grasping the most important issue at hand
10

Transcript

Asma: Police raided Wright Quad at noon.
Dorothy: ...what?
Asma: Police raided Wright Quad at noon.
Dorothy: I mean, I HEARD you, but that's... just...
Asma: The same time they raided here yesterday.
Dorothy: Yeah. Crazy.
Dorothy: You know what THIS means.
Asma: Pray tell.
Dorothy: You must not think I have COP ENERGY anymore if you're telling me these things! I'm safe! I'm on your trusted anti-fascist rebel list!
Asma: Please. A cop would be SAFEST to tell, because they'd ALREADY KNOW what cops are doing.
Dorothy: ...rats.

Wright Quad
Posted on April 30, 2026 by David M Willis

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Tags: asma, dorothy

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110 thoughts on “Wright Quad”

  1. NGPZ

    ʷʰᶦᵗᵉ

    1. RassilonTDavros

      How do you do the small text thing, IYDMMA?

      1. NGPZ

        https://lingojam.com/SmallTextGenerator

        1. RassilonTDavros

          ᵇᶦᵍ ᵐᶜᵗʰᵃⁿᵏᶦᵉˢ ᶠʳᵒᵐ ᵐᶜˢᵖᵃⁿᵏʸ’ˢᵎ

        2. Gigafreak

          Those mcthankies look very small, not big

        3. Skorpeyon

          ˡᶦᵗᵗˡᵉ ᵐᶜᵗʰᵃⁿᵏᶦᵉˢ ᶠʳᵒᵐ ᵐᶜˢᵖᵃⁿᵏʸ’ˢˀ

        4. steamweed

          ᴹᵘᶜʰ ᵇᵉᵗᵗᵉʳᵎ

        5. Makkabee

          The McThankies are STILL big! It’s the fonts that got small!

    2. zee

      When I said I’m gonna keep commenting on new instances of white girl cringe, this is what I meant

      1. apocryphascribe

        Exactlyyyy

    3. Isactuallyabear

      Such white girl behavior.

    4. Amós Batista

      The Squidward avatar is the cherry of the cake.

    5. Auz the Slacknificent

      Did she just channel Charlie Brown energy?

  2. Doctor_Who

    From now on Asma is going to start playing Tom Cardy on her phone whenever Dorothy speaks to her.

    1. Dara

      May I introduce you to the animated version which (imo) makes it much better since it’s so much easier to tell the characters apart?
       
      (Also the dance scene in general but particularly 2:07 absolutely sends me)

      1. Doctor_Who

        That was great stuff! Never knew there was a longer version of the song.
        But what do you mean you have difficulty telling the three ginger mustachioed Australians apart, they’re so distinct! One faces right, one faces left, and one isn’t a cop!

      2. Cholma

        Thank you both. Today, I became one of XKCD’s 10,000.

    2. CT Phipps

      I hope Asma just amps it up. Like she gives Dorothy her number but every time Dorothy calls it plays, “This is the Sound of the Police.” Which Dorothy would hear because Asma was just off camera so she’d call.

      1. clif

        As long as we’re hoping, I’m hoping Sal dumps the Amazi-outfit before Forest is raided.

        Is it Forest?

  3. tbf

    Can someone remind me where Jennifer lives?

    1. Laura

      Or Walky?

      1. steamweed

        I’m thinking Wright Quad is women’s?

      2. Laura

        Thank you all for the info! :-)

    2. Wack'd

      forrest quad

      1. embe13

        whew, bullet dodged today,

      2. John Campbell

        It’s “Forest”, like woods. Also “Read”, like s book, with an ‘a’.

        Walky lives in Read, like most of the other core characters. He’s in Beck Wing, while the girls are in Clark Wing. Jennifer, Alice, and Lucy are in Forest Quad.

        Forest is just across the street from Read, and I would’ve thought it would be the next one to be hit if they’re targeting based on Amazi-Girl sightings around Read. Wright Quad is about half a mile away. But in any case, I think Jennifer needs to find somewhere else to hide that costume pretty quickly.

        1. thejeff

          Bring it back to Amazi-Girl? They’ve already searched there.

          Interesting that the search continues. Are the cops just picking dorms randomly once a day or is there some reason to target Wright? I don’t think we’ve ever heard of it before.

        2. HoeRatioHornBlowHer

          Alternatively, they’re not actually looking that hard for Amazi-Girl, and these are just reprisals against the protests and Wright Quad had more of them than Forest Quad.

      3. Needfuldoer

        Its name is Quad, Forrest Quad? Ya know, sometimes, college is like a box-a chock-lits. Ya never know what yer gonna get.

    3. HueSatLight

      Forest Quad

    4. Holly

      My first thought also.

    5. anon

      dun remmeber the name but wasn’t there a whole arc of her moving to a diff quad

  4. QueenofSodor

    i wonder if asma is actively trying to fuck with dorothy at this point. like, presumably she’s not supposed to be here, and she is correct in her assertion imo. BUT, i also think it’d be really funny if she was just like “well if she’s gonna keep being annoying by bringing up that one thing i said to her offhand every single time we talk, then i might as well fuck with her a little bit” and now keeps coming up with new ways to keep dorothy on her toes and deny her validation
    —
    asma should have little a trolling dorpy, as a treat

    1. reddslym

      I do not blame Asma at all lmao

  5. Name

    Hehehehe she’s reading about Bowling

    1. steamweed

      Bowling erotica is some of the hottest AO3 stuff.
      (mmmmm)

    2. Thag Simmons

      The Bowling Yuri has been an ongoing element of Asma’s recent appearances

    3. Stormtide Leviathan

      It’s a manga according to shortpacked

      1. Les

        I wish to know more about the book she is reading. Was it in Shortpacked? Is more said about it there?

        1. Mitzi B.

          Yep, it’s right here https://www.shortpacked.com/comic/sunforgiveable

  6. Ray Radlein

    So they really don’t know anything about Amazi-Girl, then, do they?

  7. Amós Batista

    That’s scary, nobody will stop them. They are already in the side of society.

  8. ZombieKyrik

    I feel like Dorothy is trying too hard to prove she’s a decent person to Asma. Rather than thinking of reasons you should be trusted; why don’t you act in the appropriate manner to earn trust?

    1. Geno

      That takes long term growth, and not at all how any teenager has ever thought about anything in their entire life. I’m not sure she even really wants to be Asma’s friend she just doesn’t want to be seen as a Karen

  9. steamweed

    Dorothy. You can’t presume upon your limited acquaintance with Asma. You don’t even have your official “Antifa” card and orientation kit yet. Have some patience, please.

    1. yak

      guh, I remember the anteefuh onboarding. It sucked so much. They made us throw like a hundred bricks.
      Of course then they reorganized and put all the left-wing extremism into the Democratic Party for some reason and now my local cell is basically just paper pushers.

  10. Zamperla

    Give it another like. 10 years, dotty. I think we can get you all the way to just kinda pervasive schoolteacher energy, and that’s actually genuinely a helpful person to be.

    rn shes a dorkus but i like seeing the way she’s grown

  11. RassilonTDavros

    Spotted a minor typo on the location tags: it’s spelled “Read”, not “Reed”.

    1. Wack'd

      yeah, i’m gonna try and figure out if i can change the tag rather than go back through and retag a buncha stuff. if i can’t, i’ll do it the old fashioned way

      1. NGPZ

        if I may ask will you eventually do this and the transcriptions for the older strips too?

        1. Wack'd

          i have been, but it’s a long, tedious process and not technically part of my official job duties, so it’s been slow going

        2. NGPZ

          that’s more than fair
          and like if there’s a particular protocol to follow with transcripting them that ya willing to share, I and friends who are devote DoA fans would be willing to help with that! ^-^

        3. Wack'd

          i’m not sure it’d be a good look, as a paid employee of the website, to solicit unpaid website labor from others. even if i am also not being paid to do transcripts. i’ll think about it, i guess. thank you for offering.

        4. NGPZ

          nah it ain’t soliciting, at least not to me? more like, buncha disabled autista homies who’d potentially wanna volunteer to make the comic more accessible this way, ya know?

          heck last year I tried to get a start on exactly but only got as far as the first storyline cuz I kept second-guessing myself on the formatting

          but yeah thank you so much for considering!!! ^-^

  12. Badrock

    Asma is my favorite character

  13. IntangibleMatter

    Oh please, you think the cops know what they’re doing? They don’t know their right foot from their left.

  14. Pocky

    Yeah, I think she’s still sore about the bowling alley thing (even tho this was partially her own fault for not gettin Alice’s name first).

    1. VioletGD

      I think it’s more so that she’s tired of Dorothy trying to convince her that she doesn’t have cop-energy. If a self-proclaimed ally made a deliberate decision that escalated an already very precarious situation that actively put other people in danger during a protest that was meant to support and protect my humanity and then afterwards kept bringing it up every time we interacted, I’d be pretty annoyed too. Honestly, I commend Asma for still having any patience with this. I would have told Dorothy to piss off and leave me alone by now. Any person that keeps trying to seek my Official Approval Of Being A Good Ally is someone who is very far away from actually being a decent ally.

      And I say all this as someone who did genuinely used to like Dorothy, flaws and all. I’m not just blindly raging against her or anything even though admittedly my feelings on her have since changed quite a lot. This is just peak White Girl Cringe, regardless of any of the rest.

  15. darkoneko

    hey Asma I get Dorothy kinda called it on herself, but it’s still a shitty thing to say lol

    1. nadamás

      How so?

  16. StarryMoon

    Sounds about white.

  17. Alongcameaspider

    Dorothy the best way to get Asma to stop thinking you have cop energy is to stop being so hung up on the fact that she thinks you have cop energy

    1. darkoneko

      yeaah

    2. Tan

      Being excited that a known cop-hater doesn’t think you’re a cop is the coppest energy there is.

      1. eh, whatever

        It’s an energy thing; and of all energy things it’s the coppest one.

  18. Thing 2

    Despite the ‘orrible clash between dorm walls and Dorothy’s top, her clothes and Asma’s seem compatible. What does this mean…

  19. Acher4

    Book title: I’m on your trusted anti-fascist rebel list!

  20. Freezer

    That logic don’t quite logic, Asma. Yeah, the cops would already know what they’re doing, but not what YOU’RE doing.

    But Asma would clearly rather fluster Dorothy than be logical.

    1. Wack'd

      asma didn’t tell dorothy what asma was doing. she told her what the cops were doing.

  21. Shade

    No Dorothy, it means they didn’t find what they were looking for.

  22. Needfuldoer

    Not everything is about you and your cop energy, Dorothy.

  23. SillyGoose

    I am unreasonably amused by Asma’s flat “Pray tell”. Also I wanna know what she’s reading. Some kind of romance novel, based on just the heart shape? Front cover is unclear. Are those bowling pins? A rabbit’s ears? Is this a romance about a white rabbit who camouflages as bowling pins to investigate a mystery in a bowling alley? I’d read that.
    Also Dorothy’s expression in the third panel looks a lot like her lusting face to me, which is weird.

    1. steamweed

      Bowling pins. Murder mystery romance in the bowling alley. Quite the popular subniche.

    2. Skychrono

      It’s the bowling manga! https://www.shortpacked.com/comic

      1. SillyGoose

        Thank you, dear librarian team!

  24. zee

    Damn that one actually physically hurt a little, gj
    .
    Also, I’m in the Netherlands now! Whoo!

    1. Taffy

      As they say in the Netherlands, “Woah, that’s a person who traveled here.”

  25. Rimwalker55

    Dorothy is trying to be cool just like Joyce did with Sal after freshman family weekend.

    https://www.dumbingofage.com/comic/permission/

    1. Wack'd

      it’s really interesting how, despite dorothy’s much healthier perspective on paper, she can still find herself falling into joycelike patterns–like, say, developing a fixation on a woman of color to validate how cool you are without thinking about how this might feel to the woman in question. hopefully dorothy falls into the other joycelike pattern of clocking her own nonsense and growing out of it, however slowly. for asma’s sake, if nothing else.

      1. Rimwalker55

        Well put.

  26. Rebecca

    Dorothy’s so lucky she’s abandoned her presidential ambitions, because she SUCKS at courting potential voters.

  27. Florence

    I’m a broken record but I love messy Dorothy

    She’s trying but my gosh does she keep stepping on rakes

    1. Li

      YEP. This.
      .
      Also it’s nice to see you again.

      1. nadamás

        Hi Li I wanted to tell you that I always want to look up your comments because I really like them. But due to your username being an really common combination of letters the “search in page” function is bassically useless. I don’t know if this something you can do anything about and i won’t ask you to, but I just wanted to let you know. Have a good day.

        1. Li

          Haha! Aww.
          .
          I have the same problem, so I check the “match case” box, and that usually does it.
          .
          But also what an incredible compliment aksjfjskla thank you ;; I’m glad you’re sticking around ❤️

        2. nadamás

          What’s the match case box?

        3. Dandi Andi

          Seconding this sentiment for both of you. Also, my chrome browser on mobile doesn’t have a match case function that I can find.

        4. Li

          Right back at both of you!!
          .
          Also, rude of Chrome. It’s admittedly kind of hidden on Firefox too? There’s a little “^” symbol on the search box on mobile, and if you tap that, a popover with “Whole Words” and “Match Case” as options you can check shows.

      2. Florence

        It’s nice to see you too Li

        Been a little low but being 34 now, perhaps the energy will return ☺️

        1. Li

          Fingers crossed ❤️ Goodness knows my energy level… fluctuates. But I’ll keep on keepin’ on!!

    2. nadamás

      It’s so nice being able to enjoy flawed characters without having to repeatly tell everyone what a horrible person they are.

  28. Ty

    Whelp, at least she’s talking to you.
    Asma would not be talking to you if she seriously thought you were a cop 🤷🏿‍♂️

  29. Mitzi B.

    Given that he’s harboring a fugitive from the police right now, Walky is currently more of an antifascist rebel than poor Dorpy.

  30. OttawaTom

    That just might be the most Schultzian line in this whole comic. I could see Dorothy suddenly revealing a Charlie Brown shirt after saying it.

  31. Reltzik

    So if I’m reading the tea leaves right, Lucy’s about to be arrested.

    I’m probably not reading them right. Tea leaves are a terrible material for writing on.

  32. Allison

    Dotty, the fastest way to get antifascist credentials? Feed children, care for the sick, include and listen to minorities, and give to the poor. Instead of trying to convince Asma you’re hip and with it, accept her point of view and offer validation and empathy.

  33. SSGranor

    Seriously got to question Asma’s opsec here. If you tell that to a cop, it’s true that they know the semantic content of your statement; but, what you’re really telling them is that you know it. Particularly if you’re saying it pretty soon after it happened, knowing about it will absolutely be interpreted as at least being connected to the protestors. In short, don’t talk to cops.

    1. Stormtide Leviathan

      Agreed- and I think Asma knows that, and Dorothy is honestly more or less right in her assessment. But I don’t think Asma particularly wants to admit that, especially with how dorothy approached saying that in this comic

  34. CT Phipps

    I really like that Asma HATES dorothy and has no problem just being objectively rude to her while Dorothy keeps trying to win her over while oblivious to the level of antipathy she has.

    1. Mitzi B.

      I don’t think Asma hates Dorothy, after all she did initiate this conversation. At the very least, she’s giving Dorothy another chance to not be weird and tokenizing at her.

  35. Kerry Ann

    I know I’m 47, but I’ve been to University. I can’t help but think if police raided the dorm rooms without warrants at a university I attended, I would be going to the registrar *that day* and dropping out. Do not pass go, do not collect tuition dollars.

  36. Cattail

    I really don’t get the “cop energy” joke about Dorothy. Like, she’s a dorky cis white gay college girl with a diverse friendgroup. The halls of my college were full of them. There are mediocrities to be expected from them, but it’s usually more “you’re into Taylor Swift” or “you’re going to be really awkward around minorities” or “you’re going to ask me to go to your troupe’s production of Our Town”.

    I dunno. I haven’t been to enough protests to know how to clock the narcs, but I don’t see it here. It’s college. A white liberal girl awkwardly asking “so wait, I just noticed bad things are happening, how do I go to protests” is the most normal thing in college. You can’t hold up a live emotional support cat without five of them scurrying up to pet it.

    I guess it’s just a running gag for Asma at this point because she noticed the joke got under Dorothy’s skin? I’m still trying to figure out Asma a little.

    1. Wack'd

      dorothy specifically had previously been extremely vocal about wanting to some day be the president of the united states, a position that implicitly identifies her as someone in favor of existing structures of state power. yes, dorothy believed she could exercise this power “the right way”, but she still wanted the power to begin with, and was constructing her whole life around obtaining it. it makes sense to me that maybe you don’t want a person like that around when you’re trying to fight said power.

      1. Cattail

        I dunno, like, maybe? I can see that; someone trying to seek elected office has to be careful about attending protests. But I didn’t get the vibe that Asma was basing her read on that. From what I remember, it was more of a cold read, right? “You give cop vibes”.

        I guess I just went to a different kind of college? Different regions. Or it’s a silly running gag I’m overthinking.

  37. HueSatLight

    Was Charlie’s residence hall ever disclosed (other than not Briscoe)? I think everyone else is in Read, Forest, or McNutt.

    Wait a sec. Did Guns Agatha’s first roommate leave IU or just change dorms? Is she going to be heavily featured in the next four books?

  38. Stormtide Leviathan

    Do we think Asma honestly thinks Dorothy’s a cop, or is just refusing to give dotty the win on account of dotty being pretty obnoxious here? I’m personally leaning the latter. I don’t think Asma ever actually thought that even, so much as made an off-hand comment because telling someone going around asking weird questions at a protest is never a good idea even if you don’t think they’re a cop, and dorothy really latched onto it

  39. rainbow-flyer

    Dotty’s trying way too hard—but that’s her whole deal. She should just leave Asma alone and take the lesson, but instead she’s spiraling trying to prove she’s not part of a broken system. No way she drops it—it’s going to eat her alive.

  40. nadamás

    Wow a strip where Dorothy is being ankward and weird and it’s not full of people telling me what a horrible person she is! The new moderation seems to be working!

  41. Tequila Mockingbird

    Y’know Dotty, even if Asma’s opinion has changed, you handed her like, the perfect setup for a burn… like, right over home plate.

  42. nadamás

    You just have to make me a liar don’t you?

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