“If spite were a woman, I’d marry it.”
“And I’d jeopardize our friendship by nailin’ your hot wife.”
“You wouldn’t have to: THREESOME”
“AW YEAH, IT’S BUSINESS TIME”
[speaking of, shit, I’m late for my wedding with XCOM 2]
Whoa! Soldiers can be captured! When a mission says “x turns until mandatory evacuation”, you better make DAMN SURE all troops get to the evac zone before then!
The amusement in thinking you had already joked about what I was going to joke about, and how you guys are decades late to XCOM 2, and realized you seemed to be referencing something in the remake game.
My estimator started by showing 5 hours of unpacking. I watched it drop as low as 55 minutes. It read 7 hours when I started writing this comment and now reads 5 hours, no 4 hours.
Watching the estimator isn’t madness. No, It’s just dynamic sanity.
Given that Ruth is plotting to avenge someone’s mildly hurt feelings quite literally over a bottle of hard liquor she’s sharing with a minor under her supervision who she’s also sexually harassing… I’m not sure her priorities are sufficiently in order for Mary not to realistically win this one. Especially since she lacks any kind of minimal good judgement that would keep her out of ‘call the police’ territory (in a more realistic setting she’d have been in jail for a while now).
Though maybe they’ll _both_ lose, and thus everyone will win.
Because it’s hard for cis people to imagine it being worse. If someone misgenders me, as a cis man, it doesn’t even hurt my feelings. I reply with a witty zinger, and win the argument because misgendering a cis person is seen as childish by most other people.
Because I’ve never been trans, and especially because I’m not only cis but I’m a cis white male, it’s difficult for me to wrap my head around just how it feels to deal with countless micro- and macro-aggressions every day, including misgendering. It’s hard for cis people like me to wrap our heads around our gender not being accepted by other people, and what that would feel like.
Just to be clear, I am not in any way defending that attitude. Ignorance is no excuse, and we cis people should be seeking out trans voices to better understand things from their perspective. I am merely explaining why it’s so hard for cis people to figure this out. Part of our cis privilege is misgendering not being a big deal.
It’s very easy for individuals who have a privileged understanding of the concept to assume it’s like a person teasing another person.
They don’t have experience about how it fits into an entire societal framework of violence and terroristic threat. How it plays into regular death threats, discrimination, genuine fear when you walk outside, and depression. How in that last one it can sear into one’s minds all one’s fears that you’ll never just be allowed to be, that other’s will always view you as a desperate fraud, all the pain of dysphoria you’ve ever swallowed. They don’t know how it feeds the staggering rate of suicide among trans individuals (31%, with over 50% of the survivors attempting at least once in their lives) or lowers our expected lifespans down into the low 30s.
They don’t know how it sits like an infected wound in your gut and ruins your whole day or week.
And sadly, often, they don’t want to know. Because that’s depressing. Because that means having to think about the suffering of a population that they have to this point had no social obligation to think about in any way. And so it can be very tempting to assume the trans community is making mountains out of molehills. Because that way nothing needs to change. That they don’t have to change.
It’s very similar in some ways to the way dudebros often dismiss harassment of POC or women online, comparing it to the time they got trash-talked once or got sent an angry flame as if that was the same thing as continuously being worn down by constant death or rape threats.
Though honestly, even among cis people, while it’s not that extreme, in some contexts, deliberately misgendering someone is insulting. The more tied to gender roles the society is, the more so. Even back in my youth, calling someone a girl was pretty much fighting words. The only way to prove you weren’t was to hit back.
Stupid of course, but I doubt it’s really changed all that much for school ages. Or for macho sub groups elsewhere.
Oh yeah, misgendering men and telling them that they might as well be women and thus be treated like women has been the main means of self-enforcement for toxic masculinity for a very long time.
And calling a woman boyish or calling her a lesbian (in a negative way) has long been a way of enforcing “proper” gender roles among women as a lot of women and those raised as if they were women can attest when they actually had trouble reading that Mary was intending transphobia at first owing to that type of role enforcement.
It doesn’t carry the same screaming impact, but it’s definitely used as that tool. I think though, a lot of people who are not used to unpacking that on a conscious level or are not aware of its specific awfulness with regards to trans people though assume that that is nonetheless “normal” and “just part of growing up” and “you just shrug it off (albeit by buying more in to the system or paying your “annual dues”)”.
Gender dysphoria is also something that’s hard for a lot of us to wrap our heads around. We’re identified at birth by our genitals, and if they happen to match our actual gender, we’re not even aware that they’re separate things.
as a cis person i’ve been hurt by misgendering, but mostly because it was coupled with glorious misogyny. because being called a guy is a compliment, or whatever.
Say whatever you will about “innocent” (meaning ignorant) misgendering. There might be some room for sympathy towards the clueless bumpkin who just doesn’t get it and so keeps putting a foot in the mouth. (Says the cis guy who tends to put his foot in his mouth because his conscious brain doesn’t catch up with the part of his brain where pronouns are stored.)
Mary went above and beyond that. (Or below and inwar– metaphor fail.) She didn’t do it because she doesn’t understand. This wasn’t ignorance, this wasn’t not getting it, this wasn’t the privelege of being able to go through life without knowing what it’s like to be a minority or to have to question your preconceptions, this wasn’t attempting to make the real world match your world view because you just assume it’s that way without thinking about it. She did it because she DID understand… at least enough to realize that this was a way to HURT Carla.
To be fair, it was a bongo-fest and both sides were carrying on asshole. But Carla was just being noisy and Mary went full evil. Huge difference in degrees.
On the other side of the Atlantic they could be happily drinking in legality. Or, miserably legally drinking (given their tendencies).
Heck, over here (varying from country to country), Billie would have been legally able to consent for years and years now. Actually, I do believe age of consent varies based on state laws in the US.
Even if you don’t get how awful misgendering is (and I suggest you read the comments, especially Cerberus’, during Carla’s part on screen, as well as some of today’s), Carla feoze in her tracks and didn’t even react until Ruth was leaving. That isn’t ‘mildly hurt,’ that’s shock, most likely accompanied with fear (for her safety on campus, for not being able to report because staff have biases, for not being able to feel at home in her hall, etc), and maybe some heartbreak for things suddenly taking such a shitty turn after a so far moderately painless semester.
You can say I infer too much, but the freezing up is on screen, completely and fairly continuously visible. That isn’t a reaction to mildly hurt feelings.
Why stop here? I feel we can minimize a lot more than just saying that blatant misgendering and transphobia are “hurt feelings”.
Like, sure, death threats sound bad, but what if we call them “strong critiques” instead. Or how about physical attacks? Not so harrowing if we call them “a light tussle”. Lynchings? Now they’re just “vigorous neck massages”.
The sky really is the limit!
(and yes, I know I’m laying the sarcasm on thick, but it’s sometimes a little disheartening the amount of people who unintentionally reinforce this notion that actions that carry so much destructive intent and damage must be “hurt feelings” or “overblown” simply because the person making this type of argument doesn’t actually understand what they’re talking about)
misgendering a transperson is an act of transphobia.
Transphobia is Violence.
you don’t have to understand that to accept it when every single transgender person says the same thing. just like how i’m not a physicist, but i still believe entropy is a thing.
Like, stop. “Violence” has an actual common meaning in people’s head. It does involve things like punching people, and it doesn’t involve words, no matter how hateful those words are. Saying that (premise) all transphobia is violence, so misgendering a trans person is an act of violence is a really poor argument.
And when poor arguments are used to fight transphobia, it just makes anti-transphobia activism look stupid/misguided/whatever by association.
But this seems to be changing, gradually going the same way “abuse” now gradually covers both the physical and verbal aspects of it.
And personally, I’ll be glad if it does. To me, words are actions. And actions has consequences. You can destroy a person’s life with the “right” words. You can get them frozen out of society, make them completely unemployable, stop their progress, harness their feelings… All of this without a single punch being laid.
And when you use words to do just this, when you use words to yank another person’s life from under them, to take away their job, their personal relationships, their self-worth, their sense of safety… How else can such an act be described, but as an act of violence?
As Marie just a couple of scrolls up in the comments remarked, Carla’s reaction was that of being gut-punched out of nowhere. Actually, it was even worse, because if she’d been punched, she could’ve fought back (and this being Carla, she might very well have). But Mary’s act of (verbal) violence was finding that weak spot that was impossible to fight back against. I know there are comments in the archives explaining exactly why this is, I could find them for you if you wish.
And I haven’t even begun talking about how repeating the same words to the right group of people is what leads to the actual punches or worse.
“How else can such an act be described, but as an act of violence?”
As an act of verbal abuse? As an act of harassment? As a an attack (of the verbal type)? There’s some rather adequate words that describe this with the appropriate gravitas. There’s no need to start equivocating actual violence with things that don’t involve physical harm. That just undermines the actual severity of the physical harm, and makes communication hard. Common people have a common understanding of what violence is, and it doesn’t involve the use of words alone.
I don’t believe that transphobia is best fought by using a weird jargon that seems deceptive. I think it’s much better to be clear and sincere, so that the people we want to sway don’t start doubting claims we make.
Yes, words are sometimes correlated with the punches, but they’re still not actually the punches. When a culture that’s been mostly bigoted through words starts being bigoted with punches, that’s a very bad sign, but it’ll be harder to convince anyone that the switch matters if the words have already been described as as severe as the punches, by terming them both violence.
First of all, re: “common people have a common understanding”. This means nothing. Common people also have a common understanding of gender as a binary determined by genitals and leading to different IQ levels, so what? That doesn’t make it true.
Second, no. “Undermines the actual severity of the physical harm” my ass. If you get punched and walk with a bruise under your eye for a couple of days, how does that compare to losing your job, your housing, most of your friends and family? Which is more ‘severe’? I say it’s not the goddamn punch. Yes, physical violence can be horrible and lead to people’s deaths; verbal violence can also be horrible and lead to people’s death, either via driving to suicide or via incitement of other people to commit physical violence.
As a wise person said, “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words cause lifelong psychological wounds that never heal”.
And let’s not pretend that there’s a separate culture that only uses words and never escalates to physical violence, that is kept from the latter by understanding that the former is much less severe (which it isn’t).
Plus there tends to be a thing among abusers and bullies where they seem to think that so long as they don’t escalate to physically assaulting you, they can say and do anything they want, because it’s “just words”.
Not to mention that physical violence can sometimes be preferable. A physical ache in your bones and bruises and scars feel visceral. They communicate things and are a lot harder to internalize as your own fault. They are also more likely to be picked up on by others as a negative action or a wrong. A black eye gets you concerned questions about your safety. A depression complex so severe you are constantly suicidally ideating gets you an admonishment to “smile more” and people naively saying you just need to ignore that sort of thing if they even notice or respond at all.
Lady, thank you very much. Or “gal”, or “girl”, or any other term that isn’t a way to refer to a male person.
“And let’s not pretend that there’s a separate culture that only uses words and never escalates to physical violence, that is kept from the latter by understanding that the former is much less severe (which it isn’t).”
I’ve not claimed that. My claim is that some bigoted cultures, as a general rule, don’t use physical violence in their bigotry. They’re not kept from using violence by the belief that it’s less severe, but by other factors. My point was to reserve the word “violence” for acts that involve actual harm, for a) clarity of communication, and b) to maintain a clear difference between acts of bigotry that involve physical harm, and the ones that don’t.
I believe that this is useful, because I see the societies that don’t allow physical violence from bigotry to happen as preferable to the ones that do; people not being beaten up for who they are is a sign of progress, and when the physical harm comes out in force it’s a sign of things getting worse. Among other things because the “choice” tends to be “physical violence and verbal harassment” versus “only verbal harassment”.
“If you get punched and walk with a bruise under your eye for a couple of days, how does that compare to losing your job, your housing, most of your friends and family?”.
With physical violence there’s also a chance of developing depression, PTSD, and the alike. The PTSD rate for being physically assaulted is actually pretty high (over 30% IIRC), and it’s the kind of thing that people can and have lost their jobs over, and have their social lives or whatever deteriorate from. Not to speak of the risk of being killed from the physical harm itself, and the risk of receiving a lasting injury.
Yeah, psychological harm from verbal abuse is pretty bad! But physical violence is also pretty bad by itself, since it causes physical and psychological harm. I don’t want to undermine the harm of verbal abuse; I wish to point out that physical abuse is that kind of thing that, in the context of transphobia and similar, is an even worse sign; it means a society that is OK with violence against trans people.
And I think that distinction is important to make.
Oh, sorry, I wasn’t meaning to imply anything about your gender. That “Dude” was more like “Wow” or “Holy shit”.
“My point was to reserve the word “violence” for acts that involve actual harm, for a) clarity of communication, and b) to maintain a clear difference between acts of bigotry that involve physical harm, and the ones that don’t.”
Okay, okay, let’s stop and look closer here.
Do you classify anxiety, invasive thoughts and fear of violence as “actual harm”? Do you classify them as “physical harm”?
(I mean, technically, brain is a physically existing thing. You could)
Do you classify suicidal ideation and suicide attempts as “actual harm”? Do you classify them as “physical harm”?
Do you classify being shunned and disowned by your family as “actual harm”? Do you classify that as “physical harm”?
Do you classify losing your job and/or housing, and not being able to find new ones, as “actual harm”? Do you classify that as “physical harm”?
(I mean, starving / dying of exposure is pretty physical)
Do you classify being denied medical help with life-threatening conditions as “actual harm”? Do you classify that as “physical harm”?
I could continue, but I hope you see my point.
If we are clarifying terms, let’s clarify them to their core, okay?
The English language isn’t always the best way to communicate clearly, but I’ll try.
OK, so, all the things you’ve mentioned are things I’ll accept as being “harm”. However, I think there’s a distinction to be made in causality here. All the things you’ve talked about are things that can happen as a consquence of verbal harassment. They’re not things that must happen as a consequence. Physical harm, injuries, meanwhile, is a consequence of violence. In the traditional sense of the term, if you visit violence upon someone, you must necessarily also have caused them physical harm.
So, perhaps a little more accurately, “My point was to reserve the word “violence” for acts that necessarily and always involve harm,”.
Violence: act that necessarily and always involves harm.
Good enough as a starting point, I agree.
Now, a punch that is thrown and misses is still a punch, yes? Because violence failed to connect on the other end, it doesn’t stop being violence.
Shall we say: what matters is intent?
Violence: actions taken with intent to do actual tangible harm.
“Violence: act that necessarily and always involves harm.”
I’m not using this as a definition; it’s more of a description of why I think it’s important to make a distinction. If I were to define “violence” in this context, it’d be something like “acts that cause or are intended to cause injury” (where ’cause’ is meant in the direct sense by which a punch causes an injury, ‘injury’ is in the medical sense of physical harm to the body, etc.).
So you keep insisting that only physical harm deserves being designated as violent, even if it’s less lasting than harm caused by words?
Also, I’m pretty sure arm twisting is generally considered violent, even though it involves no injury, just pain.
I’d define violence as pretty much any act of deliberately inflicting pain and/or injury, no matter physical or not.
And I don’t see why you would limit it to only physical when the activist circles have decided the definition I’m trying to outline here is way more useful for their goals and causes…
If I remember correctly, the pain from arm twisting is caused by the tissue damage that twisting the arm causes; the same thing that can cause bruises when arms are twisted. In any case I forgot to mention pain because trying to tie down every single aspect of a word with other words is a bit difficult.
I don’t like the way some activist circles define certain words; here “violence” apparently falls among those. It’s a perfectly common word, with a commonly understood meaning. To quote begbert below “[T]here are enough words in the language to describe horrible behavior that you don’t have to latch onto this one word and try to warp it to fit.”
This way of using what is essentially academic jargon (where common words can and often are redefined into terms of art for the purposes of discussion) in activism is something I consider a giant barrier to activism being understood. It may be useful for discussing the nature of bigotry or whatever within activist circles, but that’s a very academic concern. I don’t see the benefit it offers to activism; using a common word in an uncommon way is a barrier to effective communication.
Eukie,
I phrase this as articulately as I can. Language is a mutable ever-changing slurry of new words and syntax, as well as archaicized words and syntax that all overlap, mingle, and contradict each other. English is especially guilty of this, as it has through out the near fifteen centuries it has been around, been both conquered and conqueror.
Words change in both denotation, the official meaning of the word as written by ‘experts’ (I have a great deal of respect for some of them but most just drag their feet as a way of “not taking a side” and by doing so side with the conservatives anyway), and connotation, which is the hidden or symbolic meaning of words that aren’t necessarily written anywhere.
There are many who resist this constant ebb and flow of meaning, as you right now are doing by arguing that “Violence” is purely physical in denotation and connotation. And a– let me call them linguistic generations– linguistic generation or two ago, you would have proved correct. BUT that is no longer the case: “Violence” has in connotation (which is the more important one) come to mean an act of harm in any nature of the word “harm,” and not simply its physical variation.
There is proof in this the language you use to advocate for the distinction. You used the phrase “Physical Violence” a number of times. This phrase is a phenomenon refered to by linguists as a retronym. This occurs when some change, such as an inovation, discovery, historic event, and/or political-cultural movement, cause an old word to encompass more in its meaning than it once did; to then clarify meanings the old word is demarcated into subcatigories, which are then tagged with words that distinguish one type from another (“manual transmittion” and “automatic transmittion” are examples of this outside our argument as proof of real-life applicability).
Inside the argument– “Violence” has come to encompass more than harm in the physical sense and as such, “Physical Violence” is now said to be distinguish it from “Verbal Violence,” “Sexual Violence,” and “Mental Violence.”
And sometimes a distinction between them is required– for the sake of explaining what happened or when there are two or more types present– but discussing this matter requires no such distinction because there are not two types of violence here: There is only “Verbal Violence” (though some would argue mental violence is present as well, in which case distinction might be required, but between only those two) and as such the purpose distinguishing between physical and verbal violence serves is less than null.
Let me provide a metaphor as means of further elaboration: You likely had the teacher that said “I don’t know can you?” in an effort to goad the word “may” as a replacement in the statement “can I go to the restroom?”. You’re drawing attention to an equally padantic (in this case) distinction between “Physical Violence” and “Verbal Violence” which just like that teacher, is wasting valuble time which could be better served running to the restroom because you need to FUCKING PISS; or returning from the metaphor, help stop transphobia and bigotry in general.
And that is why you should reevaluate your beliefs on this subject; put into sophiticated words– which hold no ambiguity.
In this case, it WAS violent. Mary had no idea what kind of responses might have come out her putting Carla in a public place and outing her. In fact, from her gleefulness I expect she would encourage Carla being ‘put in her place’ which is ABHORRENT and yes, VIOLENT.
I think there’s a rather large gap between “actions that cause physical harm to the body” (which is how I use the term violent), and “actions that might cause someone else, if they were so inclined, to cause physical harm to Carla”.
I categorically refuse to warp the language in this manner. Violence is physical. And seriously, there are enough words in the language to describe horrible behavior that you don’t have to latch onto this one word and try to warp it to fit.
I’m not at all sure what Mary was up to, other than being a jerkass and a drum, and don’t care to speculate.
I also respectfully decline from sliding adjectives around like that. Just because a person might be using words in service of noise doesn’t mean you can describe the words themselves as being noisy when I whisper, “Wait until he gets closer before hitting him with the klaxon.”
I’m perfectly willing to accept a definition of violence that only includes, to grab a random dictionary definition “behavior involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something.”
As long as you’re willing to accept that some non-violent actions can be worse than some violent actions. Outing someone in a bad situation can ruin their life and be worse than all but the most extreme violence.
Was this really necessary? What do you even get out of pretending transphobia doesn’t exist? Do you just enjoy being called a hateful bigot? 3K+ comments later and you really think we all need to have this discussion again?
It’s both. The focus of the strip is on spiting and beating Mary, but that’s to the end of not putting Carla and the rest of the queer ladies in the dorm under risk of getting Mary’s shit.
Yeah, this has every risk to backfire in a lot of collateral damage – Mary is good at spite too – and it keeps the official channels to deal with these things firmly closed.
Like it’s already been said. It’s both. Ruth is very good at using spite as a motivator for her thankless job. Whether Ruth is a good RA or not ruling by fear, within the rules, is how she keeps the systems in line.
Spite can sometimes give you the power to conquer fear and just pull the cord on something scary, especially when dealing with an abuser or someone exploiting power over you.
Spite was what gave me the endurance to survive high school. I think it gets a bad rap – as long as you use it for good, I don’t have a problem with it (mind you, I’m biased, as I think spite quite literally kept me alive for the better part of 6 years, so.).
And so like a responsible adult, Ruth went to her bosses and reported Mary for committing a hate crime. She lost her job due to her abuse of power and violation of the rules she was supposed to enforce, but found solace in doing the right thing as she and Billie decided to make an effort towards sobriety again.
Smarting of Age revolves around a bunch of other students in another dorm. It’s kind of dull because they all like each other, all come from happy backgrounds, and everything goes right for them all the time.
Honestly, that wouldn’t be a terrible idea. Mary has very little proof of anything that we know about.
Becky is gone for the weekend, so they aren’t going to find her, we’ve seen that the other girls on the floor have her back and so will deny seeing her if asked, and if Billie can quickly remove any evidence of her new living arrangements (Sal won’t squeal to an authority figure), then Mary has nothing.
And Mary was dumb enough to commit her hate crime in front of an RA, one who the people in charge allegedly like and will listen to because she keeps things in order. An RA in good standing’s word vs. an uppity freshman with no evidence and no one willing to back up her claims.
It’d be a great idea… that will probably not happen while they will probably focus on simply escalating to finding their own blackmail material on Mary to exploit.
Hm i wonder:
Will the responsible authorities actually be available at the weekend?
To me it feels more that they have to wait for monday if they want to go that route.
If they’re willing to escalate sufficiently, yes. The university is open, students are in residence, if something goes pear-shaped and needs to be dealt with there have to be people available to deal with it.
If it’s presented as a minor complaint, it’ll be pushed off and dealt with later.
Fffffffft. Ruth goes to her bosses after taking Mary, and there’s no worries.
Three days later she goes back to them for a talk along the lines of, “That wacky idea that lunatic had about me and Billie? We found it hilarious, and then even more hilarious, and then the craziest thing ever, and then we realised we were about to fall into each others’ arms. Would it be okay to transfer her to another floor so we don’t cross any lines? So weird though, being brought together by that psycho like this. Guess that loon musta had a prophetic gift or something. Wonder if it’ll help her find her femurs?”
The difficulty of that one is that literally everyone who’s ever been within 100 yards of the dorm with a functioning set of eyes is a witness to both Ruth’s drinking and her sexual harassment bit.
Two witnesses for Mary’s rudeness (not a hate crime, a hate crime has to be associated with an actual crime), probably around two _hundred_ for Ruth’s actual felonies and general negligence. For bonus points, the only witness to the actual line-crossing bit, the blackmail, is the negligent alcoholic desperate to keep a job she’s not actually doing while essentially drawing a fraudulent paycheck.
Normally there’s a level of “why the hell would anyone make that decision?” in DoA character arcs, but in this case Willis has done an excellent job of it making not going to the authorities the actual rational choice for the character involved. Ruth couldn’t even get people to lie to cover for her on the drunken negligence thing, because not only is it entirely true but she’s gone out of her way to alienate the students on her hall in every way.
I mean, owning up to her failures would be the honorable path, but if she was being honorable she’d have quit the job she clearly can’t do already, regardless of blackmail, because she clearly can’t do it. So that doesn’t apply either.
It’s a really well-set-up no-win situation, the Dumbing part is probably going to be her doubling down and making it worse. Thus, entertainment value.
As far as I know, no one other than Billie has any idea about Ruth’s drinking. No one’s commented on it. No one’s directly seen anything. Even Mary didn’t mention drinking in her little blackmail speech.
Nor does anyone else no anything about sexual harassment. Billie mentioned it to Daisy after the kiss/sexual assault, but it never went anywhere.
They do all know about Ruth’s general threats and her and Billie’s fights, which are now staged to cover up the affair.
The residents wouldn’t lie to cover for Ruth, but given the accusations Mary’s bringing, they’ll lie to protect Becky and they’ll tell what they think is the truth about Billie.
Yup. It’s very likely if they asked it’d be “Ruth and Billie, dating? Nah, they hate each other. They’re fighting literally all the time. What, someone besides us living on the floor? Noooooo… can’t say I’ve seen that.”
Also, I highly suspect the people on Ruth’s floor think fairly highly of her.
They have her down as a “dragon lady” with the rules, but she hasn’t made a habit of unprovoked violence, has been protective of her charges and is genuinely helpful to everyone except Billie.
The one example of violence against anyone other than Billie (besides slapping Mary, and no one is going to care about that) is from so far back in the series that the characterization may no longer be valid. It certainly doesn’t fit with what David showed later.
Personally I think they see her more like a tyrant but I hope you are right. After her – ah – discussion with Blaine I think most of the people of the floor started to think more highly about her.
I reeaaaallly don’t see that happening. Like at all. I’m pretty sure the rest of the dorm would stand up for Carla, definitely, but Ruth? Why would they want to? Ruth’s a jerk who yells and beats up Billie. She barges into quiet dorm parties unannounced and keeps yelling about how she wants to tear out our femurs.
Also the cliché would be so bad I might actually die.
Uh, no? At least not to my recollection. They basically just stand there with their mouths agape because the RA is tossing one of the students around.
Well, Mandy an Grace think they’re banging.
Anyway let’s not try to enforce the garbage idea that Billie “provoked” Ruth, or that if she did than that would somehow entitle Ruth to beat the shit out of her.
Well, at this point it wouldn’t be too surprising to think Billie’s provoking it, since they’re deliberately staging the fights to keep people thinking they’re enemies (and because it turns them on.)
The original abuse, certainly not.
Plus, she’s been nice to non-Billie members of the hall. There was a comic that was just her standing in the hall giving good friendly advice to everyone and helping out with stuff… up until she saw Billie and then it was verbal abuse.
So yeah, they probably see her as scary and terrifying but overall pretty awesome and besides she helped me with that fight I was having with my roommate and so on…
True. Contrast that with the male RA whose initial meeting was apparently “Consent. Yadda yadda yadda. Trek Marathon’s on. Bye.”
Or frankly, any RA I had in college. At least they see Ruth.
The real issue with going to the “bosses” about Mary’s hate speech is that the bosses would, maybe, call Mary in, tell her it is unacceptable and call that an end to the matter.
Anything more would require them to put their students sense of safety above money.
That’s definitely true. The GLBT Student Support Services might care more, but the faceless “bosses” from downstairs would probably not bother with more than a half-hearted “warning” until the 4th or 5th complaint about it… at which point they’d probably just shift Carla or Mary to a different dorm or if they’re especially incompetent, “suggest” to Carla that it should be time that she looks into off-campus housing, you know, independently, and not at all because this would allow us to “solve” the problem by not actually doing jack all.
I… *really* don’t want that to be Carla’s story. Or anyone’s.
I know (and appreciate!) that Willis works with real-world tropes so’s he can give us laughs/feels/hurts over things that happen out here in the ugly, but there’s two things that give me hope here: (a) homelessness is already a plot point twice over, and is visible as an issue to a significant number of the characters (via Leslie and via Becky), and (b) any authority is already set up to be lawsuit-twitchy via Russ.
ie, “Do we toss this skatemangled nuisance out and get on with our lives (yay!), or do we need to keep in mind that apparent friendship with problem-who-was-shot-at-and-kidnapped-who-shouldn’t-even-be-ours might mean papers and lawsuit lawsuit lawsuit? Aw shit.”
… three things. (c) Ruth and the Rule of Funny. Dammit Willis, in the middle of the peak of all that drama you gave us “… punched him so hard he landed in a pile of cops two floors up.” You’re gonna do the impossible and give us something that internet-winningly-magnificant again, aren’t you?
(on the more serious side of that read: Carol. I suspect the storylines we’re really seeing play out are Joyce vs Carol over Becky, and Ruth vs Mary over Carla, with any higher-level authorities happening out-of-picture. then again: Becky needs somewhere permanent to live…)
It’s not everything, but sometimes it can really keep your feet moving when you desperately need them to. Wanting to spite those who want to exploit your collapse can be really good motivation for staying on all the balls needed not to.
This is actually literally true for me. Among my constellation of health problems is a tendency for my blood pressure to drop and stay too low. Very frequently, when I’ve got a good hate going, I physically feel better. 🙂
I mean starting out this relationship was a horrible trainwreck of abuse and mutual self-destruction but it’s actually growing into something borderline functional.
This is the sweetest thing I’ve seen all week, and the screwed-up circumstances surrounding it only make it sweeter somehow. They are joined in both love AND hate!
Hell yeah, time to wipe that smug grin right off of Mary’s face.
Bigoted brat thinks she’s got all the cards, but Ruth’s about to walk up to her and knock those cards right out of her hand. And then take her femurs for good measure.
Excellent, I’d have been disappointed if it had been that short and with that little suffering to feast on. I may /want/ a happy ending, but I /expect/ to receive at least sustenance.
Also, so glad Ruth and Billie kept this part of Willis.
It’s a complex thing. Spite is a bad thing, in a lot of circumstances. But sometimes, when you’re on the ropes, it can be the only thing that keeps you going. I wish that wasn’t true. But I’d also be lying if I said it hasn’t at one point saved me from the raggedy edge.
I was writing a response to this, and I had to pause in my writing of it to consider a few things. The summary is that I have to start by saying I get where you’re coming from. I don’t think many people get through life without, at least once, having just one little thread to hang onto which can keep you from falling into darkness. If that little thread is spite, we can call it a necessary evil. I can’t begrudge people what it might take to get them through to another sunrise.
What I was going to add after that was that my comment wasn’t aimed at Ruth and Billie, but at the audience. There’s a lot of people here gleefully clapping their hands with giddy excitement at the idea of Ruth and Billie hurting Mary somehow. Not showing her the error of her ways, not shaping up to be better, but inflicting misery on another human being for the sake of taking pleasure in causing that misery.
That was what I was GOING to say, at least. Then I considered that there are probably more than a few people in the audience who’ve had experiences like this; who have probably desperately wanted revenge and not been able to get it in the way fantasy so often lets us enjoy. Revenge might not be justice but it can feel an awful lot like it, and revenge fantasies really do feel good. That certainly might make the spite more understandable.
That doesn’t make me any more comfortable with it, though. I’m not comfortable with wishing misery on someone. I’m not comfortable talking about people “deserving” destructive behaviour aimed at them. Call that a removed or privileged perspective if you will, you wouldn’t exactly be wrong; I’m not trans. I don’t think that invalidates my concerns, though.
So, yeah. Guess that’s a lot of saying nothing, but a complex issue, as you say, doesn’t have an easy summary.
I can see that. And I can see being perturbed by people wanting to wish Mary physical harm. And I don’t think that empathy is necessarily a function of privilege.
Desires for revenge can stoke fires, but at a large volume can probably feel unsafe and I respect that.
Honestly, my own experiences with spite, I didn’t so much want to physically injure the person I needed to spite. I just needed to not let them win over me and put me in a really unsafe place. And holding on to that gave me what I needed to get through the hardest months of it all.
For me, I never wished harm to people. Spite was more of a “Fuck you, I’m not gonna give you the satisfaction” thing. People at the time were quite literally, and in so many words, trying to bully me into suicide. Spite kept me alive. Not hope, not “it gets better,” not anything like that. Spite.
So, yeah. I think people who’ve never been in a systematically unwinnable with their current resources situation (like Ruth and Billie right now or like Carla earlier), where society itself is stacked against you because you’re marginalized in some way, don’t understand how necessary spite can be to having the will to carry on even though everything is terrible and hopeless.
i am personally hoping for Carla to pull a lot of pranks. cream pie to the face? sure. drawing a satanic circle on her door in the middle of the night? go for it. dump her in the Amazon? sounds cool. we haven’t seen Carla do pranks yet, and i want that.
Yup. It’s like… “I don’t see an endpoint to this, everything is awful, but Bob damn I’m not giving X the satisfaction of engineering my downfall.”
And to altalemur-
I would love to see Carla escalate the prank war as her means of gaining power back, but I would not at all blame her if she decided to just avoid Mary to avoid getting hit hard with intentional transphobia every time she interacts with her. I mean, it’s one thing to goad a bigot. It’s another to goad a bigot knowing there is very likely a chance that they’ll do direct harm to you and get away with it.
… Well, to clarify: I fantasized about causing harm to the worst of them. However, consistently when I had the opportunity in a very-low-chance-of-this-coming-back-on-me-and-most-people-would-encourage-me-to-act-shitty situation, I opted to not be shitty. I did do some Carla-style pranks to be a thorn in their side, but nothing actually serious and nothing that would damage property or hurt people.
And, when some of them have come to me to apologize for what little shits they were in school, I’ve bit back the angry tirade I spent the better part of my schooling crafting, and told them to learn from it and not let anyone or anything make them be so cruel to another person ever again.
Not gonna lie: I wanted to use the angry tirade. But when it comes down to it, I am not someone who takes joy or comfort in hurting people. So I didn’t.
The level to which people in the comments for DoA comics wish misfortune on the various characters for various reasons leaves me somewhat uncomfortable at times. Sometimes jokes about beating people to death with their own femurs can be fun (because of the inherent ridiculousness of such over-the-top violence), but other times it feels like people are airing their revenge-fantasies and I’m witness to people getting really, really aggressive over fictional characters.
And I’m not necessarily sure that working up such a level of rage and bloodlust over fictional characters is healthy.
Similarly, I kind hoped for a conclusion of people coming to rational decisions and working out their problems in a mature and reasonable manner. “Hey, I’m trying to study here, and all that noise is extremely distracting.” “Oh, sorry about that, I’ll go skate outside.” “Thanks, I appreciate it!” instead of ‘gleefully throwing transphobic slurs’ and ‘escalating prank wars as a means of gaining power back’. But then, as someone said above, this is “Dumbing of Age” and not “Young Adults Behave Maturely In A Collegiate Setting”. If the drama didnt exist, this comic wouldn’t be nearly as interesting.
I’m OK with DoA’s cast doing stupid things for my entertainment because they’re fictional characters in a fictional world, incapable of causing any actual suffering.
I’m slightly less comfortable with the way in which some number of DoA readers, all of whom I believe are real people in the real world, seem to be really invested in the right way for things to go being the ways that involve violence and retribution.
actually though if the trip home doesnt turn out to be a total disaster maybe becky could stay with joyces family until she can register for the next semester
Almost certainly not. If that were the case then Becky would be out of the cast for years, unless we got a timeskip.
If Becky eventually gets found out, then I think she might end up living with Marcie. It being established that Marcie isn’t a student and works long hours is too clean for it not to be setting up for something.
Must have been that guy he said about in the twitter feed a couple of minutes back. It’s his duty to keep this comment section assholeproof.(and not a very pleasant one)
Do I want to know? I probably don’t want to know. I kinda want to know. I probably shouldn’t though. I can guess though. Carla was briefly mentioned last comic, so I’m going to guess some variation of “I’m way too cis to see why transphobia is a big deal and besides, Carla was loud in the halls and thus deserves death”. Did I guess right?
Your experienced imagination is probably thinking of viler stuff than the Original Poster said. OP was very clueless, but hey, no calls for death to anyone, yay?
Repeating the post in its entirely would defeat the purpose of deleting it. Suffice to say, OP didn’t seem to understand that hate-speech is not the same as regular hurtful words. They blamed Carla for everything, including skating at Mary to annoy her. Most bizarrely, they asserted that society forgives trans people because they’re trans (lolwut). They probably said other strange and/or potentially-triggery stuff, but I’ve forgotten it and I’m OK with that. I’ma go fill that brainspace with sweet dinosaur facts.
Well, Ruth said in front of a witness that she was turning away when someone gave Mary what was coming. And boy does Mary have it coming. The only good thing that could (hopefully) come out of that confrontation is that Ruth and Billie may end up redirecting their destructive energy elsewhere and maybe end the self-destruction.
Hooray for spite. And not just any spite, but karmic laser guided spite against a bigot at that. The best kind of spite, as it very nearly borders on principled stand.
Yeah, Ruth conjures some really complicated feelings for me. On the one hand, I have a hard time looking past the origins of the relationship and how textbook abusive and stalkery it got at times, but on the other… they have these flashes of really awesome potential that I’m super invested in and I feel happy for them when they can pull through their shit and reach out all earnestly like this. And so I find myself rooting for Ruth and Billie even though there are so many internal issues, including Ruth’s tendency to default to tearing Billie down in order to push her away.
So what I’m saying is, Ruth and Billie confuse the fuck out of me in a… good? way? I guess?
i think the best way to think of it is that neither Ruth nor Billie are bad people…they just make some really bad decisions.
I genuinely hope they don’t crash and burn like everyone expects them to, but instead grow together into more healthy, well-balanced adults. Because after so many narratives where queerness results in tragedy, I think we’ve all earned that.
I like Ruth pretty much exclusively under Billie’s influence. Ruth on her own is kinda a terrible person. Like I categorically disapprove of how their relationship was started or a lot of it’s more codependent and self destructive aspects but it seems like it’s actually developing into something supportive, and dare I say it, almost functional.
“but we should give you a pass to do what you want because your trans? I mean that’s the way society is acting”
Buddy, you do know that in the US, 1 in 12 trans women deaths are caused by murder? That 72% of the time, hate crime murder victims are trans women? Society does not let trans people do what they want, society kills them.
Plus, Mary did more than say “hateful words”. Like if she just told Carla to go fuck herself or something, she would be totally in the right, Carla was being an ass. But she brought up the fact that Carla was trans to bring her down and, sorry, but if you feel the need to bring up someone’s gender identity, sexual orientation, race, disability etc etc etc to get back at them, you’re a bigot and a horrible person.
Like, usually we’re silly together. Sometimes we have thoughtful disagreements about how we interpret characters, or heartfelt posts where people respectfully debate stuff based on their life experiences, and that’s all cool. But, if you want to make tired arguments that will definitely feel like a punch to the gut of another reader, then you can go pretty much anywhere else on the whole internet. I think that’s spiffy.
Totes. It very much encourages the type of comment section for comics that actually feels safe and positive to comment on… which is not often the case, even for nominally queer-positive comics. So yeah, very grateful for all his hard work to keep it that way and piss off all the douchelords of the internet.
And I mean, I’m pretty sure the latter is a quote from alt-text of the actual comic strip and not just from the comment section, so
this is the sort of place I sometimes just need to breathe in and take a break from in order to not physically destroy surroundings
I skimmed through all of the Ross tagged strips. You may be thinking of hi-2 where the alt-text is “how’d they even find his neck to put a brace on it”. And there is much neck-related discussion in the comments.
Yes, thank you. I did remember there was something like that in the alt-text, and that at some point the joke about ‘giving out necks’ was made >_< The Ross-centered strips were the worst, and I did not want to dig through there to find exact quotes.
I mean… "Toedad". Clearly the thing we want to focus on and make into a nickname for this murderously abusive bigot is his body shape! That's hilarious! He's fat! Hahaha!
The ‘handing out necks’ joke is not a musclephobic one.
But yeah, point taken. I’ll just keep on keeping quiet and saving up reserves of indifference for going in the comments here, just as I did until now. Woo issues you are already paying attention to, everything else is just setting expectations too high.
Interesting. I never read Ross’s shape that way — I thought he was stocky and very muscular, sort of a “chin-less jock”, like this guy: http://i.imgur.com/KyK6sYK.jpg
All the characters are stylized, though, so YMMV.
The comments sure read differently if I come from the interpretation that Ross is fat instead of muscular and/or stylized. (Personally, I thought that ‘toe-dad’ was a hyperbole based on how he was drawn — I’m sorry I said it now that I know people might identify with his shape!)
Do you interpret any other characters as fatter-than-average? If so, do you think they are presented as appealing, unappealing, or neither?
I totally read him like Leorale too. Kind of the looming stocky build that makes his threats all the more terrifying. I guess it’s cause his actual stomach area is thinner than his chest and that’s not usually the case if you’re fat like I am.
Hey! One of my favourite wrestlers! That’s a bit younger Bryan Danielson, probably from after he transitioned from Ring of Honour to WWE, but before he grew the beard. Back when he was still finding his feet within the company.
Oh my fucking lord? Seriously? Some dickweasel actually tried to argue that being trans is some fucking “get out of jail free” card? Fuckkkkk…
Yeahhhhhh, anyone who believes that is welcome to trade lives with me for a single day. I look forward to how awesome that “free pass” works out for them.
I hate it when people act like being asked to not be a gaping bigoted asshole is some massive imposition on their rights and like this huge societal advantage being given to marginalized groups. It just belies a degree of self-absorption that borders on psychopathy.
Anybody else’s school have that tradition where once in a while the cheerleaders and football players trade uniforms and the guys cheer while the girls run the pigskin around? Can’t remember what they call that variant.
thinking about it, Mary is really bad at blackmail. She has this big piece of dirt on her R.A….and she wastes it through using slurs?! Fuck that noise. Why isn’t she going “Ruth, no one else has to know about your little arrangement, for just a few dollars a week” If your going to be evil, at least be smart about it.
I’m sick of people not realizing their evil. I want someone to be like…fuck it, I’m evil, mwahahahaha! And start robbing banks while leaving riddles or some shit.
Yes, that Joker. Heath Ledger’s (may he rest in peace) Joker. I’m really unsure how to feel about Jared Leto’s Joker, that grill just throws me off every time, makes his teeth look nasty when he laughs.
Well, you’ve got to realize that Mary thinks she’s on the right side. Blackmailing for money would make it obvious, even to Mary, that she’s the bad guy, here.
It’s easy to hate Mary, because of how horrible she is. But, remember that the worst part about her is that she thinks she’s the good guy.
The hell planet are you from? People doing heinous things while thinking they’re justified is the norm on Earth. It doesn’t make them ‘easier to change’, it makes you a bad person for saying they weren’t justified. Of course they’re Good People.
You come up with a different solution to deal with bigots. Cause lets face it, attempting to educate is the only real option we have. Every other possibility goes way beyond my moral code. We can’t force people to act the way we want. (Well, not at a governmental level anyway) and I’m not interested in controlling people.
Uh, yes, we can force at least some small minimums of decency at the governmental level.
But more to the point, what did I say that sounded like “we can’t educate them”. I said that them thinking they’re good doesn’t make them easier to change.
I think the insidious part that many might overlook is that what people might consider the egregious violation on Mary’s part (the slur) isn’t really where Mary’s focus in all this would be. It isn’t even on her radar. For her, it’s just another insult, even if it’s one that cuts deep. That’s why, for Mary, she’d be the aggrieved party: Carla deliberately antagonized her, Ruth has been abusive, so why treat them any differently than she feels they’ve treated her?
Anyone who has much empathy for trans people will realize that what Mary said was crossing a line, but it’s a line that doesn’t even exist in Mary’s head.
That’s why the blackmail wasn’t used before: Mary wasn’t looking just to hurt or manipulate for their own sake. This was a response.
I don’t buy that. That line doesn’t exist in Mary’s head because to her it’s just simple and obvious truth.
The whole trans thing is just a perversion. Carla’s a boy pretending to be a girl and just belongs in the boy’s dorm. Sure, she only says it to hurt and because she’s angry, but it’s also tied into why she’s angry.
Now, she doesn’t actually explain her full reasoning and say all that, but since in her blackmail bit, she’s all about the “pervert vagrant” and Ruth “defiling” Billie, it’s pretty obvious where she’s coming from and it’s not the reasonable attitude that a lot of us have here that Ruth has some serious ethical issues.
She’d also been saving that blackmail until she needed it. Which, even though she didn’t expect Ruth to walk up right then, probably made her feel freer to attack Carla.
Yup, she’s a “good person” in her head. One of the few of God’s chosen who follows Him in the “right way”. She’s not going to use this information for money, because that would be blackmail. But using this to allow her greater freedom in “cleaning up” the dorm and its “undesirable sinful elements”? That’s just doing the Lord’s work. And Carla is a great microcosm for all that, because people like Mary don’t see people like Carla as who they are, but rather the ultra mega upgrade version of queer. And so, taking on the “queerest one of them all” and getting away with it by throwing another queer under the bus and blackmailing a third is like “wow, the Lord sure is shining down on me today”.
Hell, it’s probably her most favored outcome outside of maybe somehow doing something terribly awful to Roz.
To be honest, I’ve not gotten this feeling from her. I don’t really see Mary’s bigotry here as being religiously motivated (which isn’t to say that it’s not definitely religiously inspired, just that she doesn’t feel that God’s telling her “Go widdle in all these peoples’ chips!”). She hasn’t even really sought out her targets; she reacted, rather than incited.
Maybe that’ll change now that she feels immune, but I don’t really expect it to. She could’ve used this at any time and didn’t. There’s a real chance Mary might just be a student genuinely interested in her academics who wants some peace and quiet.
Oh, I’m sure the religion is the excuse for the sneering superiority complex and the bigotry. But it’s a convenient excuse for her and if she can use that to look down on others, especially those who are “wrong” by being queer and “punish them”, then all the better.
But I fully believe the “punishment” is part of the point. She’s held on to this blackmail material on Ruth for awhile, waiting for an opportunity to play her hand. Similarly, she escalated the situation with Carla (which began with her not being all that loud (seriously, skates on carpet is not even remotely close to a legitimate distraction)) way beyond reason very quickly and given her casual transphobia later it’s very hard to believe that Carla’s trans status was not central to why she took it to such extremes so fast.
And then she actively drew out her little transphobic bullshit, setting it up and smugly gloating over it. She was definitely looking for an excuse to play a hand like this and is pleased to play it far beyond any idea of just “wanting the problem to go away”. And that is really hammered home when we look at her following comics there where she notes “Ruth’s sins” which is all centered around queerness, the queerness of Ruth, the transness of Carla, the homeless queerness of Becky. And she highlights the queer aspects on purpose because that’s clearly what bothers her the most.
And once she has got her little victory over Ruth, she gloats at Carla, asking her if she has anything to say and then laughing about it, gloating that “she finally likes how Ruth is running things” now that she’s allowed to be transphobic and homophobic without rebuke.
She’s not interested in peace and quiet. She’s interested in making the hall an unsafe space for queer students. Now whether that is because her religion has poisoned her into that hate or whether her religion allows a means of disguising her hate is up to debate but also immaterial and irrelevant.
At the end of the day, all her chosen targets are queer. She’s sought them out and gloated about her power over them and likes looking down on and “punishing” them and most importantly winning over them.
Yup. All this time when we have seen Mary smiling and making snide remarks, she has been plotting and preparing for this. This is Mary’s move to make life worse for all the “sinners” on her floor.
Meanwhile, Joyce nudged Ethan to the queer meeting, risked everything including her immortal soul to help Becky and smiled fondly at Becky’s and Dina’s smooching. You know, just for comparison.
Letting Billie know that she knows about her relationship with Ruth by passive-aggressively talking about how being gay is a sin in the Bible:http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-5/01-when-somebody-loved-me/dvr/ (bonus points here for causing distress to a third party as well as getting in a dig at how Billie couldn’t possibly be considered Christian because of her sexuality)
Thinking she’s ruined Carla’s fun by laying down in the hallway: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/02-that-perfect-girl/allowed/ (and yes, it’s about winning over Carla there. Look at her smile, that’s not, yay peace and quiet. That’s a smile reveling in this causing inconvenience and “winning” over Carla)
Literally, like I scoured all of Mary’s appearances. She only seems to smile under these conditions of “getting one over” on a queer person or after a big dump of bigotry.
And that’s more of a shit-eating liar’s grin than a genuine full-lipped “I’m enjoying this” sort of thing like she has in all the others. So yeah, only times she shows joy in the comic so far is when she’s hurting or threatening or thinking she’s “winning” over a queer person.
Hah, yeah. Goofus revels in his power over marginalized individuals. Gallant is forced to examine the system that benefits him, and decries it! Goofus puts glue in his hallmate’s skates. Gallant wants to buy his friend a nice scarf.
I have to disagree with a lot of what you’ve said. I think there’s a lot of unwarranted extrapolation going on that, hey, might be right, but I don’t think it’s there.
I had a reasonably long response written up, but I think I’d hone my point to two things you said in the last paragraph: That Mary sought them out, and that her chosen targets were queer.
On the latter point, I think there’s a selection bias going on here. The conflict with Carla was instigated by Carla. You can argue Mary escalated it (and you’d be right), but she didn’t choose Carla, Carla chose her. Ruth, meanwhile, is the RA and, hence, the person she’d have to interact with in regards to her blackmail. They could both be cishet and it wouldn’t change the fact that Carla was the one who interrupted her studying or that Ruth is the RA she’d have to tangle with.
I’d also point out that DoA has a rate of queer characters far in excess of the most generous estimates of the rates of prevalence in the US population. Of the student body, we have, what, five male characters, one of whom is gay and one of whom is at least bicurious? And of the female cast, we have at least seven queer characters (Ruth, Billie, their teacher, Carla, Becky, the newspaper editor, Dina maybe… I suck with names, I’m afraid), and I might even be forgetting some. If Mary got into a fight with a female character purely by random chance, the odds would quite possibly be 50/50 or even higher in favour of getting in fight with a queer character than not.
And that all ties into the first bone as well: Mary didn’t pick a fight with Carla, Carla picked one with her. You can argue about a “legitimate distraction”, but there’s so many factors that it’s irrelevant. It was clearly sufficient to upset Mary, and she asked Carla if she’d go skate outside. Carla, rather than be polite and go skate outside, flipped her the metaphorical bird. Did Mary escalate it? Yep. But Carla instigated it. Ergo, she can hardly be said to have sought Carla out. Ruth, meanwhile, is the RA, and arrived to the conflict of her own accord. Mary responded to Ruth, rather than seeking her out.
Mary’s definitely a bigot, but she’s not a hand-wringing villain looking to cause as much misery as possible; she’s a smirking git who was gloating about being able to take revenge without reprisal. If she wanted to hurt people, she could easily just have gone to the university admin office and anonymously reported Becky’s presence or Ruth and Billie’s relationship, but she didn’t.
I’m not saying she isn’t awful or a bigot here. Just that I don’t think she’s the kind of bigot you seem to be saying she is.
I think Mary DOES target queers, and she does it for two reasons: They are acceptable targets in her view, and she can easily gain power over them. Just look how Ruth backed off when Mary pulled out the homophobic slurs.
As for why she didn’t report Becky, Ruth and Billie, that’s not the point. She doesn’t want them to STOP, she want them to SUFFER. She wants them to stay here where she has power over them. She is a first class bully and unfortunately good at what she does. (besides the point and allegedly, so is Billie, which is why I really fear the way this is going).
Yeah, that’s the other thing of it. Targeting queer youth is a proud bully pastime that is usually seen, especially in high school, as a totally legit activity that is frequently overlooked. And that’s the thing, if you target people with less social power, society tends to not react as harshly to it.
I have the horrible feeling that to Mary, targeting queer youth isn’t just legit, it’s necessary. Tribe she grew up in…
I suspect the not-reporting is tied up with the related martyr complex: the whole university is set up to allow them to carry on as they are. Deviants everywhere. Ruth the TA. Leslie the lecturer. Roz is allowed to get away with anything! Who knows where it ends? So it’s all up to her.
Compare with Joyce and Hank (and note that their subset of the tribe spawned/encouraged/sheltered Russ McIntyre), who are both certainly capable of total cockups (eg: Joyce’s date-the-gay-away plan), but are working on making sure love’s guiding all their actions. Gonna be a fun weekend with Carol, yessireebob…
Having met a lot of Mary types growing up, I very much agree with everything you said. In fact, the more privileged White Christian a bigot is, the more critically important that faux-martyrdom becomes. Oh woe is me, I’m being oppressed and mistreated because all these rule-breakers and sinners are allowed to get away with everything while poor me gets called out or corrected if I just make an “innocent statement” (about the inferiority of another group of people). It’s soooooo unfair.
Sure, statistical wibble wobble, but at the end of the day, her chosen targets are 4 queer women. Ruth, Billie, Carla, and Becky. And that’s rather telling because she shares a room with Roz. Roz, whom she hates. Hates so much she death glared at her elementary-school sister simply for being from the same family and thus tainted by Roz’s “sin” in her eyes. But Roz isn’t on her list. There’s nothing about Roz’s attempt to use a school dorm room to film a porno (she doesn’t know that this was resolved in her Gender Studies class because she doesn’t attend that class) or anything else.
And she does so in ways that double-down on the homophobia underpinning it. Ruth is not in an inappropriate relationship with a student in her complaint. She’s “defiling the cheerleader”. Becky is not illegally living in the dorms against floor rules in her complaint. She’s a “perverted vagrant”.
And in the previous comic where she lays that heavy transphobia down on Carla (which there’s no excuse for, I don’t care if Carla was sneaking into her room to blast Cannibal Corpse at full volume, you don’t do what she did. Period), she follows up her initial intentional misgendering with “where you belong”. And the word “belong” is darkened because that’s the word she emphasized.
In every case, it is not “happenstance” that she just so happened to tangle with queer women. She sees their queerness and their transness as reasons above and beyond everything else. The things worth emphasizing when she’s playing her hands.
If it was a coincidence, she wouldn’t emphasize like that. She wouldn’t circle these bits with homophobic and transphobic language.
And the fact that she does colors all her interactions. Why does she have an encyclopedic knowledge of the “wrongdoings” of only the queer members on the floor? Why did she even care initially that Carla was very quietly skating on carpet (Seriously, for every asshole who wants to pretend that Carla instigated this, there’s no getting around the fact that skates on carpet is not loud or a distraction. It’s at the level of someone shuffling their feet on carpet)? Why does she escalate so quickly to violence? Why is she so insistence on the “you’re breaking the rules” argument while not actually seeking out any form of authority? Why doesn’t she just do what literally any other student would have done and walked down the hall to the designated study room which is nearly guaranteed to be available midday on a Friday early on in the semester?
Why does she deliberately pick and escalate a fight with Carla, trusting in her reflexive anti-authoritarianism to give her an excuse?
Once she revealed her little transphobia bomb, all that suddenly becomes very suspect, because well, it’s actually a thing where trans people are held to higher standards and have their “wrongdoings” emphasized and virtues diminished and where escalation to violence for very minor things is very normalized.
So yeah, the evidence is rather strongly suggesting Mary sought out or at least is paying WAY more attention to the goings ons of queer students.
And as for your last point. She’s not going to report Becky to an authority for the same reason she didn’t just cry to an authority figure that Carla was breaking the rules.
Mary wants to win. She wants to be seen winning by her target. She wants her target to know that Mary personally outsmarted and outplayed them. That Mary showed them up and taught them their place.
Outsourcing things to an authority means she can’t directly gloat to their face like she did right before walking away from Carla. It means she can’t evoke that sense of fear and powerlessness that she craves. It means she can’t get that rush of superiority and faux-martyrdom where it is “her alone” against the “tide of immorality and sin”. And I feel that is born out in the vast majority of her behavior in her spoken-line appearances.
Cerberus, I admire your eloquence, your insight, and your passion. I don’t bother with the comments sections of hardly any of the other dozens of webcomics I follow, but you are one of the reasons I started paying attention to this one.
Please don’t call me an asshole because my character interpretation differs from yours.
Mary is a bigot, but I don’t see that as her main motivation. I think she’s all about power, and is so self-centered that she only gets involved when she is denied getting her way. If Mary’s primary concern was the “statistically anamolous” level of queerness (theoretically, I suppose, though it being established as a relatively liberal college in a conservative state, it makes sense that the demographics would be influenced by the school attracting a non-heteronormative student body) in the hall, I think she would have been more active as soon as she got the blackmail on her immediate authority figure. Your interpretation is influenced by your experiences, as mine is informed by my experiences. I am not dismissing your interpretation, but I believe my interpretation is as valid as yours, absent confirmation of authorial intent one way or the other. Note, please, this is not a defense of Mary by any means; in fact, I find her almost off-handed bigotry to just hurt someone that dared to cross her and score points in their argument to be even more abhorrent then a calculated manoeuvre might have been.
Carla “instigated” the situation by skating in the hall. Apart from it being mildly dangerous and therefore against the rules, she wasn’t hurting anyone. Mary heard the noise, however minimal it was, and investigated. Before she knew who it was. If it had been, say, Joyce out there skating, her reaction would undoubtedly have been different. In my view, she probably would have actually engaged in a polite conversation as her first attempt to change the situation. But she still would have wanted the skating to stop because what Mary wants is always the Right Thing in her mind and skating in the halls is against the rules. Her bigotry caused her reaction to Carla to start out brusque (at best, depending on how one wishes to read that speech bubble), and to continue escalating the situation each time she was thwarted.
I don’t think it’s victim blaming to say that Carla started the situation and was thus the instigator; I don’t attach any blame to that role in this context. She was doing nothing malicious, and she is by no means responsible for Mary’s reaction to her actions, nor did she “deserve” to be emotionally abused. At most, Carla may have “deserved” a short lecture on why skating is against the rules and to be sent outside to do it. (Mary’s actions, of course, should bring a much wider array of consequences, though it seems we’re more likely to see the “wacky hijinks” end of the spectrum there.)
Carla did deserve to have an authority figure who would stand up for her. The fact that she didn’t is why we’re still talking about it. Unfortunately, today’s strip makes it seem like that motivation is being left by the wayside…
That’s true. I think you are very much right that power is a major motivation. She needs to win and come out on top. She needs to have power and hierarchy over others. That’s definitely been a huge part of her game. I suppose I would say that you’re right that power is her motivation and bigotry is her expression of that motivation.
By your definition, I suppose you’re right that Carla “instigated” in that she existed and fell on Mary’s radar, because Mary very much doesn’t understand how to live with other people yet and has been shown to be incredibly dismayed and even offended by the fact that dorm living is not like her (presumably suburban) home she came from and thus she can not have the same expectations of absolute universal quiet when she wants it without a single adaptation, can’t have the same expectations of universal privacy, and can’t have the same expectations of having universal control over every aspect of her living space.
I think you may be right, that she didn’t know who it was at first, but that when she saw it was Carla, had no problem psychologically escalating probably very unconsciously to begin with owing to the influence of her bigotry. And I think Carla’s “pfft, you and your weird hangup on rules, man” attitude towards life definitely elicited a much more, shall we say, “potent” response than it might have done if the loudness had been from a Joyce, who she almost respects as an actual person, enough at least to hang near her at Church.
And definitely agree with you that Carla did not deserve that and at best “deserved” nothing more than a telling off by Ruth the RA or a “c’mon, move along downstairs” from a bored security figure.
And yeah, nothing assholic or victim-blaming about your response. I think it’s a lot more nuanced to the differences between the motivation and the expression of the motivation of Mary’s wonderfully despicable role as a villain and foil for a lot of the hall.
I think you may be right, that she didn’t know who it was at first
I originally had the same impression. but other commenters convinced me about a different interpretation: She knew that the only skater on her floor is Carla and she knew that Carla is trans.
So when she heard the skating noises, it was not the noise level what annoyed here, it was knowing that Carla was skating on the floor, and as that is against the rules, this gave her the motivation (and leverage) for pestering Carla.
And that is a really good counter-example and really makes a lot more sense than being bothered by a relatively quiet shuffling noise, so we’re right back around to her “just happening” to seek out and target queer individuals.
This one is positively in my top 10 DoA panels. I keep hoping for these two, and I love it when they act like they are getting their shit together. I love the faces.
There is room in my top 10 for watching Mary get her shit splattered all over campus.
Go get her guys. I got the salt & vinegar chips ready (better than popcorn 😉 )
well if that avatar isn’t appropriate then i dont know what is
anyway it’s not really a dig on the storyline I’m just disappointed that … this should be about Carla, not… allies… saving her… imo. It’s why I’m always kinda leery of cishet allies writing stories about our struggles, cus it turns into cishet savior bs. I’m sure it’ll turn out satisfying in the end it’s just… sigh. Disappointing.
The trans person involved has her shit together though. An asshole, yes, but largely an undramatic, relatively mature asshole that it’s hard to play up the drama about.
She’s sort of in the same position as Mike, she rolls her eyes and occasionally gives things a little nudge toward disaster, she doesn’t do drama herself.
Yeah, but it’s still a Queer character suffering from prejudice when someone else runs into help them, and right now we’re focusing on the ally (Ruth) suffering from it.
Ruth’s status as a bi woman is kinda irrelevant to that.
Nah, it means cisgender and heterosexual, so you’re response is totally valid, but I can see where Kole is coming from and think Spencer describes the potential issue well.
That all being said, I’m sure we’ll get a bunch of strips with Carla’s perspective soon based on the preview panels and I couldn’t be more excited about that.
I’m really sorry you feel that way. If it helps any, Willis has promised that Carla will be given a lot more focus in the coming months, and Jocelyne will be reappearing next storyline as well.
it might be mainstream media making me apprehensive that we go right into following Ruth instead of Carla along this storyline, but at the same time I think it might have been fixed had we followed Carla along a bit instead of jumping right into Ruth’s side of it (for… awhile, to boot)
It might feel a bit more like stories happening alongside each other had we already seen Carla’s side of it more than just her one quip to Ruth and that being the end of it, her arc in this should have been more prioritized for screentime imo
Again I’d like to reiterate I trust Willis to pull it off cus I know he listens to us and I mean I do appreciate him hearing us out not just when we have flattering things to say about his stories
I could be wrong, but my understanding is that this is a Ruth and Mary storyline as well as a Carla one. We’re going to get to the Carla part, and I’m excited for that since I like her and we haven’t seen enough of her, but she’s not the only participant here.
I mean, we’re both homoromantic asexual transwomen. What’s the likelihood of more than one of those in the world? /that one badwebcomic entry guy who wrote the thing about Shortpacked
I am picturing Carla closing the door to her room and a vast array of holographic screens pop up and her digital assistant details the myriad options for ultra-tech revenge.
if this were an already-published story, i’d agree with you. but the pacing is necessarily slow given that it’s a webcomic. imagine if it only updated three times a week.
i anticipate more focus on carla. but i really did like carla’s dialogue with ruth. it wasn’t forgiveness. it was “yeah, i knew you would hurt me, so i’m choosing not to care.” carla’s casual acceptance of the whole transphobic attack makes me think that there isn’t going to be a lot of immediate action with her, but that she’s internalizing it. much like how we’re still seeing joyce’s PTSD show up whenever she’s walking alone on campus. at the very least, i’m hoping for carla to actually start pranking mary or even ruth. there hasn’t been a single cream pie in anyone’s face in this entire webcomic.
Yup. Practiced apathy and resignment is a type of social armor that trans people are often forced into and definitely agree that Carla’s main impacts will probably be delayed or more in secret. She doesn’t want to show just how badly things hit, because she doesn’t want to risk showing that vulnerability and fear again, or at least that’s my impression from future preview panels where Carla is looking harried and then awkwardly trying to smile it off.
I thought it was weird that we didn’t get back to Carla sooner after the incident. I half wondered if that was in response to how the comments blew up, but I think he’d’ve said something.
I think if we’d immediately gotten back to Carla, we would’ve been treated to a dozen panels of solo anger/despair responses. Much better to wait til she’s had time to process before turning the story back to her.
Damn these two are cute in these glimpses where they open up to each other and skate right on the edge of healthy. They’ve got these little pieces that make me want to root for them even though I still do believe they are so so doomed.
Here’s hoping that instead, they help each other grow as people and become slightly less fucked up one little bit at a time until they’re a happy, sustainable longterm relationship.
I’m really hoping Willis subverts the tragic queer ladies trope here if for no other reason than these two dopes ending tragically is so incredibly predictable.
i dont really understand how doing it together fixes any of the problems? like, the problem was that she wanted to be a jerk to mary but she cant cause then mary will tell the principal or whatever that shes together with billie and that shes an alcoholic. so if they do it together, mary can just do the exact same thing??
More importantly, it’s support. This is Billie showing that she is on Ruth’s side, that she’s not giving up on her and the promise that Billie is just as good as being mean as Mary.
I don’t know what the correct word is in English, but this page feels sort of rushed, in lack of a more appropriate word. To elaborate, the dramatic buildup from the last two pages feels redundant when the problem is solved immediately in the very next page. That or as if there are some missing pages in between.
Never back an animal into a corner, because they’re liable to do anything it takes to get out.
And both Billie and Ruth are kinda freaking feral when it comes to each other.
With the Dynamic Duo united against her I foresee an epic bongo-slapping in Mary’s immediate future (of course with no proof Billie and Ruth are responsible)…
I’ve been doing the same. I kind of hope it catches on broadly and sometime circa 2050 there’ll be scholarly etymological papers tracing the original of the use of “bongo” as an insult back to a comic on the primitive internet.
But what can she do, exactly? I’m genuinely curious about that: what official route can she take in her function? Evil girl was obviously saying something quite malicious, but is it actually illegal? Not to mention how easy a misgendering is explained as a ‘honest mistake’. (Not that’s not what happened here, but it is so difficult to prove.)
Or is Ruth just going to do something to her, that’s not within the official bounds of her function? (I’m quite okay with that).
It’s likely against the school’s rules assuming it has anything resembling a competent anti-discrimination policy. Plus she said it right in front of their RA and it was decidedly NOT an innocent mistake and couldn’t be construed as such by any reasonable person.
Interesting…”bongo” wasn’t what I typed above; it actually rhymed with “witch.” I guess we have to keep the comments clean. Although bongo-slapping does have a certain ring to it…
I’m not so sure this is a good idea. They might have spite on their side, but they’re attacking an enemy who is likely every bit as good on that account.
The depressing thing here for me is that they don’t seem capable of doing the right thing unless they’re framing it in a negative light. Like they’ve given up on themselves as human beings to the point that they can’t see any of their actions as good or positive. Which means that they’re more likely to trend toward destructive (both self- and otherwise) behaviours.
They are functional, still in school, not going to prison for murder, and occasionally have shared goals, like ____ the hell out of Mary. That’s a whole lot better than some.
Now, first of all, I’d rather that they did not do anything really bad against Mary, such as throwing her out a window. Sure, I despise her a lot, but it’s not about how good a person she is (or isn’t), it’s about how good a person -I- want to be. Or to put it another way, I don’t think I can claim to be a good person if I do the same things that bad persons would.
That being said, I agree with many people here, that spite is a powerful motivator, when harnessed properly. And it certainly has its place.
A friend of mine once had cancer (and he’d already have to deal with other shit too that would’ve killed him in any other age but this of modern medicine. Hooray for titanium spines and medical progress!)
Now, obviously he did the proper medical treatments for the cancer itself. But cancer treatment is really rough, and you do need to be able to find mechanisms to cope with that shit. Well, he didn’t try “positive thinking” as we’d commonly recognize it. He went for spite. He was all “I’ll be fucked if I’m going to let that piece of shit cancer kill me.” And that got him through the surgery and the chemo.
So use it when you need it, but don’t let it take you over.
I do like the progression here. Ruth in panel 1, knowing that this doesn’t sound good but also knowing that if she lets Mary wins, she’ll be succumbing to her demons. Billie in the next panels — is this when she finally realizes just how deep Ruth’s issues run? It’s like when she woke up to find Ruth crying and thought something must be wrong instead of understanding it’s just a thing. Now she’s starting to get it, and has this mix of “Oh you poor thing” and “Oh God, I can’t help,” followed by “Okay, this is probably a bad idea, but this is what she needs, let’s go for it.” And then Ruth, apparently realizing that Billie is willing to drown with her, but will try to keep her head above the water the whole time.
This could actually be one of the most significant moments in their whole relationship. As well as one of the few hopeful ones. We’ve seen that Ruth doesn’t think she deserves Billie, but now she’s suddenly faced with the fact that Billie doesn’t care. Billie’s seen her at her worst — drunk, suicidal, angry, etc. — but now she’s seeing her being driven to deliberate vindictiveness, and she still loves her.
I admit, I recognize Ruth in the last two panels. The realization that someone loves you even though you can’t understand why. It’s terrifying because you have no idea how to deal with the feeling, and yet you’re smiling despite yourself.
1. I noticed the sentiment above that having this storyline center around Ruth’s actions rather than Carla’s actions against Mary is a sneaky transphobic trope of ‘cishet savior’.
I am not trans, so I don’t get much of a vote on this, but… My personal revenge fantasy when dealing with Mary-style bullying is not getting to trounce them myself. It’s an authority figure getting their shit together, getting pissed on my behalf and trouncing them.
And yes, Ruth and Billie are framing their actions in the worst possible light here, but this IS at least in part on Carla’s behalf. Ruth cares about students feeling safe on her floor, and that extends to Carla, and that – well, I really really wish I had someone like that on my side in my school years.
One one side, yes, Carla deserves her chance to be a hero.
On the other, she doesn’t deserve to HAVE to be. She also deserves to be protected and to have people care about her wellbeing and safety. She deserves seeing Ruth, who she’s already written off as a shit faux-ally, gearing up and DESTROYING Mary explicitly in defense of her.
Just… my five cents, I guess.
(And I mean, then there’s the part about Ruth being queer herself. She’s not trans, and a lot of queer community is transphobic, but – it’s still not quite mainstream shit belching)
2. Actually, what consequences can there be for Mary? She broke Carla’s skates and was transphobic towards her, what’s the official response policy on that? Will she have to pay for the skates, move to another room, get kicked out of the university altogether? What CAN Ruth do? I’ve never lived in a dorm myself, so I have not the faintest idea of what the power of an RA is.
3. HOLY SHIT THIS IS SO SWEET THO. As a Ruth/Billie moment, I mean. I agree with all above commenters remarking their storyline deserves a happy ending/continuation… just. AWWWW.
You might not be trans, but I am and I agree with you. There.
To me at least, it’s exceedingly stressful to always be the one to stand up for myself, when those who should (because authority, trust, proximity, etc.) make themselves conveniently scarce.
That or they stand up against *you* for “making waves” or something. Because you know, being different is such a nuisance for everyone around you, and since they’re already making such a heroic effort to endure your whims, well you should make yours and lay low.
So, really, “cishet savior”? Well, that’s up to the person being “saved”… although I’d personally disagree with other trans people who’d percieve it that way. But that’s a discussion to have between us.
Telling trans people how they shoud feel about how they’re treated without being in their shoes, though? Transphobic. But that’s applicable to any discrimination, since the mechanics are similar even if the details change. And if you understand that, you understand a lot.
*not sure if I should happily eat my ally cookie or start worrying about me possibly telling trans people how to feel about stuff, because disclaimer doesn’t actually absolve me of responsibility for my words welp*
Haha, well… as long as people try their best and consider the views of those who know stuff firsthand, I’m happy (assuming those efforts are whole, sincere, yadda yadda).
As I implied, you made a parallel with other types of discrimination which you have firsthand experience with. To me it’s valid, especially since you didn’t actually compare (which often comes across as diminishing). Discrimination is a human experience, and we can connect on that. The details come after and can be discussed as a means to deepen understanding.
Also, you made it clear that you knew what you were saying is your current perception based on your current knowledge, while trying to put yourself in her shoes by refering to your own experiences. Still a valid process, imo. Actually, if my understanding is correct, that process is called sympathy and, with empathy, is one of the only resources we have to actually communicate.
So you can have a cookie if you like. But it’s like with anything, just don’t get happy to the point where you’ll rest on your laurels… although I get the feeling that you might just be more of the neurotic type that doesn’t need to be told that because they always worry.
By the way, what does an ally cookie look like, is it tasty?
I’d use the word ‘anxious’ rather than ‘neurotic’ but overall you are on point haha
and yeah I’m using my own experiences there. There’s a fine line between ‘ok I don’t know enough about This Particular Thing’ and ‘I can sympathize by drawing parallels to shit that happened to me that was vaguely similar in spirit’
The part that’s MY vicarious wish fulfillment through Carla here is for Ruth to stand up for her
not saying anything about anyone else’s ^^
(I imagine an ally cookie as a calming round thingie that tastes like content and lack of anxiety and friendship)
As someone who’s been welching about it (and a cis bi dude, if that means anything), it’s not that I want Carla to be the one defending herself, absolutely not; she should be protected from hate crimes by her institution. It’s that Carla suffers from bigotry, but then the scene focuses on Ruth, how Ruth feels about failing Carla, and how Ruth is planning at getting back at Mary. The focus right now is on the allies while it was Carla who suffered, and that is distressingly common in fiction, where violence is meted out on non-white, female, and queer characters, but viewed through the lens of the privileged, and the focus is on how bad they feel.
Hence why, while I’m frustrated now, I’m really looking forward to the promised higher focus on Carla we’ll be seeing in the coming months, and it’ll be a splendid opportunity to delve more into her character beyond being the wacky prankster.
This. I’d like to see Ruth sneaking to Carla’s to be supportive and see how she is dealing with things. This is something that wouldn’t make it worse for her, and what an R.A. should do. And she can encourage Carla to make a report that doesn’t involve Ruth – saying that she didn’t take the matter to her R.A. because she felt threatened by Mary and didn’t want to involve someone else living in the same place, so went to the head of the campus security instead. Basically, yeah. Carla deserves support, and I hope she gets it, but I also want to see this from Carla’s POV.
In fact, whether they go to the authorities or not, I’d like to see them work together. Both allies.
Mary is as prejudiced against bisexuals as she is against trans women and her problems with Ruth actually go back well before we saw any trouble between her and Carla.
Ruth’s an authority figure here and trans people have even more difficulties than queer females, but neither rank very high on the usual privilege charts.
Oh yeah this is absolutely true. While the action might be Ruth’s, I just kind of assumed the narrative would show the point of view of Carla once again. This is a Willis comic, after all…
As a trans dude I must say that I feel like secondary trans characters who aren’t objectified or used as tragedy devices are waaaaay to rare.
I really don’t want to see another narrative where the poor trans person struggles with this and that. Seriously. The only coverage trans people get in the media is that. I’d much, much rather have a background-ish Carla who actually has a personality which isn’t reduced to transness (meaning : both good and bad traits, same depth as other characters, unrelated things going on in her life, etc.)
Not only that, but he does it without erasing trans issues. Up until now, I don’t have much critiques to make. My only heartbreak with this comic is the low frequency of male homoerotism… but that’s unrelated.
Not every character in this comic had their full-on spotlight moment. Carla doesn’t have to just because she’s trans, either. Please. I think Willis made a good move by putting a character there, who happens to be trans instead of making a big deal about it. He also might not be willing or interested in venturing too deep in there at the moment, and that would be his choice. Dumbing of Age is one project, and one project has to have set limits.
Also, nothing is worse that someone making a “trans character” instead of a character that is trans, which he also has avoided. Up until now, at least. Maybe he’ll stumble on the way, but that would also be normal.
Also, tell me how a gynephilic woman is privileged when one almost got killed by her dad a few days before.
So yeah, I really think your “frustration” about Carla is super out of place, since it really doesn’t concern you.
That’s… not really my point? Like at all? Unless I’m misreading you, you think my objection is that we’re seeing a trans character struggle, rather than said trans character struggling in service of somebody else’s narrative. Insofar as that part about trans characters being objectified or used tragedy devices I feel like that’s what happened to Carla now, and that’s something that’s going to be corrected later. Plus, I don’t think that’s an either or question, that we either need happy background Queer characters or Queer characters at the forefront who are only sad and miserable. I’ve never felt this way about seeing any of the other Queer cast members struggling as I have now, I see this and think “yep that’s something I’ve seen a million times literally everywhere else.”
And besides that, ultimately it’s still a Queer character who has a problem, but with the focus on somebody else reacting to that problem. I’d resent that if that happened to any of DoA’s Queer cast members. It’s why I like Ethan so much, since he has the very standard narrative of “Gay dude who is sad about being gay”, but it’s about him, how he reacts, how he feels, and the steps he takes to reclaim normalcy, and eventually how he’s started to accept himself. It’s not about Joyce and Amber being perfect allies and pulling him out of his funk, because he’s the one who has to deal with it.
Actually, that’s my point, that it’s not because she’s backgroundish that she’s necessarily being diminished, or even that serving someone’s narrative is not necessarily objectifying, depending on how it’s done.
And if I might quote Carla the other day, when the comment section was closed : “I’m used to be everyone’s acceptable loss.”
To me, that was a very clear message that Willis is not going to use her as a dramatic device. I felt like that very simple sentence contained a sh*tload of critique against how trans are portayed in general. I mean, we have horrendous rates of suicide, para-suicide, murder and “para-murder” victims in real life, and in stories the trans person is there to serve the plot by dying, in general. That’s worse than rubbing salt into wounds. And I really got the feeling that he made that strip (the one I quoted) to recognize that. And now he shows Ruth reacting instead of having the trans person become collateral damage. It’s a huge paradigm shift. I imagine Carla going about her business while letting the R.A. take care of what she should, and that’s how it should be. Of course, Mary might probably do more awful things, but that’s her character.
I’m sorry, but I really think that right now what trans people need is to see representations of people actually siding with them, not another struggle viewpoint. You can’t really compare with LGB people on that aspect. Or maybe you can, but only if you go back to the 70-90s, when homosexuality was legally viewed as a mental disorder.
You know, the other day at my university, there was a special “trans” edition of the weekly campus newspaper. I took a look… half the informations were simply false and the interviews were edited in a way to make it seem like trans people were homosexuals that transitioned because they wanted to be heterosexual. But the articles were presented like they were super compassionate, informative, like they were doing us a favor.
And did I mention those times when I went to the hospital and my very serious illnesses were dismissed as “emotions” because I’m trans?
So, if you ask me, I really don’t need to see another trans person walking on tight rope. I’d much, much rather see someone siding with us, for once.
As for your part about how you want stories with allies siding with us (I use “us” in this context to refer to all Queer characters, since I feel like the “saviour ally” storyline tends to occur to all manner of Queer characters), I agree, but that’s not the impression I got from this story arc. It’s not about Carla being supported by Ruth, it’s about Ruth failing Carla and feeling guilty about it. Like, you mentioned that part about Carla not being collateral damage; that’s kind of how it came off to me, like she’s Green Lantern’s girlfriend who got stuffed in the fridge so Ruth can feel sad and take action.
Like, I don’t want this to just be about Carla being miserable, that she has to deal with it alone and must earn her safety, or that it’s inherently harmful for their to be allies present, it’s that she, a Queer lady, suffers at the hands of a bigot so Ruth the Ally could come in to help and the A-plot of Mary dropping her blackmail on Ruth can occur, with Ruth motivated into actions because of her failures to help Carla in the same way, well, basically any story where a manly man’s apple pie wife dies so he starts chopping heads off.
And I guess this is just something we’re going to have to disagree on, because I find that having Queer characters suffer to promote another character’s storyline to be fundamentally diminishing to us,. At the least, I’m going to feel that way until representation becomes more prominent across the board and the focus stops being on the allies, because I’ve had my fill of ally stories. Hence why I’m super excited for more Carla focus in the coming months.
The physically violent, power abusing bully is about to strike back against the transphobic, blackmailing bully but one of the bully’s cried so I know which one is the goodie!
Well, she’s crying because she’s upset. Abusers have feelings too.
Anyway, I don’t think the intent of this is “aww poor Ruth”, it’s just that Ruth is flustered because of what’s going on, plus her dealing with her own illnesses. I really think that, more than any other character, we as the readers are free to judge her as we see fit.
And besides that, I don’t think Ruth going on a spite fueled rampage on someone whose blackmailing her for things that could get her fired is gonna go over too well.
I get the feeling we are meant to go “poor Ruth” and that’s why we see her crying. Does make me wonder what’d happen if we’d seen Mary crying about something.
I really disagree with that, because we’ve also seen Ruth do tons of horrible, abusive shit to people.
It’s just that since “abuser whose really nice once you get to know them” is one of the grossest character tropes out there that still worms its way into stuff, we’re judging Ruth with the metric of “the point of Ruth is that her abuse is okay because of her sad backstory, and we must unilaterally support her because now she’s crying about something”, and I don’t feel that’s David Willis’ intent. He’s writing a complex abuser, someone who does lots of horrible shit but is still a human being and human beings laugh and cry and smile and occasionally don’t physically assault people. That doesn’t erase Ruth’s previous actions, but it’s there.
I can’t tell you to like Ruth. I don’t like Ruth, nor do I care to, but I think that not liking Ruth is an intended interpretation of her character.
Anyway, Mary’s on the same character level as Blaine or Toedad. They don’t matter as characters, but more the obstacle they represent to the protagonists.
Really? that’s what you needed? Because I had a pretty easy time based on which was doing systemic harm. Systemic harm + personal harm > personal harm. Fuckin’ obviously.
Ruth’s terrible sometimes, but she doesn’t need to be a saint. Pretty much by definition, she’s less terrible than Mary.
Ruth’s in a position of power and uses it to get away with causing personal harm; uses that position as her alleged right to cause that harm. She’s herself a system gone rancid
RAs have a ‘position of power’!? Are you from planet fucking earth!? I mean yeah, she nominally has a position, but in practice, that position has so little authority as to be laughable. This is like getting bent out of shape over a HALL MONITOR abusing their power. Sure, ti says bad things about the hall monitor, but it’s not a systemic issue like, you know, fucking heterosexism.
I am 100% on the side of Ruth here because there’s no excuse for bullying trans people. But the thing is, I don’t like Ruth still because she is a violent abusive bully. She needs professional health and I wish her a full recovery but that doesn’t mean I condone her behavior. It’s just hate-speech is worse, much-much worse.
That’s how I feel and I may have to stop reading for a while. I can’t stand Mary and her bullshit. But my dorm had an RA who was disturbingly similar to Ruth. He didn’t limit his crap to his own floor, he’d patrol the whole dorm looking for excuses to threaten and write up residents. When a couple of the other RAs managed to get him caught red-handed while underaged drinking, and he lost his position and was thrown out of the dorm, everyone openly celebrated.
I just don’t like being put in a position where I’m forced to say, “Well, the melanoma of Ruth is not as immediately destructive as the black death of Mary, so I’m forced to side with Ruth.” I want someone to treat BOTH of these diseases.
Hating Ruth is a perfectly acceptable interpretation of her character. I think that’s one of her strengths, actually, that we aren’t expected to side with her, and we can just observe and judge.
Loading ...
“If spite were a woman, I’d marry it.”
“And I’d jeopardize our friendship by nailin’ your hot wife.”
“You wouldn’t have to: THREESOME”
“AW YEAH, IT’S BUSINESS TIME”
[speaking of, shit, I’m late for my wedding with XCOM 2]
[[stupid pre-load lag]]
Love that Venture Bros quote. That show has some amazing writing.
One episode in, and the new season’s looking good already.
There’s… there’s a new season of Venture Bros?
Somehow, yes. I don’t hate the show, but I’m still surprised it’s still going.
Well they will definitely have pleasure in taking care of this business.
Spite! It’s The UNCola!…..wait a minute….something’s wrong here.
That’s right it’s 7-UP!
Damn straight.
XCOM2! Aww yeah! Pre-loaded last night!
WELCOME BACK, COMMANDER.
FINALLY FINISHED PRE-LOADING
UGH
And we’ve never heard from her again… Which reminds me, mine finished too.
I thought 30 years had passed, dis they put the guy in stasis or something?
Opening mission says 20 years.
Whoa! Soldiers can be captured! When a mission says “x turns until mandatory evacuation”, you better make DAMN SURE all troops get to the evac zone before then!
Been playin for a while there, haven’t you Cholma.
The amusement in thinking you had already joked about what I was going to joke about, and how you guys are decades late to XCOM 2, and realized you seemed to be referencing something in the remake game.
Goddamned kids!
I AM WAITING FOR IT TO FINISH INSTALLING AFTER PRELOADING IT EARLIER. I WILL SEE YOU AT AN UNDETERMINED BUT LATER TIME.
I AM EXCITED.
My estimator started by showing 5 hours of unpacking. I watched it drop as low as 55 minutes. It read 7 hours when I started writing this comment and now reads 5 hours, no 4 hours.
Watching the estimator isn’t madness. No, It’s just dynamic sanity.
Steam has finished installing XCOM 2
Later taters.
Come on now, Billie and Ruth would be in a happy and fulfilling triad with Spite.
Wish I was installing it, but my laptop doesn’t have a good enough graphics card. Curse you HP Dell Inspiron from 2012!!!! Curse you!!!!
It’s so gooood.
Spiiiiiiiiiiiite~
I thought it said Sprite
Obey Your Thirst
It is a thirst for necks.
And femurs.
a thirst for…? ;_;
oh, NECKS, ok, that’s fine.
… for vengeance?
THIS IS SIERRA MIST
no linking to that party. is too mean :'(
Sierra has better aim than that.
Obligatory.
https://youtu.be/UwbqPPSUp90
RIP Gravity Falls
THIS IS SPARTA
http://i.imgur.com/dfF47gd.png I think it does.
New Sprite – Spite flavor. Quench your thirst… for vengeance!
Spitesprite what
YES Mary is going down
Someday this campus will have a crater named Mary, and a statue of Billie and Ruth looming over it. The plaque will read “Beware”.
After BIllie goes down.
iseewhatyoudidthere.jpg
After Billie goes down on Ruth?
No Billie doesn’t get to go down again until after Mary does. One kind of fun at a time.
Given that Ruth is plotting to avenge someone’s mildly hurt feelings quite literally over a bottle of hard liquor she’s sharing with a minor under her supervision who she’s also sexually harassing… I’m not sure her priorities are sufficiently in order for Mary not to realistically win this one. Especially since she lacks any kind of minimal good judgement that would keep her out of ‘call the police’ territory (in a more realistic setting she’d have been in jail for a while now).
Though maybe they’ll _both_ lose, and thus everyone will win.
Mary misgendered Carla as a way to dehumanize her. That’s worse than “mildly hurt feelings”.
I don’t get it. Why is this still even a thing. Why do we keep trying to downplay the inherent vileness of misgendering?
Because it’s hard for cis people to imagine it being worse. If someone misgenders me, as a cis man, it doesn’t even hurt my feelings. I reply with a witty zinger, and win the argument because misgendering a cis person is seen as childish by most other people.
Because I’ve never been trans, and especially because I’m not only cis but I’m a cis white male, it’s difficult for me to wrap my head around just how it feels to deal with countless micro- and macro-aggressions every day, including misgendering. It’s hard for cis people like me to wrap our heads around our gender not being accepted by other people, and what that would feel like.
Just to be clear, I am not in any way defending that attitude. Ignorance is no excuse, and we cis people should be seeking out trans voices to better understand things from their perspective. I am merely explaining why it’s so hard for cis people to figure this out. Part of our cis privilege is misgendering not being a big deal.
This.
It’s very easy for individuals who have a privileged understanding of the concept to assume it’s like a person teasing another person.
They don’t have experience about how it fits into an entire societal framework of violence and terroristic threat. How it plays into regular death threats, discrimination, genuine fear when you walk outside, and depression. How in that last one it can sear into one’s minds all one’s fears that you’ll never just be allowed to be, that other’s will always view you as a desperate fraud, all the pain of dysphoria you’ve ever swallowed. They don’t know how it feeds the staggering rate of suicide among trans individuals (31%, with over 50% of the survivors attempting at least once in their lives) or lowers our expected lifespans down into the low 30s.
They don’t know how it sits like an infected wound in your gut and ruins your whole day or week.
And sadly, often, they don’t want to know. Because that’s depressing. Because that means having to think about the suffering of a population that they have to this point had no social obligation to think about in any way. And so it can be very tempting to assume the trans community is making mountains out of molehills. Because that way nothing needs to change. That they don’t have to change.
It’s very similar in some ways to the way dudebros often dismiss harassment of POC or women online, comparing it to the time they got trash-talked once or got sent an angry flame as if that was the same thing as continuously being worn down by constant death or rape threats.
Though honestly, even among cis people, while it’s not that extreme, in some contexts, deliberately misgendering someone is insulting. The more tied to gender roles the society is, the more so. Even back in my youth, calling someone a girl was pretty much fighting words. The only way to prove you weren’t was to hit back.
Stupid of course, but I doubt it’s really changed all that much for school ages. Or for macho sub groups elsewhere.
Oh yeah, misgendering men and telling them that they might as well be women and thus be treated like women has been the main means of self-enforcement for toxic masculinity for a very long time.
And calling a woman boyish or calling her a lesbian (in a negative way) has long been a way of enforcing “proper” gender roles among women as a lot of women and those raised as if they were women can attest when they actually had trouble reading that Mary was intending transphobia at first owing to that type of role enforcement.
It doesn’t carry the same screaming impact, but it’s definitely used as that tool. I think though, a lot of people who are not used to unpacking that on a conscious level or are not aware of its specific awfulness with regards to trans people though assume that that is nonetheless “normal” and “just part of growing up” and “you just shrug it off (albeit by buying more in to the system or paying your “annual dues”)”.
As been noted Cerberus, I’m happy you are a teacher – you are really good at it!
Gender dysphoria is also something that’s hard for a lot of us to wrap our heads around. We’re identified at birth by our genitals, and if they happen to match our actual gender, we’re not even aware that they’re separate things.
as a cis person i’ve been hurt by misgendering, but mostly because it was coupled with glorious misogyny. because being called a guy is a compliment, or whatever.
Say whatever you will about “innocent” (meaning ignorant) misgendering. There might be some room for sympathy towards the clueless bumpkin who just doesn’t get it and so keeps putting a foot in the mouth. (Says the cis guy who tends to put his foot in his mouth because his conscious brain doesn’t catch up with the part of his brain where pronouns are stored.)
Mary went above and beyond that. (Or below and inwar– metaphor fail.) She didn’t do it because she doesn’t understand. This wasn’t ignorance, this wasn’t not getting it, this wasn’t the privelege of being able to go through life without knowing what it’s like to be a minority or to have to question your preconceptions, this wasn’t attempting to make the real world match your world view because you just assume it’s that way without thinking about it. She did it because she DID understand… at least enough to realize that this was a way to HURT Carla.
To be fair, it was a bongo-fest and both sides were carrying on asshole. But Carla was just being noisy and Mary went full evil. Huge difference in degrees.
Dude. Quit referring to a consensual relationship between adults as sexual harassment.
Billie’s also not a minor, in any way that Ruth isn’t. 18 and 20, if I recall.
Legal for sex with each other. Neither is legal for booze
On the other side of the Atlantic they could be happily drinking in legality. Or, miserably legally drinking (given their tendencies).
Heck, over here (varying from country to country), Billie would have been legally able to consent for years and years now. Actually, I do believe age of consent varies based on state laws in the US.
‘Mildly hurt’???
Even if you don’t get how awful misgendering is (and I suggest you read the comments, especially Cerberus’, during Carla’s part on screen, as well as some of today’s), Carla feoze in her tracks and didn’t even react until Ruth was leaving. That isn’t ‘mildly hurt,’ that’s shock, most likely accompanied with fear (for her safety on campus, for not being able to report because staff have biases, for not being able to feel at home in her hall, etc), and maybe some heartbreak for things suddenly taking such a shitty turn after a so far moderately painless semester.
You can say I infer too much, but the freezing up is on screen, completely and fairly continuously visible. That isn’t a reaction to mildly hurt feelings.
Oh cool we’re gonna call blatant bigotry mildly hurt feelings. Lovely.
Why stop here? I feel we can minimize a lot more than just saying that blatant misgendering and transphobia are “hurt feelings”.
Like, sure, death threats sound bad, but what if we call them “strong critiques” instead. Or how about physical attacks? Not so harrowing if we call them “a light tussle”. Lynchings? Now they’re just “vigorous neck massages”.
The sky really is the limit!
(and yes, I know I’m laying the sarcasm on thick, but it’s sometimes a little disheartening the amount of people who unintentionally reinforce this notion that actions that carry so much destructive intent and damage must be “hurt feelings” or “overblown” simply because the person making this type of argument doesn’t actually understand what they’re talking about)
That was amazing sarcasm and you ruined it with the text inside the ()
I’m history’s greatest monster 😉
I’m more afraid or gorgons, sorry!
This would be funny if people didn’t already do most of that so instead it’s just heartbreaking.
misgendering a transperson is an act of transphobia.
Transphobia is Violence.
you don’t have to understand that to accept it when every single transgender person says the same thing. just like how i’m not a physicist, but i still believe entropy is a thing.
Like, stop. “Violence” has an actual common meaning in people’s head. It does involve things like punching people, and it doesn’t involve words, no matter how hateful those words are. Saying that (premise) all transphobia is violence, so misgendering a trans person is an act of violence is a really poor argument.
And when poor arguments are used to fight transphobia, it just makes anti-transphobia activism look stupid/misguided/whatever by association.
But this seems to be changing, gradually going the same way “abuse” now gradually covers both the physical and verbal aspects of it.
And personally, I’ll be glad if it does. To me, words are actions. And actions has consequences. You can destroy a person’s life with the “right” words. You can get them frozen out of society, make them completely unemployable, stop their progress, harness their feelings… All of this without a single punch being laid.
And when you use words to do just this, when you use words to yank another person’s life from under them, to take away their job, their personal relationships, their self-worth, their sense of safety… How else can such an act be described, but as an act of violence?
As Marie just a couple of scrolls up in the comments remarked, Carla’s reaction was that of being gut-punched out of nowhere. Actually, it was even worse, because if she’d been punched, she could’ve fought back (and this being Carla, she might very well have). But Mary’s act of (verbal) violence was finding that weak spot that was impossible to fight back against. I know there are comments in the archives explaining exactly why this is, I could find them for you if you wish.
And I haven’t even begun talking about how repeating the same words to the right group of people is what leads to the actual punches or worse.
“How else can such an act be described, but as an act of violence?”
As an act of verbal abuse? As an act of harassment? As a an attack (of the verbal type)? There’s some rather adequate words that describe this with the appropriate gravitas. There’s no need to start equivocating actual violence with things that don’t involve physical harm. That just undermines the actual severity of the physical harm, and makes communication hard. Common people have a common understanding of what violence is, and it doesn’t involve the use of words alone.
I don’t believe that transphobia is best fought by using a weird jargon that seems deceptive. I think it’s much better to be clear and sincere, so that the people we want to sway don’t start doubting claims we make.
Yes, words are sometimes correlated with the punches, but they’re still not actually the punches. When a culture that’s been mostly bigoted through words starts being bigoted with punches, that’s a very bad sign, but it’ll be harder to convince anyone that the switch matters if the words have already been described as as severe as the punches, by terming them both violence.
Dude.
First of all, re: “common people have a common understanding”. This means nothing. Common people also have a common understanding of gender as a binary determined by genitals and leading to different IQ levels, so what? That doesn’t make it true.
Second, no. “Undermines the actual severity of the physical harm” my ass. If you get punched and walk with a bruise under your eye for a couple of days, how does that compare to losing your job, your housing, most of your friends and family? Which is more ‘severe’? I say it’s not the goddamn punch. Yes, physical violence can be horrible and lead to people’s deaths; verbal violence can also be horrible and lead to people’s death, either via driving to suicide or via incitement of other people to commit physical violence.
As a wise person said, “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words cause lifelong psychological wounds that never heal”.
And let’s not pretend that there’s a separate culture that only uses words and never escalates to physical violence, that is kept from the latter by understanding that the former is much less severe (which it isn’t).
Heh. This.
Plus there tends to be a thing among abusers and bullies where they seem to think that so long as they don’t escalate to physically assaulting you, they can say and do anything they want, because it’s “just words”.
Not to mention that physical violence can sometimes be preferable. A physical ache in your bones and bruises and scars feel visceral. They communicate things and are a lot harder to internalize as your own fault. They are also more likely to be picked up on by others as a negative action or a wrong. A black eye gets you concerned questions about your safety. A depression complex so severe you are constantly suicidally ideating gets you an admonishment to “smile more” and people naively saying you just need to ignore that sort of thing if they even notice or respond at all.
Lady, thank you very much. Or “gal”, or “girl”, or any other term that isn’t a way to refer to a male person.
“And let’s not pretend that there’s a separate culture that only uses words and never escalates to physical violence, that is kept from the latter by understanding that the former is much less severe (which it isn’t).”
I’ve not claimed that. My claim is that some bigoted cultures, as a general rule, don’t use physical violence in their bigotry. They’re not kept from using violence by the belief that it’s less severe, but by other factors. My point was to reserve the word “violence” for acts that involve actual harm, for a) clarity of communication, and b) to maintain a clear difference between acts of bigotry that involve physical harm, and the ones that don’t.
I believe that this is useful, because I see the societies that don’t allow physical violence from bigotry to happen as preferable to the ones that do; people not being beaten up for who they are is a sign of progress, and when the physical harm comes out in force it’s a sign of things getting worse. Among other things because the “choice” tends to be “physical violence and verbal harassment” versus “only verbal harassment”.
“If you get punched and walk with a bruise under your eye for a couple of days, how does that compare to losing your job, your housing, most of your friends and family?”.
With physical violence there’s also a chance of developing depression, PTSD, and the alike. The PTSD rate for being physically assaulted is actually pretty high (over 30% IIRC), and it’s the kind of thing that people can and have lost their jobs over, and have their social lives or whatever deteriorate from. Not to speak of the risk of being killed from the physical harm itself, and the risk of receiving a lasting injury.
Yeah, psychological harm from verbal abuse is pretty bad! But physical violence is also pretty bad by itself, since it causes physical and psychological harm. I don’t want to undermine the harm of verbal abuse; I wish to point out that physical abuse is that kind of thing that, in the context of transphobia and similar, is an even worse sign; it means a society that is OK with violence against trans people.
And I think that distinction is important to make.
Oh, sorry, I wasn’t meaning to imply anything about your gender. That “Dude” was more like “Wow” or “Holy shit”.
“My point was to reserve the word “violence” for acts that involve actual harm, for a) clarity of communication, and b) to maintain a clear difference between acts of bigotry that involve physical harm, and the ones that don’t.”
Okay, okay, let’s stop and look closer here.
Do you classify anxiety, invasive thoughts and fear of violence as “actual harm”? Do you classify them as “physical harm”?
(I mean, technically, brain is a physically existing thing. You could)
Do you classify suicidal ideation and suicide attempts as “actual harm”? Do you classify them as “physical harm”?
Do you classify being shunned and disowned by your family as “actual harm”? Do you classify that as “physical harm”?
Do you classify losing your job and/or housing, and not being able to find new ones, as “actual harm”? Do you classify that as “physical harm”?
(I mean, starving / dying of exposure is pretty physical)
Do you classify being denied medical help with life-threatening conditions as “actual harm”? Do you classify that as “physical harm”?
I could continue, but I hope you see my point.
If we are clarifying terms, let’s clarify them to their core, okay?
The English language isn’t always the best way to communicate clearly, but I’ll try.
OK, so, all the things you’ve mentioned are things I’ll accept as being “harm”. However, I think there’s a distinction to be made in causality here. All the things you’ve talked about are things that can happen as a consquence of verbal harassment. They’re not things that must happen as a consequence. Physical harm, injuries, meanwhile, is a consequence of violence. In the traditional sense of the term, if you visit violence upon someone, you must necessarily also have caused them physical harm.
So, perhaps a little more accurately, “My point was to reserve the word “violence” for acts that necessarily and always involve harm,”.
Violence: act that necessarily and always involves harm.
Good enough as a starting point, I agree.
Now, a punch that is thrown and misses is still a punch, yes? Because violence failed to connect on the other end, it doesn’t stop being violence.
Shall we say: what matters is intent?
Violence: actions taken with intent to do actual tangible harm.
Does this definition sound good?
“Violence: act that necessarily and always involves harm.”
I’m not using this as a definition; it’s more of a description of why I think it’s important to make a distinction. If I were to define “violence” in this context, it’d be something like “acts that cause or are intended to cause injury” (where ’cause’ is meant in the direct sense by which a punch causes an injury, ‘injury’ is in the medical sense of physical harm to the body, etc.).
So you keep insisting that only physical harm deserves being designated as violent, even if it’s less lasting than harm caused by words?
Also, I’m pretty sure arm twisting is generally considered violent, even though it involves no injury, just pain.
I’d define violence as pretty much any act of deliberately inflicting pain and/or injury, no matter physical or not.
And I don’t see why you would limit it to only physical when the activist circles have decided the definition I’m trying to outline here is way more useful for their goals and causes…
If I remember correctly, the pain from arm twisting is caused by the tissue damage that twisting the arm causes; the same thing that can cause bruises when arms are twisted. In any case I forgot to mention pain because trying to tie down every single aspect of a word with other words is a bit difficult.
I don’t like the way some activist circles define certain words; here “violence” apparently falls among those. It’s a perfectly common word, with a commonly understood meaning. To quote begbert below “[T]here are enough words in the language to describe horrible behavior that you don’t have to latch onto this one word and try to warp it to fit.”
This way of using what is essentially academic jargon (where common words can and often are redefined into terms of art for the purposes of discussion) in activism is something I consider a giant barrier to activism being understood. It may be useful for discussing the nature of bigotry or whatever within activist circles, but that’s a very academic concern. I don’t see the benefit it offers to activism; using a common word in an uncommon way is a barrier to effective communication.
Eukie,
I phrase this as articulately as I can. Language is a mutable ever-changing slurry of new words and syntax, as well as archaicized words and syntax that all overlap, mingle, and contradict each other. English is especially guilty of this, as it has through out the near fifteen centuries it has been around, been both conquered and conqueror.
Words change in both denotation, the official meaning of the word as written by ‘experts’ (I have a great deal of respect for some of them but most just drag their feet as a way of “not taking a side” and by doing so side with the conservatives anyway), and connotation, which is the hidden or symbolic meaning of words that aren’t necessarily written anywhere.
There are many who resist this constant ebb and flow of meaning, as you right now are doing by arguing that “Violence” is purely physical in denotation and connotation. And a– let me call them linguistic generations– linguistic generation or two ago, you would have proved correct. BUT that is no longer the case: “Violence” has in connotation (which is the more important one) come to mean an act of harm in any nature of the word “harm,” and not simply its physical variation.
There is proof in this the language you use to advocate for the distinction. You used the phrase “Physical Violence” a number of times. This phrase is a phenomenon refered to by linguists as a retronym. This occurs when some change, such as an inovation, discovery, historic event, and/or political-cultural movement, cause an old word to encompass more in its meaning than it once did; to then clarify meanings the old word is demarcated into subcatigories, which are then tagged with words that distinguish one type from another (“manual transmittion” and “automatic transmittion” are examples of this outside our argument as proof of real-life applicability).
Inside the argument– “Violence” has come to encompass more than harm in the physical sense and as such, “Physical Violence” is now said to be distinguish it from “Verbal Violence,” “Sexual Violence,” and “Mental Violence.”
And sometimes a distinction between them is required– for the sake of explaining what happened or when there are two or more types present– but discussing this matter requires no such distinction because there are not two types of violence here: There is only “Verbal Violence” (though some would argue mental violence is present as well, in which case distinction might be required, but between only those two) and as such the purpose distinguishing between physical and verbal violence serves is less than null.
Let me provide a metaphor as means of further elaboration: You likely had the teacher that said “I don’t know can you?” in an effort to goad the word “may” as a replacement in the statement “can I go to the restroom?”. You’re drawing attention to an equally padantic (in this case) distinction between “Physical Violence” and “Verbal Violence” which just like that teacher, is wasting valuble time which could be better served running to the restroom because you need to FUCKING PISS; or returning from the metaphor, help stop transphobia and bigotry in general.
And that is why you should reevaluate your beliefs on this subject; put into sophiticated words– which hold no ambiguity.
GO AWAY
Who, me? (I have trouble lining up the replies to the parent comment. ^_^; )
In this case, it WAS violent. Mary had no idea what kind of responses might have come out her putting Carla in a public place and outing her. In fact, from her gleefulness I expect she would encourage Carla being ‘put in her place’ which is ABHORRENT and yes, VIOLENT.
I think there’s a rather large gap between “actions that cause physical harm to the body” (which is how I use the term violent), and “actions that might cause someone else, if they were so inclined, to cause physical harm to Carla”.
I categorically refuse to warp the language in this manner. Violence is physical. And seriously, there are enough words in the language to describe horrible behavior that you don’t have to latch onto this one word and try to warp it to fit.
Lamia brings up a good point, though. For all we know Mary was planning on loudly outing Carla in front of the boy’s dorm.
Anyway I feel like using words in service of violence can be described as violence as well.
I’m not at all sure what Mary was up to, other than being a jerkass and a drum, and don’t care to speculate.
I also respectfully decline from sliding adjectives around like that. Just because a person might be using words in service of noise doesn’t mean you can describe the words themselves as being noisy when I whisper, “Wait until he gets closer before hitting him with the klaxon.”
I’m perfectly willing to accept a definition of violence that only includes, to grab a random dictionary definition “behavior involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something.”
As long as you’re willing to accept that some non-violent actions can be worse than some violent actions. Outing someone in a bad situation can ruin their life and be worse than all but the most extreme violence.
I enthusiastically second that “violent” doesn’t mean “the worst thing ever”.
Was this really necessary? What do you even get out of pretending transphobia doesn’t exist? Do you just enjoy being called a hateful bigot? 3K+ comments later and you really think we all need to have this discussion again?
Go away.
Never assume that the members of a suicide pact have more to lose than you do.
Words to live by.
*plays a buttload of Twisted Sister revenge songs on the hacked Muzak*
Thank you. Classic metal is my lifeblood today.
“Screaming for Vengeance” by Judas Priest (bonus points for being from a queer singer)
And unlike Twisted Sister, I have plenty of Judas Priest albums.
Caps Locks “WE’RE NOT GONNA TAKE IT ANYMORE” until the end of time. 😀
was kind of hoping theyd talk about that last point billie made, but ok. hooray spite
also this makes it seem like its way more about “taking down mary” than “protecting carla”. those are two separate and not equal goals.
It’s both. The focus of the strip is on spiting and beating Mary, but that’s to the end of not putting Carla and the rest of the queer ladies in the dorm under risk of getting Mary’s shit.
On the contrary, taking Mary down has the direct effect of making Carla safer.
Yeah, this has every risk to backfire in a lot of collateral damage – Mary is good at spite too – and it keeps the official channels to deal with these things firmly closed.
But they feel better and that is worth something.
Like it’s already been said. It’s both. Ruth is very good at using spite as a motivator for her thankless job. Whether Ruth is a good RA or not ruling by fear, within the rules, is how she keeps the systems in line.
Willis, change one letter and you could have a great soda sponsorship
For some reason, this prompted me to imagine Sprite changing one letter in their ads, resulting in ads for “Spite.”
Particularly this one, ’cause it really does sound like they say “spite” at the beginning:
https://youtu.be/Ee-8U42C1zI
http://i.imgur.com/dfF47gd.png Satisfied?
They’re both really excited by carpet talk
If they go yanking her carpet, they will find it is already all sticky…
Some sailors must have owned it before Ruth.
Spite really is a wonderful thing.
It is a fantastic motivator. 😀
They’re embarking on the sexiest vengeance since Russ Meyer! 😉
[applauds reference]
Faster, Pussycat!
May the Spite be with you
And your father (Whoo-oo-oo!)!
Spite can sometimes give you the power to conquer fear and just pull the cord on something scary, especially when dealing with an abuser or someone exploiting power over you.
Spite was what gave me the endurance to survive high school. I think it gets a bad rap – as long as you use it for good, I don’t have a problem with it (mind you, I’m biased, as I think spite quite literally kept me alive for the better part of 6 years, so.).
Personally, I consider Wroth to be one of the most important virtues one can have.
And also with you.
Spite: the worst quencher
Obnoxiously bubbly
Spite: because lemons and limes are jerks.
Why are they jerks? And what does that make the other citruses? Like tangelos.
Grapefruits are decent folk. If you can get past the bitterness.
Oh man I feel this.
And so like a responsible adult, Ruth went to her bosses and reported Mary for committing a hate crime. She lost her job due to her abuse of power and violation of the rules she was supposed to enforce, but found solace in doing the right thing as she and Billie decided to make an effort towards sobriety again.
Well, that’s no fun, let’s go with ridiculous hi-jinks instead.
Booooooooorrrrrrrrrrrrrriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnnng.
Sounds like some acting with integrity there.
Last time that ended with her getting killed by a truck.
Ruth died because she was trying to help out Danny and the universe punished her for this wanton cruelty.
RUTH DIED ON THE WAY BACK TO HER HOME PLANET
What kinda comic do you think this is? Smart People Making Smart Decisions?
Smarting of Age is a hell of an AU isn’t it?
Sometimes I like to hope. You know, to make it sting a little more when it all comes crashing down.
You fool. You damn-ed fool.
Smarting of Age revolves around a bunch of other students in another dorm. It’s kind of dull because they all like each other, all come from happy backgrounds, and everything goes right for them all the time.
I wonder if new students are recommended away from Clark Wing.
Like McAwesome’s in Shortpacked!
Mike spends half his time in that dorm, drunk.
Spiting of Age?
Honestly, that wouldn’t be a terrible idea. Mary has very little proof of anything that we know about.
Becky is gone for the weekend, so they aren’t going to find her, we’ve seen that the other girls on the floor have her back and so will deny seeing her if asked, and if Billie can quickly remove any evidence of her new living arrangements (Sal won’t squeal to an authority figure), then Mary has nothing.
And Mary was dumb enough to commit her hate crime in front of an RA, one who the people in charge allegedly like and will listen to because she keeps things in order. An RA in good standing’s word vs. an uppity freshman with no evidence and no one willing to back up her claims.
It’d be a great idea… that will probably not happen while they will probably focus on simply escalating to finding their own blackmail material on Mary to exploit.
I actually assumed this was what they WERE doing? With Ruth cleaning up evidence for the upcoming official investigation?
Hm i wonder:
Will the responsible authorities actually be available at the weekend?
To me it feels more that they have to wait for monday if they want to go that route.
If they’re willing to escalate sufficiently, yes. The university is open, students are in residence, if something goes pear-shaped and needs to be dealt with there have to be people available to deal with it.
If it’s presented as a minor complaint, it’ll be pushed off and dealt with later.
Fffffffft. Ruth goes to her bosses after taking Mary, and there’s no worries.
Three days later she goes back to them for a talk along the lines of, “That wacky idea that lunatic had about me and Billie? We found it hilarious, and then even more hilarious, and then the craziest thing ever, and then we realised we were about to fall into each others’ arms. Would it be okay to transfer her to another floor so we don’t cross any lines? So weird though, being brought together by that psycho like this. Guess that loon musta had a prophetic gift or something. Wonder if it’ll help her find her femurs?”
*taking out
The difficulty of that one is that literally everyone who’s ever been within 100 yards of the dorm with a functioning set of eyes is a witness to both Ruth’s drinking and her sexual harassment bit.
Two witnesses for Mary’s rudeness (not a hate crime, a hate crime has to be associated with an actual crime), probably around two _hundred_ for Ruth’s actual felonies and general negligence. For bonus points, the only witness to the actual line-crossing bit, the blackmail, is the negligent alcoholic desperate to keep a job she’s not actually doing while essentially drawing a fraudulent paycheck.
Normally there’s a level of “why the hell would anyone make that decision?” in DoA character arcs, but in this case Willis has done an excellent job of it making not going to the authorities the actual rational choice for the character involved. Ruth couldn’t even get people to lie to cover for her on the drunken negligence thing, because not only is it entirely true but she’s gone out of her way to alienate the students on her hall in every way.
I mean, owning up to her failures would be the honorable path, but if she was being honorable she’d have quit the job she clearly can’t do already, regardless of blackmail, because she clearly can’t do it. So that doesn’t apply either.
It’s a really well-set-up no-win situation, the Dumbing part is probably going to be her doubling down and making it worse. Thus, entertainment value.
As far as I know, no one other than Billie has any idea about Ruth’s drinking. No one’s commented on it. No one’s directly seen anything. Even Mary didn’t mention drinking in her little blackmail speech.
Nor does anyone else no anything about sexual harassment. Billie mentioned it to Daisy after the kiss/sexual assault, but it never went anywhere.
They do all know about Ruth’s general threats and her and Billie’s fights, which are now staged to cover up the affair.
The residents wouldn’t lie to cover for Ruth, but given the accusations Mary’s bringing, they’ll lie to protect Becky and they’ll tell what they think is the truth about Billie.
Yup. It’s very likely if they asked it’d be “Ruth and Billie, dating? Nah, they hate each other. They’re fighting literally all the time. What, someone besides us living on the floor? Noooooo… can’t say I’ve seen that.”
Besides, Billie is into guys (just ask Danny). How could she be interested in girls too. Is there even a word for that?
They’d also lie to spite Mary. Spitefulness towards Mary is probably quite common on this floor.
It could be the basis of a fledgeling economy!
Also, I highly suspect the people on Ruth’s floor think fairly highly of her.
They have her down as a “dragon lady” with the rules, but she hasn’t made a habit of unprovoked violence, has been protective of her charges and is genuinely helpful to everyone except Billie.
The one example of violence against anyone other than Billie (besides slapping Mary, and no one is going to care about that) is from so far back in the series that the characterization may no longer be valid. It certainly doesn’t fit with what David showed later.
“She’s an S.O.B., but she’s our S.O.B!”
(Of course now I am wondering if and how “son of a bongo” can be used for women, and the complications and alternatives. And implicit values thereof.)
Personally I think they see her more like a tyrant but I hope you are right. After her – ah – discussion with Blaine I think most of the people of the floor started to think more highly about her.
I reeaaaallly don’t see that happening. Like at all. I’m pretty sure the rest of the dorm would stand up for Carla, definitely, but Ruth? Why would they want to? Ruth’s a jerk who yells and beats up Billie. She barges into quiet dorm parties unannounced and keeps yelling about how she wants to tear out our femurs.
Also the cliché would be so bad I might actually die.
People’s reaction to her beating up Billie has been “why does Billie keep provoking her?”
Uh, no? At least not to my recollection. They basically just stand there with their mouths agape because the RA is tossing one of the students around.
Well, Mandy an Grace think they’re banging.
Anyway let’s not try to enforce the garbage idea that Billie “provoked” Ruth, or that if she did than that would somehow entitle Ruth to beat the shit out of her.
Well, at this point it wouldn’t be too surprising to think Billie’s provoking it, since they’re deliberately staging the fights to keep people thinking they’re enemies (and because it turns them on.)
The original abuse, certainly not.
Plus, she’s been nice to non-Billie members of the hall. There was a comic that was just her standing in the hall giving good friendly advice to everyone and helping out with stuff… up until she saw Billie and then it was verbal abuse.
So yeah, they probably see her as scary and terrifying but overall pretty awesome and besides she helped me with that fight I was having with my roommate and so on…
True. Contrast that with the male RA whose initial meeting was apparently “Consent. Yadda yadda yadda. Trek Marathon’s on. Bye.”
Or frankly, any RA I had in college. At least they see Ruth.
The real issue with going to the “bosses” about Mary’s hate speech is that the bosses would, maybe, call Mary in, tell her it is unacceptable and call that an end to the matter.
Anything more would require them to put their students sense of safety above money.
That’s definitely true. The GLBT Student Support Services might care more, but the faceless “bosses” from downstairs would probably not bother with more than a half-hearted “warning” until the 4th or 5th complaint about it… at which point they’d probably just shift Carla or Mary to a different dorm or if they’re especially incompetent, “suggest” to Carla that it should be time that she looks into off-campus housing, you know, independently, and not at all because this would allow us to “solve” the problem by not actually doing jack all.
I… *really* don’t want that to be Carla’s story. Or anyone’s.
I know (and appreciate!) that Willis works with real-world tropes so’s he can give us laughs/feels/hurts over things that happen out here in the ugly, but there’s two things that give me hope here: (a) homelessness is already a plot point twice over, and is visible as an issue to a significant number of the characters (via Leslie and via Becky), and (b) any authority is already set up to be lawsuit-twitchy via Russ.
ie, “Do we toss this skatemangled nuisance out and get on with our lives (yay!), or do we need to keep in mind that apparent friendship with problem-who-was-shot-at-and-kidnapped-who-shouldn’t-even-be-ours might mean papers and lawsuit lawsuit lawsuit? Aw shit.”
… three things. (c) Ruth and the Rule of Funny. Dammit Willis, in the middle of the peak of all that drama you gave us “… punched him so hard he landed in a pile of cops two floors up.” You’re gonna do the impossible and give us something that internet-winningly-magnificant again, aren’t you?
(on the more serious side of that read: Carol. I suspect the storylines we’re really seeing play out are Joyce vs Carol over Becky, and Ruth vs Mary over Carla, with any higher-level authorities happening out-of-picture. then again: Becky needs somewhere permanent to live…)
http://i.imgur.com/IPKEbub.png
My god.
Billie’s ass is getting bigger.
That’s no moon
“That’s no moon…”
This can be solved by removing her pants.
…More things in life oughtta be solvable by the removal of pants, really…
Booze has a lot of calories. Luckily, on Billie they go to the best places.
Wait she stores the booze? Much better than a camel!( yeah I know their humps don’t store water at all)
Welcome to University, where fat asses come free with admission
I miss short hair Billie.
“And I mean that as a compliment!”
“Oh, Ruth… poor simple, confused Ruth… it doesn’t #%@!ing matter.”
“Do you think I would do this with a GOOD RA?”
Anyone who says nothing good comes from being motivated by spite is a liar.
Some of my greatest achievements were accomplished purely through spite.
Nothing quite like it to keep you moving and on your feet when all else fails.
So much this!
It’s not everything, but sometimes it can really keep your feet moving when you desperately need them to. Wanting to spite those who want to exploit your collapse can be really good motivation for staying on all the balls needed not to.
Is this like using anger to keep depression at bay?
Prolly. I did that a lot too.
This is actually literally true for me. Among my constellation of health problems is a tendency for my blood pressure to drop and stay too low. Very frequently, when I’ve got a good hate going, I physically feel better. 🙂
Spite got us a prototype Chevy Impala with Honda cylinder heads in the 70s and the Sony PlayStation. It can’t be all bad…
Like the moon race!
Since spite is one of the reasons I actually exist, I full heartedly agree with this statement.
Spite! 😀
I anticipate nothing but good things to come from this.
SPITE,
bringing enemies and allies together for how long.
Of COURSE they’re not breaking up. I don’t know what I expected.
Dumbing of Age: It’s Okay As Long As There’s Someone Worse Than Me!TM
I mean starting out this relationship was a horrible trainwreck of abuse and mutual self-destruction but it’s actually growing into something borderline functional.
Aww, this is the most adorable misanthropy I’ve ever seen.
They should double date with The Monarch and Dr. Mrs. The Monarch.
At a karaoke bar, singing Beatles songs.
I know. To quote a Shortpacked meme: “I’m so happy for these assholes”
I have never been more into this ship than I am at this moment.
This is the sweetest thing I’ve seen all week, and the screwed-up circumstances surrounding it only make it sweeter somehow. They are joined in both love AND hate!
You know what? You’ve got spunk.
I HATE spunk!
WELP!
THAT DOES IT!
GIVE THIS PERSON A USENET!
(More Muffled Speech)
WE’RE OUTTA THOSE TOO?
FINE, GIVE ‘EM A LANDLINE OR SOMETHIN’.
Yesssssss.
Telling you: Sexy lesbian homicide pact.
These two… These two I love and understand.
Yeah, I was reminded a touch of Thomas.
Yeah! Now recruit Carla’s posse of skaters and bikers and put up a united front against Mary!
these ladies have a real love-hate relationship!
i.e. their relationship is built on their mutual love of hate. lord help us if mary, carla, and malaya ever bang mike!
i mean that sounds like one hell of a foursome actually id buy that slipshine
This seems like it’s going to end terribly and for horrible reasons but be really entertaining along the way.
So business as usual, you mean.
Hell yeah, time to wipe that smug grin right off of Mary’s face.
Bigoted brat thinks she’s got all the cards, but Ruth’s about to walk up to her and knock those cards right out of her hand. And then take her femurs for good measure.
I seem to recall some preview panels of Mary looking increasingly frustrated, which is a good sign.
I’m so very okay with this outcome.
Ruth x Billy x Spite. The true OT3.
Excellent, I’d have been disappointed if it had been that short and with that little suffering to feast on. I may /want/ a happy ending, but I /expect/ to receive at least sustenance.
Also, so glad Ruth and Billie kept this part of Willis.
Ruth, Billie, don’t ever change. Except for, you know, all the wildly self-destructive stuff.
Just be destructive towards other people who deserve it. Comments also really like spite! 🙂
Yeah, it’s… Actually kind of unsettling.
It’s a complex thing. Spite is a bad thing, in a lot of circumstances. But sometimes, when you’re on the ropes, it can be the only thing that keeps you going. I wish that wasn’t true. But I’d also be lying if I said it hasn’t at one point saved me from the raggedy edge.
I was writing a response to this, and I had to pause in my writing of it to consider a few things. The summary is that I have to start by saying I get where you’re coming from. I don’t think many people get through life without, at least once, having just one little thread to hang onto which can keep you from falling into darkness. If that little thread is spite, we can call it a necessary evil. I can’t begrudge people what it might take to get them through to another sunrise.
What I was going to add after that was that my comment wasn’t aimed at Ruth and Billie, but at the audience. There’s a lot of people here gleefully clapping their hands with giddy excitement at the idea of Ruth and Billie hurting Mary somehow. Not showing her the error of her ways, not shaping up to be better, but inflicting misery on another human being for the sake of taking pleasure in causing that misery.
That was what I was GOING to say, at least. Then I considered that there are probably more than a few people in the audience who’ve had experiences like this; who have probably desperately wanted revenge and not been able to get it in the way fantasy so often lets us enjoy. Revenge might not be justice but it can feel an awful lot like it, and revenge fantasies really do feel good. That certainly might make the spite more understandable.
That doesn’t make me any more comfortable with it, though. I’m not comfortable with wishing misery on someone. I’m not comfortable talking about people “deserving” destructive behaviour aimed at them. Call that a removed or privileged perspective if you will, you wouldn’t exactly be wrong; I’m not trans. I don’t think that invalidates my concerns, though.
So, yeah. Guess that’s a lot of saying nothing, but a complex issue, as you say, doesn’t have an easy summary.
I can see that. And I can see being perturbed by people wanting to wish Mary physical harm. And I don’t think that empathy is necessarily a function of privilege.
Desires for revenge can stoke fires, but at a large volume can probably feel unsafe and I respect that.
Honestly, my own experiences with spite, I didn’t so much want to physically injure the person I needed to spite. I just needed to not let them win over me and put me in a really unsafe place. And holding on to that gave me what I needed to get through the hardest months of it all.
For what it’s worth, some stranger on the internet is glad you got through them.
I think we see reasonably eye to eye here. Shine on.
Same.
For me, I never wished harm to people. Spite was more of a “Fuck you, I’m not gonna give you the satisfaction” thing. People at the time were quite literally, and in so many words, trying to bully me into suicide. Spite kept me alive. Not hope, not “it gets better,” not anything like that. Spite.
So, yeah. I think people who’ve never been in a systematically unwinnable with their current resources situation (like Ruth and Billie right now or like Carla earlier), where society itself is stacked against you because you’re marginalized in some way, don’t understand how necessary spite can be to having the will to carry on even though everything is terrible and hopeless.
i am personally hoping for Carla to pull a lot of pranks. cream pie to the face? sure. drawing a satanic circle on her door in the middle of the night? go for it. dump her in the Amazon? sounds cool. we haven’t seen Carla do pranks yet, and i want that.
Yup. It’s like… “I don’t see an endpoint to this, everything is awful, but Bob damn I’m not giving X the satisfaction of engineering my downfall.”
And to altalemur-
I would love to see Carla escalate the prank war as her means of gaining power back, but I would not at all blame her if she decided to just avoid Mary to avoid getting hit hard with intentional transphobia every time she interacts with her. I mean, it’s one thing to goad a bigot. It’s another to goad a bigot knowing there is very likely a chance that they’ll do direct harm to you and get away with it.
… Well, to clarify: I fantasized about causing harm to the worst of them. However, consistently when I had the opportunity in a very-low-chance-of-this-coming-back-on-me-and-most-people-would-encourage-me-to-act-shitty situation, I opted to not be shitty. I did do some Carla-style pranks to be a thorn in their side, but nothing actually serious and nothing that would damage property or hurt people.
And, when some of them have come to me to apologize for what little shits they were in school, I’ve bit back the angry tirade I spent the better part of my schooling crafting, and told them to learn from it and not let anyone or anything make them be so cruel to another person ever again.
Not gonna lie: I wanted to use the angry tirade. But when it comes down to it, I am not someone who takes joy or comfort in hurting people. So I didn’t.
The level to which people in the comments for DoA comics wish misfortune on the various characters for various reasons leaves me somewhat uncomfortable at times. Sometimes jokes about beating people to death with their own femurs can be fun (because of the inherent ridiculousness of such over-the-top violence), but other times it feels like people are airing their revenge-fantasies and I’m witness to people getting really, really aggressive over fictional characters.
And I’m not necessarily sure that working up such a level of rage and bloodlust over fictional characters is healthy.
It is uncomfortable for me too. I just can’t get into my head that “Hope she dies” is supposed to be read as “I don’t agree with her actions”.
Yeah, I totes agree. That being said, I hope that Mary steps on legos. I hope she steps on all the legos.
I’d manufacture additional legos for her to step on.
And also d4s. Lots and lots of d4s.
Similarly, I kind hoped for a conclusion of people coming to rational decisions and working out their problems in a mature and reasonable manner. “Hey, I’m trying to study here, and all that noise is extremely distracting.” “Oh, sorry about that, I’ll go skate outside.” “Thanks, I appreciate it!” instead of ‘gleefully throwing transphobic slurs’ and ‘escalating prank wars as a means of gaining power back’. But then, as someone said above, this is “Dumbing of Age” and not “Young Adults Behave Maturely In A Collegiate Setting”. If the drama didnt exist, this comic wouldn’t be nearly as interesting.
I’m OK with DoA’s cast doing stupid things for my entertainment because they’re fictional characters in a fictional world, incapable of causing any actual suffering.
I’m slightly less comfortable with the way in which some number of DoA readers, all of whom I believe are real people in the real world, seem to be really invested in the right way for things to go being the ways that involve violence and retribution.
This comment section reads like it was written by a Sith Lord.
see comment below.
er, I mean:
“Good. Gooooood…”
That’s the Ruth and Billie we know and love!
Mary, be very, very afraid.
Fuuuuuuck yeah girls, give her hell.
That’s the spirit: Destructive energies turned OUT and…. go!
Well this probably won’t end well but it’ll probably be entertaining along the way.
So it’s business as usual for these two. =D
Dumbing of Age in a nutshell.
Ah, our favorite bi sapphic lovers combining their powers of spite to fuck with Mary~
Life can be a beautiful thing :’)
I think I preferred the threesome Ana proposed.
Yay, that is a so awesome way to refer to them!
Okay but if billie is moving back into her old room where is becky going to sleep
With Dina?
Or maybe she can use Sal’s bed at night when Sal’s not using it.
shes gonna get her own place and set her life back on track
actually though if the trip home doesnt turn out to be a total disaster maybe becky could stay with joyces family until she can register for the next semester
Almost certainly not. If that were the case then Becky would be out of the cast for years, unless we got a timeskip.
If Becky eventually gets found out, then I think she might end up living with Marcie. It being established that Marcie isn’t a student and works long hours is too clean for it not to be setting up for something.
Awww. All the best people really like spite.
I… I don’t think that’s true.
How about ‘most interesting?’ It’s just as subjective as ‘best,’ but a little less absolute.
People who’ve had shitty moments in their lives…?
After life has walloped you below the belt a few times you develop a (un?)healthy respect for the power of spite as a means of support and motivation.
“Now please hold my nose while I get out a knife…”
–my above comment was responding to a comment that got deleted. Thanks for moderating, Willis.
Must have been that guy he said about in the twitter feed a couple of minutes back. It’s his duty to keep this comment section assholeproof.(and not a very pleasant one)
Do I want to know? I probably don’t want to know. I kinda want to know. I probably shouldn’t though. I can guess though. Carla was briefly mentioned last comic, so I’m going to guess some variation of “I’m way too cis to see why transphobia is a big deal and besides, Carla was loud in the halls and thus deserves death”. Did I guess right?
Your experienced imagination is probably thinking of viler stuff than the Original Poster said. OP was very clueless, but hey, no calls for death to anyone, yay?
Repeating the post in its entirely would defeat the purpose of deleting it. Suffice to say, OP didn’t seem to understand that hate-speech is not the same as regular hurtful words. They blamed Carla for everything, including skating at Mary to annoy her. Most bizarrely, they asserted that society forgives trans people because they’re trans (lolwut). They probably said other strange and/or potentially-triggery stuff, but I’ve forgotten it and I’m OK with that. I’ma go fill that brainspace with sweet dinosaur facts.
Ah, the “faceplanting on one’s privilege” type post. Say no more.
Well, Ruth said in front of a witness that she was turning away when someone gave Mary what was coming. And boy does Mary have it coming. The only good thing that could (hopefully) come out of that confrontation is that Ruth and Billie may end up redirecting their destructive energy elsewhere and maybe end the self-destruction.
Hooray for spite. And not just any spite, but karmic laser guided spite against a bigot at that. The best kind of spite, as it very nearly borders on principled stand.
I mean, I feel like it IS a principled stand. They just need to call it spite to feel okay with it. =P
Good point. Also, digging the Sokka gravatar. Although now I’m having flashbacks to that train wreck made by M. Knight Shyamalan….
LA LA LA, I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU ARE REFERRING TO
The difference between spite and a principled stand is that spite usually accomplishes something beyond martyring yourself.
It’s a moral imperative.
Panels 4 and 5 are the most adorable thing that happened around here in a while.
YES TEAM UP
Rest in spaghetti Mary, no regretti, never forgetti.
Okay, really though. Why doesn’t Billy just swap rooms with someone else on another floor?
Probably for the same reason an employee of Indiana University is about to start harassing a student with her girlfriend she’s not allowed to have.
They are not good at thinking things through.
I’m starting to get the impression you don’t like Ruth.
I feel like not liking Ruth is a crucial part of liking Ruth. At least, that’s how it works for me.
Yeah, Ruth conjures some really complicated feelings for me. On the one hand, I have a hard time looking past the origins of the relationship and how textbook abusive and stalkery it got at times, but on the other… they have these flashes of really awesome potential that I’m super invested in and I feel happy for them when they can pull through their shit and reach out all earnestly like this. And so I find myself rooting for Ruth and Billie even though there are so many internal issues, including Ruth’s tendency to default to tearing Billie down in order to push her away.
So what I’m saying is, Ruth and Billie confuse the fuck out of me in a… good? way? I guess?
This is the best description for why I personally like Billie and Ruth. Thank you for putting into words what I could not.
i think the best way to think of it is that neither Ruth nor Billie are bad people…they just make some really bad decisions.
I genuinely hope they don’t crash and burn like everyone expects them to, but instead grow together into more healthy, well-balanced adults. Because after so many narratives where queerness results in tragedy, I think we’ve all earned that.
I like Ruth pretty much exclusively under Billie’s influence. Ruth on her own is kinda a terrible person. Like I categorically disapprove of how their relationship was started or a lot of it’s more codependent and self destructive aspects but it seems like it’s actually developing into something supportive, and dare I say it, almost functional.
So Billie is the the control rod of the Ruth reactor?
(Sorry)
(not really)
I read control rod I immediately think golem which actually also works for this dynamic. Ruth IS largely inactive without Billie making her do stuff.
Because then this comic wouldn’t be called Dumbing of Age.
This is extremely ill-advised and inappropriate on so many levels.
When do we start?
“but we should give you a pass to do what you want because your trans? I mean that’s the way society is acting”
Buddy, you do know that in the US, 1 in 12 trans women deaths are caused by murder? That 72% of the time, hate crime murder victims are trans women? Society does not let trans people do what they want, society kills them.
Plus, Mary did more than say “hateful words”. Like if she just told Carla to go fuck herself or something, she would be totally in the right, Carla was being an ass. But she brought up the fact that Carla was trans to bring her down and, sorry, but if you feel the need to bring up someone’s gender identity, sexual orientation, race, disability etc etc etc to get back at them, you’re a bigot and a horrible person.
Seriously.
I can’t believe this is still up for debate at this point.
Oh who am I kidding of course I can.
Whoops, Willis axed that a-hole before I could shut him down, good work
I’d say Willis is probably one of the best webcomic artists when it comes to moderating the comments and nixing hate before it can fester.
Yes. That is why this comic is my happy place.
Like, usually we’re silly together. Sometimes we have thoughtful disagreements about how we interpret characters, or heartfelt posts where people respectfully debate stuff based on their life experiences, and that’s all cool. But, if you want to make tired arguments that will definitely feel like a punch to the gut of another reader, then you can go pretty much anywhere else on the whole internet. I think that’s spiffy.
Totes. It very much encourages the type of comment section for comics that actually feels safe and positive to comment on… which is not often the case, even for nominally queer-positive comics. So yeah, very grateful for all his hard work to keep it that way and piss off all the douchelords of the internet.
Now if only Willis added ableism and fatphobia to the list of issues he shuts up immediately…
Because from ‘psycho’ to ‘lol he was late when they handed out necks’, this comment section often does not feel safe to me at all )=
And I mean, I’m pretty sure the latter is a quote from alt-text of the actual comic strip and not just from the comment section, so
this is the sort of place I sometimes just need to breathe in and take a break from in order to not physically destroy surroundings
I skimmed through all of the Ross tagged strips. You may be thinking of hi-2 where the alt-text is “how’d they even find his neck to put a brace on it”. And there is much neck-related discussion in the comments.
Yes, thank you. I did remember there was something like that in the alt-text, and that at some point the joke about ‘giving out necks’ was made >_< The Ross-centered strips were the worst, and I did not want to dig through there to find exact quotes.
I mean… "Toedad". Clearly the thing we want to focus on and make into a nickname for this murderously abusive bigot is his body shape! That's hilarious! He's fat! Hahaha!
Toedad is not fat. His neck is muscle. His torso is shaped like a V, fer chrissakes.
The ‘handing out necks’ joke is not a musclephobic one.
But yeah, point taken. I’ll just keep on keeping quiet and saving up reserves of indifference for going in the comments here, just as I did until now. Woo issues you are already paying attention to, everything else is just setting expectations too high.
They keep trying to put a tax on reserves of indifference, but it is hard to get anyone to care.
Let it be known for the record that the “handing out necks” joke was in-comic dialogue by Other Rachel: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/01-to-those-whod-ground-me/necks/
(double chin that seamlessly transitions into neck, in particular, is not a muscle thing)
Interesting. I never read Ross’s shape that way — I thought he was stocky and very muscular, sort of a “chin-less jock”, like this guy: http://i.imgur.com/KyK6sYK.jpg
All the characters are stylized, though, so YMMV.
The comments sure read differently if I come from the interpretation that Ross is fat instead of muscular and/or stylized. (Personally, I thought that ‘toe-dad’ was a hyperbole based on how he was drawn — I’m sorry I said it now that I know people might identify with his shape!)
Do you interpret any other characters as fatter-than-average? If so, do you think they are presented as appealing, unappealing, or neither?
I totally read him like Leorale too. Kind of the looming stocky build that makes his threats all the more terrifying. I guess it’s cause his actual stomach area is thinner than his chest and that’s not usually the case if you’re fat like I am.
What Lorelei and Cerberus said.
Also, you lose your neck a lot faster with muscle than fat, unless it distributes unusually.
Hey! One of my favourite wrestlers! That’s a bit younger Bryan Danielson, probably from after he transitioned from Ring of Honour to WWE, but before he grew the beard. Back when he was still finding his feet within the company.
Oh my fucking lord? Seriously? Some dickweasel actually tried to argue that being trans is some fucking “get out of jail free” card? Fuckkkkk…
Yeahhhhhh, anyone who believes that is welcome to trade lives with me for a single day. I look forward to how awesome that “free pass” works out for them.
I hate it when people act like being asked to not be a gaping bigoted asshole is some massive imposition on their rights and like this huge societal advantage being given to marginalized groups. It just belies a degree of self-absorption that borders on psychopathy.
+1
…
Huh.
Tag-team.
This could be fun.
Just let me prepare my bunker.
“Yessss. Your hate has made you powerful. Now, strike her down with all of your anger, and your journey to the Dark Side will be complete.”
WELP!
THAT DOES IT!
GIVE THIS PERSON AN INTERNET!
(Muffled Speech)
WHADDYA MEAN WE’RE ALL OUT?
FINE, GIVE ‘EM A USENET OR SOMETHIN’.
A whole USEnet? I’d be happy with just one of the Big
SevenEight.“Congratulations, you have joined the Dark Side! Btw, we lied about the cookies. What did you expect?”
The cookies are oatmeal raisin
Eh, good enough. They’d have to be samoas to inspire enough hatred and rage to really be useful to a Darkside Adept.
I was expecting a cake, you fucking liar!
Did the game “Portal” not teach you anything? The cake is always a lie.
You’ve failed, your highness. I am a cheerleader, like my father before me.
This is my headcanon for Billie’s dad no matter what from now on.
Anybody else’s school have that tradition where once in a while the cheerleaders and football players trade uniforms and the guys cheer while the girls run the pigskin around? Can’t remember what they call that variant.
In my school, we called it “weird”.
I grew up in Fundieville, someone even thinking about that would be grounds for an exorcism.
Powderpuff! At least that’s what they called it at my school.
Basically the entire tone of this comment thread is “Darth Sidious trying to turn Luke Skywalker”
thinking about it, Mary is really bad at blackmail. She has this big piece of dirt on her R.A….and she wastes it through using slurs?! Fuck that noise. Why isn’t she going “Ruth, no one else has to know about your little arrangement, for just a few dollars a week” If your going to be evil, at least be smart about it.
Well, additionnally, since Becky’s conveniently gone for some days, no one , Ruth or administration, may find her in the dorm right now.
I just realized I might be evil. But I’m more Xanatos evil. I do frequently find myself making plans in my head and putting my fingers together.
Well, you know, “the kind of evil that doesn’t realize it’s evil, is the worst kind of evil there is.”
Only maybe worst in this case meant quality of evil.
I’m sick of people not realizing their evil. I want someone to be like…fuck it, I’m evil, mwahahahaha! And start robbing banks while leaving riddles or some shit.
*they’re
So Joker and the Suicide Squad? I’m a leave now.
This comment section deserves a better class of criminal, and I’m gonna give it to them
Yes, that Joker. Heath Ledger’s (may he rest in peace) Joker. I’m really unsure how to feel about Jared Leto’s Joker, that grill just throws me off every time, makes his teeth look nasty when he laughs.
And the Joker is known for his cleanliness.
Look, if you don’t get a secret volcanic island lair out of it, it ain’t worth doing.
Well, you’ve got to realize that Mary thinks she’s on the right side. Blackmailing for money would make it obvious, even to Mary, that she’s the bad guy, here.
It’s easy to hate Mary, because of how horrible she is. But, remember that the worst part about her is that she thinks she’s the good guy.
Well, that just makes her easier to change. At least she has a potential to grow.
Nowhere to go but up when you’ve tunneled miles beneath the barrel.
You could always tunnel deeper or to the side.
The hell planet are you from? People doing heinous things while thinking they’re justified is the norm on Earth. It doesn’t make them ‘easier to change’, it makes you a bad person for saying they weren’t justified. Of course they’re Good People.
You come up with a different solution to deal with bigots. Cause lets face it, attempting to educate is the only real option we have. Every other possibility goes way beyond my moral code. We can’t force people to act the way we want. (Well, not at a governmental level anyway) and I’m not interested in controlling people.
Uh, yes, we can force at least some small minimums of decency at the governmental level.
But more to the point, what did I say that sounded like “we can’t educate them”. I said that them thinking they’re good doesn’t make them easier to change.
I think the insidious part that many might overlook is that what people might consider the egregious violation on Mary’s part (the slur) isn’t really where Mary’s focus in all this would be. It isn’t even on her radar. For her, it’s just another insult, even if it’s one that cuts deep. That’s why, for Mary, she’d be the aggrieved party: Carla deliberately antagonized her, Ruth has been abusive, so why treat them any differently than she feels they’ve treated her?
Anyone who has much empathy for trans people will realize that what Mary said was crossing a line, but it’s a line that doesn’t even exist in Mary’s head.
That’s why the blackmail wasn’t used before: Mary wasn’t looking just to hurt or manipulate for their own sake. This was a response.
I don’t buy that. That line doesn’t exist in Mary’s head because to her it’s just simple and obvious truth.
The whole trans thing is just a perversion. Carla’s a boy pretending to be a girl and just belongs in the boy’s dorm. Sure, she only says it to hurt and because she’s angry, but it’s also tied into why she’s angry.
Now, she doesn’t actually explain her full reasoning and say all that, but since in her blackmail bit, she’s all about the “pervert vagrant” and Ruth “defiling” Billie, it’s pretty obvious where she’s coming from and it’s not the reasonable attitude that a lot of us have here that Ruth has some serious ethical issues.
She’d also been saving that blackmail until she needed it. Which, even though she didn’t expect Ruth to walk up right then, probably made her feel freer to attack Carla.
Yup, she’s a “good person” in her head. One of the few of God’s chosen who follows Him in the “right way”. She’s not going to use this information for money, because that would be blackmail. But using this to allow her greater freedom in “cleaning up” the dorm and its “undesirable sinful elements”? That’s just doing the Lord’s work. And Carla is a great microcosm for all that, because people like Mary don’t see people like Carla as who they are, but rather the ultra mega upgrade version of queer. And so, taking on the “queerest one of them all” and getting away with it by throwing another queer under the bus and blackmailing a third is like “wow, the Lord sure is shining down on me today”.
Hell, it’s probably her most favored outcome outside of maybe somehow doing something terribly awful to Roz.
To be honest, I’ve not gotten this feeling from her. I don’t really see Mary’s bigotry here as being religiously motivated (which isn’t to say that it’s not definitely religiously inspired, just that she doesn’t feel that God’s telling her “Go widdle in all these peoples’ chips!”). She hasn’t even really sought out her targets; she reacted, rather than incited.
Maybe that’ll change now that she feels immune, but I don’t really expect it to. She could’ve used this at any time and didn’t. There’s a real chance Mary might just be a student genuinely interested in her academics who wants some peace and quiet.
Oh, I’m sure the religion is the excuse for the sneering superiority complex and the bigotry. But it’s a convenient excuse for her and if she can use that to look down on others, especially those who are “wrong” by being queer and “punish them”, then all the better.
But I fully believe the “punishment” is part of the point. She’s held on to this blackmail material on Ruth for awhile, waiting for an opportunity to play her hand. Similarly, she escalated the situation with Carla (which began with her not being all that loud (seriously, skates on carpet is not even remotely close to a legitimate distraction)) way beyond reason very quickly and given her casual transphobia later it’s very hard to believe that Carla’s trans status was not central to why she took it to such extremes so fast.
And then she actively drew out her little transphobic bullshit, setting it up and smugly gloating over it. She was definitely looking for an excuse to play a hand like this and is pleased to play it far beyond any idea of just “wanting the problem to go away”. And that is really hammered home when we look at her following comics there where she notes “Ruth’s sins” which is all centered around queerness, the queerness of Ruth, the transness of Carla, the homeless queerness of Becky. And she highlights the queer aspects on purpose because that’s clearly what bothers her the most.
And once she has got her little victory over Ruth, she gloats at Carla, asking her if she has anything to say and then laughing about it, gloating that “she finally likes how Ruth is running things” now that she’s allowed to be transphobic and homophobic without rebuke.
She’s not interested in peace and quiet. She’s interested in making the hall an unsafe space for queer students. Now whether that is because her religion has poisoned her into that hate or whether her religion allows a means of disguising her hate is up to debate but also immaterial and irrelevant.
At the end of the day, all her chosen targets are queer. She’s sought them out and gloated about her power over them and likes looking down on and “punishing” them and most importantly winning over them.
That’s her central motivation.
Yup. All this time when we have seen Mary smiling and making snide remarks, she has been plotting and preparing for this. This is Mary’s move to make life worse for all the “sinners” on her floor.
Meanwhile, Joyce nudged Ethan to the queer meeting, risked everything including her immortal soul to help Becky and smiled fondly at Becky’s and Dina’s smooching. You know, just for comparison.
Totes. The only times we’ve ever seen her smile in this comic have been instances where she’s feeling a sense of power over a queer individual.
Seeing Billie leave Ruth’s room and plotting her little blackmail scheme: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-5/01-when-somebody-loved-me/clear/
Letting Billie know that she knows about her relationship with Ruth by passive-aggressively talking about how being gay is a sin in the Bible:http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-5/01-when-somebody-loved-me/dvr/ (bonus points here for causing distress to a third party as well as getting in a dig at how Billie couldn’t possibly be considered Christian because of her sexuality)
Thinking she’s ruined Carla’s fun by laying down in the hallway: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/02-that-perfect-girl/allowed/ (and yes, it’s about winning over Carla there. Look at her smile, that’s not, yay peace and quiet. That’s a smile reveling in this causing inconvenience and “winning” over Carla)
Immediately after her transphobia bomb: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/02-that-perfect-girl/wrong-2/
Immediately after blackmailing her RA over a list of sins that’s entirely about queer people and her RA’s queer relationship: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/02-that-perfect-girl/leverage-2/
Immediately after getting away with her bigotry and right before she walks away happy at “how things are run” now that she has full reign to be a bigot: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/02-that-perfect-girl/blindeye/
Literally, like I scoured all of Mary’s appearances. She only seems to smile under these conditions of “getting one over” on a queer person or after a big dump of bigotry.
The only exception I could find was this:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/04-the-whiteboard-dong-bandit/sterling/
And that’s more of a shit-eating liar’s grin than a genuine full-lipped “I’m enjoying this” sort of thing like she has in all the others. So yeah, only times she shows joy in the comic so far is when she’s hurting or threatening or thinking she’s “winning” over a queer person.
I could have sworn we had an actual smile from Mary at some point, but the closest thing I could find was this old model sheet from 2010.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/sarahjoycebilliesalwalkymiketony.png
It’s strange to see a happy smile out of her but it demonstrates that all her smiles in comic have pretty much always been spiteful.
That exception: Was she remembering at that moment that the dick-drawing caused Carla to complain about about a “hate-crime”?
Was that the moment Mary learned that Carla is trans?
So now she remembers it as “It had the positive effect to reveal my next enemy!”
Joyce is willing to re-examine her values and judge herself by them. It’s often uncomfortable and painful, but she knows it’s necessary.
Mary doesn’t bother re-examining hers, resulting in her self-judgments always returning “super best servant of God.”
Mary and Joyce feel like Christian Goofus And Gallant sometimes.
Hah, yeah. Goofus revels in his power over marginalized individuals. Gallant is forced to examine the system that benefits him, and decries it! Goofus puts glue in his hallmate’s skates. Gallant wants to buy his friend a nice scarf.
I have to disagree with a lot of what you’ve said. I think there’s a lot of unwarranted extrapolation going on that, hey, might be right, but I don’t think it’s there.
I had a reasonably long response written up, but I think I’d hone my point to two things you said in the last paragraph: That Mary sought them out, and that her chosen targets were queer.
On the latter point, I think there’s a selection bias going on here. The conflict with Carla was instigated by Carla. You can argue Mary escalated it (and you’d be right), but she didn’t choose Carla, Carla chose her. Ruth, meanwhile, is the RA and, hence, the person she’d have to interact with in regards to her blackmail. They could both be cishet and it wouldn’t change the fact that Carla was the one who interrupted her studying or that Ruth is the RA she’d have to tangle with.
I’d also point out that DoA has a rate of queer characters far in excess of the most generous estimates of the rates of prevalence in the US population. Of the student body, we have, what, five male characters, one of whom is gay and one of whom is at least bicurious? And of the female cast, we have at least seven queer characters (Ruth, Billie, their teacher, Carla, Becky, the newspaper editor, Dina maybe… I suck with names, I’m afraid), and I might even be forgetting some. If Mary got into a fight with a female character purely by random chance, the odds would quite possibly be 50/50 or even higher in favour of getting in fight with a queer character than not.
And that all ties into the first bone as well: Mary didn’t pick a fight with Carla, Carla picked one with her. You can argue about a “legitimate distraction”, but there’s so many factors that it’s irrelevant. It was clearly sufficient to upset Mary, and she asked Carla if she’d go skate outside. Carla, rather than be polite and go skate outside, flipped her the metaphorical bird. Did Mary escalate it? Yep. But Carla instigated it. Ergo, she can hardly be said to have sought Carla out. Ruth, meanwhile, is the RA, and arrived to the conflict of her own accord. Mary responded to Ruth, rather than seeking her out.
Mary’s definitely a bigot, but she’s not a hand-wringing villain looking to cause as much misery as possible; she’s a smirking git who was gloating about being able to take revenge without reprisal. If she wanted to hurt people, she could easily just have gone to the university admin office and anonymously reported Becky’s presence or Ruth and Billie’s relationship, but she didn’t.
I’m not saying she isn’t awful or a bigot here. Just that I don’t think she’s the kind of bigot you seem to be saying she is.
She didn’t waste the opportunity to give Billie grief for her sexuality. http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-5/01-when-somebody-loved-me/dvr/
I think Mary DOES target queers, and she does it for two reasons: They are acceptable targets in her view, and she can easily gain power over them. Just look how Ruth backed off when Mary pulled out the homophobic slurs.
As for why she didn’t report Becky, Ruth and Billie, that’s not the point. She doesn’t want them to STOP, she want them to SUFFER. She wants them to stay here where she has power over them. She is a first class bully and unfortunately good at what she does. (besides the point and allegedly, so is Billie, which is why I really fear the way this is going).
Yeah, that’s the other thing of it. Targeting queer youth is a proud bully pastime that is usually seen, especially in high school, as a totally legit activity that is frequently overlooked. And that’s the thing, if you target people with less social power, society tends to not react as harshly to it.
I have the horrible feeling that to Mary, targeting queer youth isn’t just legit, it’s necessary. Tribe she grew up in…
I suspect the not-reporting is tied up with the related martyr complex: the whole university is set up to allow them to carry on as they are. Deviants everywhere. Ruth the TA. Leslie the lecturer. Roz is allowed to get away with anything! Who knows where it ends? So it’s all up to her.
Compare with Joyce and Hank (and note that their subset of the tribe spawned/encouraged/sheltered Russ McIntyre), who are both certainly capable of total cockups (eg: Joyce’s date-the-gay-away plan), but are working on making sure love’s guiding all their actions. Gonna be a fun weekend with Carol, yessireebob…
Very true. ToeDad’s attitude to Becky and Dina is still way too fresh in memory.
Fudge you, Ross.
butting-
Having met a lot of Mary types growing up, I very much agree with everything you said. In fact, the more privileged White Christian a bigot is, the more critically important that faux-martyrdom becomes. Oh woe is me, I’m being oppressed and mistreated because all these rule-breakers and sinners are allowed to get away with everything while poor me gets called out or corrected if I just make an “innocent statement” (about the inferiority of another group of people). It’s soooooo unfair.
Sure, statistical wibble wobble, but at the end of the day, her chosen targets are 4 queer women. Ruth, Billie, Carla, and Becky. And that’s rather telling because she shares a room with Roz. Roz, whom she hates. Hates so much she death glared at her elementary-school sister simply for being from the same family and thus tainted by Roz’s “sin” in her eyes. But Roz isn’t on her list. There’s nothing about Roz’s attempt to use a school dorm room to film a porno (she doesn’t know that this was resolved in her Gender Studies class because she doesn’t attend that class) or anything else.
And it’s not just that her targets are queer. She emphasizes the queerness: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/02-that-perfect-girl/leverage-2/
And she does so in ways that double-down on the homophobia underpinning it. Ruth is not in an inappropriate relationship with a student in her complaint. She’s “defiling the cheerleader”. Becky is not illegally living in the dorms against floor rules in her complaint. She’s a “perverted vagrant”.
And in the previous comic where she lays that heavy transphobia down on Carla (which there’s no excuse for, I don’t care if Carla was sneaking into her room to blast Cannibal Corpse at full volume, you don’t do what she did. Period), she follows up her initial intentional misgendering with “where you belong”. And the word “belong” is darkened because that’s the word she emphasized.
In every case, it is not “happenstance” that she just so happened to tangle with queer women. She sees their queerness and their transness as reasons above and beyond everything else. The things worth emphasizing when she’s playing her hands.
If it was a coincidence, she wouldn’t emphasize like that. She wouldn’t circle these bits with homophobic and transphobic language.
And the fact that she does colors all her interactions. Why does she have an encyclopedic knowledge of the “wrongdoings” of only the queer members on the floor? Why did she even care initially that Carla was very quietly skating on carpet (Seriously, for every asshole who wants to pretend that Carla instigated this, there’s no getting around the fact that skates on carpet is not loud or a distraction. It’s at the level of someone shuffling their feet on carpet)? Why does she escalate so quickly to violence? Why is she so insistence on the “you’re breaking the rules” argument while not actually seeking out any form of authority? Why doesn’t she just do what literally any other student would have done and walked down the hall to the designated study room which is nearly guaranteed to be available midday on a Friday early on in the semester?
Why does she deliberately pick and escalate a fight with Carla, trusting in her reflexive anti-authoritarianism to give her an excuse?
Once she revealed her little transphobia bomb, all that suddenly becomes very suspect, because well, it’s actually a thing where trans people are held to higher standards and have their “wrongdoings” emphasized and virtues diminished and where escalation to violence for very minor things is very normalized.
So yeah, the evidence is rather strongly suggesting Mary sought out or at least is paying WAY more attention to the goings ons of queer students.
And as for your last point. She’s not going to report Becky to an authority for the same reason she didn’t just cry to an authority figure that Carla was breaking the rules.
Mary wants to win. She wants to be seen winning by her target. She wants her target to know that Mary personally outsmarted and outplayed them. That Mary showed them up and taught them their place.
Outsourcing things to an authority means she can’t directly gloat to their face like she did right before walking away from Carla. It means she can’t evoke that sense of fear and powerlessness that she craves. It means she can’t get that rush of superiority and faux-martyrdom where it is “her alone” against the “tide of immorality and sin”. And I feel that is born out in the vast majority of her behavior in her spoken-line appearances.
Cerberus, I admire your eloquence, your insight, and your passion. I don’t bother with the comments sections of hardly any of the other dozens of webcomics I follow, but you are one of the reasons I started paying attention to this one.
Please don’t call me an asshole because my character interpretation differs from yours.
Mary is a bigot, but I don’t see that as her main motivation. I think she’s all about power, and is so self-centered that she only gets involved when she is denied getting her way. If Mary’s primary concern was the “statistically anamolous” level of queerness (theoretically, I suppose, though it being established as a relatively liberal college in a conservative state, it makes sense that the demographics would be influenced by the school attracting a non-heteronormative student body) in the hall, I think she would have been more active as soon as she got the blackmail on her immediate authority figure. Your interpretation is influenced by your experiences, as mine is informed by my experiences. I am not dismissing your interpretation, but I believe my interpretation is as valid as yours, absent confirmation of authorial intent one way or the other. Note, please, this is not a defense of Mary by any means; in fact, I find her almost off-handed bigotry to just hurt someone that dared to cross her and score points in their argument to be even more abhorrent then a calculated manoeuvre might have been.
Carla “instigated” the situation by skating in the hall. Apart from it being mildly dangerous and therefore against the rules, she wasn’t hurting anyone. Mary heard the noise, however minimal it was, and investigated. Before she knew who it was. If it had been, say, Joyce out there skating, her reaction would undoubtedly have been different. In my view, she probably would have actually engaged in a polite conversation as her first attempt to change the situation. But she still would have wanted the skating to stop because what Mary wants is always the Right Thing in her mind and skating in the halls is against the rules. Her bigotry caused her reaction to Carla to start out brusque (at best, depending on how one wishes to read that speech bubble), and to continue escalating the situation each time she was thwarted.
I don’t think it’s victim blaming to say that Carla started the situation and was thus the instigator; I don’t attach any blame to that role in this context. She was doing nothing malicious, and she is by no means responsible for Mary’s reaction to her actions, nor did she “deserve” to be emotionally abused. At most, Carla may have “deserved” a short lecture on why skating is against the rules and to be sent outside to do it. (Mary’s actions, of course, should bring a much wider array of consequences, though it seems we’re more likely to see the “wacky hijinks” end of the spectrum there.)
Carla did deserve to have an authority figure who would stand up for her. The fact that she didn’t is why we’re still talking about it. Unfortunately, today’s strip makes it seem like that motivation is being left by the wayside…
That’s true. I think you are very much right that power is a major motivation. She needs to win and come out on top. She needs to have power and hierarchy over others. That’s definitely been a huge part of her game. I suppose I would say that you’re right that power is her motivation and bigotry is her expression of that motivation.
By your definition, I suppose you’re right that Carla “instigated” in that she existed and fell on Mary’s radar, because Mary very much doesn’t understand how to live with other people yet and has been shown to be incredibly dismayed and even offended by the fact that dorm living is not like her (presumably suburban) home she came from and thus she can not have the same expectations of absolute universal quiet when she wants it without a single adaptation, can’t have the same expectations of universal privacy, and can’t have the same expectations of having universal control over every aspect of her living space.
I think you may be right, that she didn’t know who it was at first, but that when she saw it was Carla, had no problem psychologically escalating probably very unconsciously to begin with owing to the influence of her bigotry. And I think Carla’s “pfft, you and your weird hangup on rules, man” attitude towards life definitely elicited a much more, shall we say, “potent” response than it might have done if the loudness had been from a Joyce, who she almost respects as an actual person, enough at least to hang near her at Church.
And definitely agree with you that Carla did not deserve that and at best “deserved” nothing more than a telling off by Ruth the RA or a “c’mon, move along downstairs” from a bored security figure.
And yeah, nothing assholic or victim-blaming about your response. I think it’s a lot more nuanced to the differences between the motivation and the expression of the motivation of Mary’s wonderfully despicable role as a villain and foil for a lot of the hall.
I originally had the same impression. but other commenters convinced me about a different interpretation: She knew that the only skater on her floor is Carla and she knew that Carla is trans.
So when she heard the skating noises, it was not the noise level what annoyed here, it was knowing that Carla was skating on the floor, and as that is against the rules, this gave her the motivation (and leverage) for pestering Carla.
Amazi-girl –
And that is a really good counter-example and really makes a lot more sense than being bothered by a relatively quiet shuffling noise, so we’re right back around to her “just happening” to seek out and target queer individuals.
Your mum is bad at blackmail :O
Awwww
This will all end in flames and terror.
Pass the popcorn.
Already popped, or did you want to hold it over the flames?
I first read that as “Already pooped” and was quite confused.
Oh oh oh… Yes… This is good… Very good… Great even, one might say… Ruth and Billy… Out for spit. Spite VS Mary!
They don’t need to go out for spit, they can just help each other.
Things could get amazingly destructive if most of the people covering for Becky decide to make open season on Mary… added to people who dislike Mary…
This one is positively in my top 10 DoA panels. I keep hoping for these two, and I love it when they act like they are getting their shit together. I love the faces.
There is room in my top 10 for watching Mary get her shit splattered all over campus.
Go get her guys. I got the salt & vinegar chips ready (better than popcorn 😉 )
Damn, I too have water in my eyes all of a sudden? It must be contagious.
Act with integrity, no regrets.
Revenge is a sucker’s game, but that doesn’t mean the emotions that usually drive it can’t be put to good use.
The real dynamic duo
Okay, I’ve been down on Ruth for the past while. But, this one really makes me like her.
They’re like a pair of really cuddly, likable Sith.
There must be Plushies!
Me: excited for a trans storyline, being trans
Storyline: lol, I’m actually about allies getting to be allies
Me:
well if that avatar isn’t appropriate then i dont know what is
anyway it’s not really a dig on the storyline I’m just disappointed that … this should be about Carla, not… allies… saving her… imo. It’s why I’m always kinda leery of cishet allies writing stories about our struggles, cus it turns into cishet savior bs. I’m sure it’ll turn out satisfying in the end it’s just… sigh. Disappointing.
The trans person involved has her shit together though. An asshole, yes, but largely an undramatic, relatively mature asshole that it’s hard to play up the drama about.
She’s sort of in the same position as Mike, she rolls her eyes and occasionally gives things a little nudge toward disaster, she doesn’t do drama herself.
Wait a minute… does “cishet” mean, contrary to my prior understanding, “cis or heterosexual”?
Because if anyone’s being set up for “savior bs”, it’s Ruth, who, well…
Yeah, but it’s still a Queer character suffering from prejudice when someone else runs into help them, and right now we’re focusing on the ally (Ruth) suffering from it.
Ruth’s status as a bi woman is kinda irrelevant to that.
Nah, it means cisgender and heterosexual, so you’re response is totally valid, but I can see where Kole is coming from and think Spencer describes the potential issue well.
That all being said, I’m sure we’ll get a bunch of strips with Carla’s perspective soon based on the preview panels and I couldn’t be more excited about that.
I’m really sorry you feel that way. If it helps any, Willis has promised that Carla will be given a lot more focus in the coming months, and Jocelyne will be reappearing next storyline as well.
While I understand your concern (because by God does mainstream media loves to make stories like that) I do think Willis is better than that.
Anticipating this fear is exactly why I made sure to flood so many preview panels of Carla onto Tumblr.
Preview panels: The Halon of webcomics
it might be mainstream media making me apprehensive that we go right into following Ruth instead of Carla along this storyline, but at the same time I think it might have been fixed had we followed Carla along a bit instead of jumping right into Ruth’s side of it (for… awhile, to boot)
It might feel a bit more like stories happening alongside each other had we already seen Carla’s side of it more than just her one quip to Ruth and that being the end of it, her arc in this should have been more prioritized for screentime imo
Again I’d like to reiterate I trust Willis to pull it off cus I know he listens to us and I mean I do appreciate him hearing us out not just when we have flattering things to say about his stories
I could be wrong, but my understanding is that this is a Ruth and Mary storyline as well as a Carla one. We’re going to get to the Carla part, and I’m excited for that since I like her and we haven’t seen enough of her, but she’s not the only participant here.
So so excited for the Carla part! Like bouncing in my seat excited.
Someone glue ur rolling chair wheels in place too?
…mayyyyybe… (shifty eye look)
I mean, we’re both homoromantic asexual transwomen. What’s the likelihood of more than one of those in the world? /that one badwebcomic entry guy who wrote the thing about Shortpacked
I am picturing Carla closing the door to her room and a vast array of holographic screens pop up and her digital assistant details the myriad options for ultra-tech revenge.
if this were an already-published story, i’d agree with you. but the pacing is necessarily slow given that it’s a webcomic. imagine if it only updated three times a week.
i anticipate more focus on carla. but i really did like carla’s dialogue with ruth. it wasn’t forgiveness. it was “yeah, i knew you would hurt me, so i’m choosing not to care.” carla’s casual acceptance of the whole transphobic attack makes me think that there isn’t going to be a lot of immediate action with her, but that she’s internalizing it. much like how we’re still seeing joyce’s PTSD show up whenever she’s walking alone on campus. at the very least, i’m hoping for carla to actually start pranking mary or even ruth. there hasn’t been a single cream pie in anyone’s face in this entire webcomic.
Yup. Practiced apathy and resignment is a type of social armor that trans people are often forced into and definitely agree that Carla’s main impacts will probably be delayed or more in secret. She doesn’t want to show just how badly things hit, because she doesn’t want to risk showing that vulnerability and fear again, or at least that’s my impression from future preview panels where Carla is looking harried and then awkwardly trying to smile it off.
I thought it was weird that we didn’t get back to Carla sooner after the incident. I half wondered if that was in response to how the comments blew up, but I think he’d’ve said something.
I think if we’d immediately gotten back to Carla, we would’ve been treated to a dozen panels of solo anger/despair responses. Much better to wait til she’s had time to process before turning the story back to her.
I’m sure that a) He expected things to blow up in the comments.
b) He didn’t change his months of buffer just for that.
Bonding activity!
They’re bonding over destroying someone else rather than themselves. I don’t know if that’s a step up or down.
HEEEEEEEEEAD CHEER LEADER ALPHA BOOOOOOOOOONGO ON THE CASE!!!!!
…no risk for collateral damage here.
THEYRE SO CUTE AND WEIRD
Teary, Spiteful Billie’s face is so frickin cute in that panel aaargh
Huh. Two drunks are managing to hold onto each other and walk in a straight line. Who knew?
Clearly they’re sorceresses!
Omnia per carnalem concupiscentiam, quae quia in eis est insatiabilis!
Opera Maleficorum sunt talia, quod non possunt nisi opere Daemonum fieri.
Quamdiu hoc tenetis?
Ruth is secretly the Scarlet Witch.
(Sadly, given the way Marvel’s writers have treated her over the last 25 years or so Wanda would probably trade places with Ruth.)
We drunks can pull it off sometimes.
Damn these two are cute in these glimpses where they open up to each other and skate right on the edge of healthy. They’ve got these little pieces that make me want to root for them even though I still do believe they are so so doomed.
Here’s hoping that instead, they help each other grow as people and become slightly less fucked up one little bit at a time until they’re a happy, sustainable longterm relationship.
I’ll drrrrrrr-eh heh heh, I’ll toa- mm, er, let’s just say, I hope for that as well.
I’m really hoping Willis subverts the tragic queer ladies trope here if for no other reason than these two dopes ending tragically is so incredibly predictable.
Spite?
NOW WE’RE TALKING
Sprite*
i dont really understand how doing it together fixes any of the problems? like, the problem was that she wanted to be a jerk to mary but she cant cause then mary will tell the principal or whatever that shes together with billie and that shes an alcoholic. so if they do it together, mary can just do the exact same thing??
I think the idea is together they can disarm her blackmail material more effectively.
More importantly, it’s support. This is Billie showing that she is on Ruth’s side, that she’s not giving up on her and the promise that Billie is just as good as being mean as Mary.
Alpha Bongo and all that.
All the spite. To spite the spiteful one. With spite.
Now with 500% more spite!
She who controls the Spite!
CONTROLS THE UNIVERSE!
The spite must flow!
I just really need this relationship to work out for I am exactly like them.
*chanting* Spite! Spite! Spite! Spite!
Dance! Dance! Dance! Dance!
Integrity is overrated.
Though to be honest, with Ruth there is not much of a difference.
Well, at least they flat out admit that they care more about their petty bitter feelings than anything else.
I don’t know what the correct word is in English, but this page feels sort of rushed, in lack of a more appropriate word. To elaborate, the dramatic buildup from the last two pages feels redundant when the problem is solved immediately in the very next page. That or as if there are some missing pages in between.
Never back an animal into a corner, because they’re liable to do anything it takes to get out.
And both Billie and Ruth are kinda freaking feral when it comes to each other.
Yes. Team up and THEN destroy her.
Their relationship is just so twisted. Can’t wait to see what kind of shenanigans await Mary.
Spite is like 90% of my motivation for anything.
That alt-text… You just had to remind us, didn’t you?
Look at it this way. This time, she gets to be the truck.
With the Dynamic Duo united against her I foresee an epic bongo-slapping in Mary’s immediate future (of course with no proof Billie and Ruth are responsible)…
I can never figure out if it’s the censor in action or if people are actually typing “bongo”…
Years from now, Willis notices the overlooked error message that indicates that the bongo censor crashed back in 2015 and never restarted.
I’ve started typing bongo on other sites. It’s a hell of a lot funnier.
I love bongo-slapping.
I’ve been doing the same. I kind of hope it catches on broadly and sometime circa 2050 there’ll be scholarly etymological papers tracing the original of the use of “bongo” as an insult back to a comic on the primitive internet.
Yes, this, yes. 20 internets.
But what can she do, exactly? I’m genuinely curious about that: what official route can she take in her function? Evil girl was obviously saying something quite malicious, but is it actually illegal? Not to mention how easy a misgendering is explained as a ‘honest mistake’. (Not that’s not what happened here, but it is so difficult to prove.)
Or is Ruth just going to do something to her, that’s not within the official bounds of her function? (I’m quite okay with that).
It’s likely against the school’s rules assuming it has anything resembling a competent anti-discrimination policy. Plus she said it right in front of their RA and it was decidedly NOT an innocent mistake and couldn’t be construed as such by any reasonable person.
Keep an eye on someone long enough, and eventually you’ll catch them breaking some minor rule (they might not even have known was a rule).
Or just ask Carla to plant marijuana in Mary’s room and have Ruth do a “random drug search”.
OR. Get Carla to plant SKATES in Mary’s room and accuse her of skating in the halls.
I don’t think they’re planning anything that could be described as “official function”.
Spite Wars: Episode IV – A New Dope
Interesting…”bongo” wasn’t what I typed above; it actually rhymed with “witch.” I guess we have to keep the comments clean. Although bongo-slapping does have a certain ring to it…
It’s redacted because after on incident, Willis found it annoying as balls.
Now I am wondering what “balls” was originally.
Just balls.
fuck
Balls are pretty annoying on their own.
Especially when they get smashed with a hammer.
Confirmation that it hasn’t actually crashed yet.
I’m not so sure this is a good idea. They might have spite on their side, but they’re attacking an enemy who is likely every bit as good on that account.
Imma just say that I wouldn’t want to be inna way of these fight, either. There may be collateral.
Take what you want, give nothing back!
The depressing thing here for me is that they don’t seem capable of doing the right thing unless they’re framing it in a negative light. Like they’ve given up on themselves as human beings to the point that they can’t see any of their actions as good or positive. Which means that they’re more likely to trend toward destructive (both self- and otherwise) behaviours.
Maybe I’m projecting too much. I sure hope so.
They are functional, still in school, not going to prison for murder, and occasionally have shared goals, like ____ the hell out of Mary. That’s a whole lot better than some.
Whatever they end up doing, I hope it’s good.
My head is playing “This Corrosion” by The Sisters of Mercy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-RVJyNpfDk
Best song.
i am really looking forward to Canadian-flavor Spite.
This comic is fucking fantastic. I love this team!
This!
The Sapphic Sisters of Spite Smite Sociopaths*!
* Yes, yes I know. Alliterative Authorization.
Ah, spite. Want to take a stand, but feel like “principles” are too idealistic? Try Spite!
Available mail order or email!
Spite also frees you up to sink to their level without dealing with people accusing you of hypocrisy.
Ruth, when your girlfriend asks if that smile is for her, you say YES!
Its mandatory. That and if someone asks you if you are a god. Answer is always yes.
Mmmmmmmmmmmmm spite. The foundation of plenty of relationships that lead to femur-theft. Go kick the SHIT out of Mary girls.
Go kick the shit out of Mary, girls * Punctuation is everything.
Proper punctuation can save lives.
“Let’s eat, grandma!” as opposed to “Let’s eat grandma!”
And its for Comics like this that show that these two are the best couple in the entire comic
Now, first of all, I’d rather that they did not do anything really bad against Mary, such as throwing her out a window. Sure, I despise her a lot, but it’s not about how good a person she is (or isn’t), it’s about how good a person -I- want to be. Or to put it another way, I don’t think I can claim to be a good person if I do the same things that bad persons would.
That being said, I agree with many people here, that spite is a powerful motivator, when harnessed properly. And it certainly has its place.
A friend of mine once had cancer (and he’d already have to deal with other shit too that would’ve killed him in any other age but this of modern medicine. Hooray for titanium spines and medical progress!)
Now, obviously he did the proper medical treatments for the cancer itself. But cancer treatment is really rough, and you do need to be able to find mechanisms to cope with that shit. Well, he didn’t try “positive thinking” as we’d commonly recognize it. He went for spite. He was all “I’ll be fucked if I’m going to let that piece of shit cancer kill me.” And that got him through the surgery and the chemo.
So use it when you need it, but don’t let it take you over.
Why does Billie’s smile in panel 4 remind me of Yellow Pearl?
Sounds like Ruth’s gonna cut off her nose (Billie) to spite Mary’s FAAAAAAAAACE!
I do like the progression here. Ruth in panel 1, knowing that this doesn’t sound good but also knowing that if she lets Mary wins, she’ll be succumbing to her demons. Billie in the next panels — is this when she finally realizes just how deep Ruth’s issues run? It’s like when she woke up to find Ruth crying and thought something must be wrong instead of understanding it’s just a thing. Now she’s starting to get it, and has this mix of “Oh you poor thing” and “Oh God, I can’t help,” followed by “Okay, this is probably a bad idea, but this is what she needs, let’s go for it.” And then Ruth, apparently realizing that Billie is willing to drown with her, but will try to keep her head above the water the whole time.
This could actually be one of the most significant moments in their whole relationship. As well as one of the few hopeful ones. We’ve seen that Ruth doesn’t think she deserves Billie, but now she’s suddenly faced with the fact that Billie doesn’t care. Billie’s seen her at her worst — drunk, suicidal, angry, etc. — but now she’s seeing her being driven to deliberate vindictiveness, and she still loves her.
I admit, I recognize Ruth in the last two panels. The realization that someone loves you even though you can’t understand why. It’s terrifying because you have no idea how to deal with the feeling, and yet you’re smiling despite yourself.
Plus several. Had I an Internet to bestow, it would be yours.
Don’t we all, Ruth. Don’t we all.
1. I noticed the sentiment above that having this storyline center around Ruth’s actions rather than Carla’s actions against Mary is a sneaky transphobic trope of ‘cishet savior’.
I am not trans, so I don’t get much of a vote on this, but… My personal revenge fantasy when dealing with Mary-style bullying is not getting to trounce them myself. It’s an authority figure getting their shit together, getting pissed on my behalf and trouncing them.
And yes, Ruth and Billie are framing their actions in the worst possible light here, but this IS at least in part on Carla’s behalf. Ruth cares about students feeling safe on her floor, and that extends to Carla, and that – well, I really really wish I had someone like that on my side in my school years.
One one side, yes, Carla deserves her chance to be a hero.
On the other, she doesn’t deserve to HAVE to be. She also deserves to be protected and to have people care about her wellbeing and safety. She deserves seeing Ruth, who she’s already written off as a shit faux-ally, gearing up and DESTROYING Mary explicitly in defense of her.
Just… my five cents, I guess.
(And I mean, then there’s the part about Ruth being queer herself. She’s not trans, and a lot of queer community is transphobic, but – it’s still not quite mainstream shit belching)
2. Actually, what consequences can there be for Mary? She broke Carla’s skates and was transphobic towards her, what’s the official response policy on that? Will she have to pay for the skates, move to another room, get kicked out of the university altogether? What CAN Ruth do? I’ve never lived in a dorm myself, so I have not the faintest idea of what the power of an RA is.
3. HOLY SHIT THIS IS SO SWEET THO. As a Ruth/Billie moment, I mean. I agree with all above commenters remarking their storyline deserves a happy ending/continuation… just. AWWWW.
You might not be trans, but I am and I agree with you. There.
To me at least, it’s exceedingly stressful to always be the one to stand up for myself, when those who should (because authority, trust, proximity, etc.) make themselves conveniently scarce.
That or they stand up against *you* for “making waves” or something. Because you know, being different is such a nuisance for everyone around you, and since they’re already making such a heroic effort to endure your whims, well you should make yours and lay low.
So, really, “cishet savior”? Well, that’s up to the person being “saved”… although I’d personally disagree with other trans people who’d percieve it that way. But that’s a discussion to have between us.
Telling trans people how they shoud feel about how they’re treated without being in their shoes, though? Transphobic. But that’s applicable to any discrimination, since the mechanics are similar even if the details change. And if you understand that, you understand a lot.
*not sure if I should happily eat my ally cookie or start worrying about me possibly telling trans people how to feel about stuff, because disclaimer doesn’t actually absolve me of responsibility for my words welp*
Haha, well… as long as people try their best and consider the views of those who know stuff firsthand, I’m happy (assuming those efforts are whole, sincere, yadda yadda).
As I implied, you made a parallel with other types of discrimination which you have firsthand experience with. To me it’s valid, especially since you didn’t actually compare (which often comes across as diminishing). Discrimination is a human experience, and we can connect on that. The details come after and can be discussed as a means to deepen understanding.
Also, you made it clear that you knew what you were saying is your current perception based on your current knowledge, while trying to put yourself in her shoes by refering to your own experiences. Still a valid process, imo. Actually, if my understanding is correct, that process is called sympathy and, with empathy, is one of the only resources we have to actually communicate.
So you can have a cookie if you like. But it’s like with anything, just don’t get happy to the point where you’ll rest on your laurels… although I get the feeling that you might just be more of the neurotic type that doesn’t need to be told that because they always worry.
By the way, what does an ally cookie look like, is it tasty?
I’d use the word ‘anxious’ rather than ‘neurotic’ but overall you are on point haha
and yeah I’m using my own experiences there. There’s a fine line between ‘ok I don’t know enough about This Particular Thing’ and ‘I can sympathize by drawing parallels to shit that happened to me that was vaguely similar in spirit’
The part that’s MY vicarious wish fulfillment through Carla here is for Ruth to stand up for her
not saying anything about anyone else’s ^^
(I imagine an ally cookie as a calming round thingie that tastes like content and lack of anxiety and friendship)
Hahaha awww… I’d need one of those XD
As someone who’s been welching about it (and a cis bi dude, if that means anything), it’s not that I want Carla to be the one defending herself, absolutely not; she should be protected from hate crimes by her institution. It’s that Carla suffers from bigotry, but then the scene focuses on Ruth, how Ruth feels about failing Carla, and how Ruth is planning at getting back at Mary. The focus right now is on the allies while it was Carla who suffered, and that is distressingly common in fiction, where violence is meted out on non-white, female, and queer characters, but viewed through the lens of the privileged, and the focus is on how bad they feel.
Hence why, while I’m frustrated now, I’m really looking forward to the promised higher focus on Carla we’ll be seeing in the coming months, and it’ll be a splendid opportunity to delve more into her character beyond being the wacky prankster.
This. I’d like to see Ruth sneaking to Carla’s to be supportive and see how she is dealing with things. This is something that wouldn’t make it worse for her, and what an R.A. should do. And she can encourage Carla to make a report that doesn’t involve Ruth – saying that she didn’t take the matter to her R.A. because she felt threatened by Mary and didn’t want to involve someone else living in the same place, so went to the head of the campus security instead. Basically, yeah. Carla deserves support, and I hope she gets it, but I also want to see this from Carla’s POV.
In fact, whether they go to the authorities or not, I’d like to see them work together. Both allies.
Mary is as prejudiced against bisexuals as she is against trans women and her problems with Ruth actually go back well before we saw any trouble between her and Carla.
Ruth’s an authority figure here and trans people have even more difficulties than queer females, but neither rank very high on the usual privilege charts.
So let’s have a team-up!
Oh yeah this is absolutely true. While the action might be Ruth’s, I just kind of assumed the narrative would show the point of view of Carla once again. This is a Willis comic, after all…
As a trans dude I must say that I feel like secondary trans characters who aren’t objectified or used as tragedy devices are waaaaay to rare.
I really don’t want to see another narrative where the poor trans person struggles with this and that. Seriously. The only coverage trans people get in the media is that. I’d much, much rather have a background-ish Carla who actually has a personality which isn’t reduced to transness (meaning : both good and bad traits, same depth as other characters, unrelated things going on in her life, etc.)
Not only that, but he does it without erasing trans issues. Up until now, I don’t have much critiques to make. My only heartbreak with this comic is the low frequency of male homoerotism… but that’s unrelated.
Not every character in this comic had their full-on spotlight moment. Carla doesn’t have to just because she’s trans, either. Please. I think Willis made a good move by putting a character there, who happens to be trans instead of making a big deal about it. He also might not be willing or interested in venturing too deep in there at the moment, and that would be his choice. Dumbing of Age is one project, and one project has to have set limits.
Also, nothing is worse that someone making a “trans character” instead of a character that is trans, which he also has avoided. Up until now, at least. Maybe he’ll stumble on the way, but that would also be normal.
Also, tell me how a gynephilic woman is privileged when one almost got killed by her dad a few days before.
So yeah, I really think your “frustration” about Carla is super out of place, since it really doesn’t concern you.
That’s… not really my point? Like at all? Unless I’m misreading you, you think my objection is that we’re seeing a trans character struggle, rather than said trans character struggling in service of somebody else’s narrative. Insofar as that part about trans characters being objectified or used tragedy devices I feel like that’s what happened to Carla now, and that’s something that’s going to be corrected later. Plus, I don’t think that’s an either or question, that we either need happy background Queer characters or Queer characters at the forefront who are only sad and miserable. I’ve never felt this way about seeing any of the other Queer cast members struggling as I have now, I see this and think “yep that’s something I’ve seen a million times literally everywhere else.”
And besides that, ultimately it’s still a Queer character who has a problem, but with the focus on somebody else reacting to that problem. I’d resent that if that happened to any of DoA’s Queer cast members. It’s why I like Ethan so much, since he has the very standard narrative of “Gay dude who is sad about being gay”, but it’s about him, how he reacts, how he feels, and the steps he takes to reclaim normalcy, and eventually how he’s started to accept himself. It’s not about Joyce and Amber being perfect allies and pulling him out of his funk, because he’s the one who has to deal with it.
Actually, that’s my point, that it’s not because she’s backgroundish that she’s necessarily being diminished, or even that serving someone’s narrative is not necessarily objectifying, depending on how it’s done.
And if I might quote Carla the other day, when the comment section was closed : “I’m used to be everyone’s acceptable loss.”
To me, that was a very clear message that Willis is not going to use her as a dramatic device. I felt like that very simple sentence contained a sh*tload of critique against how trans are portayed in general. I mean, we have horrendous rates of suicide, para-suicide, murder and “para-murder” victims in real life, and in stories the trans person is there to serve the plot by dying, in general. That’s worse than rubbing salt into wounds. And I really got the feeling that he made that strip (the one I quoted) to recognize that. And now he shows Ruth reacting instead of having the trans person become collateral damage. It’s a huge paradigm shift. I imagine Carla going about her business while letting the R.A. take care of what she should, and that’s how it should be. Of course, Mary might probably do more awful things, but that’s her character.
I’m sorry, but I really think that right now what trans people need is to see representations of people actually siding with them, not another struggle viewpoint. You can’t really compare with LGB people on that aspect. Or maybe you can, but only if you go back to the 70-90s, when homosexuality was legally viewed as a mental disorder.
You know, the other day at my university, there was a special “trans” edition of the weekly campus newspaper. I took a look… half the informations were simply false and the interviews were edited in a way to make it seem like trans people were homosexuals that transitioned because they wanted to be heterosexual. But the articles were presented like they were super compassionate, informative, like they were doing us a favor.
And did I mention those times when I went to the hospital and my very serious illnesses were dismissed as “emotions” because I’m trans?
So, if you ask me, I really don’t need to see another trans person walking on tight rope. I’d much, much rather see someone siding with us, for once.
As for your part about how you want stories with allies siding with us (I use “us” in this context to refer to all Queer characters, since I feel like the “saviour ally” storyline tends to occur to all manner of Queer characters), I agree, but that’s not the impression I got from this story arc. It’s not about Carla being supported by Ruth, it’s about Ruth failing Carla and feeling guilty about it. Like, you mentioned that part about Carla not being collateral damage; that’s kind of how it came off to me, like she’s Green Lantern’s girlfriend who got stuffed in the fridge so Ruth can feel sad and take action.
Like, I don’t want this to just be about Carla being miserable, that she has to deal with it alone and must earn her safety, or that it’s inherently harmful for their to be allies present, it’s that she, a Queer lady, suffers at the hands of a bigot so Ruth the Ally could come in to help and the A-plot of Mary dropping her blackmail on Ruth can occur, with Ruth motivated into actions because of her failures to help Carla in the same way, well, basically any story where a manly man’s apple pie wife dies so he starts chopping heads off.
And I guess this is just something we’re going to have to disagree on, because I find that having Queer characters suffer to promote another character’s storyline to be fundamentally diminishing to us,. At the least, I’m going to feel that way until representation becomes more prominent across the board and the focus stops being on the allies, because I’ve had my fill of ally stories. Hence why I’m super excited for more Carla focus in the coming months.
goddammit this was supposed to go lower.
Could I please get a delete?
wait no its in the right place
what is wrong with me right now
You sense of verticality?
Your*
There’s some spite fetish going on here
I have a spite fetish *is aroused by this comic strip*
Spite Fetish is the name of my next punk band.
I think that both of the girls here wouldn’t even mind a spit fetish.
Spit or spite? Changes a lot of things.
They’re smiling
why are they smiling
Willis what horrible tragedies are you planning?
Bombs.
Mother will use the stories to threaten their children into obedience for the next 10,000 years.
The physically violent, power abusing bully is about to strike back against the transphobic, blackmailing bully but one of the bully’s cried so I know which one is the goodie!
Well, she’s crying because she’s upset. Abusers have feelings too.
Anyway, I don’t think the intent of this is “aww poor Ruth”, it’s just that Ruth is flustered because of what’s going on, plus her dealing with her own illnesses. I really think that, more than any other character, we as the readers are free to judge her as we see fit.
And besides that, I don’t think Ruth going on a spite fueled rampage on someone whose blackmailing her for things that could get her fired is gonna go over too well.
I get the feeling we are meant to go “poor Ruth” and that’s why we see her crying. Does make me wonder what’d happen if we’d seen Mary crying about something.
I really disagree with that, because we’ve also seen Ruth do tons of horrible, abusive shit to people.
It’s just that since “abuser whose really nice once you get to know them” is one of the grossest character tropes out there that still worms its way into stuff, we’re judging Ruth with the metric of “the point of Ruth is that her abuse is okay because of her sad backstory, and we must unilaterally support her because now she’s crying about something”, and I don’t feel that’s David Willis’ intent. He’s writing a complex abuser, someone who does lots of horrible shit but is still a human being and human beings laugh and cry and smile and occasionally don’t physically assault people. That doesn’t erase Ruth’s previous actions, but it’s there.
I can’t tell you to like Ruth. I don’t like Ruth, nor do I care to, but I think that not liking Ruth is an intended interpretation of her character.
Anyway, Mary’s on the same character level as Blaine or Toedad. They don’t matter as characters, but more the obstacle they represent to the protagonists.
Really? that’s what you needed? Because I had a pretty easy time based on which was doing systemic harm. Systemic harm + personal harm > personal harm. Fuckin’ obviously.
Ruth’s terrible sometimes, but she doesn’t need to be a saint. Pretty much by definition, she’s less terrible than Mary.
Ruth’s in a position of power and uses it to get away with causing personal harm; uses that position as her alleged right to cause that harm. She’s herself a system gone rancid
A “system” that is exceedingly small and easy to deal with compared to the queer-phobic system she’s drowning in. Just saying.
RAs have a ‘position of power’!? Are you from planet fucking earth!? I mean yeah, she nominally has a position, but in practice, that position has so little authority as to be laughable. This is like getting bent out of shape over a HALL MONITOR abusing their power. Sure, ti says bad things about the hall monitor, but it’s not a systemic issue like, you know, fucking heterosexism.
What you said. Only, without the sarcasm. Viewing bad behavior with a sympathetic eye is the central theme of the entire series.
Panel 4, Billie’s smile is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO “Charlie Brown dumb luck happy” I almost can’t stand it.
Perfunctory #damnyouwillis. Well done.
Oohhhh THAT’s what it reminded me of!
I am 100% on the side of Ruth here because there’s no excuse for bullying trans people. But the thing is, I don’t like Ruth still because she is a violent abusive bully. She needs professional health and I wish her a full recovery but that doesn’t mean I condone her behavior. It’s just hate-speech is worse, much-much worse.
That’s how I feel and I may have to stop reading for a while. I can’t stand Mary and her bullshit. But my dorm had an RA who was disturbingly similar to Ruth. He didn’t limit his crap to his own floor, he’d patrol the whole dorm looking for excuses to threaten and write up residents. When a couple of the other RAs managed to get him caught red-handed while underaged drinking, and he lost his position and was thrown out of the dorm, everyone openly celebrated.
I just don’t like being put in a position where I’m forced to say, “Well, the melanoma of Ruth is not as immediately destructive as the black death of Mary, so I’m forced to side with Ruth.” I want someone to treat BOTH of these diseases.
Hating Ruth is a perfectly acceptable interpretation of her character. I think that’s one of her strengths, actually, that we aren’t expected to side with her, and we can just observe and judge.
As a real person, I would intensely dislike Ruth. In a webcomic, I love this character.
Let the games begin!
“Act with integrity, no regrets!”
If they REALLY like spite so much, they should have a threesome with Malaya.