in people that are or are not depressed. Anhedonia, the inability to feel joy, is a diagnostic symptom.
That’s what my textbook says, anyway. Personally I felt my emotions weathering away until I felt numb most of the time. But that’s the trouble with brain diseases, they’re as complex as people’s brains.
FWIW, I’ve experienced all of this, except the recovery part. I’ll be going to the doctor in a couple weeks, and hopefully I won’t ‘neglect’ to mention my depression again.
(That would be the anxiety kicking in; I have both, and talking to authority figures flares my anxiety to the point I can’t think or remember things. 
)
Good luck!
If you’re worried you might forget, maybe writing a reminder on your hand before going will help?
XD It’ll be on paper this time. ^^; I actually took a list of “what hurts” and “what doesn’t work right” with me last time, but I put my anxiety and depression at the bottom of the list, and I realized after I got home my doctor might have thought it was caused by everything else, which is why he didn’t ask, and of course, I forgot. ^^; A physical therapist he had me see was able to resolve my chronic neck/back pain, and I’ll be able to tell him the omeprazole really didn’t seem to do shit for the gastro issues, so it’ll be basically the only thing left on the list. ^^;
That’s good! I hope it goes well.
man–i’m sorry, dude.
at the risk of throwing unsolicited advice at you: is it possible
that sending them an email or note or leaving a voicemail might
circumvent your anxiety?
I thought I might have bipolar when I was a teen, because I utterly loathed myself and didn’t want to be alive to the extent that it felt more like I was.actively choosing not to top myself at any given moment rather than actually living – but I still had feels. And the happy times kinda felt more like I was bungee jumping and on a massive adrenaline kick than something balanced, sustainable, reliable…
When I was older I decided I had ‘just” been suffering from a form of learned helplessness/self-hatred rather than chemical depression. Then after a hellish year when my SAD kicked up a notch from ‘whaddaya mean, people don’t hibernate?’ to ‘why exactly am I still alive? It would be so EASY to just do something about that…’ I worked out that, nah, I still feel things when I’m depressed – might not process it particularly well and the intrusive thoughts might try to twist everything up and make good things bad – but I don’t do numb. Back then I just literally didn’t know how to be happy and that’s why it felt so unstable. (Plus if the happy is caused by being with friends doing something nice, but you cannot see a single likeable thing about yourself, it’s hard not to think that your friends are only being your friends coz if they tell you to go away and leave them alone and you kill yourself they would feel bad; it makes it hard to believe those positive feelings are actually founded on something real, trustworthy, etc. Pretty certain being able to point at being happy and explain why this makes you a pathetic fool and a burden to people you care about is kinda indicative of deep-seated depression – although this is not a diagnostic criteria!)
Also, now I know intrusive thoughts are a real, actual thing and that makes it a lot easier to knock them down. When you’ve never heard of them and have them constantly hounding, jeering, mocking and twisting things, when they know your arguments before they’re fully formed… it’s not good.
I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to pin down what it was that I had. I saw this and this which matched that, but I know that medical student’s disease is a real thing, so could I really trust my analysis, but who else has any perspective on my life, on and on and on. I had a hundred imaginary conversations with a hundred imaginary psychiatrists, and it was one big neurotic circlejerk that went nowhere.
In the end I had a friend that told me wanting to die doesn’t occur to healthy people, it only occurs if you are very ill. And ill people should see the doctor. And I did, and things are better.
shit, dude. that sucks.
i really hope things are better now–but, in case they aren’t:
http://psychcentral.com/lib/suicide-helpline-suicide-resources/
take care of yourself–please.
Interestingly, they’ve found that painkillers (especially strong ones) tend to numb emotional responses as well as physical ones.
Add that in when you consider that long-term pain tends to cause depression (ya think?), and it causing depression is even less of a surprise.
Yep. There is large overlap in the brain regions associated with painkillers, emotional pain and physical pain. So when someone says something hurts emotionally, they’re not just being a wuss- neurology has discovered its pretty similar to more traditional pain.
That is a terror I am familiar with. It is, perversely, a good sign.
Well said.
(And shown.)
Not wanting to die is progress!
Here, just take the heart out of my chest. I don’t need it anymore, it’s in pieces and I don’t know how to glue it back together.
The feels ;_;
This.
Stop it, Willis.
Stop.
no, this is good. Being afraid of dying means she’s not actively suicidal now. This is good news. It displays a desire to live
This.
It’s hard to explain for those who haven’t been that deep in the hole, but this is actually very likely a really really good sign that she’s finally starting to unlock her emotions and slow her brain down enough to think again and that’s a critical first step towards genuinely getting better rather than just surviving.
No I get you and totally agree, this one just got to me more than any in a long time
Yeah, that’s totally understandable.
By the way, did you take your nickname from Kingdom Hearts’ Riku. Or somewhere else? Is it actually your real name and I’m too bloody ignorant to know this?
It was Kingdom Hearts inspired, I used to use darkriku666 or something edgey like that back in middle school though for some reason when I started commenting on shortpacked I ended up just going for Riku instead of literally any other name I’d be using now as an adult
Mmmmm, Kingdom Hearts….*drools*
I wouldn’t say I”ve been down that hole, but I’ve always credited my fear of even thinking about my death or injury with keeping away self-harming thoughts when I was at my worst
Absolutely.
I’ve seen (and felt) that even those that are suicidal do want to live, but the pain is so great that they’ll do anything to stop it.
not always. likely but not always…..
I’m glad she got there faster than I did at her age. The only way I figured out that I didn’t actually want to die was by trying to kill myself.
Sometime one day at a time is too much.
Sometimes it’s one breath at a time, one moment at a time.
Enough moments add up to a lifetime.
Been there. You nailed it.
-“BB”-
This. Fuck yes. This.
The Now is just the space between the last Moment and the next one. Without the Now, there is no next Moment.
*Cough*
Somewhere at a truck stop outside Bloomington, a lone driver broods over a coffee with a thousand yard stare.
“You know,” he says to nobody in particular, “I’ve got this funny feeling I shouldn’t be doing this job anymore.”
What’s next, the British Ninjas forming a union and going home?
Huh, in retrospect, it was never clear to me what they were fleeing in the Walkyverse. Brexit?
aw fuck
this hurts but in a not horrible way.
thats possible?
For my own part, I would say it is possible. We humanoids sometimes seek out that kind of thing in our choices of entertainment. We also like to be safely scared through horror movies or roller coasters.
Hell, the simplest retort would probably just be the existence of “masochism,” but that’s maybe a little bit, just a tad, different…
r u sure
Christ, dude :/
Whoa… What a powerful comic. I was planning to make a chock-full-of-jokes promo to the new podcast episode that Cerberus and I have made, but joking around feels a bit wrong now…
I still think you might want to listen to our podcast, though, if you like this comic in general. Here it is: https://skepticalclown.wordpress.com/2016/11/20/poa-episode-2-redemption-for-joyce-and-hank/
It’s also now on iTunes, Stitcher, and TuneIn as well, so you can also subscribe through those, though most of the discussion has been happening on the good Emperor’s blog.
Awesome! Thanks for making this!
Should perhaps warn you that in this episode, we do reference a lot of comics that will also hit you right in the feels.
FUCKING CHRIST THAT DEFINITELY HAPPENED
And there’s a kick to the gut that I wasn’t expecting. But at the same time, it’s a kick to feels in a good way. And the shock on Billie’s face in the final panel really helps to hammer the feels home.
As sad as the end bit is, I’m delighted to see the much bigger range of emotion Ruth’s been showing in these last three strips.
She’s beyond her previous sort-of flat affect, which is great.
It’s great that she’s got the will to live back, but this is exactly what I say when I have one of my death and/or change-related panic attacks and it is really freaky.
Me too! Which does speak to the comic’s accuracy but also makes it weird to read.
it’s a really inconvenient trigger. it used to happen any time i thought about anything beyond high school.
im not crying you’re crying
I’ve been in Billie’s shoes. It’s also a pretty big shitbucket.
Oh no. Billy think’s Ruth is now not broken enough to be safely around her. i don’t know what to think here. On the one hand, they are an unhealthy codependent relationship. On the other hand, the way Billy might try to aggressively push Ruth away “for her own good” is not going to help either of them.
I take comfort in the assurance that no one dies in this comic is all I”m saying
this comic is written by david willis
that is all
but he said that no one dies, so at least we know that Billy will not successfully kill herself.
As an animated Disney movie once put it – “You’d be surprised what you can live through.” also “There are things so much worse than death.”
I think that’s actually super likely. After all, if Ruth is healthy, in her mind, she can be poisoned by her touch, so best for her to run away to “protect” Ruth’s recovery, especially since Ruth “doesn’t need her anymore” as evidenced in her mind by Ruth getting support from sources that are not just her.
And it’s why I’m glad to remember that Billie also has mandatory therapy scheduled in her near future.
oh thank god. Though I’m a generally conflict-averse person and even i get passive-agressive with my therapists when they just don’t seem to get it and ignore their suggestions. I imagine someone like Billy would do a lot of that
MAYBE she’s going to try to shape up more to be able to carry out the request in this comic? Billy’s done a lot of atypical things for Ruth before.
Thank you. The world really does need optimists. I hope you’re right.
I could see that. I feel that a big part of Billie’s personality (or at least her issues) is that she tends to measure her self-worth in what she can do for other people (or at least that’s something I struggle with and why I relate pretty strongly to Billie sometimes. She may see protecting/taking care of Ruth as the best quality she possesses.
Hmmm….
My (equally subjective, if not even more so) interpretation is that Ruth finally grabs for Billie’s help here; quite literally too. Billie’s still a bit in shock over watching Ruth display raw emotions again, but the way Ruth is pleading her, grabbing her, looking her in the eyes… To me, this says “I need you I need you I need you!”.
I guess the question is… Does Billie see it this way? She might, or she might see it your way. And if she sees it your way, then yes, she might run away, so to speak.
If she sees it my way… Well, after running on a stream of perpetual anger for a few hours, she decided to use that anger to something constructive.
And getting one over on Mary might have given her some of that old feeling that she can actually be helpful to people, not just being poison. If she has gained* some self-respect in the process, she might just decide to try and help Ruth properly now. Not just keeping the arterial wound from bleeding, but actually help to close the wound.
*at first I wrote “regained”, but now that I think about it, it’s unlikely that she ever had much real self-respect. At most, she had a self-esteem that was tied into her thinking she was something that she was not.
Well then. That’s….progress. Definitely progress.
Progress is supposed to feel like a punch in the chest, right?
no pain no gain is a typical phrase.
if it didn’t, why would it be so scary?
Only Willis’ will stays the truck at bay.
I’m actually really uncomfortable now. I’m worried that seeing Ruth basically accidentally having the exact same type of panic attack (down to the same words) is going to give me a panic attack, since they are triggered by thinking about my own death or other major scary changes
*appropriate gestures of support* You’re going to be okay.
*hugs you back*
One day at a time, just pretending that each day I spend happy and productive is a single kick to Steve Bannon’s shrivelled little balls while shouting “L’Chaim”!
That’s what I’ve been using too! The thought that every day me and my kids are alive and present in the world and not dying like they want is a fact that is pissing off a neo-nazi somewhere into apoplexy.
thanks. I copied it from you guys. Gay people on Tumblr were saying they were going to live and thrive to spite Mike Pence and when I started getting scared of Bannon and sad, I decided to do that with him.
Spite is powerful. If our power is stolen, we can weaponize it as we need to stay alive.
Like Varys said, sometimes when someone wants you dead, the best thing you can do is live out of SPITE.
Speaking of, me and the wife is watching season five of GoT these days.
And without actually spoiling anything, I think it’s safe to say that Varys and Tyrion should have their own spin-off sitcom show.
“Spider and Imp, the lovable duo that kills all of Westeros… with laughter!”
I want that so much.
Wait, are you saying they aren’t already in a sitcom?
Dana: They are, but the real show is only about three to five minutes long every episode; and in between there is a lot of stuff that is pretty much irrelevant to the wacky adventures of Spider and Imp!
Do you have someone to help you? I really hope you have. I know that whatever I say here, it couldn’t possibly be enough.
no, but I’m good. I’ve been taught a variety of coping methods over the years and i just got back on a good medication schedule. I’m starting to get over just the shock of the words and reminding myself they are common words.
That’s good.
And I’ll gladly join you in pretending to kick Bannon in the balls, by the way; if you’ll let me.
kick whoever you want, but why not go for Trump? I’m going for Bannon specifically because I’m Jewish and he’s a fucking Nazi who would just love to see me scared and sad. Well fuck him
Everyone sane is already kicking Trump; I like to go with those that don’t get kicked enough because he grabs all the kicking attention.
You could always go with Mike Fuckabee, an Islamophobe and racist that Trump wants to serve as ambassador to Israel.
So many people to kick, so little time…
It’s starting to feel like a blessing when I don’t recognize the names of his proposed staff. Every time I do i groan in anguish.
I mean, I love my homeland, but god almighty he’s going to encourage the hardliners and the ultra-orthadox.
Unfortunately, when you don’t recognize them, that just means you need to do a little research before groaning in anguish.
@thejeff …sigh, i know
That reminds me of a joke from back when Canada had a truly terrible and hated Prime Minister (Brian Mulroney, who was the one who brought in NAFTA, and who also at one point after he left actually tried to sue the country for defamation or slander or something, ha ha. Dick.).
Adapted for the current situation:
Q: If Trump and [Trump crony of choice] are standing on top of a cliff, who do you push off first, and why?
A: [Crony]; because business before pleasure.
Here’s another one, again, adapted from the Mulroney/Clinton era:
Q: What’s eighteen inches long and hangs between Trump’s legs?
A: [Crony]’s tie.
Heh, the Devil cannot abide mockery. Let’s see if we can generate some angry 3 am tweets! XD
Take care of yourself. Take a break if you need it. DoA will still be here when you’re ready.
(I’m going to try to be careful with my wording here. I hope I don’t accidentally trigger you.)
If you feel like you need to take a break from the comments section for this strip, it’s fine. Taking care of yourself is important, and we won’t judge you. If you have any coping strategies that help you avoid or get through your panic attacks go ahead and use them if you’re worried about what you’ve already seen.
*hugs* and other comforting thoughts if you want them
My initial reaction was nothing but tears, and that really hasn’t changed in the last five minutes I’ve been staring at this strip.
What has changed is the reason for those tears.
At first, this is so sad. Like, holy shit, I didn’t cry at the end of Marley and Me (is that still a worthwhile standard?) but this has me in tears.
After continuing to look at it, those tears turned into tears of joy. Ruth doesn’t want to die, and that’s a massive step in the right direction.
Oof. Relatable feels all ’round today.
And we have progress! Nothing quite like looking back on something and realizing how BAD it was or how CLOSE you got to doing something to scare the bejeezus out of yourself. I’ve been there.
I’m guessing this is the kind of storyline you get when you have a really long time to think about what you wish you did instead of killing Ruth that one time.
Willis has grown up a lot from what I’ve heard. I’ve been scared to read anything before Shortpacked! though
It’s… not nearly as… evolved in places.
i know, but i read a little bit of early Roomies!, and it’s better than that. Shortpacked! is about as progressive as mainstream fare, while Dumbing of Age is just leagues above it
This, by the way, is probably the absolutely most diplomatic we will ever see Cerberus.
It’s extra fun to go back and read them in the archives, where Willis put in his own more recent comments, which are mainly cringing at his former self.
well, it taught me that the fundies in his comics are not exaggerated. on the other hand, it also taught me they are not irredeemable (Willis is case in point)
Roomies may be hot garbage (even though I have a soft spot for the Danny/Billie stuff), but It’s Walky! is a masterpiece.
So, now that Ruth’s beaten me up and taken my emotional lunch money for the evening…..
Hey guys~ We’re making a DoA discord! TAKE THIS LINK. https://discord.gg/9CBA8wb
I signed up, but I’m being shy.
Yeah Ruth, I’ve been there. Christ, I show up at some depressing moments…
So, Cerberus, if you don’t mind answering a question sure to provoke a long ass analytical response, can I ask how you’d handle these kids (at least the ones on the cast page) if you were there teacher?
Not at the question, but because I’m actually dealing with that right now. Two of my trans kids attempted suicide this month and three others are holding on to the edge with their teeth and a whole bunch of my other kids are scared and having trouble wanting to hold on to the future after the election.
So, I’ve been doing a lot of triage on a lot of kids who really struggle with wanting not to die and that’s so far looked like passing along a lot of suicide resources, putting up suicide hotline information on my board as a permanent fixture, emphasizing survival as resistance and that it’s okay to just focus on self-care.
I’ve also been increasing my check-ins with students and increasing the amount of time I’m visibly available for drop-ins as well as working closely with social area staff to clamp down much stronger on bullying than they have been in the last few months and being more present in those locations to come down strong on kids thinking it funny to “tease” the suicidal kids and mock their traumas and pain.
On top of that, I’ve genuinely assigned self-care work for homework, especially on classes right before a weekend and have increased the number of labs that are focused more on fun than unit relevance, though not so much it interferes with class progression and asking individual students what they feel they can handle/want during this period of recovery.
I’ve also been taking a lot of employment risks countering our head of school’s shitty handling of a sexual assault on campus as the psychological fallout of that in terms of students’ feelings of safety and ability to fight depression has been immense and the students in crisis desperately need to see someone fighting on their behalf (in my mind at least, having someone fight for a person sends a message to that person that their feelings and well-being are valuable and worth preserving).
I also work to create safe spaces for marginalized students, including say… bi girls with mental health issues, so they have a place they can go off to and see their existence celebrated and valued in a way it isn’t most places and thus not letting the real-world Marys of the world (including our new Vice President-elect) get them down.
And I say things very like Billie in the first and fourth panels. That, yeah, things suck, but they won’t always suck. That friends of mine have been in pits like theirs and made it out. That the pit isn’t always going to be pitch black and covered in spikes. That I will fight for them with my dying breath. That they matter. That I want them to believe that.
And then I go home and hope… that the next day includes the same number of them.
Oh geez, I’m sorry if the question brought up bad feelings at work. I hope your students continue to improve and that they get through this okay. At least they have a wonderful teacher.
It’s okay, it didn’t.
It’s just the situation that exists (I’m “lucky” in that I have a wealth of terrible life experiences and close loved ones with terrible life experiences to draw on for what to do in these sorts of situations to help, because I can draw on real life experience for what tends to work, what tends to not work).
And mostly, the most frustrating bit right now is my head of school is trying to do some penny-ante retaliatory shit to manufacture a cause to fire me over as if I don’t have a paper trail as long as my arm on all the ways he failed to properly handle a sexual assault incident and other harassment issues on campus and as if I’m an idiot who hasn’t had to deal with hostile (hopefully short-lived, because he doesn’t realize it yet, but several other teachers have actually filed title ix complaints against him for hostile work conditions) administrators trying to find a reason to get rid of the meddlesome tr**y.
Seriously, he can’t get replaced soon enough. Literally every one of his employees (and several of the parents) has turned on him over this whole shitstorm and thinks he handled it poorly and has offered to support me if he does decide to push his luck and try and fire me.
Okay, good, just had to make sure.
Yikes! What an asshole. This fuck can’t get replaced soon enough. What’s the over under on that happening hopefully quickly?
According to the teachers suing him right now, fairly good, so it’s just a waiting game for now. I think the reason he’s flailing at me is that he’s becoming aware of the lawsuits (I think, I’m not entirely sure what it’s called when you’ve got a Title IX case on someone) and foolishly thinks I’m behind them because I’ve been openly critical of his handling of the situation.
Which, I’m not sure how he thinks transparent bullying and retaliation attacks would make a lawsuit less likely to succeed if I was to be behind them, but then I’m not nearly so white and male to earn a six-figure salary being a complete fucking idiot.
Okay, glad to hear he’s gonna be out on his ass hopefully sooner rather than later. Fuck him.
Iiiiiiii would think that would just open him up to further lawsuits/possible criminal charges, but what the heck do I know?
That’s pretty much my viewpoint, so my current strategy is to hold firm on defending my students and calling out the behavior he did to endanger students’ safety and refusing to be intimidated into silence, offering him the ropes out of this mess publicly and in writing, countering his little schemes in writing, forwarding myself all copies of damning documents, rebooting my old methods of surviving discrimination by being so flawless they can’t find anything to “gotcha” me on, and continuing to build allies through the company and let them know what is happening so he can’t operate in the shadows.
Basically, make myself too much of a nuisance for him to take out before he is taken out or “encouraged to retire”. Oh, and also making sure students know what I’m doing, at least on the broad level, so they and more importantly their parents have a good idea of what happened to the beloved teacher who fought for their kids if he actually does decide to continue trying to play hardball.
In short, since I’ve lost my fear after the election, I think I’ve become somewhat terrifying.
I can definitely drink to that!
Good luck, Cerberus. Raise some hell.
Sounds like you’ve got all your bases covered, and hopefully he has a quick route out of his job. School boards don’t tend to be happy when admins open them up to lawsuits.
Not that I would doubt you, but it feels good to hear you’re doing so much to have your bases covered.
Best of luck to you and all those under your wing.
Good luck and best wishes plus prayers to a non-assholish brown hippie God.
Oof.
It is both inspiring what you do for those kids, and terrifying that it was ever necessary.
It’s weird.
Doing this stuff has so long been my normal that I don’t think I ever really appreciate that it isn’t most people’s normal. It’s like, what? Most people’s typical weekend isn’t babysitting a friend so they don’t kill themselves or helping a mentee fight their organization to get a sexual assault or hate crime taken seriously?
I dunno, as I said, it’s weird.
Some people complain that DoA is unrealistically over the top.
Cerberus sometimes feels that DoA is unrealistically understated.
I mean, sometimes there’s whole hours in the comic that occur without a crisis. Totes unrealistic.
Cerberus, if you’re still checking this page – is there anything someone in the California Bay Area can do to help your kids, other than donating to Southern Poverty Law Center or something similarly useful-but-generic? Please email me at cphoenix at gmail if there’s a way I can help.
Well, if you’re trans, we desperately need more folks for the Trans Lifeline. Additionally, organizations like the API Wellness Center, the Transgender Law Center (who may end up helping me if my head of school is stupid enough to push this issue), Lyon-Martin Health Services, and the Pacific Center for Human Growth (they have a bunch of queer youth and nonbinary trans youth services I direct my kids to) could always use donations to keep trucking.
More materially specific to my kids… I’ll have to think on that one a bit more, but I’ll definitely try and reach out after I’ve mused on this one for a bit.
Cerberus, bless you.
<3 for all the work that you do. Thank you!
Honestly Cerberus, I’d say you’re a Saint and that those kids of yours are lucky to have you as a teacher and guide. Also, I normally don’t like wishing ill on others but in this case I’m making one of my frequently increasing exceptions, here’s hoping that admin prick gets brought down hard. To hell with the bastard.
Cerberus, I am so, so, so deeply grateful that you’re in this world and doing such fearsome good. Thank you, just because, and all appropriate gestures of support and celebration because, damn, every minute you do this is a triumph over all those shallow needy greedy bigots looking to do harm. Thank you.
Thank you for standing up for and helping your students. I hope you can get tenure someday. Faculty directory description: [teaching subject matter] and literally fucking saving students’ lives.
Cerberus, if I may ask, are you out at all to your students? I’m asking as a queer, non-binary student teacher.
I am indeed out to my students and this head of school even made me do a public email to all the teachers stating I was trans when I first came out to work so I’m like ultra mega extreme out. It’s always something that feels important to me as trans and queer youth often need to see themselves reflected in the teacher body to feel safer coming out and queer youth also need to know about the teacher who will guarantee have their back.
But it was a hard thing to fight for and I’ve gotten discriminated out of jobs in the past for wanting to be out and I’ve had to recloset myself to survive because people have a passive resistance to the idea of a trans teacher, seeing it as somehow unseemly.
But I can say that at least for me, taking the risk and prioritizing being out was worth it to me and not having to hide who I am everyday when I go to work is critically important to my mental health. But yeah, I wouldn’t judge you at all if you looked at the risks and decided differently.
Hnngh. Really, ehm… really hitting close to home there, Willis. Haha. hoo. hrm.
Um, Billie, I feel the feels and all, but I think I still need to point out that, for all that it may have worked for you in the other universe, punching Mary in the face and counter-blackmailing her probably does not actually qualify as an actual “fix”.
Nonsense, blackmail solves all problems… all problems caused by a lack of blackmail, that is.
Are you kidding? Mary can do absolutely nothing without being brought down just as quickly, and it really isn’t in Mary’s character to let that happen.
While it may not have been the most… temperate response, I’d say that punching Mary in the face and counter-blackmailing her fixed it all up pretty well.
No, seriously. Billie may have temporarily stymied Mary (and I’m not even sure about that; if “knowing what’s good for her” were in Mary’s skillset, she wouldn’t have pushed Billie to the point that she got punched in the face in the first place), but Mary isn’t at all the sort to stop scheming just because one of her schemes has been foiled.
And Billie’s done nothing to repair the damage Mary has already caused. She hasn’t “fixed everything“, she’s applied a leaky temporary patch.
I don’t blame her for wanting to reassure Ruth that she’s got everything under control, but I’m concerned that she may actually believe that. Stupid overconfidence is in-character. <- (I was going to link a strip there, but it’s one of the ones where the bongo filter breaks the URL.)
Once she gets over the shock of learning the entire floor was against her and eating from the palm of her hand as she thought, Mary will certainly start figuring out how to regain the upper hand.
But for the moment, she’s toothless, especially with respect to Ruth. There’s going to be trouble when she figures out Becky is still around, but that’s a tomorrow problem.
Right now is huggin’ time.
It will do for now. It’ll take months to prep the rocket to launch Mary into space.
Pretty sure that Ruttech has a secret emergency rocket ready for such an occasion.
If not, I’m sure arrangements can be made with a quick phone call from the owner’s daughter.
And remember, almost all of the extensive prep work is generally to make sure the rocket will be as safe as it could possibly be for the trip. Pretty sure we can live with a 99% safe rocket ready in a week, instead of a 99.999% safe rocket ready in three months, right?
Let’s not get TOO far – even if Carla were cool with the chance of Mary dying, I doubt Ruttech wants to give her parents or church the chance to sue them out the nose.
…Why do you always have to take out the fun out of cold, swift, and absolutely ridiculous revenge fantasies against imaginary web comic characters?
Only joy I am is joy killing b*tch.
IDGI. Why would anyone looking for Mary even think she had the remotest connection with the fluffy cloud of tiny bits of steel (mostly) floating down just off the Eastern Seaboard?
A) I doubt Ruttech wants to take chances.
B) Carla ain’t infallible – someone somewhere she probably has something that will tie her to it
C) Carla’s not a killer. Hell, she isn’t even violent. She vocally objected to RESTRAINING Amazi-Girl (who had already professed to being a violent stalker) when she thought Sal was going to hit her.
It’s a good fix for now. Permanent solutions can wait until everyone has recovered a little.
I mean, that’s kinda reductionist. She did ensure Mary’s credibility was tarnished and her reputation in irreparable infamy, plus now there’s a solid group of people willing and able to corroborate her story should something come up. Most of Ruth’s scandals are already out in the open anyway, so Mary’s more or less out of any plausible dirt on her anyway. Billie isn’t in a position to ensure Ruth doesn’t get fired at this point. And, I mean, there are witnesses to her punching Mary, and given the faculty we’ve seen so far I’d think they’d be willing to listen.
So, I mean, there’s some strings left hanging, and ultimately the final decision is up to administration. But, Billie did effectively nullify the Mary problem, which was the Big Stink I think in this issue.
Damn it Willis, what are you doing to my hearrrrrrrrrrrrrrrttttttt!!! :'(
Using a sledgehammer and smashing it into tiny little insignificant pieces.
Comic Reactions:
Panel 1: Goddamnitt Willis, stop using Billie to subtweet my general response to most of my students this last week (minus the hugs)! >:(
Panel 2: This is so genuinely sweet. Billie here, telling her she fixed everything, that Ruth doesn’t have to be afraid, that she’s here supporting her, that she took care of the blackmailing piece of shit that put her in here…
It’s a line that would be seen in an action movie when the steely voiced protagonist visits the hospital bed of the disposable love interest or plucky sidekick.
And that emphasis on “for you” strikes home. She really would talk to an entire hall and cut off the angles of a harasser just to make a strong statement to her girlfriend. And it’s sweet, but it’s also worrying, because we know that Billie is co-dependent and is hurting about not being the thing that single-handedly saved Ruth. And I just feel so bad for her that she can’t see all the good she’s already doing for her girlfriend and how this is all part of a very necessary and timely recovery*.
*Not least of all because part of her might not be wanting this to be the right course of action, because then it means (in her head at least) that Carla’s extremely dangerous and reckless stunt may have actually been the relatively best call after all.
Panels 3-5: I’ve had two major moments like this.
One was after I finally fought my way into having access to hormones and therapy and after finally getting in, filling out the forms on my depression (and hitting the top bracket for most), and receiving my first anti-depressant (which was the literal worst, my current one is much better). Just having taken that step… it was powerful, it felt like I had a tomorrow. Not a long tomorrow, but a day or two beyond what I could focus on before and I wept like a little baby because I finally for a moment started to feel what it was like to not want to die for a second.
That feeling luckily came back more and more as I got on anti-depressants that worked and my hormones started making my body feel less painful to regard.
The second was relatively recently, less than a year ago, after years of shit. I was with my enbyfriend and I started fantasizing about a future. About a real and far off future I wanted to see, that I could envision myself having instead of just focusing on day to day survival.
So I identify with Ruth, yeah, but I also see this as an amazing sign that that smile isn’t a warning of an upcoming attempt. That she really is actually starting to recover and it’s going to be on Billie to see if she can adapt to a relationship that is actually healthy or if the toxicity and abuse was what she thought she deserved.
All of this.
All the hugs.
plus more hugs.
thank you for all you give, to us and others.
+1 hug.
NOT HUGS ENOUGH
NEVER ENOUGH HUGS
Darn the emotions got into my heart and out of my eyes.
Alright… now they’re my favourite couple from this comic.
Ruth’s moment of clarity is exactly how i react after months of stress. Not those words, but a breakdown of my defences to allow for hugs while i let loose all of the thoughts i have at that exact moment. Sometimes with the added repetition of the same phrase. Always while crying.
This comic hit home is what I’m saying.
Hrm… I wonder if Ruth has a terminal diagnosis that no one knows about which was the real reason for her depression and the distance she tried to keep between herself and others…
No.
Unless this is secretly an episode of House, I sincerely doubt it.
And if it is an episode of House, we must keep him away from Carla at all costs, lest he try and “cure” her asexuality.
I heard about that episode. Christ that’s awful
Also possibly Dina and Malaya.
Actually, no, introduce him to Malaya and Carla, they will unleash an unholy terror on his sorry ass nothing else can hope to match.
Also, Malaya will shit on his car.
I feel like House would actually get along very well with both Dina and Malaya
Right up until he thinks they might be ace and tries to ‘cure’ them anyways. At which point Malaya goes from getting along to ‘I just met you and you already deserve a swift punch in the face’.
I’d like to think that if that show were on today, that episode would have gone differently, but as it is, at least he tends not to get all huffy when somebody gets sick of his shit and hits him.
Ah, but will he be huffy when she shits on his car, though?
Iiiiiii hit the wrong reply button. Whoops.
I’m happy that I don’t remember that episode, saddened that it existed.
damn this makes me want to cry, I battle with depression so I know how hard it is and well plenty of others probably know what Ruth is going through as well.
At… at least her emotions are coming back online?
Apparently there was a backlog of feels, and they’re all coming out at once.
Oh my god *melts*
Dina: I am glad we have established a common goal.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/04-it-all-returns/message/
I hope Billie and Becky end up being friends eventually. Billie’s gonna need all the morale support she can get if she’s gonna be there for Ruth
Wow, this hit hard. My fear of death is the only thing that has prevented me from killing myself over the years. And I have quite literally repeated that phrase just like that more times then I would like to count.
*appropriate gestures of support*, as much as a complete stranger can give that to you over the internet…
I know that feeling. Every time I thought about ending my life, I always got afraid of the host of horrible places I would go on the other side, or even worse that there wouldn’t be ANYTHING. I’d just be gone; poof, kaput. And that fear gave way to resolve: I’m not dying pathetic and alone.
Yeah the idea of just simple non-existence terrifies me…and while it sucks (And I tend to have panic attacks over it at least once a week it seems) I am sorta happy I have that fear as I would be long dead if I didn’t.
Hey, man. Just wanted to say–I’m sorry you’re feeling like this, and I hope things get better soon.
I hope you never need any of these resources–but just in case:
http://www.crisischat.org/
http://www.crisistextline.org/
http://www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org/GetHelp/LifelineChat.aspx
https://www.imalive.org/
1-800-273-TALK (8255)
http://www.samaritans.org/
hey. i know i’m just some internet rando, but: i hope you’re in a happier place now.
take care of yourself–please.
Billie, Becky, Walky and Bagge: “GLAD YOU ARE ABLE TO FEEL SOMETHING AND THAT YOU HAVE MANAGED TO LIFT YOURSELF SO MUCH THAT YOU ARE ABLE SCRAPE TOGETHER AN OUNCE OF BASIC SURVIVAL INSTINCT. WE DON’T WANT YOU TO DIE EITHER, NOW EXCUSE US AS WE ARE FREAKING THE FUDGE OUT!!”
Then they all run around the room like headless chickens until they run into each other and knock each other out.
*has End of Evangelion flashbacks*
Brrrrrr… “Komm susser Todd” is the LAST f**king thing you listen to if you’re suicidal….
This was me just a couple weeks ago. Now I’m on some pretty stellar meds finally.. after years of trying. Thank God because that crap was getting old… so tired of being tired and sad.
I just want to hug Ruth so much.
::offers internet high fives:: Yay for not wanting to die, and yay for your years of persistence! May they all pay off in spades.
*Internet high fives back!*
Thanks! It’s a nice change
I want to (only with permission, of course) hug you and practically everybody else who’s commented the last few days.
Thank you! Many hugs to you and everyone else on here, too!
Good luck, man. I hope they help–and I hope you’re feeling better.
Thanks so much!
Meds are so touch and go, but these ones seem to be the right ones finally!
This comic sounds like it was written by someone who knows what depression is like. I hope you’re OK, DW.
Makes me wonder whether DW has quietly consulted with certain regular commenters here… assuming it’s not based on personal experience, that is.
Oh Ruth #joyceeyes
For me, this was an entirely happy comic, showing immense and unprecedented-for-Ruth progress.
I probably think about depression too often, it didn’t frighten me or hurt my heart, it made me happy for Ruth. It’s a very rough and scary new feeling for her, to be attached to life, but it’s SO MUCH BETTER than the place she’s been for years before.
Yup, been the Billie in this situation before. The onslaught of depression grinds things down so much, but sometimes some moment of clarity comes through, “I can focus on other things” as Ruth says, and the sheer terror of what you were determined to lose just a short while before hits you.
Hillary Clinton could still become our president.
The Electorial Collage will vote for the President on Dec. 19th.
The Electorial Collage can change their minds. They do not have to vote for the candidate they originally chose to run against each other in the general election.
This has happened in our history 3 times before. A presidential canidate conceded the election in spite of having the popular vote because the Electorial college didn’t give them enough votes.
However, when she conceded she had only 110, 000 votes over him. They are pouring in still from the overseas and absentee votes and number over a million votes more than Trump.
Based on the advisors that Trump is choosing, we can hope and pray that the Electorial College make it number 4: and cast their votes for Hillary. I hope.
Also – if they don’t, Louisiana folks, you have a senate race coming up. Vote in that. It can, if not flip the Senate, at least add one more opponent for Trump.
They won’t. Aside from all of the normal, political, procedural, and ethical reasons, it would probably cause a civil war.
Well, that’s exactly why they should. If Trump can stir up a credible threat of civil war in a few months of running for office, imagine what he’ll do in four years in that office.
I don’t think that he would be the one to start the civil war but his supporters
The rift in US politics has been around far, far longer than Trump’s presidential campaign. Trump won with nearly half the votes. We have a system in place that mostly works. Destroying the system to avoid one bad president would not be a very good trade.
Destroying the system to avoid destroying millions of innocent peoples’ lives, however, is probably worth it.
No he did not win. She has over 1million popular votes more than he does. But that is not the final word. The system is that the Electorial College votes for the president on Dec. 19th. And that is part of the system. And 3x in our history, they have changed their minds and voted for a different canidate than their original choice. It did not destroy the system then and wont now.
I’m not going to get in to whether this will happen or whether or not its a good thing, but if you’re set on this idea, I recommend contacting your electors and to let them know what’s at stake for you.
Won’t work. The *republican* house and senate have to count the electors’ votes in Janurary. They’ll put Trump in anyway.
Indeed.
This is the level of “democracy” we’re at on both sides of the Atlantic.
I can remember when the count of the Electorial Votes were done on the air live. Each delegate being called on, alphabetically by vote to announce their vote. No cheating under those circumstances. Wonder why we allowed them to stop it?
Oh well, maybe because we are loosing rights a little here. and a little there.
I would really very strongly recommend you simultaneously contact your electors if you want them to vote a certain way and prepare for what is going to happen if they don’t elect her (which, being real, is probably the outcome – the electoral college vote is and has been for decades a formality. Doesn’t mean they can’t call up a little used tool for controversial purpose (Harper did it here in Canada when he prorogued parliament twice in as many years, both to avoid confidence votes he thought he’d lose), but does mean that it is very unlikely.
Rather than pinning your hopes on a long shot, I’d urge you and others to prepare with 2018 and 2020 in mind. Here in Canada, the Tories are stealing Trump’s playbook (with Kellie Leitch, who like Trump is less an ideologue and more of a demagogue who will say whatever she thinks will mobilize the neofascists and get her base out to vote – except unlike Trump she is both capable of self-restraint and highly calculating so I think if anything she’s more dangerous than Trump because she doesn’t have his thin skin and tendency to talk himself into scandals impulsively), so those of us on the left who are able to learn from lessons in other jurisdictions are going, “Oh holy fuck no” and starting our prep now.
One thing the right-wingers have been better at than left-wingers over the past 40 years or so in Canada is pragmatism. The far right has never let perfect be the enemy of good enough: When they realized that if the right-wing parties united, they could get majorities with about 1/3 of the vote, the Reformers set on a 10 year quest to unite with the centre-right PC party. The PC party, for its part thought (wrongly) that they could keep the white supremacists in line and saw it as an opportunity for a broader voting base and therefore more power so they agreed to it. The Reformites (the Canadian equivalent of the Tea Party, but older and craftier) been slowly and steadily marching the resulting Conservative party to the right on things like immigration, religious freedom, and women’s rights. The Left, for its part, tends to stand on principle – so rather than finding common ground between NDP and Liberals (y’know, things like not wanting people to starve in the street, wanting single-payer health care, liking things like equality and multiculturalism, and so on and so forth), they instead stand on principle and refuse to compromise, even to form coalition governments. It’s a piss-off for me because by refusing to compromise “on principle”, we allow the right do get away with fucking murder – Harper and his 10 years in power despite usually barely more than a quarter of the popular vote comes to mind here.
And a lot of that has to do with our voting system (please can we some day eventually have proportional representation instead of the awful that is First Past The Post?) but a lot also has to do with the Left’s tendency towards dogmatism instead of incrementalism in Canada.
Rant ahoy:
Like hell – people on the Left in Canada get pissed off at incrementalism, but incrementalism is how shit gets done in politics in Canada and probably everywhere else which is not an autocracy, unless a Supreme Court decision is involved. Pierre Elliot Trudeau decriminalized same-sex relations back in the 60s here in Canada and we only finished the marriage equality fight last decade, but that shit got done and it got done because of (not in spite of) incrementalism.
Maybe because I’m involved on highly-political international standardization committees in meatspace – but holy fuck you want to get something done when there are people in a committee that are dead-set against you? You compromise. Find the thing you absolutely need, find something you can afford to bend on – offer the thing you can afford to bend on in exchange for the thing you need. Then everyone else on the committee starts to learn where you’re coming from and empathize with your needs and wants – and even if they don’t agree with you, they start to see where you’re coming from on shit and they understand that you’re a reasonable person who is willing to make shit work. It’s fucking negotiation and it’s how politics works.
But we seem to be headed back to an era of absolutism in the public mind and they want politicians to always and forever have the same public political opinion and NEVER COMPROMISE EVER and I’m just sitting here like fuck no you don’t want your side to do that because you know what happens when a committee has an obstructionist asshole who takes a hard no on absolutely everything they don’t think is perfect and who thinks “collaboration” means “everyone does it my way”? Do you know what everyone else on the committee does? Roll their eyes while Asshole is bloviating, let Asshole have their say, and then completely ignore Asshole’s point, even if it is a valid and legitimate one, unless someone else also decides to champion it because Asshole is not going to bend, Asshole is not going to contribute positively, and there is no point in trying to concede anything to Asshole because they are unwilling to concede anything in return because they think it’s their way or the highway and they either don’t know or don’t accept that their-way-or-the-highway is not how committees work. So what the rest of us do is accept that Asshole is going to be a hard no always and forever and concentrate on getting enough positive votes to over-rule Asshole in order to keep the thing moving. THAT’S what happens to your side and your POV when you demand your rep take a hard line always and forever and never bend: Everyone else on the committee figures out that you’re an obstructionist and marks you in the “not worth trying” column.
And it sounds callous because it is. But the committee only has so much time, we’ve got 20 other things to talk about that day as well and we only have an hour to devote to this thing so as much as we’d like to all hold hands and sing Kumbaya together, bending over backwards to satisfy a dedicated obstructionist is not something that gets anything accomplished – in fact, it plays into the obstructionist’s hands because sooner or later, they’re going to decide to be all, “This has taken so long obviously there is no common ground and we should drop it forever and give up,” when they’re the reason it’s been taking so long in the first place because they’re unwilling to even try to find common ground!
Quite frankly: We don’t have time to put up with a one-man obstructionist tantrum (“man” used intentionally because every obstructionist ass I’ve ever encountered has been a cishet white man who is personally offended by the fact, everyone else here also gets a vote and who thinks Gish Gallop and Ad Hominem are valid rhetorical strategies), and anyone who’s ever been involved in anything political for longer than about 6mo already knows for damn sure that if you do play along, sooner or later they’re going to use the delays caused by you playing along to try to delay and throw up road blocks even further – and people outside the committee will think they have a point because they don’t see the daily goings-on and know that everyone else has already found the common ground and we’re just trying for unanimity that will never happen.
Leaving aside the personality and power politics of the Obstructionist Ass and focusing on the practical get-shit-done side of things: “I don’t want this to pass, it’s a bad thing, I don’t think there’s a point to it, rawr rawr rawr rawr rawr rant rant rant rant rant blather blather blather blather blather maybe if I talk long enough over enough people they’ll give up on this” is not something anyone can work with. It is not constructive. It doesn’t contribute anything to the discussion. Even if your opponents want to compromise with you and cooperate, you’re not giving them anything that they can work with because when you rant for twenty minutes straight across thirty different topics, it’s impossible to figure out what’s actually important to you.
“I see that your goal here is [good thing], and I want to work for [good thing], but I have concerns about [bad thing] and [bad thing]. In the draft’s current form, I’d have to vote negative on it. If we remove/rephrase sections XX.XX through YY.YY, that would be something I could vote for.” (often followed by, “Okay, you don’t like my phrasing. What about we keep this part [that deals with my chief concern], because that addresses [reiteration of chief concern] and then the rest is the original phrasing? Would that be okay for you? I could live with that.”) is how shit gets done, and it’s how you don’t mark yourself out as an obstructionist asshole who will refuse to work for anything you didn’t think up yourself. Finally, it’s how, if you do hit a point where you have to take a hard line, you get other people to sit up and take notice. Cuz if you take a hard line on everything, people decide that’s just you’re personality and you’d take a hard line over whether that punctuation mark should be a comma or a semicolon (no really that is a thing our resident obstructionist took a hard line on). If you have a reputation for being reasonable and willing to collaborate and you take a hard line, it makes people think, “Maybe this is more important than I think, because So-and-so is usually willing to find a common ground. This must really matter to them – I should figure out why.”
Using a US political analogy: Republicans playing obstructionist doesn’t even make headlines anymore. Elizabeth Warren’s fillibuster got prime-time live news coverage internationally. Why? Republicans are That Guy. They’re the obstructionist ass everyone expects to be an obstructionist ass. Elizabeth Warren, on the other hand, has a reputation for cooperation and compromise. That she was the one taking a hard line made people sit up and take notice.
My point: I think the Left in Canada needs to learn to accept a degree of pragmatism in our leaders. Because in political entities – like governments, committees, etc, pragmatism gets shit done, and idealism does not. The conservatives in Canada have been better at left-wingers at being pragmatic for several decades, and we’re seeing that in a roll-back of worker’s protections, health care cuts, increasing attacks on religious freedom and voting rights, and so on and so forth.
And I could go onto a whole rant about what kind of obstructionist jackass idealism turns you into in committee work, but suffice to say: If you have ever encountered That Person who refuses to work constructively towards something in a group project, who wants to be the dictator and have everyone else be their minions and gets very fucking offended when they are reminded, yet again, that other people get a turn to speak, too, and that majority vote rules on the committee, you know what I’m talking about.
And if you haven’t, I’m am so very jealous.
FYI: For clarity: You don’t compromise on the things that are dealbreakers – the “needs”.
But the wants? Fuck yes I compromise on those in committee if they get the needs done.
I need this standard to pass with A. B is nice to have. If it comes down to it, I will sacrifice some or all of B to get A.
This is how politics & negotiation work. You just make sure that for everything you concede, the other side concedes something too.
But some things legit are deal-breakers – and that’s when you take the hard line, and if people know you’re usually willing to compromise, they pay attention to your hard line a lot more than if you’re one of the blowhards who doesn’t know the meaning of the word “collaboration.”
All of this.
I’m praying we can get Conservatives to listen and ignore Kellei Leitch. I’m not sure who the best alternative leader would be though.
Yep – and sorry for the rant. I just had a particularly irritating meeting last week with my committee that I’m apparently still more pissed off over than I thought I was.
(one of the things that is sure to hit my rage button is to metaphorically insist the Earth is flat when we know it’s round, objective facts say it’s round, you can get evidence easily that it’s round and oh hey as it happens we’re sitting in low Earth orbit right now looking at the round fucking earth as we orbit around it right at this very fucking moment as you’re insisting it’s flat. Like aaargh! Contrary evidence is literally sitting right in front of you and you’re insisting you’re right as if it’s not there at all! You are entitled to your own opinion but not your own facts and the facts are the Earth is fucking round – and the meeting last week was basically one hour of me insisting the Earth is fucking round and this is objective fact and no up for debate and our Resident Blowhard insisting the roundness of the Earth is up for interpretation. No, objective reality facts are not a thing I’m going to compromise on, sorry).
Yikes, what an asshole!
Who do you think is the best choice for this Conservative election, all things going well? Leitch is a disaster, who does that leave?
Not sure. Looked through them – Deepak Obhrai and Lisa Raitt both seem ok?
Brad Trost is worse than Leitch, as is Andrew Scheer, so both of them are right out.
Is Lisa Raitt the one who thought Leitch’s “immigration policy” was fucking awful? If so, she seemed alright.
Please tell me none of those three fuckwaffles are the favourite to win?
Yes.
Leitch is the current favorite.
OH COME THE FUCK ON, CANADA.
I blame Trump’s success for this (in part) because she was one of the least popular before he got elected.
Butting heads with people like that in a work environment has got to be one the most frustrating things one can experience.
If you’ve managed to avoid telling them to do something anatomically impossible, you must have incredible self-restraint.
I am a non-feminine assigned-female person in STEM who is bi, trans and autistic from a region oft-referred to as “Canada’s Bible Belt, and most of my interests and hobbies are male-dominated. Self-restraint is both necessity and survival mechanism.
Of course the problem down here isn’t the Democrats being inflexible and unwilling to compromise, it’s the Republican right that’s raised obstruction to an ideological principle.
Tied I suspect to Reagan’s casting of government as the problem: Republicans run on needing to cut government because government can never do anything right. When they then break government by refusing compromises, that just proves their theory right. Voters continue to support them because government is obviously a failure and need to get out of the way.
Democrats can counter this by making government actually work for people, but given our system it’s very hard to do so without overwhelming majorities in the face of unyielding opposition. It’s a vicious circle.
Yes totally – in Canada, the left wing usually gets at least 60% of the vote, but because vote-splitting and a refusal to work together, the Conservatives had control for 10 years and the only reason they didn’t win again was because the voters chose strategic voting.
(see also why I have a big problem with FPTP – FPTP requires strategic voting if you want someone with non-awful opinions to get in because it favors the largest single minority as opposed to reflecting what a majority of voters want in a multi-party system like Canada’s)
But this is a big example of Canada’s politics being fundamentally different from USian. USian, the fight is less one of political strategy and more one of fighting voter suppression initiatives and mobilizing the Left.
In Canada, the Left is pretty mobile and engaged – but we’re deeply divided there are three or four (depending on whether you count the BQ) federal left-wing parties, which together get between 60-75% of the vote each election, but the Conservatives are the largest single minority, so they have a larger amount of control than they should do in the political discourse here. Up here, the issue is in getting the Left to work together for electoral reform so that the government which is assembled will resemble a lot more what people vote for.
Progress. I’m glad for Ruth.
Oh, damn… Now I’m tearing up! ((Hugs Ruth and Billlie))
I’m just gonna let these waves of feels wash over me.
I’m not crying, you’re crying.
We’re all crying.
See Billy, you’re still useful! Yay!
Reading down to my comment, it now seems like I should reinforce that that was supposed to be some sort of dark humor and not making light of a shitty, shitty place to be.
I wanna live!
And that look Billie has is the one of someone who realized the full extent of how much pain someone she loves was really in. It finally sunk in to her.
I’m not crying; I’m just cutting up onions for the Thanksgiving stuffing.
This ends with Ruth skewered by 9 spears, doesn’t it?
or ten swords.
Or the infinite swords of the fractal bear.
Goddamnit, every new comic I it here and think “Ive literally lived this situation” Getting to ‘I dont want to die’ is harder than anyone thinks. Willis, Thanks for writing this. Youve done right by a dude who was committed for a suicide attempt.
ruth’s depression is so relatable it hurts
All of this has been a painfully and terrifyingly realistic look at depression. I mean, I’m glad David Willis managed to get it so spot-on- although I imagine that the research was unpleasant, to put it mildly. It’s kind of good to see the accurate representation- if, as I said, immensely painful.
I’m glad it exists and is being read. But fuck, reading it is kind of unpleasant.
not one Asuka joke? I am disappointed
I made one
are you happy now
It’s an Asuka joke, is anyone ever happy?
There’s one four posts above you.
This brings to mind the first ending song to Re:Zero.
Hrm, well, okay, hello there 6 AM tears…
We’re adding “Shitbucket” to the list of missed opportunity strip titles right?
I have said these exact words. I have held a lover who said the exact words after trying to kill herself, Thanks Willis, <3 <3 <#forever
This was not a moment I experienced when emotion started coming back but the intensity is something I definitely did as mentioned yesterday.
If Ruth’s recovery trajectory is anything like mine is, now that her brain knows how to do anxiety, it’ll be like it’s a toddler who just discovered you can make a noise by banging a spoon against a pot. By which I mean: THOCK THOCK THOCK THOCK THOCK repeat until it gets old to her brain (which is going to be looong after anxiety attacks are old for Ruth). Emotional regulation kind of went completely out the window for me for a good year ish after I started recovering (and even then, it was spotty for at least another year). What I’m saying is: She’s in for a bumpy ride. :\
Billie is good here, though. Hugs are good.
Someone gave Ruth a link to Roomies! then?
The feels train has no brakes. Toot toot!
*opens chest and sticks glow sticks into gaping wound*
Welp, might as well brace for whatever’s next. BRING IT ON WILLIS! >.</
Er, … Turn on your heart light reference?
There may be trouble ahead, but while there’s moonlight …
https://youtu.be/YtZrXzoaJvc?t=228
“before the fiddlers have fled”
this is… pretty dead-on.
Thank you for this.
Damn you Willis (tears).
Everyone is different. I started having suicidal ideation in my 30’s. I’m not anhedonic but I’ve never had an “I don’t want to die” moment. I’ve just managed to convince myself that it would be a bad idea to try. Too many ways it could go wrong, and at least one family member who would possibly follow. The pain and the impulse are like a window that suddenly opens for anything from minutes to weeks, then closes again. I don’t even know if there’s a word for that.
Mr Willis, is it at all possible to put a trigger warning on this comment? It unnerved me a little bit, and from the comments section, I’m not the only one. Thank you!
On the other hand, this was fantastic storytelling, and it really gets you *taps chest* right here, so bravo. Thank you for showing that the road to recovery doesn’t happen in 5 strips.
Aaand now I’m having Evangelion flashbacks…
Asian kid, red-headed tsundere, and depression
I can see that
and both of the Asian kids are bi
it really does work
Imagine how bewildered I must be to see comparisons to Shinji Ikari in this series that don’t involve Danny.
They’re even both bisexual!
does billie have daddy issues too? because I think im getting at something here
Billy has daddy and mommy issues.
Her dad is an absent-to-the-point-of-negligence businessman with whom she has barely any direct contact and attempts to make up for it with money. Mom isn’t any better.
And we don’t know that her mom isn’t a giant robot.
Im starting to wonder if all this is really intentional
well danny is bisexual too so theres that
Oh damn, I didn’t even see Billy as Shinji. Ruth’s mantra was the whole thing, but the parallels go deeper.
one day ill do an indepth analysis of them
not today but someday
The look of panic in panel 4. I keep coming back to it. It grips me by the bones. I think because that amount of anxiety is familiar to me. Well done, and also owmyheart.
The past 4 pages remind me so much of earlier this year when I admitted myself to hospital after wanting to commit suicide…
-The unusual cheeriness that comes not from the drugs or the group therapy or the pudding, but from the separation from your problems, the quieting of that voice in your head as you are cut off from everything in your life that is making it go to shit. Because that’s what you want. You don’t want to die. You want everything making your life a living hell to stop, from the voice in your head to the daily responsibilities like your job your relationships or just struggling to eat and sleep. And that flimsy bubble you find yourself in while in that hospital, where everyone around you is there to just stop yourself from harming yourself, make sure you get through each day, and you get fed and you actually go to sleep and you fucking take care of yourself.
-The distrust in that cheeriness, in that happiness. You feel it now, but you know it’s going to go away. It always does. You can’t trust it. Those group therapy sessions aren’t helping. They can’t keep you at max dosage of your antidepressents forever. And you know, sooner or later, you’re gonna have to get back out there and you’re gonna be one shitty day, one spit in the face by life from being right back to what got you in the mess. You can’t lay in this hospital bed, having the nurses check in with you every half hour, having meals brought to you 3 times a day, watching a movie on your laptop or playing your 3DS forever. You’re gonna have to face that fucking monster that is your life eventually. And that terrifies you.
-And when that terror comes, when pieces of your life seep back into your little bubble you’re in, everything hits you like a fucking wave. All that anxiety, all that depression, what you were about to do, the fear you’re going to end up right back where you started, everything. And that true terror in panel 4, that is real. That is exactly how I felt when I had to deal with the abusive professor that put me in this spot again. When I had to deal with the abuse of my mother. When I had to deal with my uncertain future and my crippling debt and my lack of resources, I broke down to just this: I don’t want to die. i want this to go away. I want to be able to live my life. I don’t want the monsters that plague me to win. And I don’t want to slit my wrists to end it all. And I have no idea how I can do one without doing the other. And please someone just fucking help me. Just fucking make it all go away and don’t let me fucking die. Please…
Please…
man–that’s a really brave thing you just wrote.
i really hope things are better now–but in case they aren’t:
http://psychcentral.com/lib/suicide-helpline-suicide-resources/
take care of yourself.
But Ruth has to die.
I read Roomies as a kid, Ruth died. It’s her destiny.
Everyone dies in the end. It’s how it happens and what you do in between now and then that matters the most.
Nobody dies in Dumbing of Age.
That said, you’d be surprised what you can live through. There are things that are SO MUCH WORSE than death.
This just went from zero to Eva surprisingly fast.
So long as it doesn’t go from zero to Gainax…
God dammit, Willis! I am sick and tired of you kicking my heart in the dick!
*this just has been blatantly stolen from the makers of Sword Art Online Abridged. All rights reserved.
“You’re supposed to die.”
“But I want to live!”
“Ok.”
Jesus flaming heck Willis :c
Man this hits hard in the feels. I remember having an epiphany like this, it, but it was more internal. Sometimes my body ‘freezes'(I cannot move my body, and if it is moving it is twitching and shaking uncontrollably) and I have not been able to find a reason despite talking about it to many different doctors.
Anyway during one of my worst freezing episodes I started having trouble breathing, and apathetically thought that it would be better if I just lost the ability to breath and get everything over with. When I did lose the ability to breath I panicked and managed to move my body enough to get to the door connecting me to my brothers room. Having them come in somehow helped me get my breath under control.
Long story short, feeling panic at the thought of your death is a good reminder of the fact that you do want to live. It can give you the power to push on even if the situation around you do not feel like they are not improving.
*do not feel like they are improving
Over the past few days I’ve been going “gee, I’m glad she’s doing better and I’m glad other people are able to relate to her but that’s really not my experience with recovery”
But oh boy! There’s my experience. I’ve been coming in an out of that for a while, and while it’s an improvement from my prior nonexistence it is fucking terrifying to realize how fucked up you’ve been and how close you’ve come to death, and to know that you may fall back there again. “Please don’t let me die” indeed.
man–i’m sorry you were in that place to begin with, and i hope things keep getting better.
i also hope you never need this stuff–but in case you do:
http://www.crisischat.org/
http://www.crisistextline.org/
http://www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org/GetHelp/LifelineChat.aspx
https://www.imalive.org/
1-800-273-TALK (8255)
http://www.samaritans.org/
Don’t worry, Ruth! No one’s gonna die! The Willis said so!
bllllgghhlglglh ;___;
Been there, been there, BEEN THERE. Depression cuts you into little chunks of what used to be one mind, and none of the chunks realize they’re not talking to each other anymore. You feel tiny and alone, and something that isn’t /you/ is hauling you toward death, and you don’t know how to tell it to stop.
ruuuuuuuth.
It’s still a messed up situation, but a Lesbian Life Pact seems like a better thing.
Back when I was about 15 I attempted to commit suicide (it was a cry for attention) and I don’t know if its the passage of time but seeing Ruth in this strip makes me feel like what I went through was absolutely nothing (in comparison to the hurt she’s feeling)
Its a strange feeling looking at this strip and then (trying) to remember the feelings I had at that time, the difference between me now and me then is the difference between night and day which means that I think I should be feeling empathy towards Ruth (and Billie) but I can’t seem to as its seems so…for lack of a better word foreign to me, sadness absolutely, hope definitely but not empathy
So once again a very good strip with no easy answers
Holy shit, Willis
She’s in full panic mode
The timing of this is so uncanny, because literally last night, as I was walking down the road in the snow, i had this SAME THOUGHT… and for once i meant it. I’ve spent the last twenty three hours since then, thinking to myself, for once i want to live. It’s disturbing how much Ruth and Billie remind me of me and my exwife (in their promoting the worst of each other) Except it was only in GETTING AWAY from her that I managed to have this revelation… Idk maybe i’m going too much into this just thought to point out the uncanniness.
howdy! just wanted to say that I hope you keep feeling that way; you deserve it. if things get bad and you need help, you can always dial 1-800-273-8255 or go to http://www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org/GetHelp/LifelineChat.aspx–just in case.
good luck. you deserve that too.
I sincerely hope I’m never in a position I have to reassure someone like that. I’d probysay something like “well, just for the next 80 years or so, I can’t promise anything after that.”
It’s OVER, FINISHED!
Good job resisting the temptation of furmanism.
I just started sobbing for like 5 seconds and i don’t know why but that hit me for some reason but only a little.
Sympathy via Light Physical Contact
Hoo boy. This one hits close to home. I sure have been exactly in Billie’s position here, and it sure is terrifying.
This comic makes me feel some feels I don’t know how to feel about.
It doesn’t help I can’t identify the feels I’m feeling.
I have literally said those exact words, in that exact same position.