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I…had a thought
That mike is going through with his plan
To sleep with Ethan to drive the final piton into Amber and Danny’s remaining relationship
Or maybe get Danny jealous and acting upon his feelings. Or just…ok y’know being mike.
My guess? Already, but backing out would hurt his image way too much at this point, so he’s stuck between a rock and a hard place oh god why did I put that winky in there I have become what I fear
Yeah, but I’ve never really seen him as enjoying the pain of others so much as enjoying the CONSEQUENCES of the pain he inflicts on others, especially when those consequences come in the form of retaliation.
If Michael Bay wanted to complete his dark work and drive the fandom truly mad, he could put a red robot and blue robot who look like Frenzy and Rumble in his movies, and not say which is which.
But he’d never do that. Why use red OR blue and recognizable character models when they can be gray and look like a roll of aluminum foil going through the garbage disposal?
Everything I’ve seen about the most recent bayformers (that was /released/, not the upcoming one) suggests that, in fact, Michael Bay put a /lot/ of thought into Transformers.
I’m of the opinion that he made that movie to make fun of everyone who gave him money.
My take on him and this franchise has always been that he seems to know plenty about the canon of the franchise, but also fails to understand why it’s as popular as it is and possibly considers the franchise somewhat beneath him so takes a trolling kind of mentality when making these films.
Further toping this is that he engenders a lot of relevance and makes a lot of money making Transformers films compared to his entire remaining directorial oeuvre. The four existing Transformers films have grossed about $3.8 billion at the box office while his other eight films in the director’s seat have grossed around $2.1 billion since 1995. His first Transformers movie garnered about the only real critical praise he’s seen and his name is rather well known to the general public due to the franchise.
My personal take on his career is that he’d be great as just a cinematographer but has no business having the kind of creative control he generally does as a producer and/or director.
Given that he’s outright told people to shut up and that he refuses to listen to any criticism “because he makes films that he’d like”, I think it’s safe to say he doesn’t care what a fandom thinks about any franchise he touches.
[PS: TMNT was an atrocity in line with an Uwe Boll film, but with better action sequences. Then again, paint drying has better action sequences than an Uwe Boll film.]
Honestly, if it was developer integrity, I’d respect that, but all he cares about is flashy sequences, and to him plot is just a thin series of breadcrumbs to tie the action sequences together. And he fails to get character depth at all, often seemingly insulting the depth of development of characters in the franchises he touches (Raphael in TMNT was especially bad, making a very simple, very childish joke of the emotional challenges he faces in the comics or original live action series.)
In the end, Bay has the same mentality as Boll- “Shut up or I’ll punch you, I can shit on the floor, and it’s okay, because I like the smell.”
There’s no consideration either to the franchises involved, to the expectations of the fandoms, or to developing oneself as a director. It’s just a mindless repetition of the same self-indulgent design, without any effort put into it.
Well, we’ve famous actors that get by with just playing the same simplistic role over and over again and not ever developing their acting skills, as well.
In the end, such things are inexplicably popular, so there’s really noone to blame but the general population for supporting it..
Though among fans of an IP, it’s always troubling when we support the continuation of such things ourselves, through our financial contributions to them. If we want better movies, we gotta hold out for them, or we’ll only keep getting more of the same thing we’re agreeing to pay for.
You’re right, why risk shaming people for having cumbersomely large phalluses that will no doubt cause their partners uncomfortable strain.
Seriously though, phallus size as a measure of masculinity has gotta be one of the most ludicrous concepts I’ve ever come across. Any competent or intelligent individual will tell you that the ideal tool matches to the size and shape of the task at hand [think screwdrivers], and carrying a larger tool than needed to a task is likely just to make things awkward and more difficult than necessary.
Add in that there’s enough anecdotal commentary among females and males alike that outside of a social expectation framework, large sizes aren’t favored..
Add in that in the end, it’s just another part of the human body, and the entire special preference it gets is due to a very peculiar obsession with a single form of interaction..
In the end, it’s only “cruel” to those that are in a specific situation where they find their arrangement doesn’t meet to their circumstances. In the end, we all have minor things, characteristic or genetic, that will limit what we’re capable of and how we interact with others. It’s no more cruel than any other disadvantage a person may have, such as not being talented with a favored musical instrument. We work around it.
Then of course there are those who think it’s cruel because they think it’s an attack on their character, but that’s reflective of a deep psychological complex, and actually has no inherent basis within the commentary itself.
Definitely where mine is, have you SEEN those abs? I’m bi, and Mikes the only male character in this comic that I have straight up crush on, none of the other guys who are into guys are anywhere near my type. Ethan and Danny are both too nice.
Actually, this has been a consistent failing to me in web-comics, which is a pretty progressive community, is that they seem like their trying to hard to give LGBT characters a halo effect. I understand why, to combat dangerous stereotypes, but it also makes many of the characters wholly unlikeable and not human enough to me.
Mike and Carla are two bright exceptions to this rule, and I find them both hot as hell compared to, say, Ethan and Danny or Becky and Dina.
Rumble is red, Frenzy is blue,
I really like transformers,
But not as much as you.
..At least so long as you dress
just like that one bot, Aimless,
Because so long as it looks like a Transformer,
then I’ll feel my body getting warmer,
and if you can’t do that, then I may love you less.
Light hearted, cute, funny?
Well, cute perhaps.
But Mike is never light hearted about any of his targets, and Ethan is his endeavor at this point. This does not bode well for Ethan.
The sad thing is, Ethan KNOWS Mike. You’d think he would know better.
I think Ethan’s just built up a thick enough skin towards Mike that he’s (foolishly) come to ignore the low-grade abuse baseline, and it no longer factors in to his appraisal of Mike’s likely motives.
Well, he’s reached out repeatedly and has been trying to single-handedly keep their friendship alive despite Mike’s habit of trying to ruin his life for fun.
So, it’s not for lack of trying. It’s just in Mike’s current edgelord state, Ethan’s suffering has been the only thing he’s wanted.
That would be a very Mike thing to do….and, since Mike is a universal sexual demigod in all continuities, it would be the best sex of Joe’s life, ruining forever the one thing he enjoyed most, meaningless sex. Very, very Mike indeed.
That is, surprisingly, one area where Joe’s not too concerned. He once wondered what sort of threesome he ended up with the night before, but the prospect of it having involved another man didn’t really bother him at all.
Of course, what should have bothered Joe should have been the fact that he’s getting so drunk that he can’t even remember what sort of sex he said yes to the next day…
But yeah, Joe’s attitude towards gay men is the single ray of sunshine through his rotten darkness of masculine toxicity. He’s more than willing to be a gay man’s wingman, and if Danny were to go on a date with another man, Joe is there to make certain protection is used and that good times are to be had.
Which would be cuter is Joe had been able to conceive of something other than a string of one-night stands to count as a good time…
So, I see the mysterious force of darkness has a surprising amount of popular support as to who will take over a very important leadership position. In unrelated news, check out the poll for the new RA!
There’s nothing mysterious about the force of darkness in that other race. He made quite clear to everyone exactly what he is. That’s what makes his level of popular support so horrifying.
oh yeah bc Mike seducing his friends and making them fall in love with him has always ended with terrible disaster in the past. cant think of a single time that ended happy.
Oh Ethan…sweet Ethan…this is what you’re spending you’re time on? Literally the most pointless argument in Transformers history, so pointless its an in-joke? You gotta get a man man.
I’m kind of proud of Mike. He approached the situation intelligently, he did research, he got to know his enemy… now that is how you win the internet. Very impressive.
I showed this to my boyfriend because lol internet arguments, and not only was he familiar with this argument despite not ever having touched Transformers fandom, he responded to my explanation of the whole Danny/Ethan/Mike situation and Mike trying to bang Ethan as a result with “Of course that’s his excuse, justifying it with spite.”
Think Mike will ever get some character development by the end of this storyline like Joe’s starting to get, or will he remain this very unpleasant one note dude forever?
I wouldn’t get my hopes up…mike has never once stopped being in asshole in any continuity. True, he generally allows his assholery to benefit others in the long run…but only because he mostly cares about how shitty they feel the instant he drops the hammer.
Personally, I’ve got a huge crush on mike and hope he never changes. As a sadomasochist, he’s my ideal person.
Regardless of what Mike’s reasons for this are on any level, I love that Ethan is taking ruthless advantage of it. He’s 50-60% sure Mike is his friend, and he’s known the guy for years, knows who and what he is. And, sadly, Mike is probably the least-fraught friend Ethan has right now.
Joyce: a reminder that he shoved himself back into the closet and went along with her fundie notions
Amber: Amazi-girl. Danny. The summer. The table-flipping. Pick a reason, Ethan can’t be 100% comfortable with her at least right now. He supports her, not vice versa.
Danny: Amber. Crush feelings. Too easy to be too close. Have to be on guard all the time.
Yelling at people on the internet with Mike doesn’t require any guard, doesn’t require him to watch what he says/does/thinks lest it be the wrong thing. Or so he thinks. Time will no doubt tell whether he’s right or wrong, but kudos for grabbing fun friend-time with both hands, Ethan.
When Alfred Nobel established the prizes that bear his name, one of the world leading authorities on Transformers was a man he hated. He didn’t want to endow a prize the man could win, so there is no Nobel Prize in Transformers. Or was it Mathematics? I always get those two mixed up.
Let us never forget the context of this, which is Mike intending to seduce him entirely so he can try and ruin his life for fun in direct defiance of one of the few requests Ethan has ever managed to make of Mike. Cause that makes this whole arc vile no matter what and the actions of a manipulative abusive boyfriend mixed with the type of internet troll who tries to get people shot by cops for “fun”.
Like, this isn’t Shortpacked! This is a realistic setting and as such, Mike has real-world analogues and those real-world analogues who like to bully people and like to “fake date” people just to use it against them often end up costing lives in suicide attempts, not to mention lots of PTSD and inability to trust anyone.
Like, let’s be frank, Ethan hasn’t dated a guy in his life yet and has been extremely jumpy about being gay. So if his first time with a guy, with a long-time friend who knows exactly how to get to his heart is this bullshit, how easy is it going to be for him to date again? To take those risks? To trust when someone says they are his friend?
Mike’s actions in a realistic setting become even more monstrous, because in a cartoon land, consequences are frequently ignored. The long term detriment doesn’t play out and linger.
But here? His actions have cost.
And so, given the horribleness he is enacting, I’m somewhat amused that he’s putting himself through a miserable time in service to it unnecessarily. Like, if he just said, hey Ethan, I think you’re interesting and hot, wanna bang, that would at least put his game up front.
But weaseling his way in sideways like this by pretending to take an interest in Ethan’s weird hobbies just to try and use them to tear him down is only serving to communicate to Ethan that he enjoys these pointless and misery-inducing battles of minutiae he couldn’t possibly care about.
And the best part of it all is that he really really doesn’t have to be doing this to himself. It’s all completely unrelated to his goal. And I doubt Ethan would put him up to it if Mike was honest and forthright about it just being a tactic to endear himself to Ethan. Hell, Ethan probably wouldn’t even hold it against him.
So, yeah, choke on that, Mike, you bully abusive fuck.
Good, they should take it slow and get comfortable with each other. Having Mike fuck Ethan just to fuck with him is not going to make Ethan more ready to jump into sexy time with Danny in the same way as getting massive PTSD doesn’t tend to make one more down to fuck.
Also, it’s Danny. He’s a serial monogamist who can’t stand being single. How long do you really think he’s going to hold out without trying to pursue something? And well, if he somehow manages it, good, he really could use learning to love himself and himself being single so he stops equating sacrifice with love.
Sadly, Ethan is very vulnerable to Mike’s brand of gaslighting. He is open and trusting to a fault, he is very insecure about his sexuality and dating and he is starving for affection on an almost Danny-like level. I also think he has a Danny-like nostalgia for his old friends, because hanging out with Mike reminds him of a time when he hadn’t left the closet and made everything horrible with his family, and Amber was not in as bad shape as she is now.
And again, it remind us of one of Mike’s most despicable traits – his habit to prey on the vulnerable and punch downwards. His latest attempts to target Dorothy and Walky were shut down pretty fast, but Ethan is still a possible target for him.
Also, let’s not forget that Ethan in his eternal quest to find ways to punish himself feels its’s up to himself to suffer Mike so other people don’t have to.
He is the perfect abuse victim, and Mike wastes NO time taking advantage of it.
Yup, and Mike is an abuser. Like, he’s been a bully, but he’s upgrading himself to abusive romantic partner, playing off Ethan’s desire for things to be “like they were” as you note.
And I’m not really in a headspace to feel “lol” about manipulative shitheads who try and trick people into sex and act super controlling towards them, given how much I’ve seen the aftermath of those sorts of short term relationships in the damage they call future relationships and given what I’ve been learning about my rapist student and his actions towards the student he raped back when the two of them “dated”.
Mike has been horrible and has needed to be stopped, but now that’s even more insistive.
FWIW, I suspect that Willis plans to have this resolve itself by Mike learning something that he suspected but never really knew – Ethan is high-maintenance. Trying to get close enough, emotionally, to him to reach the ‘seduce’ part if going to be so trying on an intellectual level (getting himself into Ethan’s über-fan mindset) he might end up giving up.
Say it again for the folks in the back who seem to think backstory and motivation cross over like sexuality and keep Mike from being an abusive fucking prick?
I think it’s interesting that I’d like Willis to go whole hog with this. I’d like to see him take some characters who were redeemable and fun in Shortpacked and just make them….bad…here. That Mike and Robin are, in fact, unsalvagable.
Also, call me Crazy, but *IS* Mike actually trying to be a Zen mentor? It seems it’s entirely possible he is being an ass just to be an ass in this universe.
Some comments here that are true, in opposite directions.
I mean:
True this is not Shortpacked. And although that strip was syfy fantasy, the characters in it were real to themselves (and a lot of us). Their loves and hates were no less important, than the actions, and or feelings of their counterparts here in DoA. And their actions, did lead to consequences.
Mike was a clear cut asshole in Shortpacked, but not on the just plain cruel level of Mary.
Mike often went after someone to point out their own stupidity of actions and make them realize what idiots they were/had been. An encounter with Mike changed your world view but didn’t put you in actual danger – usually.
And people engaging in any activity with Mike usually KNEW what they were getting into, and did it anyway. As do people here in DoA.
Here in DoA, Ethan also KNOWS Mike. He should take Mikes actions with a grain of salt. Mike is a bit more sharp here in DoA, I’m not sure just how, but it seems he is going more for his pleasure, instead of his pleasure And a chance to be teaching biting life lessons to people he considers sheep.
Unless Mike has changed overnight, he is not doing this to endear himself to Ethan, imo.
In Shortpacked, you could follow a convoluted trail of Mike plans back to several people all caught in his net. He was great at multiple zings. Here it seems he is simply going after Ethan for a one nighter (or more), so as to hurt Danny, and indirectly Amber. For no reason other then to get Ethan in bed. There may be ulterior motives that come to light later.
I can’t personally compare Mike to the type of person who trolls the net to get innocent people shot by the police. Mike has to be on the scene of his malicious tricks and interfering. And he doesn’t seem to be so warped as to want to see people dead, just humiliated and hurt.
I dunno, “humiliated and hurt” still leaves its own trail of bodies (*cough cough* Tyler Clementi *cough cough*). And I’m not really keen on blaming the victim of targeted abuse because they “should have known what an abuser is like” because that feels victim blaming as all hell and ignores that Mike has been actively sabotaging Ethan’s attempts to make friends other than him*.
*Hell, this whole abusive scheme is entirely because Mike feels threatened by the healthy time Ethan’s been spending with Danny as it might lead to Ethan having the self-esteem needed to cut Mike out once and for all and so is trying to ruin that and make it toxic by proxy.
And I know the justifications of abusers, the way they think of themselves as brilliant masterminds showing the “sheep” how foolish they are. And I track their actions which are always to punch down and cling pathetically to cultural narratives that they are worth more socially because of accidents of birth (white and male is a pretty common one, at least among the abusers I’ve had to clean up after).
And more importantly, I’ve seen the damage that ensues from a garbage person treating someone’s life as a “game” to “show how smart they are”. Like, the abusive boyfriend who constantly tells his girlfriend how stupid she is and how he understands people and how sheep-like they are.
That type of asshole dated my ex and I spent the first couple of years of my relationship with her just helping to clear out all the damage she acquired in abusive relationships like that, with folks who diminished her every quality and made her doubt her own sense of worth. And those scars ran deep and still plague her to this day as did their actions of rape.
And well, we’ve seen the aftermath of Mike’s “help” in this universe.
He actively made a mental health condition for Amber worse by accusing her of becoming her dad and made her less likely to seek out the support of friends because this unsafe asshole insists of tagging along every time Ethan tries to check up on her (Ethan being the person who most grounded her before).
He managed to bully Ethan back into the closet, undoing all of Amber’s hard work to try and get him to love himself and again poisoning that relationship.
He’s convinced Walky that letting anyone know about things he feels vulnerable about will cause them to hate him, thus preventing him from getting real help about his academics and instead has been bumping him towards the TA that Mike knows doesn’t actually help and instead just tries to sleep with his students.
And he’s harassed Dorothy, not even for anything other than a “lesson” she already knows being a woman in society in what has now been a year in comic where sexism has never been more prominent.
He doesn’t help people, he alienates them from support networks and tries to break them down to emotional collapse. For fun. Not giving a damn if his targets are miserable or want to kill themselves or are taking risks that make them more likely to die. Because to him, his whole edgelord worldview depends on viewing himself as some Machiavellian genius rather than an asshole who’s boned up on the Abuse and Control Wheel and has a massive chip on his shoulder.
And sadly, in the real world, there are plenty of people who fit that profile. Wannabe Machiavellis that are just abusive shitheads. Hence the comparison.
huh. Did not realize how all the suffering in the DoA can be tied to Mike in some way. Perhaps he’s going to be the final villain. An effigy of all the problematic aspects of Willis’s previous works that he himself recognizes. And a deconstruction of characters who think that pushing everyone’s flaws to the surface makes them some kind of ultimately helpful Trickster archetype when they’re really just ruining everyone’s self-esteem and creating a horrible, draining environment.
you’re giving entirely TOO MUCH credit to Mike for getting Ethan back in the closet and Walky be hesitant to ask for help. Knowing these characters, it’s actually extremely likely that they would have gone through with both those actions without Mike’s comments
Mike is not doing that well in college. He has made zero new friends, his peers grow increasingly tired of his antics, the teachers are getting suspicious of him and even his beloved bullying is loosing steam (compare his first and latest interactions with Dorothy, Walky and Joyce).
So he find himself trailing like a puppy after the one person who still gives him the time of the day increasingly often. But of course he can’t just hang out, no, he need it to be a scheme for some ridiculous gaslighting plan.
“I’m just doing this for the craft” he tells himself, the third hour into research of transformers minutia (compare and contrast Becky reading up on dinosaurs). But he can’t shake of the thought of how Ethan and Danny looked at each other. And Ethan is out of the closet now. How soon before he has a boyfriend? Not that Mike can SAY anything about it, of course. For him, it needs to be a plan…
Nah, I don’t really believe it. I believe Mike is perfectly honest when he says he does this just because he saw an opening to make someone sad. I believe him when he says that his sole motivation is to be a bully to those around him. But I also believe there is a reason the only times we see him not actively being a dick is when he trails after Ethan – because who else would he be with?
Man, if making new friends is the first/primary bar to doing well in college, I’m failing it for the third time. The first two times I failed both gradewise and friendwise, but I thought I was doing well this time. (note: this is me being silly, no part of this comment is serious except I actually have made exactly zero friends in college)
(I’m currently attending an all-online university. Making new friends would entail hanging out on message boards, and with the exception of this comment section and one or two others, I avoid message boards as general viper pits.)
Actually, I don’t we ever saw anybody directly interact with the math teacher. Penny said his name once, and I think we saw him from afar a couple times, but I don’t think we ever saw him up-close.
Never seen him close up and the only student we see talk to him was Sal when she was asking for help after the she didn’t understand her first math quiz. He promptly dumped her on Jason, who immediately hit on her before offering his actual office hours.
I think you’re right that he’s a bit terrified of losing Ethan, because then he would be truly alone and in that, he again fits that common profile of the abusive edgelord.
How many times has some vile internet bully or guy with a string of relationships in which he’s been the abuser whined about no one liking him or being (usually romantically) alone? It’s been the origin story and narrative of a huge amount of abusers from Elliot Rodger to Mark Lepine to the incel assholes who found the foundation of many hate movements.
And well, he kind of needs to be alienated and alone because his presence is horrendously toxic and most toxic to the poor bastards that try and reach out to him.
Hell, he’s a great example to a point I made a few days ago about how not everyone is worth reaching out and trying to help, because some people will use that as an opening to abuse and hurt you.
Mike embodies that warning and has rewarded Ethan’s continued friendship by trying to make Ethan as alienated and miserable as himself.
Mike is a lot smarter than people give him credit for. The guy is going to college for social work and still has time to hang out with people if he chooses, pull both simple and elaborate pranks (only a fraction of which we ever see), collect and catalog a massive amount of data on everyone he has even the slightest interaction with both directly and indirectly, write a spur of the moment detailed cited essay, and style his gravity defying hair. He can also debate with the precision and skill of a surgeon, write articulate detailed essays, control his fighting ability to such a degree that he knows exactly how hard to hit as to not break bones or cause permanent damage but still hurt, use advanced psychology, control his emotions, and so much more. This incarnation of Mike seems to be a genius among geniuses who got so bored by challenges like chess that he decided to play with people instead, but pushing everyone away because they annoyed him and running them off by playing mind games with them has taken a toll longterm.
I dunno, in my experience, it doesn’t take a lot of intelligence to be an abuser (just look at Trump for a key example), it just takes a firm willingness to utterly disregard the normal forms of society and take advantage of people’s trust and willingness to give people the benefit of the doubt that surely they aren’t actually intending to ruin their life.
And it takes a society that doesn’t actually punish interpersonal abuse in any meaningful way so there are no consequences to ruining lives in this way.
But you’re right that society does view abusers as intelligent when they are not. Of making works about abusers that paint them as brilliant strategists in the war of the human mind rather than penny-ante control freaks with terrible respect for people and boundaries.
And that leads a lot of abusers to see abuse as a means of demonstrating “how much smarter they are than everyone else” and I’ve seen this in person. There’s a lot of smugness in being a penny-ante manipulator. The ability to fuck with a person’s sense of self and gaslight them is not hard, anyone could do it if they valued people little enough, but it makes abusers feel brilliant and unstoppable.
And that’s sort of the central problem with folks like Mike who prop up their mediocre intelligences with a bunch of utter disregard for the humanity of others and taking an oblique road most people will try and convince themselves they are not actually seeing, because we want to view the best in people.
For example, Trump is dumb as a bag of rocks. But he successfully treated America as his abuse victim. Hell, he’s even doing the gaslighting with his ignoring reality.
Let’s just say that it takes a certain skill to successfully abuse people, and that one needs specific counter-skills to defend against it. And those counter-skills are (sadly) usually only gained by first-hand experience.
I guess my problem is that I was raised by assholes and can see past Mike’s asshole ways into a few things that hint at him being on the intelligent side. My brother was an asshole who started out being of average intelligence until he discovered drugs. My mother was an abusive asshole and dumb as a box of rocks (example she asked my dad when I was little if men have periods like women do). My father is a verbally abusive man of average intelligence, but well above average in common sense, construction, electrical, cooking, spacial, survival, marksmanship, tracking, local flora/fauna, gardening, natural remedies, and classic car repair. Being remarkable in some areas doesn’t mean he’s not abusive; being abusive does not mean he can’t be remarkable at some things. I guess that’s how I can see signs of Mike being above average intellectually; I’m used to separating the asshole from the rest of the person.
Not so much that he’s dumb as that I don’t think he’s an asshole because he’s a bored genius. That just feeds into the general edgelord superiority complex and doesn’t have a lot of textual support.
We don’t really know why Mike’s an asshole. He just is. Maybe we’ll learn more in this arc. Probably not though. Humanizing Mike just makes him seem like more of a jerk and changing him removes any real interest from the character.
That sneer in the second panel shows me all I need to see. He’s not even hiding the contempt. He’s actively pursuing a strategy that avoids overtly showing anything like attraction and simply impressing Ethan with a new application for his tendency to rhetorically tear people to shreds. When/if they do fuck, Ethan will have made all the first moves and Mike will have simply gone along with it. When Mike stops (literally) giving a fuck and stops seeming to care, Ethan will find himself upset. Danny will probably be made to know in such a way that he thinks it’ll be a longer term thing. Amber will probably find out about the whole thing and blow a gasket.
This is Mike Warner. Don’t be a Mike Warner. In this universe at least, he uses his talents for evil.
And it’s been dismaying to see Mike get worse and worse with few in comic universe knowing or reacting to. But that’s kind of how it works in real life as well. Someone getting more and more abusive is frequently brushed off as “oh, he’s just trying to be funny”.
Well, Mike, say goodbye to your free time for the rest of the year. Something tells me that Ethan has plenty of uses for it unless you’re pretty firm with him (Note: Firm means ‘clear about what you will or will not do and not just passive-aggressively snarky like you usually do).
I am feeling triggered! I always HATED it that the cartoon got those two wrong (well, it was one of many things, not the least of which is that Starscream was supposed to be extremely badass, if too impatient for his own good. The original story was that Megatron kept his backstabbing ass around purely because too many of his forces – the jets, mainly – would simply follow Starscream out the door if he kicked him out. Bumbling, stupid, and cowardly Starscream did not sit well with me at all.)
The early G1 cartoons were reduced to self-parody by two policies on the producers part:
1) An impossible production and release schedule that led them to broadcasting half-complete animation;
2) “Money? You don’t need money! This is animation!” – A common affliction in 1970s and 1980s western animation most typified by the Hanna-Barbera quality-free cookie machine.
A while ago Ethan made him promise not to do anything to Danny. Once Ethan was gone he said something like “I was wondering which of you I’d seduce to mess with the other. Looks like it’s going to be you.” This may well be step one of that.
Frenzy was one of the G1 Transformers toys and a character in the G1 Transformers cartoon. Due to quality control issues on the part of Hasbro, sometimes, the physically identical but different-coloured Rumble toy was shipped in Frenzy boxes. Even more confusingly, due to tight schedules and abysmal quality control at Sunbow Studios, the few times Frenzy appeared in the early seasons of the G1 cartoon, his colour scheme was occasionally swapped with Rumble’s (sometimes strobing between the official blue-and indigo and Rumble’s red-and-grey multiple times in a single shot).
Because of this, there is a debate amongst fanatical Transformers purists about what is the ‘real’ colour of Frenzy. As Mike has found out, the debate can become quite involved but winning a bout is a considerable cause for admiration and kudos. This was probably what Mike was looking to achieve here.
frenzy [fren-zee]
noun, plural frenzies.
1. extreme mental agitation; wild excitement or derangement.
2. a fit or spell of violent mental excitement; a paroxysm characteristic of or resulting from a mania: He is subject to these frenzies several times a year.
verb (used with object), frenzied, frenzying.
3. to drive to frenzy; make frantic: She was frenzied by fear when she smelled the smoke.
Also, a Decepticon who transforms into a cassette tape. There’s another one who looks pretty much the same named Rumble. Frenzy is red, Rumble is blue. Or maybe vice versa. Or maybe they’re both blue. I dunno. I’m going with “they both like getting repainted regularly”.
So… like that one episode of Ouran High School Host Club, but with Transformers that go into Soundwave’s chest instead of twins that want to get into Haruhi’s pants?
“I’m surprised you know enough of transformers.” – Stop being an elitist doorkeeper, Ethan.
“How long have I known you. It rubs off.” – You wish, Mike.
It strikes me that G1 Soundwave (known to be an evesdropper and blackmailer) might be Mike’s childhood hero. Given that Frenzy is one of Soundwave’s sidekick squad, it makes sense that he knows all about him in some detail.
I’m probably being whooshed, but, in case I’m not, how is it “gatekeeping”? They’ve known each other for years. Mike knows Ethan likes Transformers, so, if Mike liked them, you’d think he’d talk to him about it.
If anything, the sudden interest shows Ethan’s gullibility, since he should know by now how big a jerk Mike is, and that he’s exactly the type of person who would feign an interest for some scheme.
Well, unless Ethan actually knows that and is playing along. Now that would be awesome.
So, yeah, even if you are joking and I’m saying nothing good, at least something good came out–an awesome idea for how this could end.
Well, I’m kinda joking. I think Ethan dips a bit too much into the mindset of “being a fan right”, which easily lends itself to elitism and shutting new people out – a bit like Dina with her dinosaurs. But of course there is nothing like that dynamic going on with Mike, just like you pointed out, so this was just me making fun of that line while completely ignoring the context.
wait how is Dina elitist and shutting people out? She’s always willing to explain stuff and loves it when people want to share her interest like Becky, she does get angry at Joyce but that’s because she denies all the known facts and doesn’t want to learn about evolution.
Of course, Dina would very much LIKE to be inclusive and teach everyone how cool dinosaurs are, but her bad people skills make it very hard for other people to access that knowledge and she can be a tad defensive about it.
So i know somewhere in my heart guts that mike is mike and is probably up to no good but…. Part of me wants to backfire and turn into maybe a brief thing….
Idk i think itd be an interesting thing to see mike develop feelings instead of just more plots to utilize.
Maybe Mike will turn out to be Danny and Amber’s reconciliation fairy. Because Ethan is ‘taken’, Danny will redouble his efforts to reconcile with Amber/Amazi-Girl.
In Shortpacked!, Mike occasionally plotted casual sexual encounters to force couples past walls of denial, so it isn’t unprecedented for him to have that role again (although unknowingly in this case, given DoA’s more serious tone).
so given that Ethan atm was probably born around 1998… that means Transformers Armada would have been the cartoon he first latched onto, unless his dad was a huge fan of G1 and or some other season. i can’t wait for DoA five or so years from now, when Ethan’s first Transformers would be the Bayverse movies.
I hate diagnosing fictional characters with all my heart for its numerous mentalist facets, but, between his actions in the comic and Cerberus’s comments about his real-life counterparts (so lovely to know they exist, really), I’m seriously wondering if Mike is a bonafide psychopath. As annoying as his parents can be, I can’t imagine how else they could make a Mike unless they are secretly horrific abusers.
I knew a self-admitted sociopath who I was friends with. He smiled more, but he’s eerily similar. Looking back, I don’t think he was ever my friend, or the very least, not a friend I want to have. He’s in the IDF right now and posting some scary stuff on social media. Every time I think about him I pray that he has hasn’t done some sort of war crime or other horrible thing yet.
not for his sake, but for the sake of the people he has power over in the Occupied Territories.
The man outright admitted to being the terror of his high school, where he carried a knife and was the local coke dealer. I have no idea how I ever looked past that and out of all the people I lived with during my gap year, he’s the only one I don’t consider to be family.
I think Mike’s problem isn’t that he’s a sociopath if his “happy drunk” attitude is there, it’s just that he’s a tremendous misanthrope. Basically, my theory for how Mike exists in Dumbing of Age is that he decided to be an Emo Goth Kid who listens to Linkin Park without the Dragonballz videos who sneered at society—and never grew out of it. Like Raistlin Majere, he’s smarter and better than everyone else so he doesn’t change.
I’m late to the game, but I thought I’d point out what I think is an imminent power couple: Dorothy and Mike (or Dorke)
They both keep close, intricate notes about the people around them, and have no shame in pursuing their interests. After the wishy washy Walky business Mike will appear as a strong minded foil to her. Together they will save, or destroy, the dorm!
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btw if you're one of those rando bluesky weirdos who doesn't know me but sees me in the wild being sarcastic and don't know i'm being sarcastic because you haven't taken like 30 seconds to, like, maybe look at my user profile or something, keep walking, you're not going to score internet points here
Here's an entertaining cite at the bottom of the first page
Josh Gerstein@joshgerstein.bsky.social ⋅ 2d
JUST IN: Milwaukee Judge Hannah Dugan moves to dismiss federal criminal case against her for allegedly helping immigrant hide from ICE. Her lawyers say she's protected by official acts & judicial immunity and 10th Amendment. Doc: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
Where did Hollywood go so wrong? I thought movies were supposed to be an escape from reality, a chance to put your worries aside and not have to think about any underlying ideas or concepts. Well, not anymore.
theonion.com/you-can...
It's not a new argument, of course, but Chesterton dismissed it effectively in 1908.
"You will hear everlastingly... this argument that the rich man cannot be bribed. The fact is, of course, that the rich man is bribed; he has been bribed already. That is why he is a rich man."
Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com ⋅ 2d
Hawley dismisses Trump lining his pockets with his memecoin: "Listen, I think nobody believes that Donald Trump can be bought. I mean, what does Donald Trump need more money for?"
wilbur, savvy enough to know he's in a comic strip but still not a great actor, awkwardly lifts a muffin up into frame so that we, the audience, understand that he has a muffin right now, which is very important narratively, but he's not really selling it well as an organic, human action
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 ⋅ 18h
Josh Gerstein @joshgerstein.bsky.social ⋅ 2d
Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com ⋅ 2d
Pavel
@spavel.bsky.social ⋅ 11d
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you brought it upon yourself, Mike
*looks at current Slipshine* …you brought it upon yourself, Willis
it’s what you get for asking us
No good deed goes unpunished.
What’s the current SS pairing?
Tinkerbell and the Keebler Elf
what is slipshine doing right now anyway?
Mary jerkin’ it to a drawing of Ronald Reagan weeping before the cross. You know, the usual.
If Peter Paul exists in the DoA universe, I doubt he ever thought he’d have to compete with The Gipper.
He does in fact exist! He showed up in a Patreon strip.
who’s Peter Paul? some sort of fundamentalist male model from the original walkyverse?
the hapless sap who originally hitched up with Walky!Mary
hence Peter Paul and MaryLOLOLOLOL DO U GET IT [prolly not if you’re the target demographic for DoA]
Oh, so I guessed right from the miniature.
Damn, that makes me a psychopath, right?
I mean, it was too much to expect Mike to be harnessed for good but I’m still impressed Ethan managed to harness him for neutrality
Has he? Has he really?
well lets just agree he’s harnessed him
Hey, woah, no spoilers for the upcoming Slipshine.
And thus the seed is planted
You guys are the reason I can’t give up on internet perverts. Thanks :3
Please don’t go around sowing your seeds willy nilly. :X
I…had a thought
That mike is going through with his plan
To sleep with Ethan to drive the final piton into Amber and Danny’s remaining relationship
Or maybe get Danny jealous and acting upon his feelings. Or just…ok y’know being mike.
I would imagine one possible end game for him is a threesome involving Mike and Danny, for extra mind screw value.
So how long before Mike decides this plan isn’t worth it?
I give him until thirty seconds after Ethan starts going on about Pat Lee.
My guess? Already, but backing out would hurt his image way too much at this point, so he’s stuck between a rock and a hard place
oh god why did I put that winky in there I have become what I fear
Something gonna be rock hard, alright.
See, I think Mike values sadism highly enough that all this Transformers crap doesn’t really balance it out in the negative. Still worth it.
Mike’s not a sadist, he’s an asshole masochist. An assochist.
No, he’s a sadist. A masochist is someone who enjoys their own pain, a sadist is the opposite
Mike enjoys pain. There are many instances of this throughout both universes.
Mike’s both. It’s possible to be both.
Yeah, but I’ve never really seen him as enjoying the pain of others so much as enjoying the CONSEQUENCES of the pain he inflicts on others, especially when those consequences come in the form of retaliation.
Seduction is going smoothly I see.
Is that what’s happening? I thought Mike was just bored.
It can be both
If Michael Bay wanted to complete his dark work and drive the fandom truly mad, he could put a red robot and blue robot who look like Frenzy and Rumble in his movies, and not say which is which.
But he’d never do that. Why use red OR blue and recognizable character models when they can be gray and look like a roll of aluminum foil going through the garbage disposal?
Because to do what you suggested would require Michael Bay to put a level of thought into his films that I don’t think he has.
By which I mean any thought.
This.
Bay hasn’t a clue which is which. And doesn’t care. Because the movies make money anyway.
We’re talking about the same guy who gave a decepticon balls, so…
Everything I’ve seen about the most recent bayformers (that was /released/, not the upcoming one) suggests that, in fact, Michael Bay put a /lot/ of thought into Transformers.
I’m of the opinion that he made that movie to make fun of everyone who gave him money.
My take on him and this franchise has always been that he seems to know plenty about the canon of the franchise, but also fails to understand why it’s as popular as it is and possibly considers the franchise somewhat beneath him so takes a trolling kind of mentality when making these films.
Further toping this is that he engenders a lot of relevance and makes a lot of money making Transformers films compared to his entire remaining directorial oeuvre. The four existing Transformers films have grossed about $3.8 billion at the box office while his other eight films in the director’s seat have grossed around $2.1 billion since 1995. His first Transformers movie garnered about the only real critical praise he’s seen and his name is rather well known to the general public due to the franchise.
My personal take on his career is that he’d be great as just a cinematographer but has no business having the kind of creative control he generally does as a producer and/or director.
Given that he’s outright told people to shut up and that he refuses to listen to any criticism “because he makes films that he’d like”, I think it’s safe to say he doesn’t care what a fandom thinks about any franchise he touches.
[PS: TMNT was an atrocity in line with an Uwe Boll film, but with better action sequences. Then again, paint drying has better action sequences than an Uwe Boll film.]
Honestly, if it was developer integrity, I’d respect that, but all he cares about is flashy sequences, and to him plot is just a thin series of breadcrumbs to tie the action sequences together. And he fails to get character depth at all, often seemingly insulting the depth of development of characters in the franchises he touches (Raphael in TMNT was especially bad, making a very simple, very childish joke of the emotional challenges he faces in the comics or original live action series.)
In the end, Bay has the same mentality as Boll- “Shut up or I’ll punch you, I can shit on the floor, and it’s okay, because I like the smell.”
There’s no consideration either to the franchises involved, to the expectations of the fandoms, or to developing oneself as a director. It’s just a mindless repetition of the same self-indulgent design, without any effort put into it.
Well, we’ve famous actors that get by with just playing the same simplistic role over and over again and not ever developing their acting skills, as well.
In the end, such things are inexplicably popular, so there’s really noone to blame but the general population for supporting it..
Though among fans of an IP, it’s always troubling when we support the continuation of such things ourselves, through our financial contributions to them. If we want better movies, we gotta hold out for them, or we’ll only keep getting more of the same thing we’re agreeing to pay for.
Pretty sure he’s interested in making piles of money. With explosions.
Yeah, he’s totally getting into Ethan’s pants at this rate.
Give a guy a inch.
… then give him the other six?
That’s a pretty cruel metaphor/modified idiom to start trending when the average size is five.
A inch into his pants I mean, you see I didn’t even make the effort to shit talk him this time.
Well, y’know, they say “write what you know”.
You’re right, why risk shaming people for having cumbersomely large phalluses that will no doubt cause their partners uncomfortable strain.
Seriously though, phallus size as a measure of masculinity has gotta be one of the most ludicrous concepts I’ve ever come across. Any competent or intelligent individual will tell you that the ideal tool matches to the size and shape of the task at hand [think screwdrivers], and carrying a larger tool than needed to a task is likely just to make things awkward and more difficult than necessary.
Add in that there’s enough anecdotal commentary among females and males alike that outside of a social expectation framework, large sizes aren’t favored..
Add in that in the end, it’s just another part of the human body, and the entire special preference it gets is due to a very peculiar obsession with a single form of interaction..
In the end, it’s only “cruel” to those that are in a specific situation where they find their arrangement doesn’t meet to their circumstances. In the end, we all have minor things, characteristic or genetic, that will limit what we’re capable of and how we interact with others. It’s no more cruel than any other disadvantage a person may have, such as not being talented with a favored musical instrument. We work around it.
Then of course there are those who think it’s cruel because they think it’s an attack on their character, but that’s reflective of a deep psychological complex, and actually has no inherent basis within the commentary itself.
I appreciate your dedication to social progress, but maybe consider reactions to short jokes with seven paragraphs an excessive reply.
They are probably compensating for having a small penis.
Yeah, didn’t Mike show you? Six paragraphs is enough, unless you are making up for missing footnotes.
Thanks, I wasn’t sure how to put it.
The second panel is the most expressive face I’ve seen in Mike in years
And I think this is the most words he’s ever said in a single strip. Possibly across universes.
Mike.
Strip.
I see where your mind is at.
When you gaze into the void, it gazes into you.
Definitely where mine is, have you SEEN those abs? I’m bi, and Mikes the only male character in this comic that I have straight up crush on, none of the other guys who are into guys are anywhere near my type. Ethan and Danny are both too nice.
Actually, this has been a consistent failing to me in web-comics, which is a pretty progressive community, is that they seem like their trying to hard to give LGBT characters a halo effect. I understand why, to combat dangerous stereotypes, but it also makes many of the characters wholly unlikeable and not human enough to me.
Mike and Carla are two bright exceptions to this rule, and I find them both hot as hell compared to, say, Ethan and Danny or Becky and Dina.
Run, Mike. Run.
See Mike.
See Mike Run.
Run Mike Run.
See Ethan.
See Ethan Talk About Transformers.
…Run Mike Run.
So long as I don’t have to hear Ethan talk about Transformers.
This may be Ethan’s plan – he may know that Mike is trying to pull a Mike, and is making it work for it.
fibrir?
Frenzy is blue, Rumble is red.
Sounds like something you’d see on a Valentine’s card.
Rumble is red, Frenzy is blue,
I really like transformers,
But not as much as you.
I love the sight of ambiguous syntax in the evening. Looks like . . . work I don’t have to do.
Rumble is red, Frenzy is blue,
I really like transformers,
But not as much as you.
..At least so long as you dress
just like that one bot, Aimless,
Because so long as it looks like a Transformer,
then I’ll feel my body getting warmer,
and if you can’t do that, then I may love you less.
:X
See that little thing called “research” that Mike mentioned? You can use it too, and it’s only a quick Google search away!
Yeah, but just googling it isn’t very conducive for starting a conversation.
FIBRIR for life, bruddah!
I’m glad this comic covers the burning issues that need addressing.
It scares me that, apparently, this argument is well-known enough that a frickin’ acronym was created for it! AND PEOPLE KNOW WHAT IT MEANS!!
RIBFIR
alt.toys.transformers forever!
I didn’t care what Transformer was what color–I watched it on a monochrome TV set back then! And I tolerated it!
*plays Weird Al’s “Dare To Be Stupid” on the hacked Muzak*
Dare! Dare to believe you are stupid… you hold no brain in your hea-
…. wait, that’s not how it goes?
You’ve got to squeeze all the Charmin you can
While Mr. Whipple’s not around
Put your head in the microwave and
Get yourself a tan!
It’s so easy to do
DARE TO BE STUPID!
We’re all waiting for you
LET’S GO!
(Thank you, Stephen! I needed that!
Be warned, though, I will sing along to ANYTHING Weird Al.)
I can’t hear you!
Okay, I can hear you now!
Really?
Even the song that acknowledges the existence of Episode I?
That song was awesome, so yes.
That song justifies the existence of Episode 1! So long as we don’t have to watch it.
Is the seduction worth it Mike?
This is so light-hearted and cute and funny, I’m really enjoying this in these troubled times tbh.
Light hearted, cute, funny?
Well, cute perhaps.
But Mike is never light hearted about any of his targets, and Ethan is his endeavor at this point. This does not bode well for Ethan.
The sad thing is, Ethan KNOWS Mike. You’d think he would know better.
I think Ethan’s just built up a thick enough skin towards Mike that he’s (foolishly) come to ignore the low-grade abuse baseline, and it no longer factors in to his appraisal of Mike’s likely motives.
Power corrupts. Mike corrupts absolutly.
And yet Mike gets uncorrupted by Absolut.
Come to think of it, when has Ethan ever done anything for Mike?
Aside from being a feeding source of suffering.
Well, he’s reached out repeatedly and has been trying to single-handedly keep their friendship alive despite Mike’s habit of trying to ruin his life for fun.
So, it’s not for lack of trying. It’s just in Mike’s current edgelord state, Ethan’s suffering has been the only thing he’s wanted.
Ethan reaches out to Amber. Otherwise, we’ve only ever seen Mike approach Ethan, not the other way round.
Maybe he does have a crush on Ethan after all??
Ethan.
Ethan, no. Run away as far in the other direction as you can. That is not a tree you want to bark up.
Mike uses flirt. It’s… super effective?
When Mike is the least obnoxious person on the room.
Except for the part where Mike said he’d sleep with Joe just to hurt his ex.
Ethan! Not Joe…
He’d probably sleep with Joe too, just to hurt…
…. huh.
…. well, probably Joe’s self-image of hetero-normative masculinity, but if there was anyone else to hurt, that would be a bonus.
That would be a very Mike thing to do….and, since Mike is a universal sexual demigod in all continuities, it would be the best sex of Joe’s life, ruining forever the one thing he enjoyed most, meaningless sex. Very, very Mike indeed.
I dunno; that might backfire on Mike – it might just end up broadening Joe’s range of targets as it were, if he finds he likes both sexes.
That is, surprisingly, one area where Joe’s not too concerned. He once wondered what sort of threesome he ended up with the night before, but the prospect of it having involved another man didn’t really bother him at all.
Of course, what should have bothered Joe should have been the fact that he’s getting so drunk that he can’t even remember what sort of sex he said yes to the next day…
But yeah, Joe’s attitude towards gay men is the single ray of sunshine through his rotten darkness of masculine toxicity. He’s more than willing to be a gay man’s wingman, and if Danny were to go on a date with another man, Joe is there to make certain protection is used and that good times are to be had.
Which would be cuter is Joe had been able to conceive of something other than a string of one-night stands to count as a good time…
So, I see the mysterious force of darkness has a surprising amount of popular support as to who will take over a very important leadership position. In unrelated news, check out the poll for the new RA!
There’s nothing mysterious about the force of darkness in that other race. He made quite clear to everyone exactly what he is. That’s what makes his level of popular support so horrifying.
It’s happening … again.
uh, what. No, I doubt even 1/10 of the reader know what you’re talking about.
(it’s Trump, we’re talking about Trump)
Fuck, I thought John was talking about a new RA.
When Mike decides to do something, he goes all out.
Or all in, hurr hurr.
Huh, I kinda expected Mike to be more forward in his seduction, but then again he’s rather unpredictable
That’s the most I’ve heard Mike talk in one Dumbiverse strip.
theyre so cute
… why’s mike being so nice?
To get into Ethan’s pants.
To destroy Danny.
Because Ethan and Danny are sickening.
They might be sickening, but Mike’s doing it because they’re vulnerable.
No, seriously, you can see the exact moment when Mike decided to destroy them.
Yeah, because he’s an abusive sociopath not because they in any way deserve it for being “sickening.”
Exactly. That’s not a “this here is disgusting” look. That’s a “this here is an opportunity” look.
everybodys saying he has alternate motives but i bet hes just usually like this around ethan. they’re buds.
Sorry to burst your bubble of naive and hopeless optimism, but there’s this.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/04-it-all-returns/percent/
Don’t wish for best in Mike…he’ll use your desire to find it as a tool to destroy you.
oh yeah bc Mike seducing his friends and making them fall in love with him has always ended with terrible disaster in the past. cant think of a single time that ended happy.
So, next slipshine comic is MikexEthan confirmed?
So, who thinks Mike has a good shot at being President?
US Voters do love hate fuelled speech from jerks.
But surely Mike is a low to which US voters have shown themselves unwilling to sink!
Oh Ethan…sweet Ethan…this is what you’re spending you’re time on? Literally the most pointless argument in Transformers history, so pointless its an in-joke? You gotta get a man man.
Ethan’s ambition is insufficient to use the One Mike of Mordor. He can only become a Gollum-esque creature rather than a Ringwraith.
I’m kind of proud of Mike. He approached the situation intelligently, he did research, he got to know his enemy… now that is how you win the internet. Very impressive.
Some people like strong girls.
Damn I can actually see this version of Joyce being utterly confused by the concept.
OH MY
Mike is accidentally trolling himself.
It’s kind of beautiful.
OK, that made me laugh out loud!
I showed this to my boyfriend because lol internet arguments, and not only was he familiar with this argument despite not ever having touched Transformers fandom, he responded to my explanation of the whole Danny/Ethan/Mike situation and Mike trying to bang Ethan as a result with “Of course that’s his excuse, justifying it with spite.”
Think Mike will ever get some character development by the end of this storyline like Joe’s starting to get, or will he remain this very unpleasant one note dude forever?
I hope so. And if not, I hope we actually explore what makes him so currently horrible and he faces some consequences for it.
He’s grumpy all the time. That’s his consequence. He’s like Ebenezer Scrooge; he thinks he’s winning at life, but he’s actually losing.
That’d be nice, even if it’s nothing more than him opting to be less of a turd than he originally planned
Hey now. He’s an abuser AND a masochist. That’s two notes.
I wouldn’t get my hopes up…mike has never once stopped being in asshole in any continuity. True, he generally allows his assholery to benefit others in the long run…but only because he mostly cares about how shitty they feel the instant he drops the hammer.
Personally, I’ve got a huge crush on mike and hope he never changes. As a sadomasochist, he’s my ideal person.
Are you a sadist, a masochist, a switch, or a nonconformist to traditional S&M roles?
Regardless of what Mike’s reasons for this are on any level, I love that Ethan is taking ruthless advantage of it. He’s 50-60% sure Mike is his friend, and he’s known the guy for years, knows who and what he is. And, sadly, Mike is probably the least-fraught friend Ethan has right now.
Joyce: a reminder that he shoved himself back into the closet and went along with her fundie notions
Amber: Amazi-girl. Danny. The summer. The table-flipping. Pick a reason, Ethan can’t be 100% comfortable with her at least right now. He supports her, not vice versa.
Danny: Amber. Crush feelings. Too easy to be too close. Have to be on guard all the time.
Yelling at people on the internet with Mike doesn’t require any guard, doesn’t require him to watch what he says/does/thinks lest it be the wrong thing. Or so he thinks. Time will no doubt tell whether he’s right or wrong, but kudos for grabbing fun friend-time with both hands, Ethan.
Jacob.
Ethan can be close to Jacob.
VERY close.
When Alfred Nobel established the prizes that bear his name, one of the world leading authorities on Transformers was a man he hated. He didn’t want to endow a prize the man could win, so there is no Nobel Prize in Transformers. Or was it Mathematics? I always get those two mixed up.
Linear algebra. A mathematician that worked on linear transformations.
Comic Reactions:
Let us never forget the context of this, which is Mike intending to seduce him entirely so he can try and ruin his life for fun in direct defiance of one of the few requests Ethan has ever managed to make of Mike. Cause that makes this whole arc vile no matter what and the actions of a manipulative abusive boyfriend mixed with the type of internet troll who tries to get people shot by cops for “fun”.
Like, this isn’t Shortpacked! This is a realistic setting and as such, Mike has real-world analogues and those real-world analogues who like to bully people and like to “fake date” people just to use it against them often end up costing lives in suicide attempts, not to mention lots of PTSD and inability to trust anyone.
Like, let’s be frank, Ethan hasn’t dated a guy in his life yet and has been extremely jumpy about being gay. So if his first time with a guy, with a long-time friend who knows exactly how to get to his heart is this bullshit, how easy is it going to be for him to date again? To take those risks? To trust when someone says they are his friend?
Mike’s actions in a realistic setting become even more monstrous, because in a cartoon land, consequences are frequently ignored. The long term detriment doesn’t play out and linger.
But here? His actions have cost.
And so, given the horribleness he is enacting, I’m somewhat amused that he’s putting himself through a miserable time in service to it unnecessarily. Like, if he just said, hey Ethan, I think you’re interesting and hot, wanna bang, that would at least put his game up front.
But weaseling his way in sideways like this by pretending to take an interest in Ethan’s weird hobbies just to try and use them to tear him down is only serving to communicate to Ethan that he enjoys these pointless and misery-inducing battles of minutiae he couldn’t possibly care about.
And the best part of it all is that he really really doesn’t have to be doing this to himself. It’s all completely unrelated to his goal. And I doubt Ethan would put him up to it if Mike was honest and forthright about it just being a tactic to endear himself to Ethan. Hell, Ethan probably wouldn’t even hold it against him.
So, yeah, choke on that, Mike, you bully abusive fuck.
Worth pointing out, I guess, because taken on its own this strip is really close.
We haven’t seen a village idiot who says stupid shit that ‘no fan would ever say’ yet.
Look, if you try to make something idiot-proof, the only outcome is that they’re gonna make better idiots.
Withiut Mikes machinations to backfire, Ethan and Danny are going to remain sexless. And denying each other in a misplaced obligation toward Amber.
So I say, Bring it on.
I dont think Ethan with get tripped up by Mike, Unless Mike drinks.
Good, they should take it slow and get comfortable with each other. Having Mike fuck Ethan just to fuck with him is not going to make Ethan more ready to jump into sexy time with Danny in the same way as getting massive PTSD doesn’t tend to make one more down to fuck.
Also, it’s Danny. He’s a serial monogamist who can’t stand being single. How long do you really think he’s going to hold out without trying to pursue something? And well, if he somehow manages it, good, he really could use learning to love himself and himself being single so he stops equating sacrifice with love.
Unlikely. They’re raging pots of hormones.
Except it DOES accomplish something. It gets Ethan emotionally invested in a way that a bald-faced hookup wouldn’t.
Sadly, Ethan is very vulnerable to Mike’s brand of gaslighting. He is open and trusting to a fault, he is very insecure about his sexuality and dating and he is starving for affection on an almost Danny-like level. I also think he has a Danny-like nostalgia for his old friends, because hanging out with Mike reminds him of a time when he hadn’t left the closet and made everything horrible with his family, and Amber was not in as bad shape as she is now.
And again, it remind us of one of Mike’s most despicable traits – his habit to prey on the vulnerable and punch downwards. His latest attempts to target Dorothy and Walky were shut down pretty fast, but Ethan is still a possible target for him.
Also, let’s not forget that Ethan in his eternal quest to find ways to punish himself feels its’s up to himself to suffer Mike so other people don’t have to.
He is the perfect abuse victim, and Mike wastes NO time taking advantage of it.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-1/04-the-bechdel-test/backpack/
Yup, and Mike is an abuser. Like, he’s been a bully, but he’s upgrading himself to abusive romantic partner, playing off Ethan’s desire for things to be “like they were” as you note.
And I’m not really in a headspace to feel “lol” about manipulative shitheads who try and trick people into sex and act super controlling towards them, given how much I’ve seen the aftermath of those sorts of short term relationships in the damage they call future relationships and given what I’ve been learning about my rapist student and his actions towards the student he raped back when the two of them “dated”.
Mike has been horrible and has needed to be stopped, but now that’s even more insistive.
FWIW, I suspect that Willis plans to have this resolve itself by Mike learning something that he suspected but never really knew – Ethan is high-maintenance. Trying to get close enough, emotionally, to him to reach the ‘seduce’ part if going to be so trying on an intellectual level (getting himself into Ethan’s über-fan mindset) he might end up giving up.
And if he does manage to get there, he just might recoil in horror from what he’s become. Being an asshole, sure, that’s Tuesday… but a nerd?
“Like, this isn’t Shortpacked!”
Say it again for the folks in the back who seem to think backstory and motivation cross over like sexuality and keep Mike from being an abusive fucking prick?
Oh no…. not FIRRIB/FIBRIR.
That’s a funny way of acronymizing FIRRIB
this ship could totally sail the same way Mamber did
I was thinking just that. I ship them since SP!
I think it’s interesting that I’d like Willis to go whole hog with this. I’d like to see him take some characters who were redeemable and fun in Shortpacked and just make them….bad…here. That Mike and Robin are, in fact, unsalvagable.
Even without goatees.
Also, call me Crazy, but *IS* Mike actually trying to be a Zen mentor? It seems it’s entirely possible he is being an ass just to be an ass in this universe.
I would say it looks more likely that he’s just an asshole in this universe. Although I really need to read Shortpacked for comparison…
…. now I’m imagining Robin with a fake goatee for talking to hipster constituents. Curse you.
Some comments here that are true, in opposite directions.
I mean:
True this is not Shortpacked. And although that strip was syfy fantasy, the characters in it were real to themselves (and a lot of us). Their loves and hates were no less important, than the actions, and or feelings of their counterparts here in DoA. And their actions, did lead to consequences.
Mike was a clear cut asshole in Shortpacked, but not on the just plain cruel level of Mary.
Mike often went after someone to point out their own stupidity of actions and make them realize what idiots they were/had been. An encounter with Mike changed your world view but didn’t put you in actual danger – usually.
And people engaging in any activity with Mike usually KNEW what they were getting into, and did it anyway. As do people here in DoA.
Here in DoA, Ethan also KNOWS Mike. He should take Mikes actions with a grain of salt. Mike is a bit more sharp here in DoA, I’m not sure just how, but it seems he is going more for his pleasure, instead of his pleasure And a chance to be teaching biting life lessons to people he considers sheep.
Unless Mike has changed overnight, he is not doing this to endear himself to Ethan, imo.
In Shortpacked, you could follow a convoluted trail of Mike plans back to several people all caught in his net. He was great at multiple zings. Here it seems he is simply going after Ethan for a one nighter (or more), so as to hurt Danny, and indirectly Amber. For no reason other then to get Ethan in bed. There may be ulterior motives that come to light later.
I can’t personally compare Mike to the type of person who trolls the net to get innocent people shot by the police. Mike has to be on the scene of his malicious tricks and interfering. And he doesn’t seem to be so warped as to want to see people dead, just humiliated and hurt.
I dunno, “humiliated and hurt” still leaves its own trail of bodies (*cough cough* Tyler Clementi *cough cough*). And I’m not really keen on blaming the victim of targeted abuse because they “should have known what an abuser is like” because that feels victim blaming as all hell and ignores that Mike has been actively sabotaging Ethan’s attempts to make friends other than him*.
*Hell, this whole abusive scheme is entirely because Mike feels threatened by the healthy time Ethan’s been spending with Danny as it might lead to Ethan having the self-esteem needed to cut Mike out once and for all and so is trying to ruin that and make it toxic by proxy.
And I know the justifications of abusers, the way they think of themselves as brilliant masterminds showing the “sheep” how foolish they are. And I track their actions which are always to punch down and cling pathetically to cultural narratives that they are worth more socially because of accidents of birth (white and male is a pretty common one, at least among the abusers I’ve had to clean up after).
And more importantly, I’ve seen the damage that ensues from a garbage person treating someone’s life as a “game” to “show how smart they are”. Like, the abusive boyfriend who constantly tells his girlfriend how stupid she is and how he understands people and how sheep-like they are.
That type of asshole dated my ex and I spent the first couple of years of my relationship with her just helping to clear out all the damage she acquired in abusive relationships like that, with folks who diminished her every quality and made her doubt her own sense of worth. And those scars ran deep and still plague her to this day as did their actions of rape.
And well, we’ve seen the aftermath of Mike’s “help” in this universe.
He actively made a mental health condition for Amber worse by accusing her of becoming her dad and made her less likely to seek out the support of friends because this unsafe asshole insists of tagging along every time Ethan tries to check up on her (Ethan being the person who most grounded her before).
He managed to bully Ethan back into the closet, undoing all of Amber’s hard work to try and get him to love himself and again poisoning that relationship.
He’s convinced Walky that letting anyone know about things he feels vulnerable about will cause them to hate him, thus preventing him from getting real help about his academics and instead has been bumping him towards the TA that Mike knows doesn’t actually help and instead just tries to sleep with his students.
And he’s harassed Dorothy, not even for anything other than a “lesson” she already knows being a woman in society in what has now been a year in comic where sexism has never been more prominent.
He doesn’t help people, he alienates them from support networks and tries to break them down to emotional collapse. For fun. Not giving a damn if his targets are miserable or want to kill themselves or are taking risks that make them more likely to die. Because to him, his whole edgelord worldview depends on viewing himself as some Machiavellian genius rather than an asshole who’s boned up on the Abuse and Control Wheel and has a massive chip on his shoulder.
And sadly, in the real world, there are plenty of people who fit that profile. Wannabe Machiavellis that are just abusive shitheads. Hence the comparison.
huh. Did not realize how all the suffering in the DoA can be tied to Mike in some way. Perhaps he’s going to be the final villain. An effigy of all the problematic aspects of Willis’s previous works that he himself recognizes. And a deconstruction of characters who think that pushing everyone’s flaws to the surface makes them some kind of ultimately helpful Trickster archetype when they’re really just ruining everyone’s self-esteem and creating a horrible, draining environment.
Well, not ALL of it. Billie and Ruth have their own personal hell with alcohol, depression and Mary.
never said he caused it. just said he figures in there somewhere
you’re giving entirely TOO MUCH credit to Mike for getting Ethan back in the closet and Walky be hesitant to ask for help. Knowing these characters, it’s actually extremely likely that they would have gone through with both those actions without Mike’s comments
Mike is not doing that well in college. He has made zero new friends, his peers grow increasingly tired of his antics, the teachers are getting suspicious of him and even his beloved bullying is loosing steam (compare his first and latest interactions with Dorothy, Walky and Joyce).
So he find himself trailing like a puppy after the one person who still gives him the time of the day increasingly often. But of course he can’t just hang out, no, he need it to be a scheme for some ridiculous gaslighting plan.
“I’m just doing this for the craft” he tells himself, the third hour into research of transformers minutia (compare and contrast Becky reading up on dinosaurs). But he can’t shake of the thought of how Ethan and Danny looked at each other. And Ethan is out of the closet now. How soon before he has a boyfriend? Not that Mike can SAY anything about it, of course. For him, it needs to be a plan…
Nah, I don’t really believe it. I believe Mike is perfectly honest when he says he does this just because he saw an opening to make someone sad. I believe him when he says that his sole motivation is to be a bully to those around him. But I also believe there is a reason the only times we see him not actively being a dick is when he trails after Ethan – because who else would he be with?
Man, if making new friends is the first/primary bar to doing well in college, I’m failing it for the third time. The first two times I failed both gradewise and friendwise, but I thought I was doing well this time.
(note: this is me being silly, no part of this comment is serious except I actually have made exactly zero friends in college)
You’re doing fine in Sarah’s book!
(Also, you are not a webcomic character, so I trust your situation has more dimensions).
LOL, Sarah has made many new friends!
(I’m currently attending an all-online university. Making new friends would entail hanging out on message boards, and with the exception of this comment section and one or two others, I avoid message boards as general viper pits.)
Completely against her will. She considers that a failure.
Or at least tries to convince herself she does.
When did his teachers start catching onto him? I forget
Well, not HIS teacher per se, but Leslie. We have not seen any other direct teacher-Mike interaction.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2012/comic/book-2/03-the-first-step-towards-recovery/target/
Oh yeah, thanks!
Have we even seen him in class?
Leslie threw him out, but that wasn’t his class.
I think he’s in the math class with everyone else, but I don’t think we’ve seen him interact with the teacher.
Actually, I don’t we ever saw anybody directly interact with the math teacher. Penny said his name once, and I think we saw him from afar a couple times, but I don’t think we ever saw him up-close.
Never seen him close up and the only student we see talk to him was Sal when she was asking for help after the she didn’t understand her first math quiz. He promptly dumped her on Jason, who immediately hit on her before offering his actual office hours.
I think you’re right that he’s a bit terrified of losing Ethan, because then he would be truly alone and in that, he again fits that common profile of the abusive edgelord.
How many times has some vile internet bully or guy with a string of relationships in which he’s been the abuser whined about no one liking him or being (usually romantically) alone? It’s been the origin story and narrative of a huge amount of abusers from Elliot Rodger to Mark Lepine to the incel assholes who found the foundation of many hate movements.
And well, he kind of needs to be alienated and alone because his presence is horrendously toxic and most toxic to the poor bastards that try and reach out to him.
Hell, he’s a great example to a point I made a few days ago about how not everyone is worth reaching out and trying to help, because some people will use that as an opening to abuse and hurt you.
Mike embodies that warning and has rewarded Ethan’s continued friendship by trying to make Ethan as alienated and miserable as himself.
And here I thought the previous comic was Mike just being self-aggrandizing.
Mike is a lot smarter than people give him credit for. The guy is going to college for social work and still has time to hang out with people if he chooses, pull both simple and elaborate pranks (only a fraction of which we ever see), collect and catalog a massive amount of data on everyone he has even the slightest interaction with both directly and indirectly, write a spur of the moment detailed cited essay, and style his gravity defying hair. He can also debate with the precision and skill of a surgeon, write articulate detailed essays, control his fighting ability to such a degree that he knows exactly how hard to hit as to not break bones or cause permanent damage but still hurt, use advanced psychology, control his emotions, and so much more. This incarnation of Mike seems to be a genius among geniuses who got so bored by challenges like chess that he decided to play with people instead, but pushing everyone away because they annoyed him and running them off by playing mind games with them has taken a toll longterm.
I dunno, in my experience, it doesn’t take a lot of intelligence to be an abuser (just look at Trump for a key example), it just takes a firm willingness to utterly disregard the normal forms of society and take advantage of people’s trust and willingness to give people the benefit of the doubt that surely they aren’t actually intending to ruin their life.
And it takes a society that doesn’t actually punish interpersonal abuse in any meaningful way so there are no consequences to ruining lives in this way.
But you’re right that society does view abusers as intelligent when they are not. Of making works about abusers that paint them as brilliant strategists in the war of the human mind rather than penny-ante control freaks with terrible respect for people and boundaries.
And that leads a lot of abusers to see abuse as a means of demonstrating “how much smarter they are than everyone else” and I’ve seen this in person. There’s a lot of smugness in being a penny-ante manipulator. The ability to fuck with a person’s sense of self and gaslight them is not hard, anyone could do it if they valued people little enough, but it makes abusers feel brilliant and unstoppable.
And that’s sort of the central problem with folks like Mike who prop up their mediocre intelligences with a bunch of utter disregard for the humanity of others and taking an oblique road most people will try and convince themselves they are not actually seeing, because we want to view the best in people.
For example, Trump is dumb as a bag of rocks. But he successfully treated America as his abuse victim. Hell, he’s even doing the gaslighting with his ignoring reality.
I just hope America is smart enough to leave him.
note, that’s not to say that abuse victims are not smart. I really should have phrased that differently, but I hit submit before I realized it.
Point is, I hope my analogy fails, and America doesn’t wind up like so many abuse victims.
Let’s just say that it takes a certain skill to successfully abuse people, and that one needs specific counter-skills to defend against it. And those counter-skills are (sadly) usually only gained by first-hand experience.
I guess my problem is that I was raised by assholes and can see past Mike’s asshole ways into a few things that hint at him being on the intelligent side. My brother was an asshole who started out being of average intelligence until he discovered drugs. My mother was an abusive asshole and dumb as a box of rocks (example she asked my dad when I was little if men have periods like women do). My father is a verbally abusive man of average intelligence, but well above average in common sense, construction, electrical, cooking, spacial, survival, marksmanship, tracking, local flora/fauna, gardening, natural remedies, and classic car repair. Being remarkable in some areas doesn’t mean he’s not abusive; being abusive does not mean he can’t be remarkable at some things. I guess that’s how I can see signs of Mike being above average intellectually; I’m used to separating the asshole from the rest of the person.
Not so much that he’s dumb as that I don’t think he’s an asshole because he’s a bored genius. That just feeds into the general edgelord superiority complex and doesn’t have a lot of textual support.
We don’t really know why Mike’s an asshole. He just is. Maybe we’ll learn more in this arc. Probably not though. Humanizing Mike just makes him seem like more of a jerk and changing him removes any real interest from the character.
I don’t understand people like Mike who get off on being sadistic just to be sadistic.
That sneer in the second panel shows me all I need to see. He’s not even hiding the contempt. He’s actively pursuing a strategy that avoids overtly showing anything like attraction and simply impressing Ethan with a new application for his tendency to rhetorically tear people to shreds. When/if they do fuck, Ethan will have made all the first moves and Mike will have simply gone along with it. When Mike stops (literally) giving a fuck and stops seeming to care, Ethan will find himself upset. Danny will probably be made to know in such a way that he thinks it’ll be a longer term thing. Amber will probably find out about the whole thing and blow a gasket.
This is Mike Warner. Don’t be a Mike Warner. In this universe at least, he uses his talents for evil.
Yeah.
And it’s been dismaying to see Mike get worse and worse with few in comic universe knowing or reacting to. But that’s kind of how it works in real life as well. Someone getting more and more abusive is frequently brushed off as “oh, he’s just trying to be funny”.
Silly webcomic author. Clearly Frenzy is a fetching shade of yellow.
Well, Mike, say goodbye to your free time for the rest of the year. Something tells me that Ethan has plenty of uses for it unless you’re pretty firm with him (Note: Firm means ‘clear about what you will or will not do and not just passive-aggressively snarky like you usually do).
fibrir sounds like the name of some forgotten Norse god. like maybe Fenrir’s chubby cousin or something.
Ah, Rumble and Frenzy — the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of the Decepticon forces.
I am feeling triggered! I always HATED it that the cartoon got those two wrong (well, it was one of many things, not the least of which is that Starscream was supposed to be extremely badass, if too impatient for his own good. The original story was that Megatron kept his backstabbing ass around purely because too many of his forces – the jets, mainly – would simply follow Starscream out the door if he kicked him out. Bumbling, stupid, and cowardly Starscream did not sit well with me at all.)
The early G1 cartoons were reduced to self-parody by two policies on the producers part:
1) An impossible production and release schedule that led them to broadcasting half-complete animation;
2) “Money? You don’t need money! This is animation!” – A common affliction in 1970s and 1980s western animation most typified by the Hanna-Barbera quality-free cookie machine.
Mike is confusing me a little here, he’s doing good for the greater evil or something?
A while ago Ethan made him promise not to do anything to Danny. Once Ethan was gone he said something like “I was wondering which of you I’d seduce to mess with the other. Looks like it’s going to be you.” This may well be step one of that.
Aah, the ol’ “realize your feelings by watching the other being taken away” trick. A classic.
So, nobody’s going to bring up that Frenzy was red in the cartoon but his toy was blue?
You think that simply using facts, logic and research can make you win an internet argument??
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
You forgot the chemical X that ties it all together: Psychological manipulation.
Dammit Willis now I remember FIBBIR again.
Oh no, Ethan has already given into the dark side.
Whatthehell is a ‘Frenzy’?
And who cares?
-“BB”-
Frenzy was one of the G1 Transformers toys and a character in the G1 Transformers cartoon. Due to quality control issues on the part of Hasbro, sometimes, the physically identical but different-coloured Rumble toy was shipped in Frenzy boxes. Even more confusingly, due to tight schedules and abysmal quality control at Sunbow Studios, the few times Frenzy appeared in the early seasons of the G1 cartoon, his colour scheme was occasionally swapped with Rumble’s (sometimes strobing between the official blue-and indigo and Rumble’s red-and-grey multiple times in a single shot).
Because of this, there is a debate amongst fanatical Transformers purists about what is the ‘real’ colour of Frenzy. As Mike has found out, the debate can become quite involved but winning a bout is a considerable cause for admiration and kudos. This was probably what Mike was looking to achieve here.
frenzy [fren-zee]
noun, plural frenzies.
1. extreme mental agitation; wild excitement or derangement.
2. a fit or spell of violent mental excitement; a paroxysm characteristic of or resulting from a mania:
He is subject to these frenzies several times a year.
verb (used with object), frenzied, frenzying.
3. to drive to frenzy; make frantic:
She was frenzied by fear when she smelled the smoke.
Also, a Decepticon who transforms into a cassette tape. There’s another one who looks pretty much the same named Rumble. Frenzy is red, Rumble is blue. Or maybe vice versa. Or maybe they’re both blue. I dunno. I’m going with “they both like getting repainted regularly”.
So… like that one episode of Ouran High School Host Club, but with Transformers that go into Soundwave’s chest instead of twins that want to get into Haruhi’s pants?
http://tfwiki.net/wiki/FIRRIB
This is fascinating, but I’m not a Transformers fan, so… the fascination is somewhat abstract.
“I’m surprised you know enough of transformers.” – Stop being an elitist doorkeeper, Ethan.
“How long have I known you. It rubs off.” – You wish, Mike.
It strikes me that G1 Soundwave (known to be an evesdropper and blackmailer) might be Mike’s childhood hero. Given that Frenzy is one of Soundwave’s sidekick squad, it makes sense that he knows all about him in some detail.
I’m probably being whooshed, but, in case I’m not, how is it “gatekeeping”? They’ve known each other for years. Mike knows Ethan likes Transformers, so, if Mike liked them, you’d think he’d talk to him about it.
If anything, the sudden interest shows Ethan’s gullibility, since he should know by now how big a jerk Mike is, and that he’s exactly the type of person who would feign an interest for some scheme.
Well, unless Ethan actually knows that and is playing along. Now that would be awesome.
So, yeah, even if you are joking and I’m saying nothing good, at least something good came out–an awesome idea for how this could end.
I was joking and something awesome came out of it
Well, I’m kinda joking. I think Ethan dips a bit too much into the mindset of “being a fan right”, which easily lends itself to elitism and shutting new people out – a bit like Dina with her dinosaurs. But of course there is nothing like that dynamic going on with Mike, just like you pointed out, so this was just me making fun of that line while completely ignoring the context.
wait how is Dina elitist and shutting people out? She’s always willing to explain stuff and loves it when people want to share her interest like Becky, she does get angry at Joyce but that’s because she denies all the known facts and doesn’t want to learn about evolution.
How is Dina shutting people out, you ask?
How could Dina be seen as a gatekeeper?
Would Dina close the door on someone for not liking dinosaurs “right”.
…sorry, sorry. I will stop now.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/04-it-all-returns/security/
Of course, Dina would very much LIKE to be inclusive and teach everyone how cool dinosaurs are, but her bad people skills make it very hard for other people to access that knowledge and she can be a tad defensive about it.
On the one hand, as Ethan’s last few strips have shown he cares greatly about people having the right opinions about his fandoms. On the other hand, when actually dealing with a person who’s new to them–Joyce–he’s been very welcoming; he tried to present them in a way that would appeal to her, he didn’t criticize her for having opinions he doesn’t share, and he paid attention to what she wanted to see. Compare to Walky and his proper viewing flowchart.
That’s a good point.
I like to say that my favorite aspect of this comic is how flawed characters reach over their limitations to better themselves (best seen with Joyce).
Ethan is like that for fandoms. He contains both the lows and the highs. Both the yelling over internet and the introducing new people.
and thus.
Mike will fall for his own trap
So i know somewhere in my heart guts that mike is mike and is probably up to no good but…. Part of me wants to backfire and turn into maybe a brief thing….
Idk i think itd be an interesting thing to see mike develop feelings instead of just more plots to utilize.
Maybe Mike will turn out to be Danny and Amber’s reconciliation fairy. Because Ethan is ‘taken’, Danny will redouble his efforts to reconcile with Amber/Amazi-Girl.
In Shortpacked!, Mike occasionally plotted casual sexual encounters to force couples past walls of denial, so it isn’t unprecedented for him to have that role again (although unknowingly in this case, given DoA’s more serious tone).
If it’s not entirely a game to him I hope he gets his heart utterly crushed because fuck Mike and people like him.
*claps vigorously*
so given that Ethan atm was probably born around 1998… that means Transformers Armada would have been the cartoon he first latched onto, unless his dad was a huge fan of G1 and or some other season. i can’t wait for DoA five or so years from now, when Ethan’s first Transformers would be the Bayverse movies.
I would have voted for unknown good guy, but not unknown evil. So I went with Dorothy.
And it’s irritating Ruth isn’t in the choices. Feels like a bit of spoil
(unless that’s what he wants us to believe, evil laugh)
I hate diagnosing fictional characters with all my heart for its numerous mentalist facets, but, between his actions in the comic and Cerberus’s comments about his real-life counterparts (so lovely to know they exist, really), I’m seriously wondering if Mike is a bonafide psychopath. As annoying as his parents can be, I can’t imagine how else they could make a Mike unless they are secretly horrific abusers.
I knew a self-admitted sociopath who I was friends with. He smiled more, but he’s eerily similar. Looking back, I don’t think he was ever my friend, or the very least, not a friend I want to have. He’s in the IDF right now and posting some scary stuff on social media. Every time I think about him I pray that he has hasn’t done some sort of war crime or other horrible thing yet.
not for his sake, but for the sake of the people he has power over in the Occupied Territories.
The man outright admitted to being the terror of his high school, where he carried a knife and was the local coke dealer. I have no idea how I ever looked past that and out of all the people I lived with during my gap year, he’s the only one I don’t consider to be family.
I think Mike’s problem isn’t that he’s a sociopath if his “happy drunk” attitude is there, it’s just that he’s a tremendous misanthrope. Basically, my theory for how Mike exists in Dumbing of Age is that he decided to be an Emo Goth Kid who listens to Linkin Park without the Dragonballz videos who sneered at society—and never grew out of it. Like Raistlin Majere, he’s smarter and better than everyone else so he doesn’t change.
ETHAN IS WRONG THOUGH
Aw I actually like Roz in this universe
this is seriously some A-plus seduction Mike is doing
if he ever decided to do this in a professional capacity, i would pay him so many nickels
May you get your heart broken Mike.
Does…does Mike *like* Ethan??
Frenzy is red though …
banned
I think I speak for the others when I say we are prepared to go down with this ship #FIRRIB
Compromise, they’re both purple
YOU WIN THIS ARGUMENT!
So sayeth The Emperor.
The original production was over 30 years ago. Ergo, both are sepia.
#WhyWeFeelOld
either Mike gets his heart broken (highly unlikely) or he brutally fucks Ethan up without remorse… i’m hoping for the former
I’m late to the game, but I thought I’d point out what I think is an imminent power couple: Dorothy and Mike (or Dorke)
They both keep close, intricate notes about the people around them, and have no shame in pursuing their interests. After the wishy washy Walky business Mike will appear as a strong minded foil to her. Together they will save, or destroy, the dorm!
I think Dorothy might not quite get along with Mike ever since he tried to “save” her from dating Walky.
…the more I think about that, the more I realize how utterly chauvinistic that idea is.
Is it wrong to find this adorable?