It mystifies me that people are expecting the year that’s going to be the recipient of 2016’s shittiness to be better than the year that dished it out.
“Knowing it’s going to be shit” is not the same as “knowing what we’re in for.” As president, Trump could do pretty much anything. I’m not arrogant enough to predict exactly how he’s going to fuck shit up. Are you?
It mystifies me that people ever see anything worth celebrating in incrementing the digits used to measure a period of time defined by an arbitrary starting point. The sun rises every morning; this one is no different from the day before or the day after tomorrow. Celebrate them all.
“But here’s some advice, boy. Don’t put your trust in revolutions. They always come around again. That’s why they’re called revolutions.” – Sam Vimes, Night Watch
“pretty good year up til November”
— The entire dumpster fire of a campaign before that
— Orlando shooting, Nice attack, Brussels bombing
— Aleppo!
— Brexit, plus the continuing collapse of democracy in Poland
— The ongoing refugee crisis
— The American opioid crisis
— Zika epidemic
Actually, the sun rotates (spins) a bit like Earth’s does, but because it doesn’t have a solid surface it doesn’t have a fixed rotation period. Rather, different sections parts of its (gaseous/plasma) surface complete rotations in different lengths of time, as measured by movements of sunspots. A sunspot on the solar equator rotates about once every 24 and a half (Earth) days, while sunspots closer to the solar poles rotates about once every 38 days. So, a solar rotation is an imprecise period of time somewhere between 24.5 and 38 days. But it’s not an Earth year.
The phrase you’re looking for is “planetary revolution”, or “one revolution of Earth about the Sun”, or “Earth revolving around the sun” or something like that.
I won’t disagree that Roz has a terrible attitude about this whole deal, but she’s kinda right about Dorothy. Like approachability is a REALLY important aspect of being an RA and Roz is infinitely more approachable than Dorothy if you’re not in either’s immediate circle of friends.
Roz is not “infinitely more approachable,” because she’s a jerk. Not just a slight jerk (like Walky), but a real jerk. Grade-A.
Dorothy would be nice, would be supportive, and would really try, and that’s basically what’s required of an RA. An RA isn’t supposed to be (and rarely is) everybody’s best friend, they’re supposed to be, well, like Dorothy.
[Also Dorothy, unlike Roz, would also learn from her mistakes.]
Because she hasn’t learned from them before this. She seemed like she might be learning, but then she did the R.A. thing, and then now is celebrating her hatred of her own sister (and not even worried about what it will do to her “favorite teacher.”)
Roz has been consistently portrayed as a jerk. What growth she seemed to be having seems to have dissipated. So people don’t think she can change.
At least, not if she won and had her jerkishness validated.
“Roz is not “infinitely more approachable,” because she’s a jerk. ”
She just has to fake not being a jerk, or at least ‘our jerk’, until she’s in. Then she doesn’t have to care! (It seems unlikely she was planning on really doing anything once she had the role)
However, this strip makes it pretty clear that her end-goal wasn’t “get my sister to admit her own sexuality since I’m concerned for her”. It was “ruin my sister’s political career so that the candidate I support wins”.
I think it was even more insidiously self-serving? “ruin my sister’s political career because it reflects poorly on my own beliefs and desired career path”.
I agree, but Roz isn’t the selfless hero she claims to be here. I am questioning her motives, not the result of her actions.
Ok, I’m also questioning that because this could have serious, dangerous consequences for both Leslie and Robin, but Roz is telling others (and perhaps herself?) she is awesome for doing this. For them. Celebrate and appreciate Roz, guys, she will solve all your problems, because us queer people need other people to do that.
Not exactly. The only thing she has clearly said that she didn’t snap the photograph herself, and that she preferred it for Robin to have outed herself.
She may very well have indeed told a photographer where to find her sister. That’s not precluded from her words.
What I find really detestable about Roz here is her pretending to know what Robin’s sexuality is. Robin might not even know what that is yet! As far as the context of the comic she hasn’t done anything overtly homo or even heterosexual. She’s shown an interest and attraction to Leslie and joked about sucking an imaginary dick. What overwhelming evidence! My point is what does Roz actually know so who is she to say Robin should out herself?
Once you go down the rabbit hole of “depends on one’s ethics”, you are as bad as homophobes, many of which base their anti-gay beliefs on a somewhat consistent code of personal morals.
Bad is bad, even if it’s to cause some good. i.e., if you were forced to resort to it, it is a cause to be remorseful, not gloating.
The fact that we’re still arguing about it as a comment section five days after it comes out shows that not everyone feels that way. There will always be radicals, those who do what others see as wrong, and amongst their own will be seen as right. Whacky, isn’t it?
It should always be the decision of the person in question whether or not they make their sexuality known, both to individuals and to the public at large. That is a basic thing that has to be a line in the sand. You can’t muddy that with qualifiers or you end up in some really ethically dodgy places in a goddamn hurry. Same goes for trans people. Nobody is more qualified to make the decision of disclosure than the person in question. Full stop.
I think part of the problem lies in the chance that it further justifies outing other queer people who are not making life harder for others.
It’s kind of similar to the issue of misgendering shitty people – if it were allowed to happen to these shitty people, then what is to stop a person ‘deserving’ of this respect from making a mistake/ticking someone off and having it happen to them as an act of ‘justice’?
I agree that a person should be able to choose when, where, and how to disclose their orientation (sexual or otherwise); however, also I believe that if you publicly attack a person or group of people for something, you give up your privacy in that area. Just like any kind of publicly shared information, moral claims should be verifiable, especially when those claims impact other people. If a politician advocated for reduction of economic support on the premise that “people should manage their money more responsibly” and then it turns out that he declared bankruptcy three times, I think that fact should be made public. If he never voiced an opinion on the matter, I wouldn’t care, but hypocrisy ticks me off more than just about anything else. Especially when it negatively affects other people.
Sad thing is that I hear all the time the same “removing their choices for the benefit of our community” rhetoric from certain anti-LGBT Christian groups. That’s why I keep insisting that we need to be better than that. Whenever we decide to infringe on the rights of other peoples to protect our own, we are setting up ourselves for a never-ending escalation of self-righteous justification to be horrible to other human beings.
It is possible to be an activist without being a criminal.
It’s not saving lives. Outing Robin would stop her political career, but someone just as bad (or worse) will always be right there to replace her. Outing people just reinforces the idea that being gay is something shameful to be hidden, and that being found is a horrible scandal. It may prevent her from winning the upcoming election, but it won’t have any long term benefits.
Pointing out lies in politics never has long-term benefits. This politician promised to lower taxes and raised them instead. That politician passed a law that she spoke out against during the election. An anti-gay politician caught having a same-sex liaison should be a scandal. A pro-freedom-of-sexual-expression politician who is found out to be gay should be something that no one cares about. Lying and hypocrisy should be punished to discourage it in our politicians. If we don’t hold them accountable, they will keep doing horrible things. If we reward good behavior, it will encourage people to behave better. I don’t care what your stance is, but you should always live up to the ideals that your insist on holding others to.
Yes, that’s where I fail to understand Roz’s plan. In the long run, this is definitely not a win for LGBT rights — it makes the bigots braver and the ultimate backlash that much more deadly for the sake of a single seat in the House, and I’d assumed Roz would be smart enough to see that.
Roz’s plan, IMO, is that she gets to be free of having to “behave properly” in public for the sake of big sister’s image/career/campaign, and can do whatever she wants. That’s it.
For all that she talks the talk, I sincerely doubt that she gives a fig about any progressive cause that does not directly benefit her.
The only way? No. A very effective way? Yes. A way that works better than anything else we’ve tried? Yes.
The other ways all rely on having people support gay rights, which is only now becoming a real option.
Plus, it’s our duty to out any deceitful politician. We don’t want people who pretend to be one thing but are actually another representing us.
The whole situation is different. These people aren’t closeted because people might hurt them. They are closeted because it allows them to hurt others.
Hence it is our duty to prevent them from being able to hurt others.
Normally, I’m unhappy whenever a person is violently killed, and think it’s wrong. Occasionally, very occasionally, I make an exception.
Like Flight 93. For those too young to remember: A passenger in a hijacked jetliner killed the hijackers, because he knew they were about to crash the plane into an occupied building on purpose. Although the whole thing was several kinds of tragic, the guy was a total hero, and I’m very glad he managed to kill them.
If a politician is hurting gay people wholesale… and the only way to stop him is to out him… then, what, he shouldn’t be outed because… hurting gay people is wrong?
“Two wrongs don’t make a right” is a good rule of thumb – but it’s too simple to be a moral absolute. There are times – rare times – when killing someone is clearly the right thing to do, in order to prevent more deaths that that person is about to deliberately cause.
There are even rarer times when I take satisfaction in people being killed. Flight 93 is one of those times. Even if you don’t, I hope you can agree it’s not monstrous to be glad those hijackers were killed before they could do even more damage, and to be proud of the incredibly courageous hero who did it.
I won’t try to say that outing gay gay-bashing politicians is a good thing that we should be proud of… but… Flight 93.
It’s off-topic, but it’s worth noting that the media at the time conspicuously did not mention that the hero, Mark Bingham, was gay. I guess they thought America wasn’t ready for a gay hero.
If said “gay hero” is actively fighting to hurt gay people? Yes.
If said “gay hero” keeps it hidden because he’ll face discrimination? Then no.
The latter is the only reason outing is wrong. It’s not some universal truth, and we don’t need the overzealous turning it into one.
It’s no better than when you get offended by Speedy Gonzales, despite actual Mexicans loving him. Or claim that yoga is appropriated, when it was freely taught by people in India to people who were not in India for the express purpose of spreading it.
You’ve got to be liberal and progressive without becoming an ivory tower elite who only wants to lord over others.
Kinda like what Mary does with her (version of) Christianity.
It’s still gross af to be happy about it, the whole situation is really sad and fucked up. Roz has shown in the past to use her (straight) voice to talk over gay people and use their suffering as her own political platform. Robin clearly wasn’t in the right but being cheery about how you “threw an election” for all the “queer folks” using the misery of another queer folk is. bad.
I’ll never be Roz level happy, but in the case of someone like Larry Craig I’m okay with being a little bit disgusting. In part because I grew up watching his campaign ads. (I’m not from Idaho, but I am in the Spokane, WA media market, as is the Idaho panhandle.)
If ur gay then being happy is your own prerogative, but if you’re straight then all your doing is rejoicing in the misery and homophobia that causes situations like this to exist in the first place
No. No no no and no. Thinking like that is not helping. Stop with the divide. People are people. Period. You can’t have an opinion be “ok because you belong to a specific group.” Something is either right or wrong. Situations can change things but not who is involved. Murder is wrong. Whether a black person kills a white person or a black person kills a black person, or a white person kills a black person. Murder is wrong. Rape is wrong. Whether a man rapes a woman, a man rapes a man, a woman rapes a man, or a woman rapes a woman. Rape is wrong. If you think an opinion is wrong, it is wrong for all people. If you think that an opinion is justified it is justified for all people. Don’t build walls that don’t need to be there. Please.
Honestly, I am so tired of people ‘relating’ to assholes. It’s things like that, that get scumbags like Trump elected in the first place. It’s long time that people start learning how to relate to heroes again.
She’s got that one down pretty well. She’s more likeable than Mary, too. And Ryan, Ross, Blaine, Carol, Jonathan, Faz… hell, in this universe, she’s not even the least-likeable DeSanto sister.
Eeeh. Robin is still a likeable character, because she still has the fundamental character traits that made people fall in love with Walkyverse!Robin. All those people going “I want to like her, but (all the reasons she sucks now)” is an indication of that.
A lot of people seem to be confusing “likeable character” with “likeable person.”
As characters in fiction, we the readers know all about Roz and Dorothy . . . details that they would not, as people, share with others.
As people, they both adopt a public persona that they let other people see. And if they’re good at portraying a likeable person (eg, manipulation) – as Roz is and Dorothy is less so – then the other people in universe will fall in line with that persona.
Whether we like the character is kinda irrelevant to the point Roz is making. What we think of her (and what Dorothy thinks) don’t matter . . . it’s what all the other people who don’t know any better think of her.
“If you have to say you’re (socially advantageous element), you’re probably not.’ – Various figures from history, from ‘Lady’ to ‘Gentleman’ to ‘Electable’
Yeah, I’m kind of expecting this to deteriorate into vicious politicking which finally culminates in Dorothy and Roz getting into actual fisticuffs in the hall, only to have Chloe walk in in the middle of it with their newly appointed R.A., an upperclasswoman from another dorm whom we haven’t met before.
Yeah, they are both treating this like a political election rather than a job interview and they are both refusing to show their actual best qualities for the job because they are treating this like an election.
Like, Dorothy is not putting forward her in-depth care for other students instead showing the creepy “I’m writing everything about you down” thing she did. And Roz isn’t showing her passion for causes, her history of getting resources into the hands of students who need it, even political enemies, and so on and instead is showing glee at the outing and destruction of enemies and the ability to be “liked”.
Like, they should both honestly fail this even if they were in consideration in the first place, because they are fundamentally misunderstanding that what they are seeking may be a position of power, but it is a care-focused job first rather than a political office they want to “practice” with before launching their future campaigns for actual office.
Depends what face they’re showing to Chloe, I guess. I mean if they’re putting their “I can do this job” faces forward to her while showing the rest of the floor their “you want me in this job” faces in hopes that popularity will make the eventual job easier, that would be pretty reasonable.
Goodbye shitty 2016, hello hellish 2017, as Venezuela starts tumbling off a cliff with Bolivia in tow and Brazil following behind, with Chad showing off from the ‘Republic of Logone’ to Nigieria to Niger to Libya to Darfur, with Yemen, Libya, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Pakistan showing no end in sight, with Central Asia a powderkeg between the energy rich ‘lower’ stans and the water rich ‘upper’ stans, with China still stagnating, the Ukranian civil war still ongoing, presidents who refuse to step down from Jammeh to Kabila, a new untested King of Thailand to juggle the military and civilian sectors as his father did, Burma still killing their muslim minority, a crazy Philippine president, the South East Asia Sea crisis, a rearming Japan, no end to the drug war in North America, and, oh, the new Republican administration of the United States of America.
All I can say is that the world has been dealt harsher cards and come out. Let’s make it through.
I think the thing that bugs me about the things Roz picks on as evidence of how unlikeable Dorothy is is that a lot of its stuff I do/could see myself doing as someone who is autistic. Can’t say Dorothy is, but stuff like keeping info on everyone seems perfectly fine to someone like me who can’t remember the names of people half the time. Or coming off as too “controlled’ and “measured” as being a bad thing when I’m having to put in a lot of effort to be sociable in some form.
Like I said, don’t really see her as being autistic, but approaching social stuff in that kind of stiff, analytical manner at times and controlling image is stuff I have to do as someone who is because otherwise I’d be a complete mess.
Personally I like Dorothy because she DOESN’T make constant mistakes every 5 seconds and is organised and is logical and is prepared for pretty much anything. She makes small mistakes every now and then rather than huge ones and I can relate to that better.
Meanwhile I utterly can’t stand Roz. I wouldn’t be friends with someone for long if I ever heard them say something like that to anyone.
I agree that I wouldn’t be able to be friends with Roz, despite agreeing on many things with her, because how she acts.
Dorothy… I’m a bit on the fence. Would love to have her as an authority figure or as a friend I can rely on for things like class notes, though I wouldn’t invite her on a night out with friends (and considering my idea of “night out” involves lots of drinking, loud music and smoking cigarettes, I don’t think she’d want to come anyway. :P)
This is because you, being a reader and privy to Dorothy’s ACTUAL emotions, thoughts, and private affairs, are familiar with the real her, and pointedly, you are NOT exclusively familiar with the “public face” she puts on for most of the dorm, that of an ambitious, tidy, overly professional, (and admittedly caring and helpful) busybody with aspirations towards public office and politics.
By contrast, you are ALSO familiar with Roz’s private life of anti-authoritarian contrarianism, manipulation, and general insensitivity, rather than her public face of “that hot, fun-loving chick who opposes her weaselly anti-gay-secret-lez sister, and also made a sex tape, which means maybe us normal guys might even have a chance with her, she’s just so approachable and cool!”
In short, absolutely, you hate Roz and like Dorothy, because you are omniscient. But sorry, incorrect, in-universe, Roz is 100% right.
Ummmm…..okay?…Sorry if I offended you with my opinion? I do understand why the characters in the context of the comic like Roz. Thank you. I still think her opinion on her ALWAYS being more likeable than Dorothy even in her universe is highly debatable.
No it’s more that you can’t convey tone in writing so it read a little angry to me no big deal. After reading your other comments I get what you’re saying. We as readers have more context into Roz and such. I still kinda disagree ultimately and I think there is some evdence against Roz being as charismatic as she thinks but, I get it. Very valid point.
Cool-cool! Sorry, when I try to get analytical, it tends to come off a cold and academic, so I see what you mean. No, I totally agreed with the opinion part (I don’t like Roz and do like Dorothy), it was merely the following assertion (therefore her belief is horseshit) that I thought was mistaken. But it’s true, since we haven’t actually heard many resident opinions beyond the main characters (and Agatha and Other Rachel), Roz could indeed be overinflating her appeal.
Honestly, I think I’d still like Dorothy better, even just looking at how Roz behaves in public vs. how Dorothy behaves in public. I can see why some people would like Roz better, but Roz is obnoxious sometimes.
Roz hasn’t been obnoxious to the folks it matters to, tho… prolly none of them were present for the times when she was outwardly a jerk (Gender Studies class)
Ditto. Roz is a “fun” party girl kind of person, which isn’t my kind of person but I recognize that lots of people like party people. Dorothy seems like the kind of person you could actually have a conversation with (and she’d take notes so she could remember and pick up where we left off last time!) which is much more my kind of person. But different people like different kinds of people.
I kinda have a theory that Roz might not have a close network of friends. She seems like the type who is very popular and has a lot of superficial friends she can party with but no one she can really talk to like Dorothy does. Dorothy has Joyce, a steady boyfriend in Walky, she’s still on good terms with her ex, and regularly talks to Sarah, Becky, Dina, basically anyone who walks with Joyce to that math class. Who do we see Roz regularly interact with?…Joe?….Mary sometimes because they’re roomates?….Now admittedly this could be because Roz is more of a side character while Dorothy’s more a secondary main character. Roz gets less screentime for development or at least has so far. She could have a tight group. It could be Sierra! Or maybe she doesn’t because some people pick up on her negative traits too.
Alas, unless it’s made explicit in the comic (or word of god,) we’ll just have to stick with “not enough screen time to really know.” But I think you’re right.
More popular, not more likable. A lot of folks don’t get that those are actually different things. And unfortunately, the popular people get ahead in politics, even if they barely study, so they almost always win.
I honestly don’t think she doesn’t see it. I think it’s fully intentionally she follows in her sister’s footsteps. She just want to do it RIGHT this time.
Yes, Roz, because all of us queers are a monolithic entity who are totally cool with forced outing and involving another queer woman in a media scandal that can easily result in loss of home and employment.
Thank you for telling me how to feel oh magical straight one.
Also, fuck straight people who say ‘queer.’ It isn’t your friggin’ word.
As a fellow queer person, I’m wondering what straight people should say instead? I’ve always had some issues with the word “queer,” since I’ve heard it as a derogatory term so often, but I’m not sure what the better option is. “LGBT” is not super inclusive of people who identify as say asexual, pansexual, genderfluid, etc.
Yeah, while I agree with your general point, your opinion that ‘queer’ is an in-group-ism (god, I’m sure there’s a word for those but it’s not coming to mind right now) is not universally held by every queer person. Many people do consider it a blanket categorical word, since it is pretty much the only single term that effectively binds together the grouping of ‘all people who are not straight-cis.’
Full disclosure: I am straight and cis. I recognize that my saying that is not evidence to contradict the blanket statement that you made, but I’ll cite OJST on this one as an example. Not saying you don’t have a right to your opinion, just pointing out that it’s not as universal as the “fuck people who do this” seems to imply.
That said, if you don’t like queer as a term, I’ve heard “LGBT+” a fair bit. You can’t really expect people to automatically know which term you favor, though.
I identify as queer, and if any of my straight friends described me as “queer,”
to someone else, I’d be okay with it. If they said “the queer community,” it’s probably also my fault because that’s what I say.
Personally I don’t mind straight people using the word queer in the context of ‘the queer community’ or to say ‘queer people are affected by X so Y which stops X should help them’ as it groups in all LGBT+ people, just isn’t acceptable to me when used as a slur.
And given how many days we’ve had discussions in the comment section about whether outing is never right, sometimes right, right in a limited set of circumstances, Roz really truly is oblivious to how split the opinion is on the matter.
“Also, fuck straight people who say ‘queer.’ It isn’t your friggin’ word.”
Right okay, you know, most people would be happy when other people are willing their own words to describe them, exactly because this means that it’s the label they choose for themselves. Which means I’m not pushing my label for your group on you, it means I’m respecting *your* choice about what label to use.
If you want us to use one specific label, tell us what label to use. I respect your desire, but oh, look, when asked by another fellow queer person what label straight people should use, you reply “I do not have an answer to that”.
How about “non-straight”? But that itself feels heteronormative, treating straight as the “normal”.
Perhaps you should not be angry at people who are doing their absolute best to respect your choices.
It’s nice that there are queer peeps who are fine with straight folks saying it. I’m not since, you know, we’re not a monolithic hivemind. It’s okay that I’m not and your convenience is the last thing on my mind.
I’m not there. I’m not okay with Roz-types using it as a blanket term to describe an entire group of people who all think and act the exact same way.
Not being part of a monolithic hivemind isn’t an excuse to be an individual jerk. My convenience isn’t the issue here, the issue is “What label do you want straight people to use for the people who self-identify as queer, if ‘queer’ is not it”. Is it at least okay for straight people to use the term “people-who-self-identify-as-queer” or is that also bad?
And to that I say, fuck if I know. It’s not my job to come up with one.
I don’t like it like that straight people co-opt the term the way Roz has here, and using it to generalize every single queer person in her dorm. That’s really the gist of what I’m saying.
And that is basically what happens whenever a straight person has used it with me. If other folks have more positive experiences, that’s cool too.
I read something once about some kiddo who tried to stop going to the loo because the idea of either dead relatives or Jesus watching from heaven freaked them out quite a lot…
We’ve really only seen her interact with people who are already biased against her (Joyce, Dorothy), people she doesn’t like (Robin, Mary), and people she kind of gets along with (Joe, Leslie, Riley).
And she really doesn’t have any significant interactions outside of that. As it stands, she spends more time on screen interacting with people she naturally opposes. And since Roz is very much so a secondary character who mainly exists to create reactions and sets things into motion (the sex tape, the party, yelling at Joyce in class, the seducing-Robin-plan, the bid for RA), she’s often on the side opposing what our current viewpoint character wants/believes in and we have reason to side with them over her.
That being said, we haven’t really seen Roz just hanging out with anyone. Maybe she’s perfectly likable in a private setting with other people who aren’t predisposed against her. Maybe she’s more likable when politics never comes up. Who knows? But from what we’ve seen, there’s really only Mary who dislikes her, and the only other people that she annoys or bothers are Joyce, Dorothy, and Leslie, really. And tbh, I wouldn’t have really expected her to get along with either of them too much anyhow, because of such a difference in temperament.
I think as a liberals, we should support Robin by donating to her campaign to ensure it’s a fair fight in the election. Oh she won. Oh she pushed more anti-LGBT bills.
Well at least we get to feel good about our above-it-all attitudes
Is there a more unlikable attitude than “I’ll always be more likable”? I mean, I mostly like Roz okay, but I hated her for a moment after she said that.
That, in a dorm which houses Mary and Mike is enough bad judgement alone to render you unfit for the job and is pretty symptomatic of a dangerous arrogance.
None of those things were -secrets-, as evidenced by the fact that they are willing to talk about them openly in the hall. Taking notes about someone’s publically-held personal interests is weird, but it isn’t an invasion of privacy.
Actually, why anyone using whatsapp of FB messenger should be concerned about an individual keeping al list of stuff the talk about is beyond me.
Kind of a double-standard squared, isn’t it?
As to Dorothy makes no mistakes- everybody agrees that the list was a mistake…
Albeit, this is because I hate when people insist I have a real me under the mask that I use to talk with neurotypicals, and also that they have a right to see it. Roz hasn’t done that, she has just said that Dorothy’s mask will either have to get much better or show some cracks in order to get what Dorothy carefully implies other people want.
But, still genuinely irritating. Smug little blood traitor and outer of secrets. That’s enough for me to never trust her.
Dorothy is not remotely a moron. She’s always been portrayed as intelligent. You hate a character. Fine. Don’t make up shit about them.
And I’ve been through plenty of leadership training that tells you to take notes. The way you keep other people from reading them is that you keep them in a safe place.
We all have things we write down that we don’t want other people to read. And we tend to be able to keep prying eyes from reading them.
Writing notes to augment your memory is what you’re taught in speech class. It’s a trait of highly effective people that they keep this stuff organized.
This entire storyline came off to me as if it’s been previously rumoured that Robin might be gay, and not just by Roz. I don’t know if I just have a really skewed perception of reality or what, but if some questionable photos surface of a representative being tender with another person of their gender, then I’d think people’s reaction would be along the lines of “omg could this mean she’s a lesbian?”, not “wow Roz you outed your sister”.
Half the time I feel like I’m just not on the same wavelength with this comic.
Is… is this a lead up to Dorothy trying to campaign on mistakes she has made? Are we gonna see her and people who’re in favour of her becoming RA walk around holding up signs that talk about mistakes she’s made?
Dorothy: [I have repeatedly misspelled the word ‘misspelled]
Walky: [Dorothy once went to sleep still wearing her glasses!]
Joyce: [Dorothy used to eat holding her fork with the wrong hand]
Danny: [She dated me!]
(sorrynotsorry Danny I still loveyou)
On a different note; HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE. Despite everything, I hope it’s a good one. May it be very joyful and gay. : )
Okay, so here’s where I come down re: the debate on outing politicians who are harming the queer community. Straight people don’t get to do it. I still have a lot of conflicted feelings about the whole thing BUT the one thing I think I can say with certainty about this is this.
Straight people. do not. get to make that decision.
I was talking more generally than just the goings-on of the strip, but admittedly that wasn’t very clear.
Regardless, I don’t think someone who isn’t part of the community gets to be triumphant about someone being outed.
But he could of dug a hole to freedom with his bare hands! There was nothing stopping him. He just didn’t want to live hard enough!…wait what was this about?
Except that by “arranged a situation where it was very likely that it would happen”, you basically mean “set her up to meet the lesbian I thought she was interested in”.
Which is a pretty damn low bar if we’re treating that as some horrible betrayal.
As much as I want to see this blow up in Roz’s smug face I fear this could result in more misfortune for Leslie. Maybe Roz will just be disowned by her family. Betraying the most successful member of the DeSanto family will have consequences.
This isn’t the first time she pulled something like this, but Joe was cool about being in her sex video and she probably interpreted the dean’s warning as not to make another. Leslie did not consent to this and while I think she could weather the scandal since she could sue for wrongful dismissal I doubt she’ll appreciate being the center of attention and explain to Roz how wrong it is to out someone as well as drag in an unwilling participant.
Roz got them together. She didn’t take the picture. She didn’t spy on them. She didn’t drag anyone into anything. She brought two adults who were interested in each other together.
Now, she knows Robin, so she knew damn well that she’d never be able to keep it on the down low if anything came of it – or as it turned out, even before then.
See the gloating, the self-absorbedness, the inassailable certainty that your life is the correct model that everyone agrees with? This is why people compare you to Mary, just on the opposite spectrum of beliefs, Roz. It’s a FAR more appealing set of beliefs, but you can still get pretty shitty about it.
In some ways I’d draw a parallel between Roz and Dorothy here with Mary and Joyce from http://www.dumbingofage.com/2012/comic/book-2/02-choosing-my-religion/avoid/ They’re both actually largely on the same side on a lot of these social issues, but Dorothy, like Joyce, doesn’t interact with others ‘right’ (Dorothy should be partying with progressives and gleefully ripping the other side apart, while Joyce should be shunning the infidels)
I think the thing that most makes me think negatively of Roz here is how damn quickly her demeanor changes moving from a group of people she wants to impress, to someone she’s already decided she isn’t going to get adoration from, so she’ll just take the satisfaction of tearing her down.
Hmmm… I still think Dorothy is the more responsible of the two, but maybe Roz has a point? That is if you consider likeability to be the prime requisite for an RA.
In this particular situation, though, Ruth was the previous RA. They obviously would rather have an RA that could keep order than one hat was likeable.
Is Dorothy supposed to be a metaphor for Hillary Clinton, here? The best person for the job, but too measured and calculated to be likeable? Is that the connection I’m meant to make?
I dunno, personally, I think the outfit, and especially the hat, makes her look like a complete douchecanoe. It’s the kind of outfit I associate with edgelords with beards that just make them look like they don’t know how to shave talking about cucks.
OK, real talk.
FACT: Robin spent the better part of the night with a cute college professor.
FACT: Roz spends the morning wearing a sweet outfit.
FACT: Riley has by all logic slipped down to the cafeteria to sample some more cereals from the magic dispenser, and run into Becky and Dina. I need to see them reconnect, and if their friendship can survive the age difference.
remarks like Roz’s is why i didn’t think i deserved to have friends. it’s not that i don’t make mistakes (or dorothy doesn’t), but that such mistakes aren’t relatable. Dorothy’s likable. but probably by different people than like Roz.
No, but people who feel like that aren’t generally coming from a particularly happy place, and find it hard to see why anybody else could possibly like them. When that’s a result of people telling you that nobody likes you or could conceivably ever like you, that’s called horrific bullying, and that’s so damaging *hugs* It sounds like you’ve moved past that at least?
What we consider horrible, others consider likeable and vice versa. And if 2016 proved anything, the people who hate everything you hold dear exist in greater numbers than we dared dream.
As much as I like you, Dorothy, I have to admit Roz has a point here. You don’t come across as being… “genuine”. Everything you do has an ulterior motive; you never mean anybody any harm, but it gives the impression that everything is a calculated stepping stone on the way to something bigger and grander. And it makes people wonder… “Do you hang out with me because you like me for ME? Or are you doing it because you think I could be useful in some way to your career or other goals?” And perhaps more worryingly, “Will you gladly throw me under the bus or abandon me should I screw up or simply not prove up to your standards?”
Who, exactly, has Dorothy thrown under the bus? Ever? If she were just cold and calculating, she could have kept dating Danny even though she thought it was unhealthy for him because she was having fun. She could have let McNuggets think their relationship has long-term potential even though it doesn’t. “Has goals in life” and “throws others under the bus” are not the same.
If anyone, Roz fits that description considering she is willing to throw her sister to the angry Conservative masses after she gets outed as a lesbian.
Like I said in a different post. Robin being what she is is one thing, Roz trying to get her hurt despite her being her Sister (who clearly at least likes Roz) is another thing.
I’m not excusing Robin’s behaviour, far from it. But I just can’t trust someone who would expose their own family to danger for her own goals. Robin likes Roz and she shows it and Roz pays it back by trying to destroy her.
Robin likes Roz? Since when? Do we have any evidence of that? Robin likes Roz as much as she likes her aide: she likes people as tools for her own means
She did show affection towards Roz on several occasions. She interacts with her and Roz DID mention using up Helicopter trip Sister points to get her to come to Leslie’s class. http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-7/01-glower-vacuum/sisters-4/
Not to mention the above thing. They might not agree on things, they might argue and fight but they Are sisters and Robin seems at least a bit fond of Roz.
WTF is Roz’s problem here? First, if I were in Dorothy’s place, I’d probably be shouting obscenities down the hall after her for a remark like that. Second, no seriously, WTF?
Panel 1: Okay, Dorothy could be perceived as snippy here, though I don’t read it in her facial expression or body language. I could see Roz being insecure and defensive right now, but this has to be a question/concern she anticipated.
Panel 2: “On this floor”? That’s weird phrasing given that there are a lot MORE queer folks not on this floor. What about the state or the country? Does she not care about them? Or is she trying to use her (actually purposefully done pushing of her sister toward being outed that might ruin her sister’s career) to get the votes of the 2 or 3 queer people on the floor? I’m pretty sure RAs aren’t chosen by election, anyway, but aside from Billie and Dina, how many of the floor’s other residents are gay? (Becky isn’t a resident and Ruth currently isn’t.)
So I’m saying her statement doesn’t really make sense, hence Dorothy’s confusion at the bottom of the panel.
Panel 3: So why is Roz trying to take the job Dorothy obviously wants more than she does and was putting actual effort into trying to get? Personal antagonism against Dorothy or what?
Panel 5: This is a remarkably deep, detailed observation about someone whom she’s known for at most a few weeks, while busy with her own affair, and only as an acquaintance who basically says hello when they pass in the hall. Sure, we the audience know what Dorothy is like, but how does Roz? Where is she even coming from? What right does she think she has to go talking like this to someone she barely knows?
Panel 6: Like I said, major expletives from me here. Heck, Dorothy has friends, a boyfriend, even an ex-boyfriend. Aside from the clip-board, Dorothy doesn’t come across as “calculating” and lots of people like her. So why the need to insult her?
So why does Roz hate Dorothy? Did I miss the comic where Dorothy peed in her cheerios or something? Or is Roz just randomly hateful?
Maybe because Roz is a genuine politician… meaning she might just be a bit of a psychopath (the scientific kind, not the horror movie kind). She is more like Robin than she’d like to believe. Roz is scheming, manipulative and generally seems to have certain lacks in empathy department.
Dotty on the other hand is trying to be a bit of an idealized politician, hard working, focusing on people’s problems etc.
Dotty never stood a chance against a genuine politician like Roz.
could we maybe NOT assign a mental illness because a person is not acting the way we like please?? like seriously, “psychopath”?
for being aspersive? for having naked ambition? like these are not necessarily positive traits but they’re a long shot from anything that would warrant an actual diagnosis
Ladies who are definitely into ladies on this floor include, but may not be limited to: Billie, Dina, Mandy, Grace, Sierra, and Carla, plus Ruth and Becky.
(Fun personal story time: There was a girl on my hall in college who didn’t like me for no known reason! We never had a spat, she never complained about anything I did, and to this day I have no idea why she didn’t like me, but she very clearly didn’t like me. Sometimes people are unkind to each other for no reason at all, or at least no reason that is obvious to others.)
And this is my whole problem with Roz.
As nasty as Robin can be she is her friggin SISTER. A sister who clearly likes Roz despite their lifestyle differences. And Roz is cold-bloodily trying to destroy Robin’s life and career. She does not care about hurting people around her so long as she gets what she wants… heh which might make her more like Robin than she’d like to be.
This really has nothing to do with Right or Wrong of what Robin is. This is all about how far Roz is willing to go. If she can sacrifice her own sister for her goals then no one is safe from her scheming.
Sure Dotty might not be the most… people’s person but she would never intentionally hurt people she cares about for her own gain.
Have we ever seen Roz get abused by her family? Sure they might dislike her lifestyle but the worst they have done was pressure her a bit, which obviously didn’t do much. And Robin likes Roz enough to get talked into visiting Leslie’s class.
Her actions are VERY thoughtless, for the sake of her goals she is trying to destroy her family, her sister and she herself will get caught up in the drama that will follow Robin’s outing. Robin might become a target for some nutty and murderous people who see her as a traitor.
Sorry but unless I’m provided with some strong proof that Roz is being abused all I see her is a cold-blooded manipulator trying to get her sister seriously hurt.
I don’t think the implication was that Roz was abused, just that claiming that family should be some ultimate wallbreaker is disingenuous. Cerberus has said more than enough in the past on the subject: If someone is toxic, you cut them out. It doesn’t matter if they’re a friend, a distant cousin, or your identical twin.
Roz IS right to fight Robin on her “family values” platform. It’s incredibly harmful rhetoric to everyone except straight cisgender white men, and I’m pretty sure there’s only 3 or 4 major characters in the cast that fit that description. What makes the matter tragic is that the way she’s gone about it is about as collateral damagey as any method and there’s no guarantee that this will have any effect besides Robin and other Republicans doubling down and putting Leslie’s home and livelihood in jeopardy.
That, at least, makes it tragic. Roz being so callous about the whole affair (“Robin got ‘outted’? Good. It was super public and in a way that is guaranteed to cause more harm than help? Meh, it’s not personally fucking me up at this second.”) just makes her an asshole.
Welp this post was basically all about Why I don’t trust Roz. It has less to do with Robin and more about what Roz is willing to do to win and as she showed, she will throw her own sister under a bus to get that victory.
For me, it’s more “anyone and everyone, including those she purports to be an ally to … one of whom happens to be her sister, but that’s not really relevant.”
Some new years’s advice, just in general:
Don’t blame the “year” for the faults it contains. Fight the desire to see a pattern between events that are obviously only related by the arbitrarily assigned time period we have set them in. Such a conflation of problems can only make them appear as an overwhelmingly large, unsolvable mass. Instead remember the most elementary problem solving method is to separate problems into the smallest possible parts, making them individually easier to solve.
Think autistically; keep sight of the trees without abstracting them into a forest. Keep sight of every troubling leaf (or strand of orange hair as the case may be) and none of them will be beyond your ability to cope with, if not solve.
I’ve stood up for Roz time and again here. Not because she’s perfect (far from it) but because people here look at a person who believes the right things and go about it completely the wrong way and say she’s irredeemable. That she’s no better than the woman who misgendered (and continually misgenders) a trans woman and blackmailed a bi woman into nearly taking her life.
What she’s done here is appalling. She didn’t out her sister but to revel in it like that is just very, very bad taste.
That said. Remember Joyce saying she hates gay people? HATES? Legit question, how does Joyce get a free pass and Roz doesn’t? Both are young, both are still learning. We know Roz actually likes it when Leslie calls her on her shit, meaning she enjoys the potential of becoming a better person. How is this different to Joyce’s personal journey? Why is one damned and another given a free pass?
Maybe because Roz should know better? She portrays herself as a better person than Joyce, more enlightened, free and supportive and yet she is full of venom. Also most of what Roz is doing is duo to her own life choices and development whereas all of Joyce was programmed by her parents and community.
It’s more or less the same argument I use when bashing hypocritical priests. They should know better, they present themselves as better and more moral. So when they fuck up it’s much more shocking and upsetting.
To sum things up… expectations for Roz are much higher than for Joyce. Roz is SUPPOSED to know and do better whereas Joyce is too ignorant and programmed for us to expect much of her. And yet she is starting to change and surprise us.
We’ve also seen Joyce change far more than Roz and was always obvious that she was going to do so. Joyce started out with a whole lot of horrible ideas that promptly started to be challenged and she almost immediately started discarding them in favor of actual people.
OTOH, Roz started with much better ideas, but has shown some serious flaws underneath them. And while she is still young and there are some signs she could change, she really hasn’t shown any evidence of changing. There’s still the same lack of concern for her impact on others while she pursues her goals – however good her goals are. Dragging Joe into the scandal of the sex tape, ignoring any effect this outing will have on Leslie.
Partly of course, because Joyce is the protagonist and Roz is a minor character at best. A foil, if not an actual antagonist. She was always going to get less of an arc.
Exactly. The main difference between Roz and Joyce is that Joyce, at heart, is a nice and good person. She took all that was best in Christianity, love and forgiveness while not being poisoned by the hate and prejudice too much. And when faced with facts and suffering she quickly sides with what is right. In fact change is MUCH harder for Joyce. Her entire perception of the world revolves around her religion being true. Taking that away from her HURTS, a Lot. Like that time she said that if Evolution is true then it wasn’t man’s fault that sin was released into the world. It was always there and it is part of the natural world. Imagine realizing something like that…
It’s possible that Roz is nice (in the sense of caring deeply about people and their rights to life (we’ve seen that with her attempts to reach out to Joyce)), but she most certainly isn’t kind.
And she’s definitely more of the mindset that views it as absolutely justified to do a cruel thing for a greater good or cause.
The interesting part of her character is whether this makes her overzealous and dangerous or just with a different moral line and moral calculus about things like politics and how much they matter. And much like with the other characters, I suspect it’s a little of both, where she’s both a caring activist and someone who can be very toxic and dangerous and quick to assume people are enemies or more of an enemy than they are.
And at the very least, she definitely does not care if she’s viewed as a (slur for assertive women) for doing so.
And that I think might be her central flaw, her unkindness. She doesn’t know how to switch off the fight and stop thinking tactically and that makes her a hard person to like as a character.
Being “Crusty around the edges” is what got Trump elected. Does she really want to be chosen because people would feel comfortable with their inner jerk around her ?
Does Roz not realize the effect this is going to have on Leslie? The dean’s already shown that he’s not too big on campus scandals, and you don’t get much more scandalous than being “””””caught seducing””””” a conservative congresswoman. And yet Roz doesn’t even seem to care that this night get Leslie fired, evicted, what have you. She’s claiming to help LGBTQ+ people by throwing one (two, actually) right in the line of fire.
A valid arguement. What school or university would hire Leslie after this “incident” ? And since that she has admitted she lacks a support structure, it might as welĺ be a return to poverty, or even homelessness for her.
Pretty much. She is putting both Leslie and her sister’s very lives in jeopardy. Worst case scenario some conservative nut-case might try to physically hurt them for being “traitors”.
You know, Roz and Robin aren’t so different after all (which is something which would horrify both of them): Roz clearly believes in her ideas, unlike Robin, but how much of what she’s doing is done simply to further her case and gain consensus, much like Robin?
Ironically not making mistakes would be Dorothy’s greatest mistake.
Like I would not be surprised if this derails Dorothy pretty hard. She has a reputation of perfection with basically every character (prompting near worship from Joyce and Walky, distrust in Roz and Sal and retribution in Mike (his style of assholery with her is the “take her down a peg” variety)) She works very hard to maintain that reputation with school, reporting and volunteering.
What happens when all that effort, all that perfection, costs her an important stepping stone? Dorothy’s lived her life thinking if she just worked hard enough and was smart and careful enough, she’d get what she wanted. She could redouble her efforts and be fine but “trying to hard” lost her the RA gig so she might just stop trying.
Like I don’t blame Roz for it at all. Actually, probably better it happens freshman year of college where there are resources (at least there were for me and mine) than in adulthood. I just do not envy Dorothy this epiphany (assuming that’s where we go)
Well, hopefully-less-crappy new year to you all! I’m not getting my hopes up for a miracle to save you (and the rest of us) from the orange disaster, or for ISIS to be defeated, but at least most of the beloved celebrities are already dead, right? *unsmiling smile*
As someone who made a TON of stupid mistakes (and was pretty open about them to friends, strangers, whatever if the topic came up), I can see what Roz is getting at. Perfect people aren’t relatable. Even if they aren’t snobs about their perfection, there’s just something about never making any mistakes that can bother other people and make them feel…less.
On the other hand, I’ve never been popular, so I’m not sure of the rules there. I just know that once I did stupid stuff and owned up to it, people were more open with me in turn. And my friendships got stronger.
Dorothy has a serious issue with the fact people don’t really like her. Also, Dorothy seems completely confused at this. Becky doesn’t like her. Billie doesn’t like her. Most of the floor doesn’t like her. It’s not a problem but for the fact politics are about charisma not ability.
I’m so torn on the ethics of this. On the one hand, Roz is right. Robin’s policies would drastically affect the queer community, even dangerously so. Getting Robin away from power is a strategic move meant to protect the vulnerable.
On the other hand, I don’t want to give “presidence” for people unwillingly/forcibly outing someone.
On my right foot, I really don’t think Roz cares about the vulnerable as much as she thinks she does, and only wants to stick it to her sister, not realizing/caring about how the fallout will affect those around her. Exhibit A: Leslie. And by the laws of double standards, all lesbians. Conservatives, even the ones who hate Robin, won’t hesitate to jump on the predatory lesbian train, using Leslie as an example of seducing good, moral women to the devil.
On my left foot, even if she is doing this with the best of intentions, Roz is still acting like a jerk to Dorothy.
Roz would probably do much more good if she’d simply sit Robin down and show her the consequences of her actions. Robin is not inherently, malevolently evil. Most of the evil she does seems to be a by-product of her ignorance and just not caring.
She looked uncomfortable when Joyce and others started questioning her.
Maybe with enough education and pressure she could become a moderating element among the conservatists.
And this is the short-sightedness that Roz represents. Kill and Destroy. Kill and Destroy. No thinking about spinning the situation into a positive way whatsoever. No thinking about redeeming or improving the situation.
Ah liberals; they care more about reaching out and getting warm feelz from reaching across the aisle for the enemy more than actually winning and protecting minorities; one of the many reasons why conservatives keep eating your lunch.
Welp not mine since I’m not from US.
But this won’t really affect Robin. Like one poster said she will just get more vicious and will crack down on the homosexuals to prove she is not one and things will get Worse for everyone.
A minority can’t win with violence. You attack other people and they will fight back. You need to convince people and change their way of thinking.
Every bit of minority advancement has come with shitekicking; anyone telling you otherwise is either lying through their teeth or been lied to, and this goes back to the suffragettes.
Ah, infighting. A sign of bad times. One side of the infighting is correct (No, not going to say which, that’s not the fucking point), but both feel justified, and the lack of a united front just makes it easier for them to eat our lunch.
Before, I was thinking it’ll be a long four years. Now, I wonder if it won’t wind up being a long eight years.
The irony of course being that both approaches are needed in any social justice movement.
You need the shitkickers who’ll throw a brick and speak out aggressively about injustices that aren’t getting any attention and shows bigots they can’t just beat up the harmless dedicated victim without blowback.
And you need the people who are willing to sit down with folks and meet them where they are and devote the time and hope that individuals can be reached and swayed.
And both can go real toxic. Reaching out to folks who use that reach out to abuse can end up draining and harming your explainers or send the message that there’s no consequences for working against a group’s rights. And going all-in can scare moderates who dislike change or do genuine harm to someone who didn’t deserve it as much as it can wake people up to the seriousness of an injustice.
And that’s before factoring in things like the toxicity of callout culture where abusive exes can ruin folks lives through old posts or opinions devoid of context or potential positive growth that add extra wrinkles to the shitpile.
But at the end of the day, both the pacifist and the fighter are needed in different ways for the fight. And the same person can be different things on different days depending on how against the wall and hopeless they feel.
I think Roz has said she’s actually done this, but Robin doesn’t listen cause she’s just her kid sister. That’s one of the reasons she claimed to want to get Robin and Leslie together – she might listen to Leslie.
She did do this. And it’s been implied that she’s done this a lot without her sister ever listening to her. And we’ve seen Robin use pieces of it when she thinks it is helping her deflect from listening to what someone is saying.
We’ve also seen folks like Joyce explain to her the human cost of her policies and she basically dismissed the people affected as unimportant or meaningless.
Talking hasn’t been doing shit with Robin. This may have really been the only thing that might have actually gotten through to her about who she is and the political scum she’s been courting.
I do think that Leslie is probably the only one who could have gotten through to her – because of Robin’s crush on her.
Of course, I also suspect that Robin figuring out what that crush actually was and what it meant about her will probably be more effective than all the talking in the world or even than getting outing – as something she still doesn’t accept that she is.
I think that the fact that Robin was opening up to Les, potentially challenging her own sexual identity repression and eventually becoming an ally to queer people out of her free will and it may now be all ruined, cements this development as negative.
Positive change comes from positive feelings (even if sometimes it takes negative actions). The feelings that caused this development were pettiness and self-gain, so nothing positive.
Except those feelings of “pettiness and self-gain” were also what caused Robin to have the chance to open up to Leslie in the first place. I’m not comfortable with Roz’s gloating and especially how she ignores any consequences to Leslie, but all she did was bring the two of them together.
Everything else was pretty much a given after that, though maybe not this fast. Roz didn’t have anything to do with the actual picture or story getting out. As far as we know, she didn’t even know they’d met up again after class until the story broke.
If she had done nothing, no meeting between Robin and Leslie, no opening, no challenging her identity, etc.
What I want to know is who actually took that picture and/or wrote that article? I assume that even though Leslie is open about her sexuality not everyone would know she’s gay and while the picture itself is slightly leading it’s not really enough to back up the assumption unless someone knew of Leslie’s orientation. So it has to at least be someone from campus right? Maybe even someone from her class as I wouldn’t expect many students who don’t at least know who Leslie is to know her sexuality. Soooo who is it? Roz is dodging her involvement but she’s still a suspect as is anyone else in gender studies class. That includes Dorothy who does have a connection to the campus news. I’m interested in theories. I would say it would have to at least be someone from the school.
The photo’s suggestive enough to start a rumour – making politicians deny rumours is an established part of dirty tricks campaigning. Much nastier than this in many cases.
We know, through Mary, that there’s already speculation about Robin because she’s ~30 and unmarried. This, fragile as it is as proof, is enough to confirm suspicions.
It could be someone we know, but it doesn’t need to be. I doubt it is.
I don’t know. Maybe I’m niave to modern tabloid journalism but to me it seems a little farfetched that on the one night Robin decided to invite Leslie out to drinks, that wasn’t initially planned, some random person snapped a picture of what looked like their congresswoman holding hands with some women they didn’t know and was like “I can sell this as our congresswoman is a lesbian!” I mean yeah it could maaaybe look like they’re kissing. Robin did say there were “pictures” implying more than one possibly at different angles. It is possible. It just seems like too big a coincidence to me. Now it could just be an element to move the story forward. I mean ultimately it doesn’t matter who put the picture out just that it is out. I just think it would be cool storytelling if there were a connection.
She was shouting about blowjobs, and then it looked very much like they were kissing from the angle the photo was taking from.
It seems completely plausible to me that someone took the photo and thought about that. They probably only posted it on social media, which got picked up by the regular media.
So you want Leslie to become a partner in politics she despises, and even hates?
Even if, somehow Robin is able to be less homophobic and still win as a Republican (It’s too late to switch parties less than a month before the election.) she still has to have all the other politics Leslie hates. That’s what she’s run on, and part of what it means to be Republican.
Not that I expect someone who has run on a homophobic platform to be able to change in the last month and not hemorrhage supporters.
I just don’t think you thought this through.
(and, yes, Robin is a Republican, despite Willis’s reluctance to state that outright. We know for sure now with what Mary said about the other candidate.)
Good job Roz. Robin is going to spin and hand-wave this away, renewing her commitment to her most awful policies to stay in the race, while throwing Leslie under the bus. And it’s going to be a long time before she opens up at all to anyone about anything.
No. She’s not. Might be more realistic, but it’s not how this story goes.
There’ll likely be some more nastiness along the way, but she’s not done opening up to Leslie yet.
I kinda needed to duck out of most of the conversation, because well, I’ve made no secret that I’m pretty divided and conflicted about the outing of bigots. But I’ve grown up in my activism during a time where the outing of homophobic bigots led to direct gains in the rights me and mine were allowed to have access to. Hell, my ability to marry my fiancee because our current legal sexes are both F, depended on folks like George Rekers being discredited for hypocrisy.
And there’s been times when I’ve danced in the ashes of terrible people dying or professional homophobes being outed, because those people’s ability to harm me and mine finally came to an end.
Because for the truly powerful bigots, nothing seems to stop their onslaught other than their deaths or their complete embarrassment or humiliation (and that last one is very literal, the KKK lost membership because a Superman comic made them laughing stocks to their own kids thus getting them to think twice about how powerful belonging to a hate group made them feel).
So, I come from a different background and perspective than most politics and hey, it’s very possible that I’m in the wrong and my actions in the past were as monstrous as many deem Roz’s actions now. We all have different moral lines we can’t go over and I respect that to all hell.
But what is my exact moral lines is something I’ve thought a lot about lately as literal nazis promising to kill me and mine have become more and more powerful and mainstreamed as “a point of view”. And I think a lot about the tools that would be needed to defang this awful movement and halt its progress before it gets to a point where me and mine are in literal camps or dead.
Cause I’m not in a position where I’m inclined to let a single trans person die forgotten on the margins without a fight. Not anymore.
So what does this have to do with this comic?
Panel 1: I identify with Roz here. She’s stating her plan clearly. She hoped by bumping her and Leslie together that Robin would realize she was bi and decide to come out and accept herself and her sexuality and mellow the fuck out about her bigoted family values bullshit.
But she’s not sorry her sister was more forcibly outed and her ability to harm people has been effectively neutered and the margin of Republicans defecting has reduced by 1 to prevent truly monstrous legislation taking place.
Like, lest we forget, this fictional congressional election is this last 2016 one that we know how it ends, with total GOP control and planned legislation that will already make it hard for me and mine to survive on Day 1, including making it legal for folks to refuse me medical care because I’m transgender.
Yes. If I got shot in a hate crime and taken to a hospital, FADA will make it legal for a doctor there to say he doesn’t want to operate on a (slur for trans woman) and let me die.
And for Roz? She’s latina in this election cycle. This hits really close to home with regards to if she even counts as a citizen in the eyes of her country, legal status be damned.
Stopping that by any means necessary or at least not feeling bad if there’s one fewer dedicated officials against my rights… yeah, I feel that. And I feel a lot less bad having actual secrets doom a bigoted candidate when really strong and qualified candidates get sniped down over complete bullshit that isn’t even real or important all the damn time.
So yeah, I don’t think Roz is being evil here. I don’t think the fact that she is betraying her sister should matter when her sister has demanded her whole life be in service to laws and politics that actively make it harder for Roz to survive against her own beliefs. I think she is justified in feeling happy and celebrating her hard-fought freedom even if it came from a non-ideal source.
My opinion on outing is from a straight cis male of Caucasian descent’s perspective so it’s absolutely worthless. However, it seems that Roz’s actions are more notable for the fact it’s her sister than exposing a politician is a monstrous hypocrite. Thus, the question is whether she actually is doing it because of genuine concern for those affected by Robin’s policies (which she claims to have all failed and been known to fail–which is the first sci-fi element of this comic given Indiana) than revenge against a family member who humiliated her in public.
Well, if it was revenge, it would be more revenge for Robin demanding that Roz’s whole life be in service to Robin’s campaign and what’s best for that and desire for freedom from the eternal campaign than simply because she felt humiliated in public.
Panel 2: A lot of people have said that the fact that Roz presumes to speak for what queer folks want when she herself is straight and has a habit of speaking over queer folks is gross as hell.
I can see that, though I think it’s more she really does think this is a gift to the queer community, especially as she seems to be more tuned in with historical rights movement stuff than mayhaps the more nuanced modern perspective and antipathy towards outing that’s developed since.
Also, um, am I the only one who finds Dorothy’s comment here a little gross?
Like, Roz is specifically talking about doing stuff for the queer community in the hall while wearing an androgynous outfit and Dorothy comments about her “dressing up for the occasion” because yanno, wanting to present androgynously for a day is her “looking queer” (and ignores how Roz has been leaning towards more androgynous outfits a lot lately (which she knows because she’s in the same Gender Studies classes) and this may be part of a larger gender identity or gender performance switch [I know I used to wear skirts “for feminist reasons” before coming out as trans*]).
*Like, no for real’s, I’m starting to headcanon possibly genderqueer, genderfluid or non-binary egg-mode Roz given how frequently she’s popped up in very androgynous clothing, especially clothing that is exceedingly stereotypical among a lot of enby youth I know.
I dunno, I might just be really sensitive about that stuff because I breathe in that sort of community a lot more. And it’s especially awkward when Dorothy goes on to call a cute little gender-bending outfit a “cruise ship minibar” outfit.
Panel 3: See Dorothy, there’s your first mistake in a political style. Not just the sniping, but more the attempt to defang style over substance. Going over the artificiality of the style doesn’t really work because those who trade in it don’t really feel any shame about being empty suits.
What you need to find are the things that the empty suit actually cares about or what their base actually cares about and hit them hard and repeatedly on that.
Panels 4 and 5: I always find Roz’s more reserved and seemingly honest panels intriguing because it feels like a glimpse at the fierce mind working under her crafted persona of superficiality. She’s genuinely good at politicking and the art of charisma and she has real strong beliefs but doesn’t let them show often, likely because she came of age in an environment where she was literally banned from showing her politics outwardly in service to her sister’s campaigns.
And it’s also worth noting what gets under her skin as we see in her arms folded over her chest motion which she usually adopts when she feels someone else made a fair point or where she feels more vulnerable.
I think she’s being very real with Dorothy here and I think the real meat of it is that last point. I think she genuinely believes Dorothy is “that perfect girl” and that bothers her. I think that the way Dorothy tries so hard to be flawless makes her focus on her own flaws in a way that is deeply uncomfortable.
And I think she’s taking it out on Dorothy unfairly because of that.
Panel 6: She’s right and she’s wrong.
She’s not likable as you or I would use it. Hell, we can see by the comment threads that Roz is extremely less likable than Dorothy. To the point where we have a percussion-filter entirely because of gendered abuse her character’s unlikability was generating.
But she is likable in terms of politicking. She gets charisma, she gets showmanship, she gets how to craft a public persona that will improve how she is seen on a shallow level.
She gets the art of the campaign better than Dorothy does because Roz is more practiced at elections and campaigning coming from a political family and being an activist, whereas Dorothy would be much better at the actual job of governorship given her history of listening deeply to people and working hard and caring deeply about people and their lives.
Together, they would be a fierce unstoppable duo and I hope that once they both lose this stupid little non-election, both can provide much needed advice to each other on how to be better politicians.
I understand why you’re sensitive to such things, but I’m about 99.9% sure that Dorothy’s comment has nothing whatsoever to do with Roz “looking queer”. It’s about Roz being literally dressed up, dressed more formally than the situation calls for.
Dorothy is in a T-shirt and jeans. The others range from pajamas to T-shirts, hoodies, and flannels, because they’re getting up and getting ready to go to class. Roz is dressed like she’s ready to go out on the town.
I’m not reading any androgyny-criticism into Dorothy’s remarks, actually. A hat and tie IS more formal than the norm for Roz. Even if Roz is some flavor of non-binary, I’m not seeing a single thing in Dorothy that suggests she has an inkling of it, nor has there been a big enough of a cluebat for us (the omniscient audience) to be reasonably sure of anything, much less a limited-perspective individual like Dorothy.
I completely agree on the last sentence, and I actually think we are edging that way.
The entire non-election is also a non-issue. No matter what happens, no one will be much worse for the wear. If either of them becomes RA (which may or may not has anything to do with their make-belief-campaign), both will do a decent job and a better job than Ruth (and most likely than any other RA in the building, judging from Ethan’s and Chloe’s comments). Whoever doesn’t get the job won’t loose more than a bit of stubbed pride, and learn some valuable lessons in the process.
But in these last panels, and in some of the earlier interaction, I really start to think that they care about each other’s opinion. Roz might very well be the first competent rival Dorothy ever had, and Roz who is well acquainted with phony politicians is impressed – maybe even a bit intimidated – by Dorothy’s merits.
While they don’t miss the chance to take cheap shots at each other, they also listen carefully and take notes of the other’s opinions. Dorothy dressing after Roz advice is… actually it is a bit touching. They might not like the process that much, but they are both becoming better politicians from this, and I think they realize it. It’s a small step to actively start to work together once their goals align, and I think we will see exactly that soon enough.
… A lot of trans dudes go through an androgynous phase before going through a butch phase before realizing they’re trans, sez the trans dude who went through exactly that progression. >.>
Okay, complete off-topic, but I’m really starting to go all in on the headcanon that Roz is non-binary and doesn’t realize it yet.
A) Regular and frequent androgynous clothing, which might just mean having fun with gender performance, but I know from personal experience just how many trans eggs “play with gender” before fully coming out.
B) The clothes she does pick have very stereotypical reputations. Vests and ties, suits, even her hats. Again, doesn’t necessarily mean anything, but these are very common markers I see among young enbies on the butch end of the spectrum.
C) Queer issues being important to her. Like really angrily important to her. To the point where she’s done a fuck-ton of reading and seems to heavily include trans issues even when she’s just talking with her sisters. Yeah, she might be trying to be super-ally, but I also know I felt an “odd attraction” to queer materials before I realized who I was.
And there’s a corollary on this one where if this headcanon is true, her response to Leslie after being called out by Leslie after yelling at Joyce becomes a lot more interesting. Because that brief angry pause and exit might hit home not just because she recognizes the wrong she did but because she’s not a 100% sure of her own straightness. This could be supported by her very next Gender Studies outfit being a full suit.
D) Fear of pregnancy. Certain aspects of characters are consistent in all worlds and one of them has been Roz’s fierce support of reproductive rights and fear of pregnancy. Which again, doesn’t necessarily mean fuck-all than most people don’t want unplanned pregnancies, because unplanned pregnancies suck.
But in conjunction with the rest could also be more. My fiancee is non-binary with a womb and the terror of getting pregnant is literally petrifying at times for them, which makes them very militant on pro-choice issues (I’m largely the same, but my fiancee is even more intense).
E) There’s no current non-binary or trans men in the cast, but there are two trans women. While there’s no law that there needs to be said characters in the cast, if Willis was to slow-burn someone coming out as non-binary as he slow-burned Danny, Roz is definitely the prime candidate at the moment. And given that enby issues are likely to be creeping more and more into prominence, it may be useful to have a character who can give voice to that.
Does this headcanon make her less of an asshole in the ways she’s being an asshole? Probably, definitely not. But it’s definitely one I’m heavily considering as potentially true though please everyone take this with a huge line of salt because this is out of complete left-field for the most part and reliant on a fuckton of circumstantial evidence rather than hard-facts.
Hmm, it’s an interesting idea, but this sort of feels like the same line of thinking that makes Joyce secretly bi, so I’m sadly inclined to think it won’t pan out.
In fact, by this logic you might even be able to argue that Willis himself has something going on, given that point C applies directly to him and points A and B are met halfway by the fact that most of his long-standing characters and nearly all the new ones are turning out to be anything but straight. (Hey, I like it.) But we already know he has his own reasons, which he’s stated clearly elsewhere. Roz might have some as well, we just don’t know what they are yet.
Interesting theory. I’m inclined to think Roz is just an obnoxious activist (albeit with good cause and reason to be concerned) and judgemental but it’d be a cool twist.
…ugh, now you’re going to make me do an archive crawl just to see all of Roz’s outfits…
It is interesting how many vests and ties she’s wearing. One of the tricky parts about the subject is that there aren’t nearly as many sorts of outfits that are coded Male as there are coded Female. I work at an office that has a very casual dress code (aka “try to avoid t-shirts with swear words on them”), and there really isn’t that much of a difference between how my male and female coworkers dress.
…okay, the women tend to be a bit less slovenly than the men, but you know what I mean >_>.
But yeah, vests and ties… it’s that awkward zone of “Maybe she’s experimenting with her gender through her outfits… or maybe she just likes being a snappy dresser, I’ve seen stranger”.
As for Dorothy’s words?
……..well, the outfit is unusual. Vest, tie, a hat that looks like it was in style in the 50’s… unusual stuff is going to draw comment. I wager Dorothy would make a similar comment if it was Danny wearing that, because there doesn’t seem to be any comment about gender in it, just that it doesn’t look good to Dorothy. Roz has been sniping at Dorothy, Dorothy’s sniping back.
Then again, notation: Straight white cis man. There’s a lot of subtext that I’m just not going to get because I haven’t had to deal with such things… hence why I look out for your comments, because they’re insightful as fuck :).
It’s been very noticeable of late cause it’s been the most recent appearances that have been showing an uptick in more androgynous clothing, with her favoring more spaghetti straps and pink early on to more dapper or looser clothing nowadays:
Well, I mean, everyone has their moral lines, and I would argue the people who view her as crossing over one that makes her terrible vastly outnumber the people who don’t.
I honestly wish Roz would go further. Bluntly, while I question her motives, I don’t think she’s done anything confirmably wrong other than Straightsplan to her Lesbian Teacher about why Joyce is wrong. Here, she’s just glad her sister humiliated herself.
I’ve been hearing a lot about Robin and Roz’s relationship coming up in the discussions and it’s got me thinking. What is the dynamics of the DeSanto family?
Roz seems very focused on Robin’s influence but what about their mother and father’s influence? Was there no aunts, uncles, siblings etc. about to ally with? Has someone come out before in the family, and if so what happened?
In a family as big(?) as the Desantos I wonder if Roz might have overlooked someone who could have helped her with Robin.
Having read Cerberus post about Roz possibly being gender fluid. Could, in the back of her mind, younger Roz have been hoping her older sister would come out and in the process help her both come out and come to term with her own orientation? Very speculative question.
Part of this question of family comes from when my Uncle L. came out in the early 90’s. That side has strong ties to Mexico and are strongly Roman Catholic. The family reaction was intense varied and support broke along some unexpected lines. So I’m curious if we might see some reflection of this with the Desantos.
Their parents appear to be out of the picture, since Robin is able to use Roz and Riley as props in her ‘I love family values’ bullshit, which suggests she was the one who raised them.
Riley was picked up by Mrs. Desantos at the end of Freshman family week. I believe Mrs. Desantos is still active in her kids life, to the dismay of some.
Also it’s amazing how easy it is for an older sibling to snag a younger sibling or relative for various events and get them out of someone’s hair for a while. Their parents may love them but the idea of a day without the kids is very tempting.
Plus if Mrs Desanto has bought into the family value platform, she’s likely to think its a valuable experience for the younger siblings to help out Robin.
Possibly. I don’t think it would be conscious though, because I don’t believe Roz is any more fully aware of her enby-ness (if she is non-binary) than Robin is of her queer orientation.
And Roz being gender-fluid is a big reach on my part to begin with, so it’s possible that’s not even a factor in this decision.
Yeah. Everything you said also fits a certain type of feminist. A woman can wear whatever a man can wear! Most feminists are pro-LGBT* and carry that with the same level of anger they use against sexism. And professional women are often scared of pregnancy, or, at least, want to avoid it.
The only reason to consider it is that this is the Willis-verse, not real life. In real life, non-binary is a subset of a subset (trans) of a subset (LGBT). But, in this comic, you can probably remove one subset. Being cis-straight is at least as common as being LGBT.
*Yes, there are TERFs, but they are a minority. And they are all still pro LGB, which is the part you are talking about.
I’m still confused why they’re acting like this is an elected position and not an appointed one? The schools pick the RA’s and someone who got in an argument with the dean is probably out.
Panel analyses! Later than expected – hung out with the boyfriend last night and today. Happy New Year, everybody!
Panel One: Final confirmation Roz did not intend for Robin to be outed, but did intend to get them together and hopefully change her perspective enough to make her come out. That said, she is not crying that this will most likely lose her sister her office. I can respect her not caring her sister will lose her office, especially with how much her sister forced her to campaign with her and made her keep her beliefs on the down low and kowtow to her political machine. As for being outed…I don’t know. I can definitely feel people being done that a straight girl is celebrating folks being outed though – Roz still has the societal advantage on that, so she should maybe shut her noise hole.
Panel Two: *winces*. I know that there is a lot of split over whether it’s okay for straight folks to use that word, and whether or not its a slur. You’d think Roz’s education would’ve told her that too. I also think she might be having a rude awakening soon, as her George Bushian era education may not go over well with folks who grew up and learned about it now, which tends to be far more ‘anti outing homophobic politicians’.
Panel Three: Dorothy, don’t be dickish just because your outfit isn’t as styling. Roz looks fantastic! Dapper-ly so. Accept your fashion sense is lousy in comparison and move on.
I kid, I kid. Mostly. I do find Roz more fashionable than Dorothy, but it’s honestly no big deal. I do like her pointing out Roz contradicting herself, as it’s important to point out, but honestly, there’s very little gotcha there. ‘Aha! You DO want the job!’ – yes, congratulations, you’ve found out Roz….is doing absolutely nothing immoral whatsoever. Yeah, she’s been smug about her campaign thus far, but wanting the job is not a wrong thing to do.
Panel Four: Which is probably why Roz gives no fucks about being ‘caught’. She knows she hasn’t done anything wrong just by wanting the job. And I like how she notices Dorothy is dressing differently too. Normally she wears layers, jackets/blazers, sweaters, or at LEAST a collared or ‘nice’ shirts (as in, not plain or casual t-shirts). I like this strip! Going into character’s fashion sense is fun. And owwwww, watching Dorothy worry about her approachability hurts but it is a valid concern. Especially since…well. She’s really not approachable. She’s warm, kind, and empathetic once you get to know her and be her friend, but she’s not good at the kind of day to day casual, shallow socializing Roz is. And that IS a skill you need as an RA. Not so much as President, but as an RA? That is a valid qualification and its one Dorothy isn’t good with. For instance – not understanding the social faux pas of taking her notes on people’s interests, goings on, and problems in front of them and then flashing them to win arguments. Sure, there weren’t secrets on them, but there could have been, and those kinds of notes belong in a folder in a desk somewhere and on her phone until she can get to said folder. Not being marked on a clipboard in front of people. That can feel dehumanizing, creepy, and like you’re keeping tabs on folks – and again, I can think of two ladies on the floor who’d have a problem with that off the bat.
Panel Five: Huh. That’s an interesting perception by Roz. Between this and her calling Dorothy an ‘impeccable dresser’, I’m getting the impression she has a high opinion of Dorothy.
That said, OUCH, right in the self worth. Dorothy spends a lot of time cultivating her image as the perfect girl. She feels like she can’t take time to have unqualified fun and a good day without also working, and like any mistake will crush her. That pressure to be the perfect girl is unhealthy and toxic and it is dangerous. And Roz just punched it right in the nose. Dorothy knows she isn’t as great at her day to day socializing as Roz and since that’s a ‘flaw’ it hurts. Poor thing.
Panel Six: Ohhhhh the irony. I love you Roz (though not as much this storyline) but I know and love Dorothy more. It’s not entirely your fault, you’re not in the main main cast. But it is true. The fans generally seem to prefer Dorothy. That said in universe? Dorothy has few friends on the floor – Joyce, Sierra, kinda Amber, kinda Dina, kinda Sarah, kinda Billie (ish). That’s a lot of kindas. Now, kindas aren’t bad. They are probably the preferred form of RA relationship – relatively friendly, but not so close as to cloud judgement. But for all we know, Roz has that relationship with her entire floor. She’s good as charisma and social skills, and she’s passionate, driven, works hard for things she’s committed to, and can be responsible when doing grunt work. We’ve yet to hear any complaints from her employers at Planned Parenthood or the Indiana Daily Student. And she’s loaded on resources. And she definitely has no problem dressing down students. She’d make a decent RA on those skills – though being smug, obnoxious, and braggy is not the way to go about it, and showboating isn’t putting her best foot forward.
On that hand, Dorothy is smart, driven, compassionate, empathetic, organized, and responsible. She’s learned to balance her responsibilities together. She’s even gotten a head start on her checking in on her floor mates. That said, she’s not putting her best foot forward either. She’s been snide, boasting, focusing too much on being liked, and sniping, not to mention that mess with her information.
Honestly, if they continue showing their worst sides during this, neither deserve to be RA. They need to show their best. And this isn’t it. Also – not an elected position, it’s an appointed one you interview and apply for. Whether their floor mates like them isn’t relevant and might actually be a strike against them.
Wanting the job is no sin. One suggesting you would take it because ‘the people’ want you to and then later saying you want it is called lying. As for the ‘fashion sense’, Dorothy correctly identified the calculated nature of Roz’s outfit, and Roz basically admitted it-and then criticized Dorothy for being too calculated. This is known as ‘hypocrisy’.
It comes down to this: is helping people more important to Dorothy than her ambition? Or not? Hard to say now, but if the answer is yes then Roz is full of shit.
Both, IMO, serve the purpose of “more freedom, power, and/or ego-stroking for me.”
As I’ve said a couple of times and ways above, I believe that both DeSantos are, apart from their diametrically opposed politics, basically the same.
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Dotty, just get a private e-mail server (and hope they fix both the electoral college crap and Putin by the time you run)
oh and crappy new year
Happy “Good riddance to that dumpster fire of a planetary rotation” to all!
Now let’s usher in the next dumpster fire of a planetary rotation.
Nothing changes. Ever.
It mystifies me that people are expecting the year that’s going to be the recipient of 2016’s shittiness to be better than the year that dished it out.
At least we know what we’re in for now.
ahahahahahahaha nope
You’re wrong.
We now know in advance that this year is going to be shit. We have to do all we can to make sure it doesn’t hurt us as much as it can.
“Knowing it’s going to be shit” is not the same as “knowing what we’re in for.” As president, Trump could do pretty much anything. I’m not arrogant enough to predict exactly how he’s going to fuck shit up. Are you?
well, he’s given us almost two months’ indication of his potential administration’s composition, and their combined history is a bit of a hint
not to mention starting an arms race w/o even being inaugurated yet
The UK is still in denial abt the effects of Brexit.
It mystifies me that people ever see anything worth celebrating in incrementing the digits used to measure a period of time defined by an arbitrary starting point. The sun rises every morning; this one is no different from the day before or the day after tomorrow. Celebrate them all.
So… You’re saying I should get drunk everyday?
I can do that.
NO!
It’s not a planetary rotation!
It’s a planetary revolution!
REVOLUTION!
And yes, new revolution time!
“But here’s some advice, boy. Don’t put your trust in revolutions. They always come around again. That’s why they’re called revolutions.” – Sam Vimes, Night Watch
Polinetarical revolution!
https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1920/1*2ZaOLOOJjF27ahnYw5g_tg.png
A planetary rotation is a day. A solar rotation is a year. Besides, 2016 was a pretty good year up til November.
“pretty good year up til November”
— The entire dumpster fire of a campaign before that
— Orlando shooting, Nice attack, Brussels bombing
— Aleppo!
— Brexit, plus the continuing collapse of democracy in Poland
— The ongoing refugee crisis
— The American opioid crisis
— Zika epidemic
Let’s be more exhaustive
Hasn’t this year exhausted us enough?
Nah, they’re keeping some for 2017.
the trailer suggests otherwise
Actually, the sun rotates (spins) a bit like Earth’s does, but because it doesn’t have a solid surface it doesn’t have a fixed rotation period. Rather, different sections parts of its (gaseous/plasma) surface complete rotations in different lengths of time, as measured by movements of sunspots. A sunspot on the solar equator rotates about once every 24 and a half (Earth) days, while sunspots closer to the solar poles rotates about once every 38 days. So, a solar rotation is an imprecise period of time somewhere between 24.5 and 38 days. But it’s not an Earth year.
The phrase you’re looking for is “planetary revolution”, or “one revolution of Earth about the Sun”, or “Earth revolving around the sun” or something like that.
…..
PEDANTRY MAN AWAY!
“Once again, the planetary rotation is saved, thanks to Pedantry Man!”
Vive la revolution?
Plenty of good things happened last year, they were just drowned out.
Chris Hadfield made a pretty nice list of some of them on his twitter;
https://twitter.com/Cmdr_Hadfield/status/815294057102667778
Worth skimming over if you want to restore faith in humans a bit.
Fuck you, Roz. Why are you being so shitty about this?
Roz is a jerk.
She’s got plenty of redeeming qualities, I understand why people like her, but you can’t say that she’s not a jerk. Because she is a jerk.
There is no cause so righteous that a$$holes won’t be involved too.
That should be a Mike quote, and I will repeat it regardless.
The shittiness is her idea of crustiness.
I won’t disagree that Roz has a terrible attitude about this whole deal, but she’s kinda right about Dorothy. Like approachability is a REALLY important aspect of being an RA and Roz is infinitely more approachable than Dorothy if you’re not in either’s immediate circle of friends.
Roz is not “infinitely more approachable,” because she’s a jerk. Not just a slight jerk (like Walky), but a real jerk. Grade-A.
Dorothy would be nice, would be supportive, and would really try, and that’s basically what’s required of an RA. An RA isn’t supposed to be (and rarely is) everybody’s best friend, they’re supposed to be, well, like Dorothy.
[Also Dorothy, unlike Roz, would also learn from her mistakes.]
Where are people getting that Roz wouldn’t learn from her mistakes? ??? ?
Because she hasn’t learned from them before this. She seemed like she might be learning, but then she did the R.A. thing, and then now is celebrating her hatred of her own sister (and not even worried about what it will do to her “favorite teacher.”)
Roz has been consistently portrayed as a jerk. What growth she seemed to be having seems to have dissipated. So people don’t think she can change.
At least, not if she won and had her jerkishness validated.
Not that she’s going to win. Nor will Dorothy.
Joyce’s arc went on for a while with her barely learning anything before any actual change started to sink in.
Not to mention Roz has only a tiny fraction of the appearances where such change could be depicted
“Roz is not “infinitely more approachable,” because she’s a jerk. ”
She just has to fake not being a jerk, or at least ‘our jerk’, until she’s in. Then she doesn’t have to care! (It seems unlikely she was planning on really doing anything once she had the role)
If 2016 is any indication, she doesn’t actually have to fake not being a jerk. She just has to own it, by being a HUMONGOUS jerk.
………..Roz. You don’t out people.
In fairness, she wasn’t trying to – she was trying to get her sister to admit her own sexuality to herself from the look of things.
However, this strip makes it pretty clear that her end-goal wasn’t “get my sister to admit her own sexuality since I’m concerned for her”. It was “ruin my sister’s political career so that the candidate I support wins”.
I think it was even more insidiously self-serving? “ruin my sister’s political career because it reflects poorly on my own beliefs and desired career path”.
Some people’s sisters aren’t very nice, and shouldn’t be in politics.
I agree, but Roz isn’t the selfless hero she claims to be here. I am questioning her motives, not the result of her actions.
Ok, I’m also questioning that because this could have serious, dangerous consequences for both Leslie and Robin, but Roz is telling others (and perhaps herself?) she is awesome for doing this. For them. Celebrate and appreciate Roz, guys, she will solve all your problems, because us queer people need other people to do that.
Roz is still saying she didn’t out her sister.
Not exactly. The only thing she has clearly said that she didn’t snap the photograph herself, and that she preferred it for Robin to have outed herself.
She may very well have indeed told a photographer where to find her sister. That’s not precluded from her words.
What I find really detestable about Roz here is her pretending to know what Robin’s sexuality is. Robin might not even know what that is yet! As far as the context of the comic she hasn’t done anything overtly homo or even heterosexual. She’s shown an interest and attraction to Leslie and joked about sucking an imaginary dick. What overwhelming evidence! My point is what does Roz actually know so who is she to say Robin should out herself?
Roz is her sister. She’s known her all her life. She may have some reason to think so from before the start of the comic.
And of course, she’s right. If she wasn’t, none of this would have happened.
I am willing to bet actual money that Roz thinks her sister’s a lesbian. So, no, I don’t think she’s “right”.
Yeah what the shit, Roz.
The shit is she didn’t do it but is happy it happened anyway.
And she didn’t.
Yes, she did set in motion events that led to her sister outing herself, but honestly that’s still pretty heavily on Robin.
GLOATING after the fact is pretty crass. This should be a satisfaction-but-remorse moment.
I don’t understand how anyone can hear what she just said and think it’s okay that she wants to be the RA for a girls’ dorm.
Eeugh, straight people being happy that a gay person was outed will always be digusting to me :///
Is it better if said gay person has been vocally anti-gay as their entire political career, using said career to advance anti-gay legislation?
No, outing a gay person against their will is always wrong. No amount of “poetic justice” can justify it.
Ehh. Depends on your moral/ethical system.
Once you go down the rabbit hole of “depends on one’s ethics”, you are as bad as homophobes, many of which base their anti-gay beliefs on a somewhat consistent code of personal morals.
Bad is bad, even if it’s to cause some good. i.e., if you were forced to resort to it, it is a cause to be remorseful, not gloating.
Being consistent is unrelated to them being evil.
The fact that we’re still arguing about it as a comment section five days after it comes out shows that not everyone feels that way. There will always be radicals, those who do what others see as wrong, and amongst their own will be seen as right. Whacky, isn’t it?
What if it’s a case of saving lives and not just poetic justice?
I’m not sure how I feel about this, but I don’t think it’s that simple.
It should always be the decision of the person in question whether or not they make their sexuality known, both to individuals and to the public at large. That is a basic thing that has to be a line in the sand. You can’t muddy that with qualifiers or you end up in some really ethically dodgy places in a goddamn hurry. Same goes for trans people. Nobody is more qualified to make the decision of disclosure than the person in question. Full stop.
I find it really hard to care about queer people actively making life harder for other queer people.
*queer people who are
I think part of the problem lies in the chance that it further justifies outing other queer people who are not making life harder for others.
It’s kind of similar to the issue of misgendering shitty people – if it were allowed to happen to these shitty people, then what is to stop a person ‘deserving’ of this respect from making a mistake/ticking someone off and having it happen to them as an act of ‘justice’?
Misgendering people is a willful expression of hatred for a minority group. It’s, uh, not at all a good analogy.
I agree that a person should be able to choose when, where, and how to disclose their orientation (sexual or otherwise); however, also I believe that if you publicly attack a person or group of people for something, you give up your privacy in that area. Just like any kind of publicly shared information, moral claims should be verifiable, especially when those claims impact other people. If a politician advocated for reduction of economic support on the premise that “people should manage their money more responsibly” and then it turns out that he declared bankruptcy three times, I think that fact should be made public. If he never voiced an opinion on the matter, I wouldn’t care, but hypocrisy ticks me off more than just about anything else. Especially when it negatively affects other people.
No, sorry.
If a LGBT politician is actively harming other LGBT people while in the closet, it’s not even a question for me.
Out them, as loudly as possible.
There’s no ethical quandary about that as far as I’m concerned, it stops being their choice when they’re causing harm.
Sad thing is that I hear all the time the same “removing their choices for the benefit of our community” rhetoric from certain anti-LGBT Christian groups. That’s why I keep insisting that we need to be better than that. Whenever we decide to infringe on the rights of other peoples to protect our own, we are setting up ourselves for a never-ending escalation of self-righteous justification to be horrible to other human beings.
It is possible to be an activist without being a criminal.
It’s also always wrong to punch people in the face.
Except when it isn’t, because the face’s owner is a threat to other people.
It’s not saving lives. Outing Robin would stop her political career, but someone just as bad (or worse) will always be right there to replace her. Outing people just reinforces the idea that being gay is something shameful to be hidden, and that being found is a horrible scandal. It may prevent her from winning the upcoming election, but it won’t have any long term benefits.
… except for Roz!
Pointing out lies in politics never has long-term benefits. This politician promised to lower taxes and raised them instead. That politician passed a law that she spoke out against during the election. An anti-gay politician caught having a same-sex liaison should be a scandal. A pro-freedom-of-sexual-expression politician who is found out to be gay should be something that no one cares about. Lying and hypocrisy should be punished to discourage it in our politicians. If we don’t hold them accountable, they will keep doing horrible things. If we reward good behavior, it will encourage people to behave better. I don’t care what your stance is, but you should always live up to the ideals that your insist on holding others to.
Yes, that’s where I fail to understand Roz’s plan. In the long run, this is definitely not a win for LGBT rights — it makes the bigots braver and the ultimate backlash that much more deadly for the sake of a single seat in the House, and I’d assumed Roz would be smart enough to see that.
Roz’s plan, IMO, is that she gets to be free of having to “behave properly” in public for the sake of big sister’s image/career/campaign, and can do whatever she wants. That’s it.
For all that she talks the talk, I sincerely doubt that she gives a fig about any progressive cause that does not directly benefit her.
I assume Roz’s plan also includes the ‘having to leave
college because Robin can’t contribute to the fees without
a job’ portion of events.
Roz is dependent on her sister’s income for college? That’s news to me.
While it wouldn’t surprise me that Robin helped pay for Roz’ tuition, it hasn’t been explicitly stated anywhere.
Still, it’d be a nice ironic twist, to come and bite Roz in the ass, later.
Just a theory on my part, based on Roz complaning about the amount of DeSanto siblings and the lack of rooms to put them in.
Roz is a college freshman. Roz might think she’s smart, but Roz five years from now is going to be pretty pissed at current Roz.
Is outing anti-LGBT politicians *really* the only way to stop them, though?
The only way? No. A very effective way? Yes. A way that works better than anything else we’ve tried? Yes.
The other ways all rely on having people support gay rights, which is only now becoming a real option.
Plus, it’s our duty to out any deceitful politician. We don’t want people who pretend to be one thing but are actually another representing us.
The whole situation is different. These people aren’t closeted because people might hurt them. They are closeted because it allows them to hurt others.
Hence it is our duty to prevent them from being able to hurt others.
Normally, I’m unhappy whenever a person is violently killed, and think it’s wrong. Occasionally, very occasionally, I make an exception.
Like Flight 93. For those too young to remember: A passenger in a hijacked jetliner killed the hijackers, because he knew they were about to crash the plane into an occupied building on purpose. Although the whole thing was several kinds of tragic, the guy was a total hero, and I’m very glad he managed to kill them.
If a politician is hurting gay people wholesale… and the only way to stop him is to out him… then, what, he shouldn’t be outed because… hurting gay people is wrong?
“Two wrongs don’t make a right” is a good rule of thumb – but it’s too simple to be a moral absolute. There are times – rare times – when killing someone is clearly the right thing to do, in order to prevent more deaths that that person is about to deliberately cause.
There are even rarer times when I take satisfaction in people being killed. Flight 93 is one of those times. Even if you don’t, I hope you can agree it’s not monstrous to be glad those hijackers were killed before they could do even more damage, and to be proud of the incredibly courageous hero who did it.
I won’t try to say that outing gay gay-bashing politicians is a good thing that we should be proud of… but… Flight 93.
It’s off-topic, but it’s worth noting that the media at the time conspicuously did not mention that the hero, Mark Bingham, was gay. I guess they thought America wasn’t ready for a gay hero.
Would it have been right for the media to out a gay hero?
If said “gay hero” is actively fighting to hurt gay people? Yes.
If said “gay hero” keeps it hidden because he’ll face discrimination? Then no.
The latter is the only reason outing is wrong. It’s not some universal truth, and we don’t need the overzealous turning it into one.
It’s no better than when you get offended by Speedy Gonzales, despite actual Mexicans loving him. Or claim that yoga is appropriated, when it was freely taught by people in India to people who were not in India for the express purpose of spreading it.
You’ve got to be liberal and progressive without becoming an ivory tower elite who only wants to lord over others.
Kinda like what Mary does with her (version of) Christianity.
It’s still gross af to be happy about it, the whole situation is really sad and fucked up. Roz has shown in the past to use her (straight) voice to talk over gay people and use their suffering as her own political platform. Robin clearly wasn’t in the right but being cheery about how you “threw an election” for all the “queer folks” using the misery of another queer folk is. bad.
It’s pretty clear, IMO, she didn’t do it for them – she did it for herself.
100% yes.
Ditto, and Rush can die in a dumpster fire. Oh wait, he already did.
What have you got against Canada’s best prog-rock trio?
I’ll never be Roz level happy, but in the case of someone like Larry Craig I’m okay with being a little bit disgusting. In part because I grew up watching his campaign ads. (I’m not from Idaho, but I am in the Spokane, WA media market, as is the Idaho panhandle.)
If ur gay then being happy is your own prerogative, but if you’re straight then all your doing is rejoicing in the misery and homophobia that causes situations like this to exist in the first place
No. No no no and no. Thinking like that is not helping. Stop with the divide. People are people. Period. You can’t have an opinion be “ok because you belong to a specific group.” Something is either right or wrong. Situations can change things but not who is involved. Murder is wrong. Whether a black person kills a white person or a black person kills a black person, or a white person kills a black person. Murder is wrong. Rape is wrong. Whether a man rapes a woman, a man rapes a man, a woman rapes a man, or a woman rapes a woman. Rape is wrong. If you think an opinion is wrong, it is wrong for all people. If you think that an opinion is justified it is justified for all people. Don’t build walls that don’t need to be there. Please.
nah
However, while not all gay people are happy, all happy people are gay.
(Grammar Nazi points to whoever gets this)
I think that’s basically archaic usage at this point
(ar-GAY-ic?)
lmao,
Being aware that racism exists is the real racism.
that view is so weak, as if perfectionism cant be an interesting and engaging character flaw in itself. take a writing course you vest wearing person
“Interesting and engaging character flaw” is not the same as “is an insecurity that helps other people relate to you.”
Honestly, I am so tired of people ‘relating’ to assholes. It’s things like that, that get scumbags like Trump elected in the first place. It’s long time that people start learning how to relate to heroes again.
Perfectionism is definitely a reflection of insecurity.
Don’t rope the vest into this. It did nothing wrong.
She said perfection, though, not perfectionism.
Under the circumstances, I can’t make myself believe “Happy New Year”, so let me just say: I hope you all make it out the other side.
Do we have to? Can we rewind to 2015 instead? Relive Obergefell? Maybe make flying cars happen this time around?
There were “hoverboards”!
im proud of all of us for being here right now
I know, right. WE ROCK!
You get an ‘I Survived 2016’ t-shirt! You get an ‘I Survived 2016’ t-shirt! EVERYONE gets an ‘I Survived 2016’ t-shirt!
WHOO!
Now let’s do it again.
Are you CRAZY! We just got out.
More likeable than Dorothy. Right.
Maybe you should shoot for ‘more likeable than Mike’ instead.
She’s got that one down pretty well. She’s more likeable than Mary, too. And Ryan, Ross, Blaine, Carol, Jonathan, Faz… hell, in this universe, she’s not even the least-likeable DeSanto sister.
Eeeh. Robin is still a likeable character, because she still has the fundamental character traits that made people fall in love with Walkyverse!Robin. All those people going “I want to like her, but (all the reasons she sucks now)” is an indication of that.
I’ve never been a big fan of Robin, and the traits that were annoying but tolerable in Walkyverse Robin are horrific in Dumbiverse Robin.
Well, yes. Likeable doesn’t mean universally liked.
Ditto. Both versions of Robin are obnoxious, and this version is doubly so, because the universe she’s in isn’t wacky.
Neither one of them can hold a candle to Simon The Likeable.
A lot of people seem to be confusing “likeable character” with “likeable person.”
As characters in fiction, we the readers know all about Roz and Dorothy . . . details that they would not, as people, share with others.
As people, they both adopt a public persona that they let other people see. And if they’re good at portraying a likeable person (eg, manipulation) – as Roz is and Dorothy is less so – then the other people in universe will fall in line with that persona.
Whether we like the character is kinda irrelevant to the point Roz is making. What we think of her (and what Dorothy thinks) don’t matter . . . it’s what all the other people who don’t know any better think of her.
People who speak of themselves as “more likeable” rarely are.
It is one of those paradoxical things where if you think you are, you probably aren’t, and if you think you aren’t you may well be.
“If you have to say you’re (socially advantageous element), you’re probably not.’ – Various figures from history, from ‘Lady’ to ‘Gentleman’ to ‘Electable’
“I have the best temperament. Everyone says I have the best temperament. I spend so much money on temperament. Believe me.”
… so, wait, is he spending money on phlegm, black bile, bile, blood, or tears?
Tears. So many tears.
Plus it’s probably not an election that will determine the new RA, Roz! You don’t think they elected Ruthless, do you?
Yeah, I’m kind of expecting this to deteriorate into vicious politicking which finally culminates in Dorothy and Roz getting into actual fisticuffs in the hall, only to have Chloe walk in in the middle of it with their newly appointed R.A., an upperclasswoman from another dorm whom we haven’t met before.
Or: Meredith.
“Unknown evil.”
Oh god! It will be Sydney Yus!
AHAHAHAAAA! FOOOOOOOOLS!
What? It’s not like she’s suddenly free and employable. I mean who WOULD be looking for a job this late into the ter- oh wait.
in a Double-Shyamalan, the new R.A. will be Suy Yendys (who happens to look like Classic Sydney)
Long lost twin, separated at birth, who in a shocking twist turns out to have been amazi-girl THIS ENTIRE TIME
I’d have voted for Ruthless.
Yeah, they are both treating this like a political election rather than a job interview and they are both refusing to show their actual best qualities for the job because they are treating this like an election.
Like, Dorothy is not putting forward her in-depth care for other students instead showing the creepy “I’m writing everything about you down” thing she did. And Roz isn’t showing her passion for causes, her history of getting resources into the hands of students who need it, even political enemies, and so on and instead is showing glee at the outing and destruction of enemies and the ability to be “liked”.
Like, they should both honestly fail this even if they were in consideration in the first place, because they are fundamentally misunderstanding that what they are seeking may be a position of power, but it is a care-focused job first rather than a political office they want to “practice” with before launching their future campaigns for actual office.
Depends what face they’re showing to Chloe, I guess. I mean if they’re putting their “I can do this job” faces forward to her while showing the rest of the floor their “you want me in this job” faces in hopes that popularity will make the eventual job easier, that would be pretty reasonable.
*plays the theme to The Love Boat on the hacked Muzak *
Does that make Danny the Yeoman-Purser?
Soon we’ll be making another run!
you are perfect, and that is why we hate you
Fuck cinnamon rolls.
Too goddamn good for this sucky world, too fuckin’ pure
Well, that’s an…interesting point of view.
Bah humbug. Unknown Evil is the only viable candidate. At least this particular conflict is developing to be less cut and dry than it appeared
I know it’s just a figure of speech, but I can’t say I support it. We want an unknown good person.
Goodbye shitty 2016, hello hellish 2017, as Venezuela starts tumbling off a cliff with Bolivia in tow and Brazil following behind, with Chad showing off from the ‘Republic of Logone’ to Nigieria to Niger to Libya to Darfur, with Yemen, Libya, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Pakistan showing no end in sight, with Central Asia a powderkeg between the energy rich ‘lower’ stans and the water rich ‘upper’ stans, with China still stagnating, the Ukranian civil war still ongoing, presidents who refuse to step down from Jammeh to Kabila, a new untested King of Thailand to juggle the military and civilian sectors as his father did, Burma still killing their muslim minority, a crazy Philippine president, the South East Asia Sea crisis, a rearming Japan, no end to the drug war in North America, and, oh, the new Republican administration of the United States of America.
All I can say is that the world has been dealt harsher cards and come out. Let’s make it through.
For a scenario of 2017’s descent into unspeakable awfulness by a professional science fiction writer, see the latest entries on Charlie Stross’s blog.
I’m good with the scenarios of 2017’s descent into unspeakable awfulness I’ve come up with on my own, thanks.
You forgot “and Mexico inching ever closer to a civil war.”
I only wish I was kidding.
… I think Australia’s doing okay? Maybe?
My advice? Keep quiet about it.
Frankly Roz is probably as calculating as she thinks Dorothy is.
Roz? More likable than Dorothy? Perhaps in some universe, but the problem is they exist in this one.
Roz is extrovert-likeable. Dorothy’s introvert-likeable.
… and this is an extrovert culture.
I think the thing that bugs me about the things Roz picks on as evidence of how unlikeable Dorothy is is that a lot of its stuff I do/could see myself doing as someone who is autistic. Can’t say Dorothy is, but stuff like keeping info on everyone seems perfectly fine to someone like me who can’t remember the names of people half the time. Or coming off as too “controlled’ and “measured” as being a bad thing when I’m having to put in a lot of effort to be sociable in some form.
Like I said, don’t really see her as being autistic, but approaching social stuff in that kind of stiff, analytical manner at times and controlling image is stuff I have to do as someone who is because otherwise I’d be a complete mess.
Personally I like Dorothy because she DOESN’T make constant mistakes every 5 seconds and is organised and is logical and is prepared for pretty much anything. She makes small mistakes every now and then rather than huge ones and I can relate to that better.
Meanwhile I utterly can’t stand Roz. I wouldn’t be friends with someone for long if I ever heard them say something like that to anyone.
I agree that I wouldn’t be able to be friends with Roz, despite agreeing on many things with her, because how she acts.
Dorothy… I’m a bit on the fence. Would love to have her as an authority figure or as a friend I can rely on for things like class notes, though I wouldn’t invite her on a night out with friends (and considering my idea of “night out” involves lots of drinking, loud music and smoking cigarettes, I don’t think she’d want to come anyway. :P)
Yeah, that pisses me off, too.
I think I would find Dorothy more likeable than Roz if they were real people.
Personally, I’d like Dorothy to spend time with Dorothy a lot more than Roz. We could probably talk for hours about politics, social issues, etc.
Roz… not so much. She’s opinionated, and maybe knowledgeable, but a bit harsh and not willing to go that in-depth.
… of course, Dorothy wouldn’t have TIME to talk, so I lose either way.
I don’t like Roz and I do like Dorothy so that whole theory of hers is full of horseshit….that is a nice hat though.
This is because you, being a reader and privy to Dorothy’s ACTUAL emotions, thoughts, and private affairs, are familiar with the real her, and pointedly, you are NOT exclusively familiar with the “public face” she puts on for most of the dorm, that of an ambitious, tidy, overly professional, (and admittedly caring and helpful) busybody with aspirations towards public office and politics.
By contrast, you are ALSO familiar with Roz’s private life of anti-authoritarian contrarianism, manipulation, and general insensitivity, rather than her public face of “that hot, fun-loving chick who opposes her weaselly anti-gay-secret-lez sister, and also made a sex tape, which means maybe us normal guys might even have a chance with her, she’s just so approachable and cool!”
In short, absolutely, you hate Roz and like Dorothy, because you are omniscient. But sorry, incorrect, in-universe, Roz is 100% right.
Ummmm…..okay?…Sorry if I offended you with my opinion? I do understand why the characters in the context of the comic like Roz. Thank you. I still think her opinion on her ALWAYS being more likeable than Dorothy even in her universe is highly debatable.
No offense. Not sure where you got that. I was merely pointing out something you seemed to have overlooked in your comment. *shrugs*
No it’s more that you can’t convey tone in writing so it read a little angry to me no big deal. After reading your other comments I get what you’re saying. We as readers have more context into Roz and such. I still kinda disagree ultimately and I think there is some evdence against Roz being as charismatic as she thinks but, I get it. Very valid point.
Cool-cool! Sorry, when I try to get analytical, it tends to come off a cold and academic, so I see what you mean. No, I totally agreed with the opinion part (I don’t like Roz and do like Dorothy), it was merely the following assertion (therefore her belief is horseshit) that I thought was mistaken. But it’s true, since we haven’t actually heard many resident opinions beyond the main characters (and Agatha and Other Rachel), Roz could indeed be overinflating her appeal.
Honestly, I think I’d still like Dorothy better, even just looking at how Roz behaves in public vs. how Dorothy behaves in public. I can see why some people would like Roz better, but Roz is obnoxious sometimes.
Roz hasn’t been obnoxious to the folks it matters to, tho… prolly none of them were present for the times when she was outwardly a jerk (Gender Studies class)
Ditto. Roz is a “fun” party girl kind of person, which isn’t my kind of person but I recognize that lots of people like party people. Dorothy seems like the kind of person you could actually have a conversation with (and she’d take notes so she could remember and pick up where we left off last time!) which is much more my kind of person. But different people like different kinds of people.
I kinda have a theory that Roz might not have a close network of friends. She seems like the type who is very popular and has a lot of superficial friends she can party with but no one she can really talk to like Dorothy does. Dorothy has Joyce, a steady boyfriend in Walky, she’s still on good terms with her ex, and regularly talks to Sarah, Becky, Dina, basically anyone who walks with Joyce to that math class. Who do we see Roz regularly interact with?…Joe?….Mary sometimes because they’re roomates?….Now admittedly this could be because Roz is more of a side character while Dorothy’s more a secondary main character. Roz gets less screentime for development or at least has so far. She could have a tight group. It could be Sierra! Or maybe she doesn’t because some people pick up on her negative traits too.
Alas, unless it’s made explicit in the comic (or word of god,) we’ll just have to stick with “not enough screen time to really know.” But I think you’re right.
More popular, not more likable. A lot of folks don’t get that those are actually different things. And unfortunately, the popular people get ahead in politics, even if they barely study, so they almost always win.
Methinks Roz is more like her sister than she would care to admit.
I look forward to someone saying that to Roz. It’s the ultimate burn.
I honestly don’t think she doesn’t see it. I think it’s fully intentionally she follows in her sister’s footsteps. She just want to do it RIGHT this time.
I figure it’s either that or she has no self-awareness at all, and would deny the assertion or just dismiss it without consideration. Flip a coin.
She wouldn’t hate her sister for those things, then.
She hates her sister for being a bigot, not being a politician.
Yes, Roz, because all of us queers are a monolithic entity who are totally cool with forced outing and involving another queer woman in a media scandal that can easily result in loss of home and employment.
Thank you for telling me how to feel oh magical straight one.
Also, fuck straight people who say ‘queer.’ It isn’t your friggin’ word.
Indeed. Straight Allies, here’s a prime example of What Not To Do.
In the long run this probably would make things worse…
As a fellow queer person, I’m wondering what straight people should say instead? I’ve always had some issues with the word “queer,” since I’ve heard it as a derogatory term so often, but I’m not sure what the better option is. “LGBT” is not super inclusive of people who identify as say asexual, pansexual, genderfluid, etc.
I’m partial to QUILTBAG.
…I am also a fellow queer person, I should mention. Curse the lack of an edit button!
QUILTBAG is only two silly bulls and the fact it sounds like a word and not a word salad makes it even better.
Was a pretty good webcomic, too bad it ended so abruptly.
Yeah, while I agree with your general point, your opinion that ‘queer’ is an in-group-ism (god, I’m sure there’s a word for those but it’s not coming to mind right now) is not universally held by every queer person. Many people do consider it a blanket categorical word, since it is pretty much the only single term that effectively binds together the grouping of ‘all people who are not straight-cis.’
Full disclosure: I am straight and cis. I recognize that my saying that is not evidence to contradict the blanket statement that you made, but I’ll cite OJST on this one as an example. Not saying you don’t have a right to your opinion, just pointing out that it’s not as universal as the “fuck people who do this” seems to imply.
That said, if you don’t like queer as a term, I’ve heard “LGBT+” a fair bit. You can’t really expect people to automatically know which term you favor, though.
That would be why I said we’re not a monolithic entity.
I do not have an answer to that.
It just angers me regardless because, in my experience, it’s used by straights to categorize and separate.
I identify as queer, and if any of my straight friends described me as “queer,”
to someone else, I’d be okay with it. If they said “the queer community,” it’s probably also my fault because that’s what I say.
Personally I don’t mind straight people using the word queer in the context of ‘the queer community’ or to say ‘queer people are affected by X so Y which stops X should help them’ as it groups in all LGBT+ people, just isn’t acceptable to me when used as a slur.
And given how many days we’ve had discussions in the comment section about whether outing is never right, sometimes right, right in a limited set of circumstances, Roz really truly is oblivious to how split the opinion is on the matter.
“Also, fuck straight people who say ‘queer.’ It isn’t your friggin’ word.”
Right okay, you know, most people would be happy when other people are willing their own words to describe them, exactly because this means that it’s the label they choose for themselves. Which means I’m not pushing my label for your group on you, it means I’m respecting *your* choice about what label to use.
If you want us to use one specific label, tell us what label to use. I respect your desire, but oh, look, when asked by another fellow queer person what label straight people should use, you reply “I do not have an answer to that”.
How about “non-straight”? But that itself feels heteronormative, treating straight as the “normal”.
Perhaps you should not be angry at people who are doing their absolute best to respect your choices.
‘Non-straight’ excludes a lot of the queer community, and only gets a lot of us because we’re also non-straight, as well as being non-cis.
It’s nice that there are queer peeps who are fine with straight folks saying it. I’m not since, you know, we’re not a monolithic hivemind. It’s okay that I’m not and your convenience is the last thing on my mind.
I’m not there. I’m not okay with Roz-types using it as a blanket term to describe an entire group of people who all think and act the exact same way.
Not being part of a monolithic hivemind isn’t an excuse to be an individual jerk. My convenience isn’t the issue here, the issue is “What label do you want straight people to use for the people who self-identify as queer, if ‘queer’ is not it”. Is it at least okay for straight people to use the term “people-who-self-identify-as-queer” or is that also bad?
And to that I say, fuck if I know. It’s not my job to come up with one.
I don’t like it like that straight people co-opt the term the way Roz has here, and using it to generalize every single queer person in her dorm. That’s really the gist of what I’m saying.
And that is basically what happens whenever a straight person has used it with me. If other folks have more positive experiences, that’s cool too.
well if you’re relinquishing all naming rights to the straights, then i hereby dub thee all hinkleborfs
ha
Her employment is hurting other queer people, though. I’m pretty sure her losing that is what most of us want.
I think the polling of this comics fans would dispel Roz’s delusions about being more liked.
Because readers are omniscient, and don’t exist.
Characters would almost certainly disagree.
They’d be too busy denouncing us as voyeuristic sickos.
Remember, Jesus is watching you in the shower!
I read something once about some kiddo who tried to stop going to the loo because the idea of either dead relatives or Jesus watching from heaven freaked them out quite a lot…
I kinda doubt that. Does anybody like Roz? She seems to annoy (at best) pretty much everybody who spends time with her.
Her stating that everybody likes her does not make it so.
We’ve really only seen her interact with people who are already biased against her (Joyce, Dorothy), people she doesn’t like (Robin, Mary), and people she kind of gets along with (Joe, Leslie, Riley).
And she really doesn’t have any significant interactions outside of that. As it stands, she spends more time on screen interacting with people she naturally opposes. And since Roz is very much so a secondary character who mainly exists to create reactions and sets things into motion (the sex tape, the party, yelling at Joyce in class, the seducing-Robin-plan, the bid for RA), she’s often on the side opposing what our current viewpoint character wants/believes in and we have reason to side with them over her.
That being said, we haven’t really seen Roz just hanging out with anyone. Maybe she’s perfectly likable in a private setting with other people who aren’t predisposed against her. Maybe she’s more likable when politics never comes up. Who knows? But from what we’ve seen, there’s really only Mary who dislikes her, and the only other people that she annoys or bothers are Joyce, Dorothy, and Leslie, really. And tbh, I wouldn’t have really expected her to get along with either of them too much anyhow, because of such a difference in temperament.
All great allies forcibly out people for political purposes, as we know
Christ, Roz is awful.
I think as a liberals, we should support Robin by donating to her campaign to ensure it’s a fair fight in the election. Oh she won. Oh she pushed more anti-LGBT bills.
Well at least we get to feel good about our above-it-all attitudes
Hear, hear. Maybe she’ll have a sudden change of heart. That’s certainly a solid, foolproof thing to appeal to in anyone!
…I like Dorothy more…
Is there a more unlikable attitude than “I’ll always be more likable”? I mean, I mostly like Roz okay, but I hated her for a moment after she said that.
I thought the same
“I made a spreadsheet of all of your secrets and I’m waving it around in the hall” is pretty close I would think.
That, in a dorm which houses Mary and Mike is enough bad judgement alone to render you unfit for the job and is pretty symptomatic of a dangerous arrogance.
None of those things were -secrets-, as evidenced by the fact that they are willing to talk about them openly in the hall. Taking notes about someone’s publically-held personal interests is weird, but it isn’t an invasion of privacy.
Eh, even if it’s not strictly secrets that can be a bit creepy.
Actually, why anyone using whatsapp of FB messenger should be concerned about an individual keeping al list of stuff the talk about is beyond me.
Kind of a double-standard squared, isn’t it?
As to Dorothy makes no mistakes- everybody agrees that the list was a mistake…
I think I’m gonna bow out this evening and instead just say Fuck 2016, here’s to surviving 2017 out of spite.
Take care of yourself.
I did the inverse, slept through any bullshit and just woke up
Take care of yourself and those who need you.
Pfffffft, yeah, 2016 think it’s so tough. Well, guess who’s got the last laugh. 2017, that’s who.
*offers internet-hugs*
*hugs back*
Let 2017 be the year we hug more!
There’s a cause and effect that I thinks she not taking into consideration.
Happy New Year’s to the people who are 3 hours ahead of me.
“more likable.”
*Stares at Roz*
“YOU WOT M8?!”
“Frequently. Google to confirm.”
Roz is giving off popular mean girl vibes to me rn.
I’m always confused by the TV idea of the villainous “popular girl” that everybody hates. Uh… ?
Happy New Year
God I’m coming to hate Roz.
Albeit, this is because I hate when people insist I have a real me under the mask that I use to talk with neurotypicals, and also that they have a right to see it. Roz hasn’t done that, she has just said that Dorothy’s mask will either have to get much better or show some cracks in order to get what Dorothy carefully implies other people want.
But, still genuinely irritating. Smug little blood traitor and outer of secrets. That’s enough for me to never trust her.
Versus a moron who literally writes down secrets for scum like Mike and Mary to find.
Psst. They aren’t secrets. They’re observations about people’s public interests.
Dorothy is not remotely a moron. She’s always been portrayed as intelligent. You hate a character. Fine. Don’t make up shit about them.
And I’ve been through plenty of leadership training that tells you to take notes. The way you keep other people from reading them is that you keep them in a safe place.
We all have things we write down that we don’t want other people to read. And we tend to be able to keep prying eyes from reading them.
Writing notes to augment your memory is what you’re taught in speech class. It’s a trait of highly effective people that they keep this stuff organized.
Oh, Dorothy.
This entire storyline came off to me as if it’s been previously rumoured that Robin might be gay, and not just by Roz. I don’t know if I just have a really skewed perception of reality or what, but if some questionable photos surface of a representative being tender with another person of their gender, then I’d think people’s reaction would be along the lines of “omg could this mean she’s a lesbian?”, not “wow Roz you outed your sister”.
Half the time I feel like I’m just not on the same wavelength with this comic.
Uh, hey, Roz.
Being good at manipulating people;, including your own family, doesn’t make you a good RA.
Just sayin’
Doesn’t make mistakes? She’s dating WALKY fer cryin’ out loud!
Is… is this a lead up to Dorothy trying to campaign on mistakes she has made? Are we gonna see her and people who’re in favour of her becoming RA walk around holding up signs that talk about mistakes she’s made?
Dorothy: [I have repeatedly misspelled the word ‘misspelled]
Walky: [Dorothy once went to sleep still wearing her glasses!]
Joyce: [Dorothy used to eat holding her fork with the wrong hand]
Danny: [She dated me!]
(sorrynotsorry Danny I still loveyou)
On a different note; HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE. Despite everything, I hope it’s a good one. May it be very joyful and gay. : )
I’m guessing this little subplot is inspired by Hillary?
But yeah seeing Dorothy in a regular tee is startling.
Okay, so here’s where I come down re: the debate on outing politicians who are harming the queer community. Straight people don’t get to do it. I still have a lot of conflicted feelings about the whole thing BUT the one thing I think I can say with certainty about this is this.
Straight people. do not. get to make that decision.
So what we have to do here is track down whoever took that picture and posted it. If they’re queer, it’s cool, if they’re straight it’s horrible.
Honestly, nobody really outed Robin. She pretty much did it herself. She was in public, drawing attention to herself and Leslie.
I was talking more generally than just the goings-on of the strip, but admittedly that wasn’t very clear.
Regardless, I don’t think someone who isn’t part of the community gets to be triumphant about someone being outed.
“I didn’t out her, I just arranged a situation where it was very likely that it would happen.”
“I didn’t kill him, I just locked him in a room with no food or water and limited air.”
But he could of dug a hole to freedom with his bare hands! There was nothing stopping him. He just didn’t want to live hard enough!…wait what was this about?
Except that by “arranged a situation where it was very likely that it would happen”, you basically mean “set her up to meet the lesbian I thought she was interested in”.
Which is a pretty damn low bar if we’re treating that as some horrible betrayal.
That’s right, Dorothy. Let your opponent reverse-psychology you into making a mistake.
As much as I want to see this blow up in Roz’s smug face I fear this could result in more misfortune for Leslie. Maybe Roz will just be disowned by her family. Betraying the most successful member of the DeSanto family will have consequences.
Going bad for Leslie might be how it blows up in Roz’s face. Her actions have consequences for more than just her and Robin.
This isn’t the first time she pulled something like this, but Joe was cool about being in her sex video and she probably interpreted the dean’s warning as not to make another. Leslie did not consent to this and while I think she could weather the scandal since she could sue for wrongful dismissal I doubt she’ll appreciate being the center of attention and explain to Roz how wrong it is to out someone as well as drag in an unwilling participant.
What did Roz do? What did Leslie not consent to?
Roz got them together. She didn’t take the picture. She didn’t spy on them. She didn’t drag anyone into anything. She brought two adults who were interested in each other together.
Now, she knows Robin, so she knew damn well that she’d never be able to keep it on the down low if anything came of it – or as it turned out, even before then.
“Consequences are for other people” seems to be the family motto.
See the gloating, the self-absorbedness, the inassailable certainty that your life is the correct model that everyone agrees with? This is why people compare you to Mary, just on the opposite spectrum of beliefs, Roz. It’s a FAR more appealing set of beliefs, but you can still get pretty shitty about it.
In some ways I’d draw a parallel between Roz and Dorothy here with Mary and Joyce from http://www.dumbingofage.com/2012/comic/book-2/02-choosing-my-religion/avoid/ They’re both actually largely on the same side on a lot of these social issues, but Dorothy, like Joyce, doesn’t interact with others ‘right’ (Dorothy should be partying with progressives and gleefully ripping the other side apart, while Joyce should be shunning the infidels)
I think the thing that most makes me think negatively of Roz here is how damn quickly her demeanor changes moving from a group of people she wants to impress, to someone she’s already decided she isn’t going to get adoration from, so she’ll just take the satisfaction of tearing her down.
Hmmm… I still think Dorothy is the more responsible of the two, but maybe Roz has a point? That is if you consider likeability to be the prime requisite for an RA.
In this particular situation, though, Ruth was the previous RA. They obviously would rather have an RA that could keep order than one hat was likeable.
One “that” was likeable.
But Roz does have a good hat…
Now picturing Roz as a jagermonster…
Lol no, not after that secrets list; that’s pretty damn dangerous.
Instant thought to Roz’s last comment:
I hate you Roz.
Pffft, Roz thinks she’s more likeable than Dorothy. Guess she isn’t a reader of this comic.
…at least the comments field.
Is Dorothy supposed to be a metaphor for Hillary Clinton, here? The best person for the job, but too measured and calculated to be likeable? Is that the connection I’m meant to make?
No, because Dorothy may not actually be the best person for the job.
Also she’s clearly the more likeable one.
…of course Clinton is also clearly the more likeable one.
Ooooh, burn!
Oooooh, burn-in-return!
Sorry, Dotty, but you have to give Roz that – it IS a sweet hat.
I dunno, personally, I think the outfit, and especially the hat, makes her look like a complete douchecanoe. It’s the kind of outfit I associate with edgelords with beards that just make them look like they don’t know how to shave talking about cucks.
OK, real talk.
FACT: Robin spent the better part of the night with a cute college professor.
FACT: Roz spends the morning wearing a sweet outfit.
FACT: Riley has by all logic slipped down to the cafeteria to sample some more cereals from the magic dispenser, and run into Becky and Dina. I need to see them reconnect, and if their friendship can survive the age difference.
According to Willis, yesterday was the only appearance by Dina in this storyline. The sad is strong in 2017. 8(
That’s what he thinks. Dina may have other ideas.
remarks like Roz’s is why i didn’t think i deserved to have friends. it’s not that i don’t make mistakes (or dorothy doesn’t), but that such mistakes aren’t relatable. Dorothy’s likable. but probably by different people than like Roz.
People don’t DESERVE to have friends that’s not how relationships work.
No, but people who feel like that aren’t generally coming from a particularly happy place, and find it hard to see why anybody else could possibly like them. When that’s a result of people telling you that nobody likes you or could conceivably ever like you, that’s called horrific bullying, and that’s so damaging
*hugs* It sounds like you’ve moved past that at least?
oh, Rozy, Rozy, Rozy….
you are super overstimating your likeability. By light years.
What we consider horrible, others consider likeable and vice versa. And if 2016 proved anything, the people who hate everything you hold dear exist in greater numbers than we dared dream.
…because you make mistakes?
As much as I like you, Dorothy, I have to admit Roz has a point here. You don’t come across as being… “genuine”. Everything you do has an ulterior motive; you never mean anybody any harm, but it gives the impression that everything is a calculated stepping stone on the way to something bigger and grander. And it makes people wonder… “Do you hang out with me because you like me for ME? Or are you doing it because you think I could be useful in some way to your career or other goals?” And perhaps more worryingly, “Will you gladly throw me under the bus or abandon me should I screw up or simply not prove up to your standards?”
Who, exactly, has Dorothy thrown under the bus? Ever? If she were just cold and calculating, she could have kept dating Danny even though she thought it was unhealthy for him because she was having fun. She could have let McNuggets think their relationship has long-term potential even though it doesn’t. “Has goals in life” and “throws others under the bus” are not the same.
If anyone, Roz fits that description considering she is willing to throw her sister to the angry Conservative masses after she gets outed as a lesbian.
Roz didn’t throw her sister under the bus to further her ambitions she did it because she was a hateful and abusive demagogue.
Like I said in a different post. Robin being what she is is one thing, Roz trying to get her hurt despite her being her Sister (who clearly at least likes Roz) is another thing.
I’m not excusing Robin’s behaviour, far from it. But I just can’t trust someone who would expose their own family to danger for her own goals. Robin likes Roz and she shows it and Roz pays it back by trying to destroy her.
Robin likes Roz? Since when? Do we have any evidence of that? Robin likes Roz as much as she likes her aide: she likes people as tools for her own means
She did show affection towards Roz on several occasions. She interacts with her and Roz DID mention using up Helicopter trip Sister points to get her to come to Leslie’s class.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-7/01-glower-vacuum/sisters-4/
Not to mention the above thing. They might not agree on things, they might argue and fight but they Are sisters and Robin seems at least a bit fond of Roz.
WTF is Roz’s problem here? First, if I were in Dorothy’s place, I’d probably be shouting obscenities down the hall after her for a remark like that. Second, no seriously, WTF?
Panel 1: Okay, Dorothy could be perceived as snippy here, though I don’t read it in her facial expression or body language. I could see Roz being insecure and defensive right now, but this has to be a question/concern she anticipated.
Panel 2: “On this floor”? That’s weird phrasing given that there are a lot MORE queer folks not on this floor. What about the state or the country? Does she not care about them? Or is she trying to use her (actually purposefully done pushing of her sister toward being outed that might ruin her sister’s career) to get the votes of the 2 or 3 queer people on the floor? I’m pretty sure RAs aren’t chosen by election, anyway, but aside from Billie and Dina, how many of the floor’s other residents are gay? (Becky isn’t a resident and Ruth currently isn’t.)
So I’m saying her statement doesn’t really make sense, hence Dorothy’s confusion at the bottom of the panel.
Panel 3: So why is Roz trying to take the job Dorothy obviously wants more than she does and was putting actual effort into trying to get? Personal antagonism against Dorothy or what?
Panel 5: This is a remarkably deep, detailed observation about someone whom she’s known for at most a few weeks, while busy with her own affair, and only as an acquaintance who basically says hello when they pass in the hall. Sure, we the audience know what Dorothy is like, but how does Roz? Where is she even coming from? What right does she think she has to go talking like this to someone she barely knows?
Panel 6: Like I said, major expletives from me here. Heck, Dorothy has friends, a boyfriend, even an ex-boyfriend. Aside from the clip-board, Dorothy doesn’t come across as “calculating” and lots of people like her. So why the need to insult her?
So why does Roz hate Dorothy? Did I miss the comic where Dorothy peed in her cheerios or something? Or is Roz just randomly hateful?
Maybe because Roz is a genuine politician… meaning she might just be a bit of a psychopath (the scientific kind, not the horror movie kind). She is more like Robin than she’d like to believe. Roz is scheming, manipulative and generally seems to have certain lacks in empathy department.
Dotty on the other hand is trying to be a bit of an idealized politician, hard working, focusing on people’s problems etc.
Dotty never stood a chance against a genuine politician like Roz.
Bingo.
Indeed. Rozz is a politico on the make, which is never attractive.
I wonder if this is the point where Dorothy realises that she’s not cut-out to be a politician?
Yeah with her attitude and methodology she strikes me more as a scientist-type.
could we maybe NOT assign a mental illness because a person is not acting the way we like please?? like seriously, “psychopath”?
for being aspersive? for having naked ambition? like these are not necessarily positive traits but they’re a long shot from anything that would warrant an actual diagnosis
Ladies who are definitely into ladies on this floor include, but may not be limited to: Billie, Dina, Mandy, Grace, Sierra, and Carla, plus Ruth and Becky.
Becky’s the only one who’s simply “gay”.
Thanks, I had forgotten!
(Fun personal story time: There was a girl on my hall in college who didn’t like me for no known reason! We never had a spat, she never complained about anything I did, and to this day I have no idea why she didn’t like me, but she very clearly didn’t like me. Sometimes people are unkind to each other for no reason at all, or at least no reason that is obvious to others.)
But besides political sabotage, free condoms, online porn, free sex information, and gratuitous Mary annoyance, what has Roz ever done for us?
And this is my whole problem with Roz.
As nasty as Robin can be she is her friggin SISTER. A sister who clearly likes Roz despite their lifestyle differences. And Roz is cold-bloodily trying to destroy Robin’s life and career. She does not care about hurting people around her so long as she gets what she wants… heh which might make her more like Robin than she’d like to be.
This really has nothing to do with Right or Wrong of what Robin is. This is all about how far Roz is willing to go. If she can sacrifice her own sister for her goals then no one is safe from her scheming.
Sure Dotty might not be the most… people’s person but she would never intentionally hurt people she cares about for her own gain.
Agreed.
Blood ties are meaningless and anyone with abusive family can tell you that.
Have we ever seen Roz get abused by her family? Sure they might dislike her lifestyle but the worst they have done was pressure her a bit, which obviously didn’t do much. And Robin likes Roz enough to get talked into visiting Leslie’s class.
Her actions are VERY thoughtless, for the sake of her goals she is trying to destroy her family, her sister and she herself will get caught up in the drama that will follow Robin’s outing. Robin might become a target for some nutty and murderous people who see her as a traitor.
Sorry but unless I’m provided with some strong proof that Roz is being abused all I see her is a cold-blooded manipulator trying to get her sister seriously hurt.
I don’t think the implication was that Roz was abused, just that claiming that family should be some ultimate wallbreaker is disingenuous. Cerberus has said more than enough in the past on the subject: If someone is toxic, you cut them out. It doesn’t matter if they’re a friend, a distant cousin, or your identical twin.
Roz IS right to fight Robin on her “family values” platform. It’s incredibly harmful rhetoric to everyone except straight cisgender white men, and I’m pretty sure there’s only 3 or 4 major characters in the cast that fit that description. What makes the matter tragic is that the way she’s gone about it is about as collateral damagey as any method and there’s no guarantee that this will have any effect besides Robin and other Republicans doubling down and putting Leslie’s home and livelihood in jeopardy.
That, at least, makes it tragic. Roz being so callous about the whole affair (“Robin got ‘outted’? Good. It was super public and in a way that is guaranteed to cause more harm than help? Meh, it’s not personally fucking me up at this second.”) just makes her an asshole.
Welp this post was basically all about Why I don’t trust Roz. It has less to do with Robin and more about what Roz is willing to do to win and as she showed, she will throw her own sister under a bus to get that victory.
For me, it’s more “anyone and everyone, including those she purports to be an ally to … one of whom happens to be her sister, but that’s not really relevant.”
Happy New Year! Happy 2017!
“I don’t DO mistakes!? I’ll show her!!!, WALKY! GET IN HERE!!!”
inb4 Roz sees Walky without his shirt on once and loses her shit trying to seduce him.
I respectfully disagree with you, mini Robin…
Some new years’s advice, just in general:
Don’t blame the “year” for the faults it contains. Fight the desire to see a pattern between events that are obviously only related by the arbitrarily assigned time period we have set them in. Such a conflation of problems can only make them appear as an overwhelmingly large, unsolvable mass. Instead remember the most elementary problem solving method is to separate problems into the smallest possible parts, making them individually easier to solve.
Think autistically; keep sight of the trees without abstracting them into a forest. Keep sight of every troubling leaf (or strand of orange hair as the case may be) and none of them will be beyond your ability to cope with, if not solve.
you’re such a 2016
Fool, turn off that bullshit.
What the fuck even is “think autistically?”
Speaking as an aspie, not that.
As an aspie, I thought it was a good word to describe my thought process of intuitive compartmentalization.
Soooo, a riddle!
Dorothy: overthinks things a bit
Roz: complete douchenozzle
Which one is more likable…?
I’ve stood up for Roz time and again here. Not because she’s perfect (far from it) but because people here look at a person who believes the right things and go about it completely the wrong way and say she’s irredeemable. That she’s no better than the woman who misgendered (and continually misgenders) a trans woman and blackmailed a bi woman into nearly taking her life.
What she’s done here is appalling. She didn’t out her sister but to revel in it like that is just very, very bad taste.
That said. Remember Joyce saying she hates gay people? HATES? Legit question, how does Joyce get a free pass and Roz doesn’t? Both are young, both are still learning. We know Roz actually likes it when Leslie calls her on her shit, meaning she enjoys the potential of becoming a better person. How is this different to Joyce’s personal journey? Why is one damned and another given a free pass?
Maybe because Roz should know better? She portrays herself as a better person than Joyce, more enlightened, free and supportive and yet she is full of venom. Also most of what Roz is doing is duo to her own life choices and development whereas all of Joyce was programmed by her parents and community.
It’s more or less the same argument I use when bashing hypocritical priests. They should know better, they present themselves as better and more moral. So when they fuck up it’s much more shocking and upsetting.
To sum things up… expectations for Roz are much higher than for Joyce. Roz is SUPPOSED to know and do better whereas Joyce is too ignorant and programmed for us to expect much of her. And yet she is starting to change and surprise us.
We’ve also seen Joyce change far more than Roz and was always obvious that she was going to do so. Joyce started out with a whole lot of horrible ideas that promptly started to be challenged and she almost immediately started discarding them in favor of actual people.
OTOH, Roz started with much better ideas, but has shown some serious flaws underneath them. And while she is still young and there are some signs she could change, she really hasn’t shown any evidence of changing. There’s still the same lack of concern for her impact on others while she pursues her goals – however good her goals are. Dragging Joe into the scandal of the sex tape, ignoring any effect this outing will have on Leslie.
Partly of course, because Joyce is the protagonist and Roz is a minor character at best. A foil, if not an actual antagonist. She was always going to get less of an arc.
Exactly. The main difference between Roz and Joyce is that Joyce, at heart, is a nice and good person. She took all that was best in Christianity, love and forgiveness while not being poisoned by the hate and prejudice too much. And when faced with facts and suffering she quickly sides with what is right. In fact change is MUCH harder for Joyce. Her entire perception of the world revolves around her religion being true. Taking that away from her HURTS, a Lot. Like that time she said that if Evolution is true then it wasn’t man’s fault that sin was released into the world. It was always there and it is part of the natural world. Imagine realizing something like that…
It’s possible that Roz is nice (in the sense of caring deeply about people and their rights to life (we’ve seen that with her attempts to reach out to Joyce)), but she most certainly isn’t kind.
And she’s definitely more of the mindset that views it as absolutely justified to do a cruel thing for a greater good or cause.
The interesting part of her character is whether this makes her overzealous and dangerous or just with a different moral line and moral calculus about things like politics and how much they matter. And much like with the other characters, I suspect it’s a little of both, where she’s both a caring activist and someone who can be very toxic and dangerous and quick to assume people are enemies or more of an enemy than they are.
And at the very least, she definitely does not care if she’s viewed as a (slur for assertive women) for doing so.
And that I think might be her central flaw, her unkindness. She doesn’t know how to switch off the fight and stop thinking tactically and that makes her a hard person to like as a character.
Joyce is white.
People who hate the main character and think she’s a monster aren’t likely to still be hanging around?
Anyone else disappointed that the end of the exchange:
“Dress for the job you want.”
“You look like you run a cruise ship minibar.”
doesn’t end with:
“Yes, exactly!”
A straight girl saying queer, lovely.
Being “Crusty around the edges” is what got Trump elected. Does she really want to be chosen because people would feel comfortable with their inner jerk around her ?
Does Roz not realize the effect this is going to have on Leslie? The dean’s already shown that he’s not too big on campus scandals, and you don’t get much more scandalous than being “””””caught seducing””””” a conservative congresswoman. And yet Roz doesn’t even seem to care that this night get Leslie fired, evicted, what have you. She’s claiming to help LGBTQ+ people by throwing one (two, actually) right in the line of fire.
GG, Roz.
A valid arguement. What school or university would hire Leslie after this “incident” ? And since that she has admitted she lacks a support structure, it might as welĺ be a return to poverty, or even homelessness for her.
Pretty much. She is putting both Leslie and her sister’s very lives in jeopardy. Worst case scenario some conservative nut-case might try to physically hurt them for being “traitors”.
You know, Roz and Robin aren’t so different after all (which is something which would horrify both of them): Roz clearly believes in her ideas, unlike Robin, but how much of what she’s doing is done simply to further her case and gain consensus, much like Robin?
Ironically not making mistakes would be Dorothy’s greatest mistake.
Like I would not be surprised if this derails Dorothy pretty hard. She has a reputation of perfection with basically every character (prompting near worship from Joyce and Walky, distrust in Roz and Sal and retribution in Mike (his style of assholery with her is the “take her down a peg” variety)) She works very hard to maintain that reputation with school, reporting and volunteering.
What happens when all that effort, all that perfection, costs her an important stepping stone? Dorothy’s lived her life thinking if she just worked hard enough and was smart and careful enough, she’d get what she wanted. She could redouble her efforts and be fine but “trying to hard” lost her the RA gig so she might just stop trying.
Like I don’t blame Roz for it at all. Actually, probably better it happens freshman year of college where there are resources (at least there were for me and mine) than in adulthood. I just do not envy Dorothy this epiphany (assuming that’s where we go)
Well, hopefully-less-crappy new year to you all! I’m not getting my hopes up for a miracle to save you (and the rest of us) from the orange disaster, or for ISIS to be defeated, but at least most of the beloved celebrities are already dead, right? *unsmiling smile*
As someone who made a TON of stupid mistakes (and was pretty open about them to friends, strangers, whatever if the topic came up), I can see what Roz is getting at. Perfect people aren’t relatable. Even if they aren’t snobs about their perfection, there’s just something about never making any mistakes that can bother other people and make them feel…less.
On the other hand, I’ve never been popular, so I’m not sure of the rules there. I just know that once I did stupid stuff and owned up to it, people were more open with me in turn. And my friendships got stronger.
Dorothy has a serious issue with the fact people don’t really like her. Also, Dorothy seems completely confused at this. Becky doesn’t like her. Billie doesn’t like her. Most of the floor doesn’t like her. It’s not a problem but for the fact politics are about charisma not ability.
I’m so torn on the ethics of this. On the one hand, Roz is right. Robin’s policies would drastically affect the queer community, even dangerously so. Getting Robin away from power is a strategic move meant to protect the vulnerable.
On the other hand, I don’t want to give “presidence” for people unwillingly/forcibly outing someone.
On my right foot, I really don’t think Roz cares about the vulnerable as much as she thinks she does, and only wants to stick it to her sister, not realizing/caring about how the fallout will affect those around her. Exhibit A: Leslie. And by the laws of double standards, all lesbians. Conservatives, even the ones who hate Robin, won’t hesitate to jump on the predatory lesbian train, using Leslie as an example of seducing good, moral women to the devil.
On my left foot, even if she is doing this with the best of intentions, Roz is still acting like a jerk to Dorothy.
Roz would probably do much more good if she’d simply sit Robin down and show her the consequences of her actions. Robin is not inherently, malevolently evil. Most of the evil she does seems to be a by-product of her ignorance and just not caring.
She looked uncomfortable when Joyce and others started questioning her.
Maybe with enough education and pressure she could become a moderating element among the conservatists.
Aahahahahah.
No. It’s not worth wasting time on scum; ending their games is priority one. Their happiness and well being doesn’t even rank as a priority.
And this is the short-sightedness that Roz represents. Kill and Destroy. Kill and Destroy. No thinking about spinning the situation into a positive way whatsoever. No thinking about redeeming or improving the situation.
Ah liberals; they care more about reaching out and getting warm feelz from reaching across the aisle for the enemy more than actually winning and protecting minorities; one of the many reasons why conservatives keep eating your lunch.
Welp not mine since I’m not from US.
But this won’t really affect Robin. Like one poster said she will just get more vicious and will crack down on the homosexuals to prove she is not one and things will get Worse for everyone.
A minority can’t win with violence. You attack other people and they will fight back. You need to convince people and change their way of thinking.
Ahahahahah-
Every bit of minority advancement has come with shitekicking; anyone telling you otherwise is either lying through their teeth or been lied to, and this goes back to the suffragettes.
Ah, infighting. A sign of bad times. One side of the infighting is correct (No, not going to say which, that’s not the fucking point), but both feel justified, and the lack of a united front just makes it easier for them to eat our lunch.
Before, I was thinking it’ll be a long four years. Now, I wonder if it won’t wind up being a long eight years.
The irony of course being that both approaches are needed in any social justice movement.
You need the shitkickers who’ll throw a brick and speak out aggressively about injustices that aren’t getting any attention and shows bigots they can’t just beat up the harmless dedicated victim without blowback.
And you need the people who are willing to sit down with folks and meet them where they are and devote the time and hope that individuals can be reached and swayed.
And both can go real toxic. Reaching out to folks who use that reach out to abuse can end up draining and harming your explainers or send the message that there’s no consequences for working against a group’s rights. And going all-in can scare moderates who dislike change or do genuine harm to someone who didn’t deserve it as much as it can wake people up to the seriousness of an injustice.
And that’s before factoring in things like the toxicity of callout culture where abusive exes can ruin folks lives through old posts or opinions devoid of context or potential positive growth that add extra wrinkles to the shitpile.
But at the end of the day, both the pacifist and the fighter are needed in different ways for the fight. And the same person can be different things on different days depending on how against the wall and hopeless they feel.
Ah, smugness. It doesn’t actually help anything, but you get to feel self-righteous while you complain.
I think Roz has said she’s actually done this, but Robin doesn’t listen cause she’s just her kid sister. That’s one of the reasons she claimed to want to get Robin and Leslie together – she might listen to Leslie.
She did do this. And it’s been implied that she’s done this a lot without her sister ever listening to her. And we’ve seen Robin use pieces of it when she thinks it is helping her deflect from listening to what someone is saying.
We’ve also seen folks like Joyce explain to her the human cost of her policies and she basically dismissed the people affected as unimportant or meaningless.
Talking hasn’t been doing shit with Robin. This may have really been the only thing that might have actually gotten through to her about who she is and the political scum she’s been courting.
I do think that Leslie is probably the only one who could have gotten through to her – because of Robin’s crush on her.
Of course, I also suspect that Robin figuring out what that crush actually was and what it meant about her will probably be more effective than all the talking in the world or even than getting outing – as something she still doesn’t accept that she is.
This is pretty sad…
I think that the fact that Robin was opening up to Les, potentially challenging her own sexual identity repression and eventually becoming an ally to queer people out of her free will and it may now be all ruined, cements this development as negative.
Positive change comes from positive feelings (even if sometimes it takes negative actions). The feelings that caused this development were pettiness and self-gain, so nothing positive.
Except those feelings of “pettiness and self-gain” were also what caused Robin to have the chance to open up to Leslie in the first place. I’m not comfortable with Roz’s gloating and especially how she ignores any consequences to Leslie, but all she did was bring the two of them together.
Everything else was pretty much a given after that, though maybe not this fast. Roz didn’t have anything to do with the actual picture or story getting out. As far as we know, she didn’t even know they’d met up again after class until the story broke.
If she had done nothing, no meeting between Robin and Leslie, no opening, no challenging her identity, etc.
What I want to know is who actually took that picture and/or wrote that article? I assume that even though Leslie is open about her sexuality not everyone would know she’s gay and while the picture itself is slightly leading it’s not really enough to back up the assumption unless someone knew of Leslie’s orientation. So it has to at least be someone from campus right? Maybe even someone from her class as I wouldn’t expect many students who don’t at least know who Leslie is to know her sexuality. Soooo who is it? Roz is dodging her involvement but she’s still a suspect as is anyone else in gender studies class. That includes Dorothy who does have a connection to the campus news. I’m interested in theories. I would say it would have to at least be someone from the school.
Have you seen the internet?
The photo’s suggestive enough to start a rumour – making politicians deny rumours is an established part of dirty tricks campaigning. Much nastier than this in many cases.
We know, through Mary, that there’s already speculation about Robin because she’s ~30 and unmarried. This, fragile as it is as proof, is enough to confirm suspicions.
It could be someone we know, but it doesn’t need to be. I doubt it is.
I don’t know. Maybe I’m niave to modern tabloid journalism but to me it seems a little farfetched that on the one night Robin decided to invite Leslie out to drinks, that wasn’t initially planned, some random person snapped a picture of what looked like their congresswoman holding hands with some women they didn’t know and was like “I can sell this as our congresswoman is a lesbian!” I mean yeah it could maaaybe look like they’re kissing. Robin did say there were “pictures” implying more than one possibly at different angles. It is possible. It just seems like too big a coincidence to me. Now it could just be an element to move the story forward. I mean ultimately it doesn’t matter who put the picture out just that it is out. I just think it would be cool storytelling if there were a connection.
She was shouting about blowjobs, and then it looked very much like they were kissing from the angle the photo was taking from.
It seems completely plausible to me that someone took the photo and thought about that. They probably only posted it on social media, which got picked up by the regular media.
I vote Roz. It’s good to have a boot stomping on the face of freedom forever.
-“Unlike the rest of us, you don’t make mistakes!”
*Walky Bumbles into the scene* -“sup?”
Roz, you don’t know Dorothy well enough to say she “doesn’t make mistakes.” Who are you to presume?
Dorothy is definitely more likable right about now, imho.
I really hope Roz gets Leslie fired and Robin wins the election so robin can make Leslie her new aide!
Then again, that may be beyond the scope of this strip.
So you want Leslie to become a partner in politics she despises, and even hates?
Even if, somehow Robin is able to be less homophobic and still win as a Republican (It’s too late to switch parties less than a month before the election.) she still has to have all the other politics Leslie hates. That’s what she’s run on, and part of what it means to be Republican.
Not that I expect someone who has run on a homophobic platform to be able to change in the last month and not hemorrhage supporters.
I just don’t think you thought this through.
(and, yes, Robin is a Republican, despite Willis’s reluctance to state that outright. We know for sure now with what Mary said about the other candidate.)
Good job Roz. Robin is going to spin and hand-wave this away, renewing her commitment to her most awful policies to stay in the race, while throwing Leslie under the bus. And it’s going to be a long time before she opens up at all to anyone about anything.
She was going to throw Leslie unner a bus no matter what – she’s been doing that shit for years, and she wasn’t gonna throw away her gravy train now.
No. She’s not. Might be more realistic, but it’s not how this story goes.
There’ll likely be some more nastiness along the way, but she’s not done opening up to Leslie yet.
Hope that protects Leslie.
Except Roz isn’t likeable…
Comic Reactions:
I kinda needed to duck out of most of the conversation, because well, I’ve made no secret that I’m pretty divided and conflicted about the outing of bigots. But I’ve grown up in my activism during a time where the outing of homophobic bigots led to direct gains in the rights me and mine were allowed to have access to. Hell, my ability to marry my fiancee because our current legal sexes are both F, depended on folks like George Rekers being discredited for hypocrisy.
And there’s been times when I’ve danced in the ashes of terrible people dying or professional homophobes being outed, because those people’s ability to harm me and mine finally came to an end.
Because for the truly powerful bigots, nothing seems to stop their onslaught other than their deaths or their complete embarrassment or humiliation (and that last one is very literal, the KKK lost membership because a Superman comic made them laughing stocks to their own kids thus getting them to think twice about how powerful belonging to a hate group made them feel).
So, I come from a different background and perspective than most politics and hey, it’s very possible that I’m in the wrong and my actions in the past were as monstrous as many deem Roz’s actions now. We all have different moral lines we can’t go over and I respect that to all hell.
But what is my exact moral lines is something I’ve thought a lot about lately as literal nazis promising to kill me and mine have become more and more powerful and mainstreamed as “a point of view”. And I think a lot about the tools that would be needed to defang this awful movement and halt its progress before it gets to a point where me and mine are in literal camps or dead.
Cause I’m not in a position where I’m inclined to let a single trans person die forgotten on the margins without a fight. Not anymore.
So what does this have to do with this comic?
Panel 1: I identify with Roz here. She’s stating her plan clearly. She hoped by bumping her and Leslie together that Robin would realize she was bi and decide to come out and accept herself and her sexuality and mellow the fuck out about her bigoted family values bullshit.
But she’s not sorry her sister was more forcibly outed and her ability to harm people has been effectively neutered and the margin of Republicans defecting has reduced by 1 to prevent truly monstrous legislation taking place.
Like, lest we forget, this fictional congressional election is this last 2016 one that we know how it ends, with total GOP control and planned legislation that will already make it hard for me and mine to survive on Day 1, including making it legal for folks to refuse me medical care because I’m transgender.
Yes. If I got shot in a hate crime and taken to a hospital, FADA will make it legal for a doctor there to say he doesn’t want to operate on a (slur for trans woman) and let me die.
And for Roz? She’s latina in this election cycle. This hits really close to home with regards to if she even counts as a citizen in the eyes of her country, legal status be damned.
Stopping that by any means necessary or at least not feeling bad if there’s one fewer dedicated officials against my rights… yeah, I feel that. And I feel a lot less bad having actual secrets doom a bigoted candidate when really strong and qualified candidates get sniped down over complete bullshit that isn’t even real or important all the damn time.
So yeah, I don’t think Roz is being evil here. I don’t think the fact that she is betraying her sister should matter when her sister has demanded her whole life be in service to laws and politics that actively make it harder for Roz to survive against her own beliefs. I think she is justified in feeling happy and celebrating her hard-fought freedom even if it came from a non-ideal source.
My opinion on outing is from a straight cis male of Caucasian descent’s perspective so it’s absolutely worthless. However, it seems that Roz’s actions are more notable for the fact it’s her sister than exposing a politician is a monstrous hypocrite. Thus, the question is whether she actually is doing it because of genuine concern for those affected by Robin’s policies (which she claims to have all failed and been known to fail–which is the first sci-fi element of this comic given Indiana) than revenge against a family member who humiliated her in public.
Well, if it was revenge, it would be more revenge for Robin demanding that Roz’s whole life be in service to Robin’s campaign and what’s best for that and desire for freedom from the eternal campaign than simply because she felt humiliated in public.
“And that’s why I’ll always be more likeable.”
nnnot really
Panel 2: A lot of people have said that the fact that Roz presumes to speak for what queer folks want when she herself is straight and has a habit of speaking over queer folks is gross as hell.
I can see that, though I think it’s more she really does think this is a gift to the queer community, especially as she seems to be more tuned in with historical rights movement stuff than mayhaps the more nuanced modern perspective and antipathy towards outing that’s developed since.
Also, um, am I the only one who finds Dorothy’s comment here a little gross?
Like, Roz is specifically talking about doing stuff for the queer community in the hall while wearing an androgynous outfit and Dorothy comments about her “dressing up for the occasion” because yanno, wanting to present androgynously for a day is her “looking queer” (and ignores how Roz has been leaning towards more androgynous outfits a lot lately (which she knows because she’s in the same Gender Studies classes) and this may be part of a larger gender identity or gender performance switch [I know I used to wear skirts “for feminist reasons” before coming out as trans*]).
*Like, no for real’s, I’m starting to headcanon possibly genderqueer, genderfluid or non-binary egg-mode Roz given how frequently she’s popped up in very androgynous clothing, especially clothing that is exceedingly stereotypical among a lot of enby youth I know.
I dunno, I might just be really sensitive about that stuff because I breathe in that sort of community a lot more. And it’s especially awkward when Dorothy goes on to call a cute little gender-bending outfit a “cruise ship minibar” outfit.
Panel 3: See Dorothy, there’s your first mistake in a political style. Not just the sniping, but more the attempt to defang style over substance. Going over the artificiality of the style doesn’t really work because those who trade in it don’t really feel any shame about being empty suits.
What you need to find are the things that the empty suit actually cares about or what their base actually cares about and hit them hard and repeatedly on that.
Panels 4 and 5: I always find Roz’s more reserved and seemingly honest panels intriguing because it feels like a glimpse at the fierce mind working under her crafted persona of superficiality. She’s genuinely good at politicking and the art of charisma and she has real strong beliefs but doesn’t let them show often, likely because she came of age in an environment where she was literally banned from showing her politics outwardly in service to her sister’s campaigns.
And it’s also worth noting what gets under her skin as we see in her arms folded over her chest motion which she usually adopts when she feels someone else made a fair point or where she feels more vulnerable.
I think she’s being very real with Dorothy here and I think the real meat of it is that last point. I think she genuinely believes Dorothy is “that perfect girl” and that bothers her. I think that the way Dorothy tries so hard to be flawless makes her focus on her own flaws in a way that is deeply uncomfortable.
And I think she’s taking it out on Dorothy unfairly because of that.
Panel 6: She’s right and she’s wrong.
She’s not likable as you or I would use it. Hell, we can see by the comment threads that Roz is extremely less likable than Dorothy. To the point where we have a percussion-filter entirely because of gendered abuse her character’s unlikability was generating.
But she is likable in terms of politicking. She gets charisma, she gets showmanship, she gets how to craft a public persona that will improve how she is seen on a shallow level.
She gets the art of the campaign better than Dorothy does because Roz is more practiced at elections and campaigning coming from a political family and being an activist, whereas Dorothy would be much better at the actual job of governorship given her history of listening deeply to people and working hard and caring deeply about people and their lives.
Together, they would be a fierce unstoppable duo and I hope that once they both lose this stupid little non-election, both can provide much needed advice to each other on how to be better politicians.
I understand why you’re sensitive to such things, but I’m about 99.9% sure that Dorothy’s comment has nothing whatsoever to do with Roz “looking queer”. It’s about Roz being literally dressed up, dressed more formally than the situation calls for.
Dorothy is in a T-shirt and jeans. The others range from pajamas to T-shirts, hoodies, and flannels, because they’re getting up and getting ready to go to class. Roz is dressed like she’s ready to go out on the town.
I’m not reading any androgyny-criticism into Dorothy’s remarks, actually. A hat and tie IS more formal than the norm for Roz. Even if Roz is some flavor of non-binary, I’m not seeing a single thing in Dorothy that suggests she has an inkling of it, nor has there been a big enough of a cluebat for us (the omniscient audience) to be reasonably sure of anything, much less a limited-perspective individual like Dorothy.
I completely agree on the last sentence, and I actually think we are edging that way.
The entire non-election is also a non-issue. No matter what happens, no one will be much worse for the wear. If either of them becomes RA (which may or may not has anything to do with their make-belief-campaign), both will do a decent job and a better job than Ruth (and most likely than any other RA in the building, judging from Ethan’s and Chloe’s comments). Whoever doesn’t get the job won’t loose more than a bit of stubbed pride, and learn some valuable lessons in the process.
But in these last panels, and in some of the earlier interaction, I really start to think that they care about each other’s opinion. Roz might very well be the first competent rival Dorothy ever had, and Roz who is well acquainted with phony politicians is impressed – maybe even a bit intimidated – by Dorothy’s merits.
While they don’t miss the chance to take cheap shots at each other, they also listen carefully and take notes of the other’s opinions. Dorothy dressing after Roz advice is… actually it is a bit touching. They might not like the process that much, but they are both becoming better politicians from this, and I think they realize it. It’s a small step to actively start to work together once their goals align, and I think we will see exactly that soon enough.
I think you’re reading things into Dorothy’s comment that aren’t there.
Very possible and likely.
… A lot of trans dudes go through an androgynous phase before going through a butch phase before realizing they’re trans, sez the trans dude who went through exactly that progression. >.>
Okay, complete off-topic, but I’m really starting to go all in on the headcanon that Roz is non-binary and doesn’t realize it yet.
A) Regular and frequent androgynous clothing, which might just mean having fun with gender performance, but I know from personal experience just how many trans eggs “play with gender” before fully coming out.
B) The clothes she does pick have very stereotypical reputations. Vests and ties, suits, even her hats. Again, doesn’t necessarily mean anything, but these are very common markers I see among young enbies on the butch end of the spectrum.
C) Queer issues being important to her. Like really angrily important to her. To the point where she’s done a fuck-ton of reading and seems to heavily include trans issues even when she’s just talking with her sisters. Yeah, she might be trying to be super-ally, but I also know I felt an “odd attraction” to queer materials before I realized who I was.
And there’s a corollary on this one where if this headcanon is true, her response to Leslie after being called out by Leslie after yelling at Joyce becomes a lot more interesting. Because that brief angry pause and exit might hit home not just because she recognizes the wrong she did but because she’s not a 100% sure of her own straightness. This could be supported by her very next Gender Studies outfit being a full suit.
D) Fear of pregnancy. Certain aspects of characters are consistent in all worlds and one of them has been Roz’s fierce support of reproductive rights and fear of pregnancy. Which again, doesn’t necessarily mean fuck-all than most people don’t want unplanned pregnancies, because unplanned pregnancies suck.
But in conjunction with the rest could also be more. My fiancee is non-binary with a womb and the terror of getting pregnant is literally petrifying at times for them, which makes them very militant on pro-choice issues (I’m largely the same, but my fiancee is even more intense).
E) There’s no current non-binary or trans men in the cast, but there are two trans women. While there’s no law that there needs to be said characters in the cast, if Willis was to slow-burn someone coming out as non-binary as he slow-burned Danny, Roz is definitely the prime candidate at the moment. And given that enby issues are likely to be creeping more and more into prominence, it may be useful to have a character who can give voice to that.
Does this headcanon make her less of an asshole in the ways she’s being an asshole? Probably, definitely not. But it’s definitely one I’m heavily considering as potentially true though please everyone take this with a huge line of salt because this is out of complete left-field for the most part and reliant on a fuckton of circumstantial evidence rather than hard-facts.
Frankly, if she does come out enbie, the cloaked hate will just get worse.
Hmm, it’s an interesting idea, but this sort of feels like the same line of thinking that makes Joyce secretly bi, so I’m sadly inclined to think it won’t pan out.
In fact, by this logic you might even be able to argue that Willis himself has something going on, given that point C applies directly to him and points A and B are met halfway by the fact that most of his long-standing characters and nearly all the new ones are turning out to be anything but straight. (Hey, I like it.) But we already know he has his own reasons, which he’s stated clearly elsewhere. Roz might have some as well, we just don’t know what they are yet.
There’s more evidence for Joyce being a closet case tho – cripes, she wanted to motorboat Billie.
Interesting theory. I’m inclined to think Roz is just an obnoxious activist (albeit with good cause and reason to be concerned) and judgemental but it’d be a cool twist.
…ugh, now you’re going to make me do an archive crawl just to see all of Roz’s outfits…
It is interesting how many vests and ties she’s wearing. One of the tricky parts about the subject is that there aren’t nearly as many sorts of outfits that are coded Male as there are coded Female. I work at an office that has a very casual dress code (aka “try to avoid t-shirts with swear words on them”), and there really isn’t that much of a difference between how my male and female coworkers dress.
…okay, the women tend to be a bit less slovenly than the men, but you know what I mean >_>.
But yeah, vests and ties… it’s that awkward zone of “Maybe she’s experimenting with her gender through her outfits… or maybe she just likes being a snappy dresser, I’ve seen stranger”.
As for Dorothy’s words?
……..well, the outfit is unusual. Vest, tie, a hat that looks like it was in style in the 50’s… unusual stuff is going to draw comment. I wager Dorothy would make a similar comment if it was Danny wearing that, because there doesn’t seem to be any comment about gender in it, just that it doesn’t look good to Dorothy. Roz has been sniping at Dorothy, Dorothy’s sniping back.
Then again, notation: Straight white cis man. There’s a lot of subtext that I’m just not going to get because I haven’t had to deal with such things… hence why I look out for your comments, because they’re insightful as fuck :).
It’s been very noticeable of late cause it’s been the most recent appearances that have been showing an uptick in more androgynous clothing, with her favoring more spaghetti straps and pink early on to more dapper or looser clothing nowadays:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/02-i-was-a-teenage-churchmouse/rival/
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/02-that-perfect-girl/behave/
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/02-threes-a-crowd/curriculum/
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/04-it-all-returns/civic/
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-7/02-everything-youve-ever-wanted/gambit/
Could be nothing. Probably is nothing, but my enby-emitter is spinning hardcore.
Roz always dresses in style!
Aw that’d be so cool
This Dorothy vs Roz plot is like being stabbed with poisoned daggers some time ago, but only now does the vile toxin set in.
How far down this road does Roz have to go before it’s “acceptable” to dislike her?
Well, I mean, everyone has their moral lines, and I would argue the people who view her as crossing over one that makes her terrible vastly outnumber the people who don’t.
I honestly wish Roz would go further. Bluntly, while I question her motives, I don’t think she’s done anything confirmably wrong other than Straightsplan to her Lesbian Teacher about why Joyce is wrong. Here, she’s just glad her sister humiliated herself.
I’ve been hearing a lot about Robin and Roz’s relationship coming up in the discussions and it’s got me thinking. What is the dynamics of the DeSanto family?
Roz seems very focused on Robin’s influence but what about their mother and father’s influence? Was there no aunts, uncles, siblings etc. about to ally with? Has someone come out before in the family, and if so what happened?
In a family as big(?) as the Desantos I wonder if Roz might have overlooked someone who could have helped her with Robin.
Having read Cerberus post about Roz possibly being gender fluid. Could, in the back of her mind, younger Roz have been hoping her older sister would come out and in the process help her both come out and come to term with her own orientation? Very speculative question.
Part of this question of family comes from when my Uncle L. came out in the early 90’s. That side has strong ties to Mexico and are strongly Roman Catholic. The family reaction was intense varied and support broke along some unexpected lines. So I’m curious if we might see some reflection of this with the Desantos.
Their parents appear to be out of the picture, since Robin is able to use Roz and Riley as props in her ‘I love family values’ bullshit, which suggests she was the one who raised them.
Riley was picked up by Mrs. Desantos at the end of Freshman family week. I believe Mrs. Desantos is still active in her kids life, to the dismay of some.
Also it’s amazing how easy it is for an older sibling to snag a younger sibling or relative for various events and get them out of someone’s hair for a while. Their parents may love them but the idea of a day without the kids is very tempting.
Plus if Mrs Desanto has bought into the family value platform, she’s likely to think its a valuable experience for the younger siblings to help out Robin.
Possibly. I don’t think it would be conscious though, because I don’t believe Roz is any more fully aware of her enby-ness (if she is non-binary) than Robin is of her queer orientation.
And Roz being gender-fluid is a big reach on my part to begin with, so it’s possible that’s not even a factor in this decision.
I agree, I just figured if we were speculating might as well go the distance.
Infinite Speculation!
Yeah. Everything you said also fits a certain type of feminist. A woman can wear whatever a man can wear! Most feminists are pro-LGBT* and carry that with the same level of anger they use against sexism. And professional women are often scared of pregnancy, or, at least, want to avoid it.
The only reason to consider it is that this is the Willis-verse, not real life. In real life, non-binary is a subset of a subset (trans) of a subset (LGBT). But, in this comic, you can probably remove one subset. Being cis-straight is at least as common as being LGBT.
*Yes, there are TERFs, but they are a minority. And they are all still pro LGB, which is the part you are talking about.
It IS a bangin’ hat…
I’m still confused why they’re acting like this is an elected position and not an appointed one? The schools pick the RA’s and someone who got in an argument with the dean is probably out.
I’m going to go totally crazy here, and propose that (1) Dorothy needs a hug, and (2) someone should hug her.
Walky should hug her
with his
penisMonkey Master action figure that she prolly still hasPanel analyses! Later than expected – hung out with the boyfriend last night and today. Happy New Year, everybody!
Panel One: Final confirmation Roz did not intend for Robin to be outed, but did intend to get them together and hopefully change her perspective enough to make her come out. That said, she is not crying that this will most likely lose her sister her office. I can respect her not caring her sister will lose her office, especially with how much her sister forced her to campaign with her and made her keep her beliefs on the down low and kowtow to her political machine. As for being outed…I don’t know. I can definitely feel people being done that a straight girl is celebrating folks being outed though – Roz still has the societal advantage on that, so she should maybe shut her noise hole.
Panel Two: *winces*. I know that there is a lot of split over whether it’s okay for straight folks to use that word, and whether or not its a slur. You’d think Roz’s education would’ve told her that too. I also think she might be having a rude awakening soon, as her George Bushian era education may not go over well with folks who grew up and learned about it now, which tends to be far more ‘anti outing homophobic politicians’.
Panel Three: Dorothy, don’t be dickish just because your outfit isn’t as styling. Roz looks fantastic! Dapper-ly so. Accept your fashion sense is lousy in comparison and move on.
I kid, I kid. Mostly. I do find Roz more fashionable than Dorothy, but it’s honestly no big deal. I do like her pointing out Roz contradicting herself, as it’s important to point out, but honestly, there’s very little gotcha there. ‘Aha! You DO want the job!’ – yes, congratulations, you’ve found out Roz….is doing absolutely nothing immoral whatsoever. Yeah, she’s been smug about her campaign thus far, but wanting the job is not a wrong thing to do.
Panel Four: Which is probably why Roz gives no fucks about being ‘caught’. She knows she hasn’t done anything wrong just by wanting the job. And I like how she notices Dorothy is dressing differently too. Normally she wears layers, jackets/blazers, sweaters, or at LEAST a collared or ‘nice’ shirts (as in, not plain or casual t-shirts). I like this strip! Going into character’s fashion sense is fun. And owwwww, watching Dorothy worry about her approachability hurts but it is a valid concern. Especially since…well. She’s really not approachable. She’s warm, kind, and empathetic once you get to know her and be her friend, but she’s not good at the kind of day to day casual, shallow socializing Roz is. And that IS a skill you need as an RA. Not so much as President, but as an RA? That is a valid qualification and its one Dorothy isn’t good with. For instance – not understanding the social faux pas of taking her notes on people’s interests, goings on, and problems in front of them and then flashing them to win arguments. Sure, there weren’t secrets on them, but there could have been, and those kinds of notes belong in a folder in a desk somewhere and on her phone until she can get to said folder. Not being marked on a clipboard in front of people. That can feel dehumanizing, creepy, and like you’re keeping tabs on folks – and again, I can think of two ladies on the floor who’d have a problem with that off the bat.
Panel Five: Huh. That’s an interesting perception by Roz. Between this and her calling Dorothy an ‘impeccable dresser’, I’m getting the impression she has a high opinion of Dorothy.
That said, OUCH, right in the self worth. Dorothy spends a lot of time cultivating her image as the perfect girl. She feels like she can’t take time to have unqualified fun and a good day without also working, and like any mistake will crush her. That pressure to be the perfect girl is unhealthy and toxic and it is dangerous. And Roz just punched it right in the nose. Dorothy knows she isn’t as great at her day to day socializing as Roz and since that’s a ‘flaw’ it hurts. Poor thing.
Panel Six: Ohhhhh the irony. I love you Roz (though not as much this storyline) but I know and love Dorothy more. It’s not entirely your fault, you’re not in the main main cast. But it is true. The fans generally seem to prefer Dorothy. That said in universe? Dorothy has few friends on the floor – Joyce, Sierra, kinda Amber, kinda Dina, kinda Sarah, kinda Billie (ish). That’s a lot of kindas. Now, kindas aren’t bad. They are probably the preferred form of RA relationship – relatively friendly, but not so close as to cloud judgement. But for all we know, Roz has that relationship with her entire floor. She’s good as charisma and social skills, and she’s passionate, driven, works hard for things she’s committed to, and can be responsible when doing grunt work. We’ve yet to hear any complaints from her employers at Planned Parenthood or the Indiana Daily Student. And she’s loaded on resources. And she definitely has no problem dressing down students. She’d make a decent RA on those skills – though being smug, obnoxious, and braggy is not the way to go about it, and showboating isn’t putting her best foot forward.
On that hand, Dorothy is smart, driven, compassionate, empathetic, organized, and responsible. She’s learned to balance her responsibilities together. She’s even gotten a head start on her checking in on her floor mates. That said, she’s not putting her best foot forward either. She’s been snide, boasting, focusing too much on being liked, and sniping, not to mention that mess with her information.
Honestly, if they continue showing their worst sides during this, neither deserve to be RA. They need to show their best. And this isn’t it. Also – not an elected position, it’s an appointed one you interview and apply for. Whether their floor mates like them isn’t relevant and might actually be a strike against them.
Wanting the job is no sin. One suggesting you would take it because ‘the people’ want you to and then later saying you want it is called lying. As for the ‘fashion sense’, Dorothy correctly identified the calculated nature of Roz’s outfit, and Roz basically admitted it-and then criticized Dorothy for being too calculated. This is known as ‘hypocrisy’.
It comes down to this: is helping people more important to Dorothy than her ambition? Or not? Hard to say now, but if the answer is yes then Roz is full of shit.
“All I need to do is exploit some tax loopholes and this election is cinched”!
So, does Roz actually care about LGBT rights, or was this a long con to boost her RA bid?
Her plan started weeks before Ruth was sent to the hospital, so this definitely had nothing to do with her RA bid
Both, IMO, serve the purpose of “more freedom, power, and/or ego-stroking for me.”
As I’ve said a couple of times and ways above, I believe that both DeSantos are, apart from their diametrically opposed politics, basically the same.