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Dorothy: ...okay, I just now realized we have no ACTUAL plan for what we're doing.
Joyce: A PLAN? For seeing if Amber's in Walky's room?
Dorothy: Yeah, like, are we REALLY just... knocking on his door and asking if she's in there? And is it any of our business? Am I an ex-girlfriend invading Walky's space?
Joyce: Yep, see, YOU'RE the thoughtful one.
Dorothy: And YOU'RE the one who feels strongly about things.
Dorothy: So... what here do you feel STRONGLY about?
Joyce: I feel REALLY STRONGLY about being PROVEN RIGHT that Amber's inside.
Joyce: Hey, look, DOOR'S UNLOCKED!
Dorothy: Ah, CHRIST.
113 thoughts on “No actual plan”
Yohammar
I remember that the butt-taco was a gag between Mx. Willis and Jeph Jacques a while back. Have we seen it in comic?
It seems like a Walky thing, but I don’t remember.
Alongcameaspider
I’m pretty sure at one point Walky had a shirt with butt taco on it but thats all I remember
I might be misremembering that too tbh
Astariel
Not just Walky, Asher had one too. It played a major part in souring Jennifer on him.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/comic/balls/
Cassie
I’m pretty sure you remember correctly. I think it was a pajama shirt, but for Walky that doesn’t really mean anything.
Thag Simmons
Yeah I think it’s from really early in the comic, although I’m pretty sure there was a callback to it with Asher at some point between him. Don’t remember if that was a patreon strip though and I’m too lazy to dive into the archives to check
RassilonTDavros
I’m preeetty sure it started as a gag in a Shortpacked! strip where Robin was buying every domain name she could think of, for some reason?
RassilonTDavros
Found it. And here is its first DoA appearance.
Rimwalker55
Mx. Willis and Mr. Jaques had a great crossover cameo with Dina when QC had a discussion on therapod mating habits and Dina stuck her head into the panel to listen, while in DoA on or about the same day Dina came out of her room wearing a “Coffee of Doom” shirt.
Wack'd
rules post
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once again all replies to this will be deleted
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also i will stop posting this at the end of the week. after that it’s up to folks to know it’s linked from the read before posting page.
Thag Simmons
I feel like they’re probably going to be able to hear this
Stormtide Leviathan
People talk in front of doors unheard in this comic a reasonable amount. The walls are strangely thick
Reaver
They are incredibly thick, roomy and have surprisingly clean shared bathrooms! This HAS to be a rich kid college cuz I’ve never seen such tidy bathrooms and roomy rooms with walls that aren’t made out of white brick-
Steamweed
Very thick walls. But never locked doors. Terrible security practices.
Astariel
I love Joyce, but she is being fairly inconsiderate here. On the other hand, she’s keeping the plot moving.
YourCousinJay
Too be fair it’s not unlike Joyce to put her curiosity above the consideration of others, especially Walky.
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Though she has definitely gotten better at balancing that act since first coming here
Slartibeast Button, BIA
Will they *EVER* learn?
Mitzi B.
“An unlocked door’s an open door, as far as I’m concerned!”
Cabbage Jack
I don’t understand why they are there. I think yesterday went over my head, but I just flat out am confused about the why. Is this a feeling guilty and will feel less guilty if Walky has moved on? That’s what I thought it was, but I can’t really tell.
To be fair, Dorothy seems kind of confused as well, so maybe I’m not just slow on the uptick.
nadamás
She want to check out on Amber that’s the basic of it. Everything else is just extra.
Stormtide Leviathan
Dorothy’s been looking for Amber to check in on her. Joyce has a (largely correct, though Amber may be mysteriously gone when they go in) theory that she’s in Walky’s room, so they’re going there to check.
V
Yeah Amber is quite badly injured and recently had her room raided looking for Amazi-Girl. Wanting to make sure she’s okay is extremely reasonable here imo, even if Joyce has kind of lost the plot. Dorothy, meanwhile, is just worried about the consequences of being wrong, and also about accidentally intruding if Amber and Walky are getting back together.
Rakeesh
I mean, Joyce at least made it clear that any concern over Amber’s well-being is incidental at most.
Anna
Do Dorothy & Joyce know about Amber’s injury yet? I can’t remember where they became aware of that, if they did.
Paulie
Yes, Joyce popped into Dina + Amber’s room after Amber was injured. Dina told her, Joyce started freaking out, then Dina told her that her help wasn’t needed and they had taken care of everything.
Cbwroses
Dorothy found out from Dina, in Dina and Amber’s room, when she went to talk to Dina about Becky iirc (I can’t remember if it was before or after Becky decided God didn’t exist).
She hasn’t looked at the injury, and I’m unsure if she knows what type of wound it is, but she does know Amber is hurt, was resting, and was conked out from medicine.
Irreleverent
Dorothy has been looking for amber because she disappeared during the raid and given *gestures broadly*, it’s pretty concerning if they can’t find her.
Dave Van Domelen
Dorm life, where “whoops” is a verb. Example: “They left their door unlocked and got whooped by my friend who was doing a survey on how people spell ‘wuss.'”
Li
Pffffft.
RassilonTDavros
“Dorothy I literally just reminded you that you are an atheist, c’mon.”
TrueSurvivor
Joyce just wants to be proven right, and no matter who or what is behind that door, she has already proven that she is, at the very least relitively speaking, not the one who thinks things through. This irronically, makes her a genius.
CT Phipps
Eventually, Joyce and Dorothy will have a massive breakup involving lightsabers and death battles with exes like Scott Pilgrim. They’re too adorable to survive in this comic.
clif
I had no idea that Scott Pilgrim was an ex. So that’s who Dorothy was briefly with before Danny.
CT Phipps
Danny is a character destined to be played by Michael Cera.
Folus
Well now you’re definitely invading privacy.
Shepsquared
And here we see two white girls decide to invade the privacy of a black boy less than 24 hours after everyone here got raided by the cops, all because one of them cares more about being right than knocking. And that’s without bringing up how Dorothy is right about how Joyce dumped Walky for her 48 hours ago and Joyce doesn’t stop to consider if they’re intruding on him.
Wack'd
i’m really gonna need to ask you to connect this back to a broader critique of how the comic handles race, because “it’s okay to do the callout-post-style stuff the rules prohibit so long as you point out the characters you’re calling out have privilege” is not a precedent i’m comfortable setting
Dot
How about this: we spent months of realtime focusing on how an unrelated white girl felt about her best friend slash crush getting together with someone else, which is handled with care and pathos, while the Black boy in the equation got laughed at to his face by the girl his girlfriend cheated on him with, and this goes completely unremarked upon as the obviously horrifically cruel thing it is. Does this not speak to a broader carelessness with which the strip’s people of color are treated narratively?
Wack'd
if you want to make the case that joyce or the comic treats walky worse than becky because he’s black and becky is white, you’re certainly welcome to. but just stating two events in the comic happened, and you liked the execution on one and not the other, is not analysis.
Dot
Like, no actually, “this plot point was poorly executed and here’s why” IS analysis, actually.
Wack'd
the issue is there is no “here’s why”. walky “got laughed at to his face by the girl his girlfriend cheated on him with, and this goes completely unremarked upon as the obviously horrifically cruel thing it is” is just a statement of fact.* for it to be analysis, you would need to do something besides say that it happened. you have to actually explain how it “speak(s) to a broader carelessness with which the strip’s people of color are treated narratively.”
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like, okay. if i say “this hamburger is expensive. doesn’t this speak to a broader rise in the increase of hamburgers?”, for it to be analysis, i’d need to, i dunno, look at other hamburger prices from this same restaurant over time, or the prices of hamburgers at other restaurants, or the prices of other goods and services, or inflation, or something. a graph has more than one data point, and financial fluctuations have more factors than the price of a single hamburger.
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which is why, besides the sheer unrelenting repetition with which this strip gets “ugh character x is being a bad person” comments, there’s a bar on just pointing out a character did a bad thing.
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*not even a complete one, by the by–here it is, being remarked on.
StarryMoon
Agreed. So much focus on the white cast instead of the POC who play a big part in this storyline. (As you mentioned) Walky who was cheated on yet didn’t receive much focus, and Asma and Raidah who identify with those in Bulmeria going through genocide. And even away from the cheating, we’ve got WOC like Sarah, Asma, Raidah, and even Sal who pop up to only be seen for like one strip or two. So much focus has been incessantly on this couple instead. A pattern has been forming for nearly a year.
Wack'd
i’ll point out, because i’ve been gathering this data anyway, that as of yesterday’s comic, exactly four characters have managed more than 30 strips on the main site this book: joyce (145), dorothy (139), becky (43), and walky (34). this does mean that white characters like amber, danny, and carla have also been putting up dogshit numbers this book, but it’s disproportionately hitting cast members of color, and i agree that this is a problem.
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i’ll also point out that the previous book had joyce and dorothy breaking their personal bests, with 175 for joyce (a record high for any character in a single book) and 132 for dorothy.
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there’s a reason i’m trying to balance enforcing some very necessary rules with being permissive about talking about the comic’s attitudes towards race, and it’s because just on a sheer numbers level it’s clear something’s gone wrong.
dinerkinetic
Not sure if this’ll go under the bottom level comment RE: number of appearances, but I think it’s a quality-over-quantity issue. I think the amount of POC screentime matters less than how meaningful it is when they get it? Walky is allowed to be a funny character but (except for his concern for amber, who’s a character I love seeing interact with walky, but also very white) nothing that bothers him for the past few irl months has been taken seriously, Raidah’s treated as an antagonist who very rarely gets to make good points, and Asma’s presence has been relevant to two white people’s arcs more than her own like 50% of the time.
Like, I have no problem with the blonde girls starring in the comic for a while from a social justice standpoint. But it feels like everyone else has a little less depth than they usually do, or something.
Wack'd
@dinerkinetic: i’m not trying to say that my pure numbers stuff what really matters. it’s just one example of how one can model broader trends. another is pointing out how certain kinds of inconsiderate behavior (white characters consistently not addressing points made by characters of color) recur. or, as you’ve done, pointing out that certain characters get their interiority plumbed less aggressively. (i mean i think walky “i’ve never felt a real feeling in my life and if i did you’d have to torture it out of me” walkerton and sarah “expressing base-level empathy for other people feels like dying” clinton are skewing the numbers, but one could certainly reasonably ask why, in general, emotional constipation has been apportioned primarily to their characters of color!)
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i’m trying to encourage people to discuss those trends, rather than just pointing out when a character does a bad thing. i think it’s possible, even worthwhile, to try and have these conversations in a way that boosts the ratio of signal to noise.
Shepsquared
The numbers are stunning indictment on their own, but not relevant to the criticism I’m making. The narratively barely cares about Walky’s feelings and the main characters obviously don’t, no matter how much they say otherwise. Their actions are telling. The narrative cares more about the feelings and desires of the white cast, with the various minority characters reduced to set dressing.
Sal showed up to deliver someone else’s criticism, Asma is very much a prop for Dorothy’s astonishingly slow development, Raidah is constantly dismissed and undermined even when the characters go to her for help…
Sarah trying to say something to Joyce and Dorothy and being ignored, with the comic skipping ahead as if nothing happened keeps happening. It happened to Asma, it happened to Raidah, and it would’ve happened to Walky if he’d been allowed to verbalise his emotions.
Trying to reduce this to a conversation about privilege and dismissing a blunt breakdown and critique of the day’s strip as a callout of a fictional character is an incredibly reductive attitude to take towards a problem that you yourself have noticed.
Dot is 100% right and I have little else to add. As is StarryMoon and 99% of what dinerkinetic said.
Wack'd
@Shepsquared: see, this is analysis. you’re putting together different events across the strip and showing how they produce a trend. it’s a little muddled–dorothy is expressing concern for walky’s feelings, and joyce isn’t, so how do we determine that the strip as a whole do not care about his feelings in this instant when one half of the relevant characters are visibly caring? but there’s a good faith attempt here.
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just saying “two white girls decide to invade the privacy of a black boy” isn’t analysis. it’s factually true, but disconnected to anything. “after everyone here got raided by the cops” doesn’t even rise to that level–no one in the boys’ wing was raided, which is why walky was able to hide amber in his room. it’s not a breakdown and it’s not a critique.
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this is a sensitive issue. that doesn’t mean any and all things said about the issue are helpful or even accurate. it means that it’s important to make the case in a way that’s insightful and constructive.
drs
‘“two white girls decide to invade the privacy of a black boy” isn’t analysis. it’s factually true, but disconnected to anything. ‘
It’s insight. It’s pointing out context and perspective that people might have missed, especially people reading the comic quickly and casually for their morning funnies. “Oh wow you’re right, it _is_ two white girls invading the privacy of a black boy (and Booster, and a possible wounded fugitive)”. It is, thus, a useful part of serious discussion.
Wack'd
@drs: i disagree that simply describing a character’s demographics with no further interrogation is useful context or perspective. demographics inform perspectives, they’re not the be-all and end-all of them.
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just as a for instance. joyce, in addition to being white, was raised in a fundamentalist household. we know from becky that barging into someone’s room and smiling down on them until they wake up was considered reasonable behavior before either of them had any real experience with people of other racial demographics. we know that her exposure to “witness testimonies” in church was part of what made her feel entitled to other people’s life stories. and we know that she believed for much of her life that she was being watched at all time on heaven’s tivo, and thus seldom (never?) felt any privacy of her own. so: does joyce pull this sort of thing on people of color more often than she does on white people? do white characters without this background often engage in this sort of boundary fuckery with characters of color? this is important context that’s elided by going “joyce is white, and walky is brown.”
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“two white girls are invading the privacy of a black boy”, in my view, has the potential to stop further interrogation of what’s happening here, not encourage it. it tells you outright what the expected answer is. the rules i’ve set up are designed, in part, to prevent this sort of thing. when you just describe what’s happening in the comic as a leading statement, well–people reading quickly and casually may go “oh wow you’re right,” and not consider the issue on their own.
Sajuuk-Khar
drs, this doesn’t track at all. Why would it be a useful part of serious discussion to read what is explicitly the kind of callout-style accusation that the rules prohibit just because it *kind of* involves the institution of racism? Like, what part of serious discussion does it help to talk about “white girls white girling??” It…doesn’t??? Not to mention that the whole desire to shock the systems of other readers is weird???
Sajuuk-Khar
Like if we wanted this to be an actual serious discussion it could be framed like
-“Wow, this is the [number]th time Joyce has busted into a POC’s room, that’s kinda weird of her! I wonder if someone will educate her on boundaries, maybe Dorothy should (given her interest in social justice)”
-“is Joyce’s habit of just wandering into people’s room a genuine fundie socializing thing? Asking from [perspective].”
Or even “Oh Dorothy, ONE day you’ll learn how to set firm boundaries with the people you love. Especially the ones who need it a lot, like Joyce here :P”
And those are actionable discussion topics! This…isn’t.
Sirksome
Okay I’ve mostly gone back to lurking in an attempt to hopefully not contribute to any negativity here and out of some fear my usual gimmick jokes aren’t always in compliance with the rules, but with the recent racism discussions that have been interesting I think I have some analysis that’s hopefully relevant.
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I’m a black person and for a while I used to dislike Walky’s character because even now he’s still kind of annoying by design. I do think some of the larger criticisms and callouts such as WOC being the only ones showing consistent push against Dorothy and Joyce’s recent actions, or the one of only two black dudes that have significant roles in the comic having his relationship being treated less seriously by them are somewhat valid. If I could add I think Walky and Jacob both have the hints of a pattern of objectification by women a lot of black men experience in real life I could really get into but won’t here.
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I do think in this case some are maybe choosing to overlook certain contexts snd histories between the characters that got us here. Yes, Joyce laughing in Walky’s face and yoinking his girl in front of him can be viewed as rather cruel in hindsight but I always saw it as a payoff to their comic spanning rivalry because Walky would in fact do the same to her. I believe the pitfall here isn’t necessarily unfair disrespect to Walky’s relationship as much as more of those flaws in objectifying him . His most recent relationship with Dorothy lasted three days and we basically never got to see how he felt about that the entire time. He enjoyed the sex we know that, but Dorothy was literally stating her feelings on their rebound in bed while we had to interpret weird looks from Walky that were never followed up on. His emotions were secondary to Dorothy’s perspective and emotional health. And because Walky in general has less of a supporting cast for his specific narrative arc (even less now that Dorothy is with Joyce) that also means he has less opportunities to get serious post break up introspection or cathartic closures. And if Mx. Willis is writing Walky’s supporting characters honestly then they don’t fit those roles. Sal and Jennifer aren’t as invested in his love life or are literally physically separated from him by circumstance. He can’t confide in Sal the same way and her own history with unhealthy relationships skews her perspective. Sal’s currently possibly in her first healthy relationship ever. Jennifer has similar problems and I think she’s doing her best for him but also fails in being a proper support in part due to her distance. He has no Dina, he has no Becky, no Sarah defending him and in wider framework their stories don’t pivot around him like nearly every character’s does when intersecting with Joyce’s because she’s kinda the main character. I think this why the Walky story feels a little like a joke right now and unsatisfying and I even think him seemingly pairing with Amber so quickly while obviously a fan favored outcome is also maybe a bandage solution that also plays more into his general objectification issues.
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I think the other problem here mainly that Joyce and reluctantly Dorothy feel comfortable possibly (and this is a BIG possibly because unless you’re a patreon subscriber we have no idea what tomorrow’s strip is and getting baited by something that seems like bad behavior only for it to lead to a joke or unexpected payoff happen all the time) disrespecting Walky’s privacy for their own personal satisfaction is a bit problematic and maybe starting to form a pattern of them intruding on spaces of POC for their own ends, like Asma, or Raidah, or Dina. Maybe that does need to be looked at in the long term but it could also be the result of the recent push in trying to include these previously underrepresented characters in the narrative. But it is also writing them honestly and hopefully it doesn’t break the rules to say Joyce is an asshole to Walky specifically. This is their relationship dynamic. No shade intended, it’s just the truth and I don’t think you’re supposed to like Joyce here. This is just what they do to each other. Dorothy is even showing visible discomfort with her actions here. I’d wager these even leads to hopefully Walky getting some of that post breakup closure and pathos Joe just got because Dorothy is here now. Even if maybe we don’t like the way we’re getting there.
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This will probably get deleted but hopefully I made some good points that maybe everything Joyce and Dorothy do aren’t just racist dunking on less important characters but honest writing that can fall into problematic pitfalls as a fault of possibly overlooked stigmas and tropes. When you make Walky the resident fuck boy this is kind of how it goes. He unlike Joe is separated from them in a way that makes scenes like this necessary to move forward or we’ll never see any developments here. Uh?….Don’t trust butt tacos and unlocked doors.
Wack'd
@sirksome: this was really well done! more of this, please
Holly
This is a great analysis. I am not about to engage deeply on this topic, but minor additions/thoughts on what you’ve said:
* There’s definitely objectification of Walky and Jacob taking place, including by Sarah in the case of the latter, but I’ve always seen that as in-character actions / an intentional theme being explored. From the point of view of authorship, this could simply be an accurate depiction of a real life phenomena (I have seen people do this to a gross degree IRL one or two times, unfortunately). Willis has portrayed Walky and Sal’s mother’s internalised racism, for example, so to me I’d initially assume that this is also an intentional point or portrayal being made by the author. Your comment doesn’t speculate either way, as far as I can see (of course now that I am replying your comment is a tall string of text 1 character wide, so I cannot re-read it to verify!), but I was wondering if you interpret it as an intentional exploration of the topic or a subconscious expression of internalised author values. A lot of the above (not your) arguments seem to stem from an initial stance on either side of that equation and extrapolate on the basis of that personal assumption.
* Agree that Walky’s emotions have not been explored, but for me I have always seen that as (non-biased) characterisation of Walky and part of Walky’s character arc: the constant need to deflect emotions into jokes, the inability to be vulnerable, being led by others’ needs to the supppression of his own. I always read it as a statement of masculinity and masking, more than anything else. I would like to see more of Walky though (perhaps a hangover in part from being used to Walky being a title character), and the slow pace of the comic and slow passage of time within the comic means that big meltdowns, insights, and pivotol character moments require an awful lot of patience. That’s definitely exacerbated by the fact that the comic focuses on Joyce, especially in this arc.
* This part is not to you, but on the appearance statistics in general. That is quite shockingly surprising. It makes me reassess how much this comic is intentioned to be “The Joyce Brown story”, because while I have heard her being called “THE main character” before, I never really felt like that was supposed to be the case. If the comic IS supposed to just be a story about her (or the tale of Joyce and Dorothy learning they are bisexual), then the statistics make a lot more sense, and all other character appearances should be compared separately to Joyce, and probably Dorothy too. If it’s not supposed to me the story of Joyce and Dorothy (feat. their friends), then an all-time appearance count of all main cast is definitely a good tracker to show where imbalances lie.
Sirksome
@Holly As far as themes of black male objectification I think it’s definitely intentional for Jacob. I’m not sure if it’s there now but it was once even just part of his character bio. Almost every girl he’s talked to has desired him, he was introduced as a object of desire and even confided in Joe how messed up it was to have women, Joyce specifically interfere in his life because of such desire. I think ironically Raidah is the only woman with romantic intent that wasn’t guilty of this because her priorities lied more in his academic potential. I do find it troubling that for all his frustration at not wanting to be a sex object his ultimate payoff so far has been hooking up with a girl he met once and barely talked too. Maybe we should be more upset about that? I’m at least upset about that, but Jacob on a whole is definitely a side character so maybe he’s not meant to have deep and introspective stories. He’s kind of served his purpose narratively as a means of conflict and now gets a happy ending along with Lucy.
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Walky is harder for me to come to a conclusion on. He’s definitely higher on the character tier list than Jacob as far as story relevance and thus his objectification can just be circumstantial. The inevitable result of older storytelling, pacing, ect. He did have a whole storyline that was basically “Hey, Walky’s hot now!” But at least to me his objectification started way before that. From Dorothy seeing his relationship as just fun, to Lucy assuming months of platonic hanging was actually a sort of pre-established romantic interest, even Amber going hot and heavy day 1, but they sort of mutually agreed that relationship was them both indulging in being awful or whatever garbage roof means. Still.
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I also think we only get here where all these complaints of racism emerge because Walky exists in a sort of supporting character role, yes above side characters like Jacob narratively but significantly beneath your Joyce’s and Dorothy’s and Amber’s ect. DoA isn’t just a story about the girls of Read hall but it’s mostly a story about them and Joyce serves a vital role as a main pov character that structures the story so it’s not just a bunch of random vignettes of losers we don’t invest in. Fair. I’m pretty sure Walky got his own years long story. I didn’t read it but his name’s in the title probably. I do think that means when most of his story relevance was tied to him dating a main character and then she breaks up with him multiple times and now to date another main character maybe he gets unintentionally screwed over a bit. Maybe that results in some problematic disrespect because Dorothy doesn’t have much motivation to see him right now so Joyce has to move things along by being inconsiderate but that also falls into a recent pattern of her being inconsiderate to other racially diverse cast members and now Wack’d has to work overtime. I do kind of trust the writing at this point to lead somewhere and adjust with feedback. Like I don’t think the upcoming strips are gonna be Joyce and Dorothy dunk on Walky time. I just don’t think we get timely payoffs to the Dorothy/Walky breakup without this moment because Dorothy and Walky really don’t have a reason to talk organically otherwise. But uh that’s my opinion since you asked. Hope it helped. I’m going back to lurking.
Rose By Any Other Name
So, of basically everyone in this thread (apart from Wack’d), let me say this – no matter how valid your concerns, if you want to see them addressed, heckling the author is not an effective way to accomplish that goal.
I have never seen an artist respond positively to critique phrased with sarcasm or contempt. The “ugh, this again” attitude is not constructive, and if someone responded to one of my works with this tone, my reply would be to point at the metaphorical door and tell them to leave if they don’t like it.
Again, the concerns here are valid, but you are not presenting them as helpful critiques that Willis can address in the future – you are simply complaining about the presence of choices you dislike. That is, to some degree I would assume, why Wack’d is insisting on proper critique formatting. However, even then, y’all need to come to it with a better attitude. You should be trying to help Willis grow, not yelling at him for making mistakes. We all fuck up, but a scolding rarely results in positive growth.
Source: I have been a creative writing professor for 20 years, and I am the daughter of a retired creative writing professor of 50 years.
Rose By Any Other Name
**sigh**
Really hate that the edit button only works when I don’t need it.
I just thought of a better way to say the core of what I wanted to say:
You are treating Willis like an enemy to tear down rather than an ally to educate and improve.
zee
Will say, feels a little…..weird to be told that if I want to comment on racial dynamics in a white authors works I have to write an eloquent mini essay on the topic. Like, I can and I have but y’know. Sometimes you don’t have the spoons for that. Sometimes you just have it in you to cringe at the white girls white girling and want to find solidarity in other POC cringing. Like I get the rules against call out comments, sorta (not really but I get that it IS a rule now and I can respect that), i get that its to keep the comments from getting too negative. But like. Idk it’s probably just me thinking too much but I can’t help but feel some type of way about being told “you have to discuss racism in this specific way or shush.” Like…black people/poc being tone policed by non black people on how to discuss racism in a white person’s work. Forgive me if I’m misunderstanding something here, I’m open to discussion about it. I’m not trying to accuse anyone of anything and I know we’re just trying to keep the vibes good and like, do a counter backlash against the backlash of the past year. It’s just a weird feeling personally.
Wack'd
i’m not asking for an essay. i’m asking for some consideration of why the comic is what it is beyond “well clearly the character/author is a Bad Person doing a Bad Thing.” this whole thing started because i did not want to set the precedent that you can skirt the rules by just connecting the rule-breaking material back to social justice somehow, but i also do not want to shut down or delete what may be an attempt at good-faith discussion. “here’s how to say stuff on this topic so it doesn’t break the rules” felt like a good compromise.
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this is gonna seem mean, and maybe it is, but: if you do not have the spoons to post in a way that doesn’t break the rules, just don’t post in that moment. getting mad at me is only gonna cause more stress than you can handle. in general getting mad online where other people can see it is a pretty bad method of stress reduction. it’s good for other things, but not spoon preservation.
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as for tone policing, two things. firstly: i’m a moderator. making sure people are nice to each other is literally my job. secondly: i feel like tone policing is all about proportionality. if person a gets really loud and angry about police brutality or voter suppression or poverty or being racisted at on a daily basis, and person b decides that the real problem is person a getting angry, well, it’s pretty obvious who has a real problem and who has a fake one. but if you’re getting really loud and angry about a comic on the internet doing a subpar job at handling racialized issues, well, uh. the number of people being immiserated by that is pretty small, and fixing it isn’t terribly urgent. i don’t think it’s a moral ill to ask someone to chill out a little in that circumstance.
YourCousinJay
With Zee on this one,
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As someone who is a POC it gets exhausting to be expected to be tutors to white people with perfect language and cadance, never raising your voice because it immediately gets your opinion discarded.
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Sometimes you just wanna say what’s on your mind unfiltered and without paragraphs of supporting evidence as to why you feel the way you do and being expected to always do so only drains you until you eventually stop tuning in all together.
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And to be clear, that’s not to say it’s not also still a good thing to inform writers on how they’re writing of POC is perceived but it also shouldn’t be a job for us to only ever act as sensitivity readers regarding this topic.
YourCousinJay
@wack’d
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don’t know your race, background or identity and I won’t speculate on it,
I will say however that a person of color has given their personal opinion on a matter which you then chose to interpret as stress and anger, rather than simple mental exhaustion as was stated in their comment. I’m convinced this wasn’t intentional but regardless still reads like you projecting something akin to the “angry black woman” stereotype on a person who’s only stated they’re tired of always being expected to effectively act as a model minority.
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I’m also not a big fan of “if you do not have the spoons to post in a way that doesn’t break the rules, just don’t post in that moment.” because both the rules aren’t clearly enough defined to make that call, and it just leads back to POC readers being forced to be model minorities if they want to engage in this conversation.
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In my opinion the reply overall just comes over as tone-deaf.
Wack'd
i’m sorry. i was trying to lay out my thoughts as clinically as possible. i honestly didn’t think zee came off as angry in the slightest.
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i understand the mental exhaustion involved in having to be a model minority. with regards to “just don’t post in the moment”, i’ve found from experience that posting online about the discourse depletes my own supply of spoons. no one wants to be told that maybe they’re not in a mental place where posting is a responsible course of action, least of all myself, which is why i was worried it sounded mean. but sometimes it’s true–if you don’t have the spoons to deal with something, the best thing to do is leave it be and come back when you have more spoons.
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i’ll say again that i’m not asking anyone to be a perfect explainer of the racial issues in the comic or anywhere else. hell, that’s not a standard i can hold myself to. i communicated this badly and that’s my responsibility. i was trying to lay out an avenue for talking about these issues that do not fall afoul of the rules. (i understand some people have found the rules vaguely defined, but an equal number have said they’re reasonable. and after three attempts and a lot of thought, i genuinely do not know how to make them any clearer.)
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as a moderator, it’s my job to make sure everyone’s behaving appropriately. in the case of this website, it comes down to curtailing behavior that has been repeatedly cited to me as making this an unpleasant place to be. that means it doesn’t really get to be a “i’m just venting” place for anyone anymore. criticism needs to be kind and it needs to be constructive. i can’t say some people are allowed to be jerks and some people aren’t, but i also don’t have perfect radar for who’s being a jerk and who’s just being upset in a way that looks kinda jerky. again, i thought trying to explain how to come off as less jerky was a good solution, but i’m clearly pretty bad at it. i’ll be working on that in the future.
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i can promise, though–i’m not expecting perfection of anyone.
IntangibleMatter
The good news is they’re just playing Mario Kart
The bad news is that if my ex walked into my dorm room without asking I’d have a lot of complicated feelings, first and foremost “oh my god what the fuck”
…so it’ll probably be fine
AntithesisConundrum
*Joyce Voice*
Dorothy Margot Keener! You are an ATHEIST.
Cbwroses
So will Walky and Amber be caught in flagrante de lecto (I’ve loved that phrase since the first time I saw Clue and yet still have no idea what the literal definition is or how it’s spelled)?
Will Joyce “Love Sleuth who just happens to be a lesbian, but only for Dorothy” Brown be proven correct?
Tune in tomorrow, same Dumb time, same Dumb website (or, you know, join the Patreon).
NullSet
The repeated pattern so far is people walking in on lesbian sex, so uh, maybe Walky’s egg cracked, and lesbian modified love and not sleuth.
Cbwroses
Maybe because it’s 6am and I just woke up, but I’m not currently recalling anyone being walked in on while having sex, lesbian or otherwise.
clif
Me neither, but I dimly recall some kind of why didn’t they lock the door discussion, so I’m not completely sure.
Tya Menelaus
In flagrante delicto. It’s Latin.
Cbwroses
I’ve always assumed it was Latin, based on the sound, but I’ve never had to learn Latin for my education (outside of being taught when certain English words came from Latin roots as opposed to Greek roots) nor for my religion.
Invisible Bard
“In flagrante delicto.” The most common translation is “in blazing offense.” It used to mean pretty much the exact same thing as “caught red-handed,” but people used it as a euphemism for “caught doing sex-related things, specifically” enough that that became its primary connotation to most modern English speakers. (Though in legal parlance, one can still say that a criminal was caught in flagrante delicto and just mean “caught while obviously committing a crime” and not “caught while obviously getting their freak on.”)
Cbwroses
Thank you.
That’s very interesting.
And considering it was used in reference to Colonel Mustard being caught in the presence of a Lady of the Night, and prostitution is unfortunately criminalized, it was arguably used with both connotations simultaneously.
Rose By Any Other Name
Oh, absolutely agree – in flagrante delicto is a wonderful phrase!
….
In flagrante delicto, it ain’t no passing craze.
Sorry! Sorry! I’ll stop singing.
Dot