up in absolutely every single last one of my fries

Fries


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Tags: carla, dorothy, jocelyne

142 thoughts on “Fries

  1. Yep Carla utterly dreads having this conversation that’s for sure yep yep

  2. Don’t trust fries. Yeah I think that’s the right takeaway here.

    1. Don’t trust short order cooks.

      1. Potatoes are our friends. They hurt our friends. :(

        1. I mean, they may be our friends, but they are absolutely fookin delicious.
          Like pigs.

        2. @kdmw Oh, how I wish I could upvote that comment. I’m reminded of a T-shirt I once saw: “How many vegetables had to die for your stupid salad?”

    2. ….
      **grabs mic**
      “Daddy! Why did you eat my fries? I bought them, and they were mine.
      But you ate them. Yeah, you ate my fries. And I cried, but you didn’t see me cry.
      Daddy, do you even love me? Well I wish you’d show it, cause I wouldn’t know it.
      What kind of dad eats his daughter’s fries and doesn’t look her in the eyes?
      There were tears there. If you saw them, would you even care?”
      **mic drop**

  3. First two panels are me talking about getting the absolute most basic task that involves talking to another person done

    1. im in this picture and i have come to be at peace with it

  4. Her fries are fried

  5. I feel really bad for Carla. She’s getting a lot of emotional pressure put upon her to somehow change the course of a huge corporation and alter international politics, and I just don’t think it’s fair.

    1. It’s all both unprompted and something that it seems her parents never really prepared her for.

      Like even if they’ve been rather blissfully aware of the consequences of their tech, the whole “oh hey our technology is being used in a political war and there was a protest about it at our daughter’s school” feels like it should hoist SOME signal in their heads.

      1. They may fully support her protesting and not intend to change a thing.

        1. Yeah, I fully am of the thought that they’ll be all “oh that’s GREAT SWEETIE” without putting two and two together.

      2. I think this is probably the situation. I was originally considering it could be some kind of “Iron Man movie”-style thing where they were pretty disconnected from their company and totally unaware of what was going on, but since then it’s been mentioned publicly enough times in the strip that, yeah, they know what’s going on.

  6. Gotta agree with Jocelyn, this went incredibly well.

    1. Despite her best efforts.

      1. It did go better than I expected.

    2. neither of the mgot a pie in their faces (yet) lol

    3. I mean, yes, it did.
      From her response, Carla clearly is already aware of the problem and concerned about it – also feeling guilty about it, although I don’t think that’s Jocelyne’s intent – and already trying to work up the courage to do what Jocelyne was going to ask her to do. That means she already agrees with Jocelyne’s stance, which means they don’t need to first convince Carla, which is what they came to do. So technically, they’d already succeeded before they even arrived. Now, instead, they can focus on helping Carla work up the courage to actually do the thing she already wants to do.

  7. Curly or shoe-string. OH, seasoned!

    1. Julienne Fries (whatever those are).

      1. Waffle. The preferred fry for the sophisticated fried potato enjoyer.

      2. I’m unsure, but I know they can be made with a combination hookah and coffeemaker. I have been ensured that it will not break!

      3. julienne just means a thin cut so that’d be closer to shoestring unless they were even thinner lol

      4. Think matchstick thin. Like those potatoes stick things that used to come in a can

    2. Curly fries, of course!

    3. Steak fries

      Or what hubby calls “Animal Style Fries”.

  8. 8-)}

    Carla has the right attitude here.

  9. Now what did I say

    1. Come back when she hasn’t been hate-crimed?

      I seem to recall you saying something similar to that.

  10. I do really like Carla when she has to confront the realities of her privilege. It’s a funny and compelling situation for her, a rare time she can’t easily dismiss.

    1. I know that Carla’s blantant egoism is likely a cover for a deepseated sense of insecurity, but I do find it kind of grating, so I like it when the mask comes off. It is nice to see Caral challenged, and be the complex character she is (rather than the very shallow one she pretends to be).

    2. Yeah, it’s neat to see elements introduced as comedic beats taken seriously and given dramatic weight. That sort of recontextualization is always fun.

  11. “Come on grab your friends and come to very distant lands…”?

  12. Hey there are people who *have* no fries.
    None.
    No fries at all.
    Ever thought about that?

  13. “Up in my fries” is a new one for me, I must admit.

    It’s also making me imagine Carla eating fries whilst engineering her Revenge-Inator, and I’m not sure if that’s entirely sanitary or not. Leave it to me to go on the most irrelevant of tangents…

    1. maybe she’s just hungry, it does seem kinda random, heard ‘up in my grill’ but that’s liek decades outta date i assume

    2. I’m surely decades out of date, but all I know is all up in my business, like when my cat goes under the duvet (comforter??) to warm her face up my bum (fanny?)

      1. Please stick with bum, fanny has a totally different meaning to the rest of the world that isn’t the US of A.

        1. In the absence of other information, I’m going to assume they use it to refer to small fans.

    3. I guess Carla watches Degrassi, or at least saw the episode with the fast food commercial.

    4. New to me too. The only even remotely similar reference I’ve heard is from a hip-hop banger sixteen years ago…
      yeah I’m an asshole, but also a nice guy
      high five while I stick my dick into your French fries
      https://yousuck.bandcamp.com/track/i-want-everything-ft-mike-falzone

    5. Season 3 episode 19 Degrassi: the Next Generation

  14. Me when I have to go to the dentist

    1. Ha Ha Ha! That is a fantastic comment! Thank you for brightening my evening.

  15. You’re lucky she didn’t just kill you two with her death laser.

    1. Common misconception. It’s actually a debt laser, and because they’re college students in the US, it wouldn’t make much difference.

  16. I actually would be interested in this plot if it turns out to be more complicated than initially appears. It’s already pretty complicated with the idea that the Ruttens are pro-trans rights and actively funding the countersuits against the government’s attempt to strip them while ALSO being Pro-Bulmerian War (which is distinct enough that hopefully it won’t age or get bogged down in the fact that the protests for the RL tragedy failed). Basically, the best argument for this to be Bulmeria is that maybe our heroes CAN make a difference due to it being fictional.

    But I like some of the suggestions in the previous comic strip that Ruttech may be less involved than the protestors that Jocelyne are working with suggest. They’re not necessarily possessed of a defense contractor division but just selling chips that get used in guidance systems. They may also not actually BE able to turn down the contract too as unless they’re full owners like SOME evil billionaires, they could simply have been overulled by their stokckholders.

    Like when Tony Stark found out his shareholders voted to make Sentinels and his workers’ union were all for it because Marvel’s citizens suck.

    1. I mean you’re still complacent in genocide if you’re selling things to the genociders to aid in their genocide, even if it’s not weapons. And Tony Stark then spent his entire personal fortune helping the X-Men kill the guys that were buying the sentinels

    2. well, helping their own daughter isn’t the same as setting up some kinda ‘pro lgbt/trans funds’ that helps similar ppl in carla’s situation to get hormones/etc even if there was a lawsuit oabout it ors o

    3. I mean. I know someone who is Pro-Gaza but Anti-Ukraine.

      1. pro gaza + anti ukraine totally tracks. either way its anti Raytheon

        1. You’re pro-invasions as long as it’s not Raytheon?

        2. I’m a Zionist! Glory to Ukraine.

      2. Pro-Ukraine, Pro-Israel: Supports US goals and allies
        Pro-Ukraine, Anti-Israel: Opposes large countries invading smaller ones
        Anti-Ukraine, Pro-Israel: Supports large countries invading smaller ones
        Anti-Ukraine, Anti-Israel: Opposes US goals and allies

        1. I’m pro israel and pro ukraine specifically because I prioritize being pro queer when it comes to my views of global politics, actually!

    4. At least in the real world, the nuance likely lies in there being no weapon systems made specifically for doing genocide in Gaza. If Ruttech is making and selling systems to Israel directly, that’s a thing they could probably act on. If they’re making components used in weapons made by other companies, Ruttech won’t be able to limit the end users those are sold to.
      You can argue any weapons manufacturing is bad, but that’s a much harder sell.

  17. mm, fries…lol maybe they should make her some homemade fries/chips in the kitchen as a peace offering next time

    that said, unless her parents are teh equivalent of ‘hold up in the basement’ and focused on tech and never talking to anyone in their company/not on social media, surely they’d be aware of the issue whether carla talks to them or not

  18. “The sins of the father are to be laid upon the children.”

  19. It’s like Joyce when she was working up to hashing it out with her folks, except then everyone was up in her hash Browns.

    1. That is great.

    2. Go to your room.

  20. Yeah, the cops were bigoted against Carla…because she was at the protest!
    Because she’s a redhead.
    Because she rollerskates!
    Not because of the obvious reason!

    1. Still not sure the cops had anything to do with that one.

      1. the cops broke her monitor, as referenced in this strip. its relevant

    2. What leads you to say she was at the protest?

  21. …she would talk like a calarts cartoon character

    1. ???

      1. Ultra Car was a calarts cartoon character?

    2. What a meaningless description.

  22. Yeah, all things considered she’s WANTING to say something about this. Sad part is; I see no world in which her parents listen to her on the whole “NO GENOCIDE” thing.

    they seem like they are enjoying the benefits of capitalistic war profiteering.

    1. Rich, middle class, or poor, I don’t know of nany parents that are going to take career advice from their children, especially when they’re successful. I don’t get why Jocelyne thinks Carla will be able to achieve any results.

    2. Maybe they just don’t want to do things that make their daughter ashamed of them that they can obviously afford to stop. Won’t hurt to ask (unless the truth is going to hurt.)

      Wow, it’s just like Ted Lasso taught us: The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.

  23. Yeah I’d feel pretty positive about that interaction.

  24. “I can’t talk to my parents without my big screen TV!” she says, quickly, stammering, trying to get away from the uncomfortable truth that she just bought herself a big screen TV the same day it was broken. Kinda nice to see Carla get set on the back foot, she’s been freewheeling a bit too much.

  25. Carla does not deserve this burden in any way shape or form

    1. Obviously children of industry leaders deserve all the privileges that comes with that, but so much as mentioning what their families are actually doing for that money is unspeakable cruelty.

      1. So you think people should go knock on Jocelyn’s door and tell her to call her mum and talk about her reprehensible views and her support of the church?

        1. Nobody’s even asked yet, like I said literally all that’s happened is they mentioned the truth – in hopes Carla might agree and she plainly does. And I’m not sure those horrible views are earning Jocelyne any privileges beyond a mother who’s going to disown her, so it’s not the same at all?

        2. Sure its the same. Her mother is financially supporting something horrible and might have some exploitable humanity. Why not go shove that in her daughter’s face? Its not like it could hurt the cause when this counts as a win for Jocelyn.

        3. Jocelyn’s mother does not have the required empathy to be applicable here. There’s no humanity to exploit.

        4. The quote from Jocelyne was “Maybe some of these people have like, exploitable humanity. A sympathetic family member”. Not “we know they love their daughter”. She doesn’t know that Carla’s parents are going to listen to her, or that Carla will listen to her. For all she knows Carla listening to her will make Carla lose the support of her parents and leave her broke and vulnerable.

      2. I don’t know of many successful parents that are going to take career advice from their inexperienced college-age children. I don’t get why Jocelyne thinks Carla will be able to achieve any results.

        1. She literally said why, “exploitable humanity” she is waging on them caring enough about their daughter, which they have multiple said and show to genuinely do, that they might actually care if their choice make her hate them and distance herself from them and that might make them reconsider their business practices. It’s a long shoot bit I think it’s one perfectly worth pursuing.

        2. As someone who’s parents were somewhat successful in life, this is a very good point. In the early days of the internet I told my father he needed a website for his business, and he downplayed it. Two years later he went to a conference for his industry, came home, and insisted that he absolutely had to have a website because some guy said that everyone is doing it. Pointed out that I’d told him the same years ago, and he didn’t even remember the conversation.

          Anyway, Carla’s parents actually do seem to care about her, so MAYBE her conversations will go differently?

        3. I’ve had some excellent conversations with my own parents in which they have listened to me generationally-different perspective and changed their own views. It is possible for parents and their adult children to have meaningful exchanges of information and viewpoints!

    2. Agreed. I’m disappointed that Jocelyne decided to go for maximum guilt rather than having a reasonable discussion.

      Also, I’m extremely skeptical of the potential effectiveness of this move. Even assuming that Carla’s parents run the company themselves and don’t have a board that would have to sign off on a move like this and they’re willing to risk whatever substantial penalties might ensue from breaking a contract with government, what difference is it really going to make? So Bulmeria has to do their genocide with slightly worse missile guidance systems? So what?

    3. Thank you for posting this. I agree with you.

  26. yeah Joyce, she is very much your sister, it’s so OBVIOUS
    smh

  27. Damn, now I want fries.

  28. I get the felling that some people, even otherwise progressive people, are way too put off by the concept that actual activism requires engaging in politics and all that comes with it.

    1. Like people may be dying but heaven forbid you bring it up with someone, nobody deserves to have a few seconds of their time made awkward just because their family is profiting off war crimes. I’m sure that attitude isn’t at all part of why the world is hell.

      1. Is it that or is it whether the way Jocelyne went about it was actually likely to help persuade Carla to help?
        You can be morally right and even have a good strategy, but completely fail the tactics.

        1. That’s true, and if people were saying this isn’t tactful I wouldn’t disagree. But there are comments clearly painting this single sentence as a terrible thing to do to Carla, someone who has harassed Booster far longer just because she wanted to hook up with their family. I have a tough time reading it as anything but people just hating the idea that what her parents are doing might ever be confronted.

    2. Saw this on tumblr the other day, but: there is a certain stripe of leftist who is so obsessed with never doing anything wrong that they let it stop them from… ever doing anything, at all, for the causes they care about. “I would rather be unproblematic and useless than a cringey ally,” essentially. It sucks.

      1. There’s those two popular aphorisms that come to mind. One about not letting perfect become the enemy of good and another about evil needing only for good to look and do nothing. Should I wait until I learn to be a perfect advocate before I do anything? Is it such a terrible thing to remind Carla that she may be uniquely positioned to make a change? Should we do nothing for fear of being rude in the face of genocide? That just makes me think of a third quote. “Nice people made the best Nazis.”

    3. thank you for saying this in a much kinder and more neutral way than i feel capable of doing.

      1. I can say it for you if you like: Some people are fucking cowards and weirdos and should probably get a good kick in the ass.

  29. Is it weird to say that I think panel 2 is the most emotionally complex panel Willis has ever drawn? Because I don’t think he intended it as such.

    1. Why wouldn’t it be interested?

    2. Artists don’t usually draw stuff accidentally lmao
      You’re really condescending, was that accidental?

  30. Yeah honestly. Given the circumstances, and it being Carla. Gentle applause all around.

  31. Yeah that basically went as well as it could have.

  32. Responding to a comment from yesterday: “to try to use Carla’s leverage with her parents to stop the genocide.”

    It seems pretty unlikely to me that this could possibly work as such. Even in the case that RuttTech sells actual weapon systems or custom weapon components directly to Bulmeria, and that the parents have the power and willingness to go “gosh! we’ll stop that, right now”, Bulmeria likely has a stock of weapons already to keep fighting with. And even if they run out, it seems unlikely that the RuttTech weapons would be uniquely and irreplaceably necessary for whatever’s going on.

    Likewise, the protests to get IU to divest from RuttTech? Bulmeria? were unlikely to have much effect by themselves even if they succeeded, unless IU is somehow a very major investor in RuttTech.

    Now, as a broad campaign of pressure? Sure. But the idea that anyone here has pivotal power here, even Carla’s parents, is dubious.

    Separately, I think Jocelyne’s attack was in general very unlikely to succeed, though I guess points for being more honest than “let’s make friends with the intent of preaching at her later.” ‘Surprisingly positive’ is probably accurate, despite Dorothy’s grimace.

    1. Sure, but without a supply incoming they will probably reconsider using them as freely.

  33. I feel really bad for Carla. She has really good parents who just happen to have dubious morals outside of that. They have been REALLY GOOD to her and have always been there for her, but they also own a massive company that makes them super rich and to get there you have to be willing to do bad things.
    She has lived her entire life loving her parents and trusting that they were good people, and now suddenly out of nowhere, everybody has turned on her parents for a entirely valid reason, so her head is probably a jumbled mess. If I was in her shoes I would not be able to handle things even as well as she is. I would be locking myself in my room and having a mental breakdown as my whole reality comes crashing down around me.

    I really hope that she gets whatever she needs to be okay after this, she is obviously going through some hard shit, more so then just about anybody else in this story atm.

  34. And to make matters worse, she will catch her father eating her fries. Which will lead her to make the song “Daddy, why did you eat my fries?”

    1. And then, of course, there’s the version about the penguin named Gunter. It’s a logical progression.

      1. “Gunter, who told you you could fry?”

  35. I’d really rather see Carla being cute and doing shenanigans with Charlie. This whole genocide thing is too detached from the campus for me to really care about it as a part of the story. Just in general, I prefer the stories that involve these characters doing school stuff and hanging out in various configurations more than I enjoy them dealing with outside forces like The Church™ or kidnappers, and Bulmeria isn’t even a real country (allegories and applicability acknowledged) and we know nothing about it beyond “It’s getting genocide in some way”, so it could be nuked off whatever part of the planet it occupies and I still wouldn’t be fussed. I like the roller derby and art classes and random parties and dates and casual interactions and interpersonal dramas. So like, #NukeBulmeria and what’s Ruth doing?

    1. I very much agree. This strip is much, much more enjoyable when it’s dealing with it’s characters everyday lives rather than abstract geopolitics. I was reading a series of essays on an unrelated story the other day, and it talked about the problem of assumed empathy. This is when the author of a work introduces someone or something that they expect the audience to care very deeply about but doesn’t do any work to make the audience care. I feel that Bulmeria is very much a case of this. Bulmeria isn’t a place in the real world, has never been seen on screen, we’ve never met a character from there, and for 25 years of Willis comics it’s just been an occasional punchline, but we’re supposed to feel very strongly about what is happening there anyway. Well, I for one, don’t. I’d much rather never hear about Bulmeria again and get back to the regularly scheduled relationship shenanigans.

      1. I also don’t really care about the “supposed to” or any hypothetical authorial assumptions, is the thing about that. An off-screen country getting off-screen genocided just isn’t as interesting to me as Ruth handcuffing Jason to a stool at Denny’s, and that’s as far as I’m examining it. This comic just isn’t something I really like to analyze all that deeply.

        1. Yeah Willis should honestly be focusing on his strengths, what he knows he actually CAN do as an author — as in, I don’t expect (and neither should you) to get an accurate impression of a very complex geopolitical racial issue from somebody who in the end of the day, is a *white* dude, and a CARTOONIST.

          which isn’t to say, he still don’t serve an important role in our causes — like any other effective movement, different people fit in at different layers.

          Namely, Willis is an ex-cultist who knows what Christo-fascists tend to be like from the inside, and how difficult it can be to get out of such a group (if they get out), — in such a case, hearing Survivor Stories from people who made the jump can help, and may be the closet we get to exit counseling for modern right-wing Christian authoritarianism.

        2. I wouldn’t say that a white dude cartoonist can’t handle that issue well.

          But putting aside Willis’s personal qualifications, I don’t think DoA as it’s existed is a good launching point for such tackling. Mismatch of tone and audience expectation.

        3. like I said this is not only a geopolitical issue but a RACIAL issue, it’s much better if POC (especially those with family affected by what’s happening rn) get more say in representing it anyway vs a white dude with privilege who is far removed from from the consequences of what’s happening overseas

          Willis is really at his limit with how well he can present this shit on our behalf, my point is that his value towards are causes doesn’t hinge upon how well he can do it regardless

  36. Look, Carla, maybe you can have this conversation with your parents while your friends and girlfriend are standing next to you?
    (I’d say “don’t expose your friends’ identities to your parents, but they probably already know due to surveillance tech).

    1. “Nuke Bulmeria? You don’t really believe that do you?”
      “Gotta nuke something.”

  37. In my CRINKLE CUT fries!
    In my CURLY fries!

  38. All up in my fries? Huh, that’s a new one; I’m going to have to look that one up, to see if real humans actually say that.

  39. So today’s comments are a weird tug of war between whether we’re going to be misogynistic against Jocelyne and Dorothy, or misogynistic against Carla.

    When both parties have a lot on their plates and legit reasons within their character arcs for why they’re acting the way they are in this strip.

    1. It wouldn’t be the internet without it.

    2. Is any criticism against a woman misogyny now? Because I’m seeing a lot of criticism of both characters, but none based on the fact that they are women. Kinda dilutes the meaning of the word, no?

      1. Yeah no one is waving around s sign spelling “I am being misogynistic” in big capital letters, so obviously nobody is doing it.

      2. It’s possible to criticize women in a non-misogynistic way, to suggest that therefore criticism of women is never misogynistic, is to be illogical.
        (It’s the same with criticizing Israel and not being antisemitic.)

        1. No one has yet pointed out actual misogynistic comments, just thrown vague shade around.

  40. awww, carla & jocelyne

  41. My opinion on this subject is that a big part of college is becoming engaged with moral abstracts and politics that, realistically, you will have absolutely no effect on whatsoever. This can destroy friendships, ruin family relationships, and also make you a better person. We’ve seen the opposite happen where families turn on their kids for nebulous ideology and community. Now we’re going to see the children themselves have to engage in going against their loved ones for ideology.

  42. Walky somehow manifests in her room: ‘I don’t care about fries… but do you have any nuggets?’

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