Dear Jen Aside: it took me YEARS of reading DOA to realize your name is supposed to sound like genocide. I just thought your name was jen and this was the handle by which you wrote your witty asides.
As far as I know, I’ve never missed an instance of wordplay in my life. I probably have, regardless, since that’s the nature of ‘missing’ it. I didn’t miss ‘Jen Aside,’ though.
Ultimate Breakfast Combo is like six bucks where I’m at.
Tacos, though, are 2 for a dollar. So for the same price you get more calories. And when you’re THAT broke, you gotta play the calories per dollar game and not mess about with combos.
Why would you go for two full mealdeals when you could instead get 4 meatball subs? Ask for a water cup, skip the chips/cookie, and you double how long your money lasts, while still getting the sandwich you really want as opposed to 20 boxes of ramen or whatever.
i go the other way on saving and haircuts and only cut my hair every 2-4 months.. I however am also of the philosophy, “its only hair, it grows back” but i do appreciate the hairdresser washing my hair for me and stuff too much to not have it done by professionals every onve in a while :3
Man, he’s bangin’ a superhero. I mean, sure he’s also poppin’ the occasional boner for her super hot Jewish friend, and it’s awkward, but there’s a lot worse people to be than Danny.
Like Sarah, who just chased off her own crush in the saddest way possible.
B-O-N-G-O
B-O-N-G-O
B-O-N-G-O
And BONGO was his NAME-O!
Sorry, I though of that incredibly stupid joke back when the word substitution first started, then I didn’t post it soon enough, and then it would have been awkward. It’s probably still awkward, but I’m doing it now anyway.
I didn’t want to make this joke for a few days since I did start two threads that ende dup being about her hair when she got the cut but it reminded me of a tumblr post that made me laugh:
I walked into the barber’s today:
Barber: What do you want us to do to your hair.
Me: Just fuck me up.
When it comes to haircuts and clothing men can get away with cheap boring styles while women peer-pressure and attempt to one-up each other with over-priced fanciful styles.
I can’t stop dying my hair pink/raspberry, though with a haircut and everything I get it cheap compared to what the average is in my area thanks to being a regular for the past two years or so. I have no clue if peer pressure has anything to do with it in my case; I just love having bright hair as opposed to dull dark brown hair.
Cannot blame that one on the Patriarchy as there are more than enough female fashion designers who could add real pockets to their garments if they wanted to but refuse to as it might create “unsightly budges” or some other weak-ass excuses.
Yeah c’mon, it’s not like women themselves can or do participate in any patriarchal or oppressive practices in any way shape or form in perpetuity throughout the multiverse in all known or conceivable timelines.
I went once to a place that did men’s haircuts only. Apparently people who work in such an environment think it doesn’t matter what haircut you’ve actually asked for.
Conclusion:
The Theory: Women’s haircuts cost more because women care more about the haircut
In Practice: I will not be going back there. I told him three times.
I’ve been getting my hair cut at the same place since 1972. It’s a family-owned barber shop and I’m now getting my cuts from the granddaughter of the guy who was running the shop back then. Trust me, they know what I want.
And just in case I have to go somewhere else (out of town, for example) I carry a photograph of myself to show them so they can see for themselves what I expect.
WHY HAVE I NEVER THOUGHT OF THIS?
Would save me from the awkward conversation about what haircut I want because I don’t really know what I want or how to describe it
“An image of your own visage?! WHAT SORT OF IDOLATRY IS THIS?!”
A few hours later, they’ve brought out the stake and torches, but you’ve managed to escape into the night, where you manage to elude capture by smearing yourself with bear feces and covering yourself in leaves.
And then the wolves came…
What I’m saying is I’m never gonna get a haircut at an Amish village again.
I spend $5 for my haircuts when I don’t just shave my head like I’m going to do in a couple of weeks. My wife can sometimes get one for $15, but usually spends $20 or more.
If we assume Incomitatus’ car gets about 30 miles per gallon and the average driving speed is 60 mph to the next town, then the car would use 1.5 gallons of fuel. Prices have been cheaper lately, but for the sake of argument let’s say they’re still $3/gallon. That means Incomitatus would spend $4.50 on fuel to get there and another $4.50 to get back. So, as long as a haircut can be had there for less than $31, it seems like it would be worth it.
I hurt my arm a few years ago and couldn’t raise it high enough to wash that side of my head on my own. Called the hair dresser, asked how much for just a shampoo. No cut, nothing. Maybe towel-dry it and throw it into a braid for me.
It was going to be $20 JUST FOR THAT. No cutting/styling involved. If I want actual scissors to be involved, it’s always been at least fifty, and usually closer to $80. Which is why my hair is now past my butt.
Bad enough asking for a significant portion of a C-note each time; when I have yet to have had anyone with scissors near my head without fucking it up, I refuse to play the game at all. Fuck all y’all and your $50-80 for screwing up my head. Ends up that past a certain length, you don’t actually need it cut to any particular shape, and you can do a wide variety of different styles.
Opt out, people! Free your follicles from the tyranny of stylists! 😀
I’d really just rather pay for the haircut than dealing with hair that I keep sitting on, shutting in car doors, gets tangled in my everything, tries to strangle me if I dare fall asleep without braiding it…oh…and was causing chronic headaches from all the tugging.
Spending money to avoid irritation is kinda my thing, though 😀
I made a similar calculation to Kryss back in grad school, fortunately my follicles also seem to have a touch of ADHD and my hair ends at just below shoulder length … I guess it is nice that something in my background bucks the trend and acts against things getting hairy …
My facial fur is also relatively short … hmm … do I have time to look into hair growth genetics …
I don’t recall Marcie doing that to Peppermint Patty. 😀
…Well, ok, kidding aside, there was one time where Marcie did finally step out of her subservient role (no giggling in the back!) and angrily call Peppermint Patty out for not realizing after so long that Snoopy was a beagle and not a “funny-looking kid with a big nose.”
I wonder if Dina’s dinosaur impression would compare with one of the British comedian’s gay dinosaur impression I saw on Thursday night at PJ O’Brian’s pub.
I think she’s just heartbroken and dealing with it badly. She just got rejected yesterday, and she’s been hiding it, but she definitely is not over Joyce.
She’s also been trying to push herself away from Joyce – chasing after Billie, for instance. Probably trying to force herself to heal from the heartbreak.
Yeah, there are lot of things going on. Heartbroken and jealous, high on stress, fear and coming-out-rush, socially inexperienced and overcompensating – and also just plain rudeness and flippancy.
Mostly I don’t think she realize the effect she’s having on people. She’s trying to play up the goofy-card and misses.
Maybe she should just throw a toy in Dorothy’s head instead.
Um, the kinds of toys of that are close to hand right now aren’t really the best for throwing at heads. And Sarah would be so pissed if Becky accidentally broke any of them.
I think it would be hilarious, though. Dorothy would have a rather cross look on her, with Other Jacob tangled in her hair. Sarah would have a look of abject horror. Walky would be doubled over in a futile effort to contain his laughter. Joyce would gasp, and possibly give herself hiccups again.
I … I think I want you start your own strip … or if you don’t draw, maybe you could team up with some who can … maybe you an Yotomoe could collaborate …
I think sometimes she’s trying to play up the goofy card and missing, but more than once I think Becky’s meant exactly what she’s said/done.
As she does here – ‘friendstealing hussy’ in an undervoice so Joyce won’t here? That’s Becky being awful and meaning it. And the more we see of Becky, the more I think she’s probably turned up her tormenting of Joyce (which I do believe was in fun in the past, but has reduced Joyce to near-tears at least once or twice already in the present) to eleven to punish her for not being the lesbian Becky wants her to be and for having non-Becky friends.
It also seems like Becky’s personality is like Joyce without a filter. Joyce will consider other people. Becky will blurt out whatever. It’s funny though.
Yeah, I was worried her jealous sniping at Joyce’s friends would reach critical mass, but she seems to have reined herself in a little, most noticeably with Ethan but definitely with Dorothy too. This might just work out after all.
I don’t think she intends to be nearly as rude as she comes across. She aims for flippant (with a defiant undertone of “mine”) but misses. Since Dorothy and Ethan chose not to make a big thing out of it they all get a chance to get to know each other.
I’m pretty sure it’s supposed to be a joke, seeing as after her conversations with Joyce, she was fairly sure Dorothy had swooped in and taken the Best Friend rug out from under her feet.
It’s kind of interesting that Willis puts that word in the mouth of the character he’s mad at people for disliking so soon after being so high-handed about gendered insults.
However, he posted claiming everyone who dislikes her for anyone reason is secretly a haircut hater after the comic containing the word was made public.
>However, he posted claiming everyone who dislikes her for anyone reason is secretly a haircut hater after the comic containing the word was made public.
What Willis actually said:
>becky was awesome and sassy but then she got a nontraditional haircut and now i suddenly think she’s an asshole for some reason
>Some people have said, verbatim, that they cannot empathize with her now that she looks like that.
So…do I get a prize for correctly using “strawman” in the comments? ’cause Random832 is beating that strawman to hell and gone.
Willis’ twitter comment can be read in different ways. I think the wording sounds a bit suggestive in the way Random832 implies, but I can’t actually say what Willis meant.
But Willis has also implied on tumblr that the reason for the rampant Becky hate and intolerance of her rudeness is a mixture of unattractive haircut and casual sexism and classism. While I think these do play a factor in some people’s (snap-)judgements of Becky, the majority of Becky-hate can be much more easily explained by a problem in the way the narrative introduced Becky and has framed her actions since (ie. “hussysayswhat” is that a punchline? am I supposed to find that funny?). So, yeah, I think the Becky-hate has gotten disproportionate, but I also don’t appreciate Willis’ comments trying to discredit criticism and say this is clearly the product of haircuts and -isms, when it’s also the product of a bunch of legitimate factors.
Wait, really? I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody use the word “hussy” sincerely. It’s a fairly archaic word that most people don’t use at all anymore, so when it is used, it’s used by somebody that isn’t being particularly serious. When you want to throw a pejorative at somebody for being sexually promicuous, Hussy might’ve been the go-to insult in, like, the 50’s, but these days, it’s pretty mild.
Considering that Joyce and Becky don’t swear, ‘hussy’ and ‘harlot’ are probably about the worst things they can say to another human woman. Most people wouldn’t be serious, but they are.
At least Becky has a reason for being kind of bongoy to Dorothy, but I can’t help but feel someone’s going to call her out, and it will be awkward and saddening for all…
The only problem with auto-censoring is the filter’s inflexibility. There’s another site I go to where the word ‘screw’ is censored and gets replaced with a grawlix. The problem is that the word gets censored regardless of whether you are talking about pre-marital hanky-panky or referring to the Philips-headed wood-fastening device made of metal and utilizing the principle of the inclined plane.
We would have the same problem here if Joyce were to go to the pet shop and come home with a puppy of the female persuasion.
Except the technical term for a female dog is almost never used to actually refer to a female dog (at least colloquially) for precisely the reason it’s filtered.
You know, I looked it up once, but were you aware that there’s no word for “male dog” besides just “dog”? It’s weird. With cats you get queens and toms, cattle are bulls and heffers, there are hens and roosters….but dogs? You get the b-word and dogs.
I heard some where that the technical term for a breeding male dog is “king”.
Also, “queen” is reserved for a breeding cat. Most of the time it’s “she-cat”.
Also also, a female cow is a cow. “Heifer” is reserved for a virgin cow.
…Huh. I’d always though that “cur” was the male version, but apparently that only applies to aggressive dogs or mongrels, non-gender specific. Learn something new every day.
Yeah, my grandmother bred German Shepherds, and said “bongo” almost constantly. I feel like you, well, don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, claiming that people don’t use it to mean female dogs.
Your grandmother bred dogs. That’s not really your everyday context. There are a lot of people who use the words, but largely they exist in the dog world.
People in this comment section would be using it as an excuse to use the word, and nothing more.
But it’s a gross and inappropriate reason for being a jerk to Dotty. I’m actually REALLY looking forward to somebody holding her accountable for being an ass because these characters have already displayed a tolerance for her jackassery far in excess of my own.
Oh no, I totally agree with you that Becky’s being a jerk, it just makes me sad to see anyone called out, even when they do deserve it. I get all empathetic and shizz.
Wait, people calling Dorothy ‘Dotty’ in the actual comic is a thing now? It always bugged me when she was called that in the comments because I couldn’t recall it ever happening in the comic.
I mean…not really? At all? Not only is Sal never called Sally, but it’s been revealed that she loathes it. Whereas Dorothy is always called Dorothy. I mean, it’s whatever, obviously, but I kinda always hated her being called Dotty, because I identify with her a lot and I hate that nickname.
Whether you hate it or not doesn’t change the fact that it’s stilla short form. I hate being called the short form of my name, doesn’t change what it is.
Me hating it was not really the point of the comment, though. I mean, I even actually prefaced that addendum by saying that it was whatever. My point was it’s not the same cause Sal hates being called Sally (I just remembered that her parents call her that, but regardless) and no one has ever called Dorothy Dotty before now.
I’m not disputing that it’s an accepted variant of that name. It’s just that it’s never been used as HER name. You could call Billie ‘Jenny’ and be technically correct, but it wouldn’t stop it from being weird.
It should be noted that Becky has the same background Joyce does. How was Joyce when we first met her? Go to the early strips if you really want to test your affection for her, she was quite a jerkmobile at first.
Naïve but trying not to insult anyone and apologetic whenever her foot went in her mouth. Becky is actively insulting people, loudly and repeatedly, and not caring.
Joyce was never intentionally insulting, nor was she anywhere near so manipulative as to try to get someone to buy her a meal in between trying to make that same person seem unattractive to her crush.
“Never intentionally insulting” She’s implied people are godless heathens, she’s called Roz “Morally stripped to the roots” she does’t say “Slut” or “Godless tramp” but her past facial expressions and views are the same as them
I think they have dealt with people IRL who do the whole “Oh I’m not REALLY hungry, not really…”-sad face and possible look of expectantness- and are imposing that on Becky, don’t think she’s bumming a meal myself, just think she’s actin like a butthole.
While it’s not the impression I got saying things like “Oh, I’m not hungry anyway, not that I’d have the money to go” sounds kind of passive aggressive, I can see where they got the wrong impression.
I just took it as “I have no money to feed myself, therefore I am going to excuse myself from this invitation”. I think people who already have decided they don’t like Becky are doing overtime in the “Let’s interpret everything she says in the worst possible context!” game.
I read that as Becky genuinely excusing herself and giving a valid reason why too, Heavensrun, and lord knows I’m happy to ascribe ill motive to Becky in general at the moment. That’s not a panel I’m going to do it in.
One thing you can say about Becky: her aggression is not all that passive.
Basically, people who don’t like her will tend towards the worst interpretations while people who like her will assume benign intentions. Naturally both sides are wrong at times.
I never thought she was trying to scam a fee meal, Joyce is already covering her food.
The “I can’t afford to go out to dinner with you guys” routine can be used for completely different ends. On the the one hand, it can be used to politely excuse yourself from joining them. On the other hand, it can be used to bum a meal off of someone (I wouldn’t say scam, though – that implies deceit).
So, we’re jumping to conclusions here, but these conclusions aren’t completely unreasonable ones to be making – just presumptuous.
Remember how you noted on Tumblr that since she’s poor now, the only emotions she’s allowed are shame and contrition? Turns out those aren’t allowed either, since they’re clearly being faked to mooch and scam further.
No! Never stop! Even if you’re digging your own grave you keep digging and when you dig yourself right back out again that is your victory!! Becky’s drill is the drill that will pierce the heavens!
In a world where societal norms collide, one woman’s journey out of the closet takes her farther than she could have imagined. When everything she fights for threatens to fall apart, she must rise to her greatest challenge. This dinner — tables will be flipped.
Everyone was right about Becky being intentionally terrible to people! I guess in those few hours before Becky knew for sure Joyce was straight and AFTEr she found out about Dorothy, a raging envy was formed that cannot be sundered.
Becky has crossed so many lines that the ‘poor Becky she’s all sad cause she made a homosexual move on her best friend who had not invited it”, is getting freak’in old.
She is just flat rude, self centered, and overbearing.
She is living in the dorm on Joyces’ dime; and this is how she repays her: but being an asshat to her friends, ordering Ethan around and pulling a pity I’m broke routine?
Nope, don’t like Becky at all. However, I’m sure when either one or both parents show up and the excrement hits the revolving object, I’ll likely feel sorry as Hell for her situation.
Agree 100%, Beckys nothing but a mooching, arrogant, obnoxious bongo but its ok because lesbian I guess whereas Danny gets all the hating because he doesn’t have the same information we have
Yeah, but if she’d spent the money on food, she wouldn’t have the bangin’ haircut.
My point being that the haircut isn’t necessarily less valuable than the food. I mean sure, you can argue the food fulfills a more basic need (I don’t, mental health goes down on the bottom with food, shelter and physical health), but $20 wasn’t going to get her very close to controlling her food supply for more than a few days. It wouldn’t give her control over her living arrangements, or get her back into Anderson, or make her dad change his mind about homosexuality. The only thing it DID give her control of was her hair, which would obey her will for at least the next few months. It would also give her some control over what people initially think of her for that time. Now instead of being “Candy corn girl,” or “That red-headed kid who’s friends with Joyce,” she’s “That super-rad lesbian chick who probably rides motorcycles and everyone should totally ask out.”
In other words, the haircut was the only purchase she could make which would give her any modicum of control over her life. You can argue she should’ve tried to take control of some other part of her life, or saved it so she could get more control later, and that’s ultimately down to what things you value most. But the actual decision has to be determined by what Becky values most, and right now, she probably values the ability to get something nice for herself and that tiny bit of control over her life more than anything else.
If the haircut served some mental health purpose (like helping her hold herself together) that puts it on tier 2. Joyce has kindly taken care of tier 1 for her, so it’s up to Becky to work on the next one.
You can also argue that health (including mental) belongs on tier 1 with the physical needs. It’s the one on tier 2 that you take care of before all of the others.
She has only been there a day, and just came out to and got rejected by her best friend last night, and is pretty much homeless. Her rudeness is getting old, but I get where it’s coming from. And on re-reading today’s strip, it seems like she’s figured out she’d better at least try to get along with Joyce’s new friends, because they’re not going anywhere.
And I can’t blame her for spending her $20 from Billie on a haircut. Does anyone actually remember being a college student, flailing around trying to find your identity, and emotionally draining shit is going on constantly? It probably never occurred to Becky at the time that she had no money besides that $20 and might need to eat sometime. (Plus, it’s not like $20 would feed her for the rest of her stay in Joyce’s dorm room. So she’s broke today instead of a couple days from now; does that change much?)
Okay, I see this. What you’re saying is fair. I think a lot of the grief she’s getting comes from the fact that she’s hurting the feelings of characters we’ve invested emotions in for years. She’s the new kid on the block. We were prepared to like her . . . but not to suddenly like her more than our long-term favorites.
That people want to see that breaks my brain. At leats this time it’s not everyone voting for someone whose mentally unstable. But that’s not really a high bar to set.
There’s been some indication that what people really want to see is Sal/Jason from the Walkyverse. Although understandable, that once again would involve the mentally unstable. Hmm.
And that means we’d have like five gay dudes! Jeez that’s a lotta’ ding dong for poor ol’ Willis to draw. Literally how would you even go about doin’ that? Does each ding dong get it’s own panel? Will there be back stories? Did one of the ding dongs live on the dick version of Krypton and get sent to Earth where he gained super ding dong powers?
The lore behind this is amazing.
I can’t remember where the comment is (maybe on one of the Slipshine news posts?), but he said he would do a male-male one at some point. So we’ll probably get some form of something with Danny and Ethan in, you know, a year or so.
I think there would first have to be a canonical male-male relationship, and this comic is apparently falling into a black hole, judging by the time dilation.
Exactly, a gay themed slipshine comic is possible, but since they’re all canon we need a canon guy on guy scenario first. Ethan’s still closeted, Danny’s still confused and with Crazy-Girl and Mike would only do it to mess with them.
I think Willis mentioned a while back that he only Slipshines what appeals to him, and dude-on-dude doesn’t. It’s too bad, really, but I can understand, from an artist’s perspective.
That was a one-image Christmas gift I drew, so there’s no full story. But, yeah, drawing dude/dude is no problem. It’s just, y’know, kind of clinical for me, is all.
Ah, well this explains some things: Becky’s feeling as if she’s been replaced in Joyce’s life. After her mom’s death, Kaitlin throwing her to the wolves, and her father making it clear he’s not going to take her as she is, she’s probably racking up some abandonment issues. It’s understandable.
It doesn’t justify her behavior, but it’s understandable.
Pretty much this. After this strip I find that I am much more forgiving of Becky’s shot at Dorothy earlier as I can see where it comes from now, it was motivated by simple jealousy. Before it was just this hyper tactless remark that seemed to come out of nowhere.
Agreed. She has no one but Joyce left, as far as she knows. But I hope she realizes pretty quick that Joyce has some awesome friends who will be on her side too if she quits trying to alienate them.
She gets money from Billie and does she offer it to Joyce for giving her a roof over her head, clothes and food (for which Joyce is going without) naah she gets a haircut instead
I think maybe reality is setting in more and more for her, not only is she homeless and without family, but all her fantasies are sort of collapsing on her. Joyce isn’t into her and wouldn’t have sexed her up even if she was, she can proudly announce herself a lesbian but nobody cares, which is both good but also bad because she was likely hoping that outside her religious community she could just join the lesbian crowd but whoops, real life gay people don’t work how she was taught and the only other same-sex inclined person she’s met told her to fuck off.
Yeah, I think Becky’s turning into a shitty person. Or maybe she was like this all along, this is the first time we’ve seen her interact with Joyce’s friends directly. Jealous, controlling…she struck me as a sympathetic character at first but I’m running out of sympathy real quick.
Exactly. I can take a joke as well as the next guy. In fact, humor is a major part of who I am. But having had real experience with a person like this, I fail to find it funny.
So it’s agreed then, the haircut has taken over Becky’s conscious and is causing her to be a dingus to everyone. The plan is simple then, we must burn the hair.
Do you honestly not see the amazing contradiction when you get angry with Becky for being an unfiltered loudmouth while also calling a very common haircut which SOME REAL PEOPLE READING THIS FORUM HAVE “shitty-ass.” Congratulations, YOU are Becky.
That’s a straight up false equivalence. Insulting the haircut of strangers on the internet you’ve never even spoken to isn’t really the same as actively harassing and alienating the friends of a person who spurned your romantic advances with mean-spirited jabs. The former is kind of rude and insensitive the latter is emotional abuse.
Why yes, there is a false equivalence between a real person insulting a real haircut that real people have and a fictional character saying mean things to other fictional characters. Do you know how many fucking messages I’ve gotten about how horrible this fucking comment section has gotten once Becky got that haircut? Some people don’t think this place is safe for them anymore. People write on Tumblr how they’ve started avoiding the comment section specifically because the over-the-top, meanspirited haircut hatred, which is all directed towards (SURELY COINCIDENTALLY) a haircut that’s not seen as traditionally feminine. And I’ve kind of had it. So fuck y’all if you use this as a springboard for attacking a fictional character. I need to start throwing people into the spam folder.
Thanks for this Willis. I haven’t really posted in the comment section since then either, but it means a lot that you empathize with the issue, it’s frustrating.
First of all, NO ONE has that hair cut, except cartoon characters, NO ONE, because that exact hair cut is physically impossible in real life. If someone thinks they have one they are just wrong, and even so, who cares ? It’s just a hair cut, it wouldn’t matter if you got bold tomorrow and everyone called you cueball. And this statement is certainly not true when it comes to Beckys hair style “haircut that’s not seen as traditionally feminine” It’s not unfeminine, it’s just not aesthetic. The closest I’ve seen a RL look like this are usually different hair styles chosen by people ONLY to look like some pop-star or model, not because they actually liked it themselves. And I don’t see why you are surprised with peoples reaction to your choice in character design for Becky ? You’re the one that intentionally chose that hair cut to symbolise her increasing annoyingness towards Joyce and friends. Everytime you draw a character, every part of that character. from feet to fingers is up for scrutiny (and usually is in these comments), I believe there are more people out there with sweaterwests than something even resembling Beckys hair.
Is it too late to apologize? If its not then can I say it was stupid, thoughtless comment which I shouldn’t have made and I’m sorry if I’ve hurt anyone by it
I have to thank the crazy person who thinks undercuts aren’t real. I was going to try to make a point by linking some of them…but got distracted by all the cuties in undercuts on Google Image Search.
> I have to thank the crazy person who thinks undercuts aren’t real.
It’s entirely possible that they (also are we using crazy as an insult now?) simply think that Becky’s haircut is not an identifiably realistic depiction of one (compared to mostly everyone else’s, though I have serious questions about Mike’s haircut), or is noting other problems (like the fact that her haircut is not drawn consistently changing with the angle of her head vs the camera), problems not shared with everyone else in the comic.
>It’s entirely possible that they simply think that Becky’s haircut is not an identifiably realistic depiction of one
I knew it was an undercut, so they’d be wrong, I guess.
And I wasn’t aware that ‘crazy’ was hurtful, unless I was trying to insinuate that there was an actual medical condition at play. In any case, apologies for hurtful language. Substitute an appropriate word that says “what the hell is this person talking about?”
I compulsively read each comment in the ghead-voices and I have for each gravitar, and in their expression.
As a consequence I ALWAYS read yours cheerfully. ( which is why it struck me as funny )
ITS A GREAT HAIRCUT. ( Its almost as good as Joel Watson’s. ) Dont listen to the haters. You draw it nice, too.
Maybe its time to give the whole cast haircuts. OH! You have a 3 month buffer. Damn shame.
I do think the criticism of the haircut is all about Gender-roles. It may have started off symbolic , but turned.
My take on it is also this: The fandom has had longstanding double-standards about whats acceptable behavior for a man and a woman. And this has been heavily policed in the comments. You have used Becky as a cypher to directly challenge this vast cognitive dissonance. ( which I am totally enjoying and heartily approve of )
Rather than face this dissonance, ( or admit to central conceit of the comic: sometimes characters actions just don’t count as “real” , its for comic relief, and other times they DO count as very real ) people are projecting their Bullshit onto the her awesome , yet slightly noncomforming haircut.
( ITS AWESOME! )
( OMG she called Dorothy a “hussy”. Nobody is allowed to say that about Dorothy. It must be that haircut willis gave her. )
I think Becky has been partially tagged as ‘male’ by the fans and this has lead to some excessive criticism . But She is also partially read as female and this makes people confront ( or ignore ) their cognitive dissonance, ( and shield becky from criticism too ) . The less she behaves in a ‘permissible’ female way, the less worthy she is seen for any any privileges.
The only day I felt outraged at fan-intolerance was when people suggested becky shouldnt be an out-happy lesbian, and should consider Joyces feelings first. ( Which is literally the thing that is used to keep real gays in the closet their entire lives in real-life. Actual People reading this.
Slipshine: My first choice is Becky & Joe. Right in the middle, ( or right after )She gets up and tells him “thank you: because of you I now know I am a lesbian”
Which immediately throws Joe into an existential crises.
(You can still do this with Penny. )
Second Choice: Danny with Drunk Joe. Or Drunk Danny with Drunk Joe. ( Which is a LOT more realistic than people may give credit for ) It would drive the fandom wild, drive the homophobes INSANE , ( you know this is true ) , and still give Joe an existential crises .
The comments on DoA have been toxic for years. I read them *because* of how awful they are. The majority of posters crush dissent and stop conversation. A bit of rage in the morning perks me up!
Thanks Willis. It makes me happy that you’re calling people out for their reactions; and the point about femininity.
I like the haircut, personally. I love undercuts and partial shaves, especially on ladies. My best friend (and the best lady at my wedding) goes through phases of having not dissimilar styles, growing it all out, then getting it redone. I’m sad that I probably can’t pull it off, but I don’t want to grow my hair out anyway.
A bunch of people: I have that haircut or know someone who does.
Some jerk: no one in the world has that haircut.
Repeat for every bloody circumstance that happens in the comic. The lack of self awareness is staggering sometimes. Constant whining about how Joyce’s childhood wasn’t 100% identical to their own and so it’s implausible, usually directly after a dozen comments about how closely it matches those posters’ experience.
I have to say, I quite like the haircut myself. I don’t like the way Becky’s been behaving to Joyce’s friends; but I really don’t think it’s tied to the hair cut. Maybe I should actually say that more often.
Well, MindLink, that was a beautiful demonstration of the hostility that Willis was just talking about. You flat-out state that this haircut isn’t aesthetic, claim it doesn’t matter if people get called names such as ‘cueball’ due to a haircut, use anecdotal ‘evidence’ to assert that nobody gets this haircut because they actually like it, and to top it all off, you use the ‘nobody cares’ argument despite evidence to the contrary in the post you’re replying to. (Yes’ I’m ignoring the ‘physically impossible’ remark; it’s been hammered on enough by others)
Do I need to go dredge up more examples of how this has become so caustic? This thread alone should be evidence enough.
“Nobody has that haircut” “None of those images resemble Becky’s hair”
trendy-hairstyles-for-women.com/pictures/hairstyles/short-hairstyles-for-women/short-undercut-hairstyles/undercut-hairstyle-for-women-10_b.jpg
If the hair was straightened, that would be pretty much exactly her cut.
Dude, regardless of the haircut being feminine, manly, or asexual, it doesn’t matter to me. Do I go over the top with my posts about my obviously deep hatred for this haircut? Yes, because it’s just something to nitpick but keep the mood light. Also are you seriously telling me that people are staying away from the comments section because of haircut hate and not because whenever someone proclaims their opinion sides start getting drawn and the whole place get’s turned into a clusterfuck.
Also, just to put this out there in case somebody is having a panic attack, no I don’t really think the hair cut is stupid and should be purged with fire. I’m associating Becky’s suddenly shit behavior with her new hair cut, it’s a joke. Obviously the hair cut isn’t mind controlling her. That we know of
To the persons posting real-life “examples” of Beckys hair-cut: Really ?! I can’t even tell what part you found similar, I would NEVER recognize any of them as even trying to look a like. Some of them was so generic you could have just as easily claimed that it was Billys hair-cut you posted. I think some people will always feel attacked, even when nobodys targeting them, maybe because they have had bad experiences previously. Still, I fail to see how anyone could be upset over a comment on something as transient as a hair-style, it’s like getting upset that someone says your clothes are ugly, it’s just something you chose to wear that day, nothing else.
Okay, one, who the hell cares if people who read this have the same haircut? Two, the issue isn’t her being an unfiltered loudmouth, it’s her being a complete bongo to Joyce’s friends for no apparent reason. It’s like she’s going full-on Gatsby where she wants it to just be the two of them again, and maybe she can eventually convince Joyce to love her.
Um, a lot of people care? Did you not read Willis’s comments?
True, there is a lot of dislike of Becky because she’s trying to alienate Joyce’s new friends, which is a horrible thing to do. But that doesn’t detract from the issue regarding the state of the comments section.
is it wrong that I love undercuts but I think becky’s kinda makes it look like she’s wearing a toupee in some panels? So my issue with hating it may just be how it’s drawn.
You know Dorothy is the worst kind of friend stealing hussy. The kind that only puts out to her boyfriend. So she really isn’t holding up to her end of the bargain.
She gets money from Billie and does she offer it to Joyce for giving her a roof over her head, clothes and food (for which Joyce is going without) naah she gets a haircut instead
So she needs to help out the girl with parents who are paying for her room and will ensure one way or another that she will be fed and taken care of, rather than use what windfall she does get to help herself?
Accepting generosity does not make you shit. You could argue that she’s not being fiscally responsible but she’s eighteen years old, with homeschooling and about two weeks of college experience. Why are we expecting her to handle everything perfectly again? Why do we expect her to be a fun, unoffensive person who does not make mistakes after dealing with probably the worst shit in her entire mostly-cloistered life?
When Ruth first kissed Billie she had practically forced herself on her after throwing Billie around in a fight. Amber flew into a rabid rage and attacked Sal and all her friends for drinking beer in a wal-mart parking lot. Roz has thoroughly shut down Sarah with emotional badgering that’s turned her into a cynical misanthrope for looking out for her own best interests and trying to do what she thinks is right.
I still don’t understand why Becky is supposed to be so bad. Does she got problems? Yah. Point to a dumbing of age character who isn’t Dina. They also have problems, and probably worse problems than Becky. None of this hate makes any sense to me.
Wow. Egg on my face. Opps. I shoulda figured that, really should.
Still don’t understand why Becky’s getting the sudden serge of hate for comparatively minor and understandable things, but I go that bit about Roz REAL wrong.
Becky being annoying is one thing. That is minor leagues compared to some of the other characters here.
What crosses the line, in my mind, is Becky deliberately trying to alienate Joyce’s new friends here in a fit of jealousy. This reeks of a toxic friendship.
When Joyce is skipping meals so Becky can eat then yeah offering Joyce some money (Joyce probably wouldn’t accept it but thats not the point) is the polite thing to do
I’m sorry, but I really hate Becky. She’s irresponsible, rude, obnoxious, insensitive… She’s really just the kind of person who’s unpleasant and difficult to be around in all but small doses. I know she provides a sharp contrast to Ethan on the issue of being a gay kid with a terrible and unsupportive family, but she just does not play nice even with people who do their best to accommodate and reach out to her.
Actually everyone seems to hate Becky because apparently moral integrity and social conduct are like…important when it comes to what characters people like.
My headcanon is still that he’s secretly a trickster god/spirit/hero. Which is a role he fits to at T and means he isn’t really classifiable as ‘morally good’ or ‘morally bad’ in the sense we often use that term.
A lot of people possibly still remember and are fond of Mike from Shortpacked, he gets some grace because we hope he’ll develop some? Becky is just being a butthole.
I think Mike gets a far less negative reaction because he’s been this way for decades now, across both universes. Becky is changing, meanwhile, and we don’t like the new Becky.
Yet, a world chock full of thoroughly nice people would be an awfully dull comic.
Becky seemed like a fun and awesome happy and friendly character. Then Joyce didn’t respond to her advances, which broke her. It wasn’t immediately obvious – when decided to announce to the world she was gay it was still quite cool, if a bit more off-putting to the characters around her. But then she got rejected by Billie too and completely snapped: she got that awful haircut and simultaneously turned into a gigantic asshole, taking out her frustrations on every innocent in reach.
Why do we like Mike and not her? Because she betrayed our impression of her as a fun and nice character, and also stopped being pleasant to watch.. Mike has been faithful to his role all along, and remains entertaining.
“Fun and awesome and happy and friendly”? She was deleting messages off Joyce’s phone. She’s a self-centred, boundary-ignoring, rude, intruding, ungrateful b*ngo.
This is going to be an interesting, if very trying, test of character for Joyce. It’s easy to be a loyal friend to a fun and awesome happy friendly person. Much harder to be a good friend to a selfish user whom you ate paste with.
I agree. If Becky becomes worse, and actually manages to alienate some of Joyce’s friends, what will Joyce do? Will she turn on Becky? Would Joyce be willing to kick out Becky if she felt it were necessary? Sarah would, but Sarah is bitter and jaded. Yet Joyce?
Wait, do we even know that -now-? Did I miss a strip where somebody that isn’t the biggest misanthrope in the cast revealed that Becky was actually interfering with Joyce’s phone?
No one ever says that. They say she was screening calls. You know, to intercept calls from her dad or Joyce’s parents to keep Joyce from learning she was ‘on the run’. For all she knew, Joyce was going to reject her entirely once she learned the truth. Desperate irrational damage control is exactly the sort of thing a frightened person whose world is falling apart will do.
It’s also worth noting that Sarah just suspects this. Joyce just repeats what Sarah says. Unless I missed something, it’s not actually confirmed. She was probably just playing Angry Birds 😉
Screening calls no matter the reason, is still just as bad. Doing evil to stop another evil, still makes you evil, no matter how you want to justify it.
See the second half where we only have the suspicions of the person who suspects EVERYONE of trying to wrong Joyce as proof that it even happened in the first place.
And using ‘evil’ to describe ‘screening calls’ just cheapens the word.
I think it’s because Becky is basically acting like a spurned Nice Girl(tm) right now and it’s super toxic and realistic behaviour that plenty of people have been on the receiving end of whereas Mike is so much of an over the top jackass that it’s completely divorced from reality and thus it doesn’t really resonate emotionally.
1) No,. no we all don’t like Mike.
2) People in universe dislike Mike for his behaviour which increases our tolerance for him. Nothing is more annoying than an annoying character the author expects the readers to love
3) While people like characters with depth they greatly prefer mean people who are secretly nice than nice people who are secretly assholes.
It’s possible to see the characters flaws AND like the character at the same time, I think the people talking about “hating” Becky just means they wouldn’t like the character in real life but still like her as a literary character.
It’s hanging over her eye. I think the white spot is part of the “pupil,” you can compare the size and shape to her other unobstructed eye. Some art styles allow the eye to “pass through” hair that partially hangs over it. In this case it might have been a mistake to color that white spot in.
Dorothy asked what Becky used to think of her now that she’s been declared “not so bad”. Becky, with a sheepish expression and attempt to make it a joke, answered the question honestly.
I was hoping the alt-text would take care of this for me, but that didn’t happen, so here I go:
Dorothy, if you fall for that one, it means you haven’t watched Wayne’s World in far too long. I’m sure Walky would be glad to help you out with that.
Yeah, so Becky is awkward and issue-ridden. What else is new? If she immediately acknowledged her anger and panic instead of covering it up with a fine layer of jackassery, she would be both less convincing and less interesting. When Joyce’s friends get tired of shrugging off her jerkiness, she’ll have some fences to mend. So it is with most of the characters. I mean, Walky has been more insensitive to Joyce on multiple occasions than Becky has been to anyone yet. She’ll learn.
Now, does Dorothy’s kindness to Becky complicate her goal of discussing Ethan’s man-oriented nature over dinner? Or does Dorothy, for whatever cheese-forsaken reason, actually want her to be part of that conversation? Dang, Willis, they will all mainly be eating feels for dinner, won’t they?
Well to me it just proves Beckys immaturity that she’d use that as a way to insult someone thats willing to buy her dinner even though the first time they met Becky insulted and ignored her
Yes, but much of the humor is not dependent on its ’90s-ness. Dorothy has responsible parents who would have been in college or recently graduated in 1992, so I don’t think it’s a stretch to think they might have shown it to her at a young age.
Heh. I saw it in the theatre when it came out, great fun (much more funny at the midnight showing with all the headbangers who knew the sketches and banged along with Bohemian Rhapsody and did the “diddily-doo” hand-wavy cut thing than with all the straitlaced mundanes the next night, interestingly) and I just played it for my kids about a month ago.
Some things (like Back to the Future and Army of Darkness and other cinematic greats) just need to be passed down to the next generation. 😀
You remember that Walky and Joyce are not friends, right? Walky’s insults have consequences and the only reasons she spends time with him are because she wants to be around Dorothy and because she views him as someone safe to be around.
They are, though. They’ve been doing the, “I hate you so much! Where are we having lunch today?” dance all along; it’s not entirely a consequence of Joyce’s insecurity following the party.
It’s almost like they’re physically and emotionally compatible on a deep level that they’re concealing behind a façade of insults and teasing. But that’s crazy, right? Joyce and Walky together, who could imagine that?
This was Friday before the party, before Walky was monopolizing Dorothy’s time, or even capable of talking to her without his brain boiling over. Walky’s lampshading how they’re “not friends”, but they’re going to lunch together, at Joyce’s invitation, and they’ve been doing it all week.
It’s also worth noting that Walky’s not only one of the few guys Joyce feels safe alone with, and one of the few people who know about the party incident, he’s the only person she chose to let in on that secret. Everyone else who knows knows because they were there, or (Sal) accidentally overheard. She hasn’t even told Becky. She told Walky. Even after he wouldn’t promise not to make fun.
And that was still before he was Dorothy’s boyfriend and came as a package deal with hanging with her new best friend.
Sure, I remember the consequences of Walky being a tool to Joyce. Becky’s actions will have similar consequences. She and Dorothy will probably not be friends any time soon unless they bond over some crisis, and that tension will strain Becky’s friendship with Joyce more than she realizes. She will, like Walky, eventually be forced to develop some introspection.
I’d say whether it gets played on TV or not is more important than its age, and I haven’t run across it on any of the US channels I have access to in a long time.
Oh, absolutely. Immaturity, insecurity, neurosis, paranoia… Becky has the whole deluxe bundle of problems, and no one else who’s close to Joyce can avoid getting a faceful of that right now. It’s deeply annoying. I just think her creator, with all the wisdom of Willis, will ultimately cause her to recognize what she’s doing and try to put all that nervous energy to better use. It might take months’ worth of strips, but she’ll probably develop at least a little more self-awareness by the end of the weekend in comic time.
You’re likely right, the question is, will the reader’s goodwill be able to last long enough for her to change? Or will we all be sick of her by that time that we won’t care that she’s changing?
“We all,” the general DoA readership? Or “we all” in the comments? Because things can get pretty Bizarro World down here, and from everything Willis has said on Tumblr and Twitter, I get the impression that reader feedback about Becky outside the comments is much, much less angsty and heated. Plus, what are the consequences for Willis if a few dozen people get fed up before he has time to show us Becky’s emotional range beyond various shades of fear, anger, and relief? An infinitesimal percentage of readers rage-quits the comic? The comments don’t get nicer even after Becky becomes less alienating? Business as usual, and not something that’s gonna make him break out in a sweat and start writing out characters who still interest him.
Well … most of the haters will eventually forget they hate her (or at least mercifully shut up — really, why are we still hearing a drumbeat of criticism about her haircut … ) … just like the relentless Danny hate eventually trailed off …
Often unintentionally. He’s just as often trying to hurt people solely for the sake of hurting people, and circumstances just happen to line up to give positive consequences once in a while.
He doesn’t have a 100% win rate on “help-by-hurting” (trying to pull Ethan out of the closet has only resulted in Ethan stapling himself to the wall inside of it), nor does he have a 100% positive-consequences rate on “hurt-just-to-hurt” (did Walky manage to save his DVD collection in the end?)
And I don’t even know what to call the pajama jeans order thing. That’s all over the hurt-and-help-and-positive-and-negative chart.
Perhaps that’s Becky’s real problem. She’s secretly been an e-mail pal with Mike, who has been instructing her of the ways of the secular world. Unfortunately poor Becky has no idea that Mike is absolutely the last person you’d want doing that.
Bingo. Becky’s relationship with Joyce is just about all she has in the world. No family. No money. No home. No job. So after Joyce rejects her but go starry eyed over Dorothy, yes Becky is a green eyed monster.
If she can’t cling to Joyce as a lifeline, her next option is not as pleasant. Expect her to defend what’s left of the relationship to the death.
So… The truth comes out as the reason why Becky doesn’t like Dorothy. 😉
Although… This makes me wonder now if Becky thinks that Joyce IS into girls (or is at least bi) and hates Dorothy because she thinks Dorothy has stolen Joyce’s heart.
Becky, have you ever heard an old saying that says something about biting the hand that feeds?
A) She’s offering to buy you dinner at a time when you’ve hit a hard spot. Insulting her might not be a good idea.
B) People frequently have more than one friend, no theft necessary.
C) Kindly stop being a caustic ***.
Dorothy literally gave her an opening to stop being a massive jackass and instead she uses that opportunity to be even more of a massive jackass and also make a joke so old it could be carbon dated.
Also I just wanted to say to all those who have Becky’s haircut!
Your hair looks awesome, you rock that hair, and you shouldn’t take any crap for how you chose to make your hair look!
I personally like Becky’s hair cut, the sharp angles and interesting shaved side is cool!
Her sharp tongue and rudeness however not so much but the two aren’t exclusive to each other, I mean Dorothy’s hair makes it look like she’s wearing a hairy onion but the hairy onion doesn’t affect her personality!
Every comic like this, I’m like “Jeez, Becky, turn it down a notch” or “FFS Becky, that’s not where the foot goes” or “Becky, just stop talking for five seconds”, and then I read the comments and I’m like “Fuck you, Becky’s awesome!” out of pure defiance.
So now you know where “all the Becky love” comes from. It comes from you.
By this point I’m guessing Becky is subconsciously seeking to make people really angry at her, because she’s feeling uncomfortable at the extreme levels of acceptance she’s been getting. It’s been more than a DAY since she last had someone tell her she’s going to he’ll.
“becky was awesome and sassy but then she got a nontraditional haircut and now i suddenly think she’s an asshole for some reason”
Are you for real, Willis? She’s spent the last two week acting like a jerk to Ethan and Dorothy for kicks. Obviously there’s a long list of interpretations and justifications for why she’s acting that way, some blatantly being shown on panel right now, but acting like an asshole “for reasons” still means the character is acting like an asshole and it’s ridiculous to think people should keep liking her as much as they did earlier now that we’re exploring the more negative aspects of her personality, if we’re even supposed to see them negatively and not find her hilarious and sassy when she completely steps out of line.
I know we all liked Becky because she was Joyce’s irreverent foil and she burped and made fart jokes, but she never acted like this much of a total assclown until now. Nobody worth listening to dislikes Becky because of her hair and even if they don’t like it, so what? It’s a haircut. It doesn’t make her Rosie the Riveter.
“When Somebody Loved Me” was my favourite arc in all of Dumbing of Age, and I still really like Becky, and if anything I’m even more interested in her now that she’s acting like kind of a jerk, in the same way that I like, say, Guy Gardner, but interest and likeability are two different things. Becky is going through unimaginable hardship right now and she’s not dealing with it perfectly, and that’s fine, she’s not a robot, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable for some of your readers to be annoyed at a character when they are being annoying.
I half suspect he thinks that to be a True Artist he has to call his fans jerks, which is why he’s so eager to say that someone who calls someone a “hussy” is perfect and deserves no criticism so soon after putting a word-filter around a different gendered insult.
Except, he isn’t? Where has Willis said that Becky is immune to criticism? There is a lot of middle ground between “Becky is wonderful and perfect and noone can ever say anything about her.” and “Becky is an irredeemable asshole and a villain even though villains aren’t really a thing slice of life comics have. Also I hate her haircut.”
My personal feeling is that those of us who currently dislike Becky feel like we’re being assigned a motivation we don’t necessarily have. It sounds like the assumption is that if we don’t like Becky, we must be shallowly disliking the haircut because there’s no other reason to possibly dislike her. Because she is objectively ‘sassy and awesome’.
I personally don’t find Becky sassy and awesome, though I see how she could get there. I dislike her rudeness and thoughtlessness, her casual verbal cruelty to her alleged best friend (disclaimer: if Joyce did anything but sag in hurt, like fire back or roll her eyes, I would not care about the torment so much), and her less-casual verbal cruelty towards Dorothy.
No doubt she will learn. I hope she learns quickly.
Totally understandable. I think there’s been a lot of jumping to conclusions and talking past each other on both sides. Honestly, a lot of the vitriol would probably go away if everyone kept in mind that thing I said up there, which incidentally applies not just to Becky, but pretty much every character and also people in general.
And before anyone says something about how you can’t expect reasonable viewpoints and arguments on the internet, so why bother: just because something is a terrible place doesn’t mean we shouldn’t strive to make it less terrible.
Oh, and for the record, I’m not really a fan of Becky’s behavior right now either, understandable and in character though it may be, but I still think she’s fundamentally a good person.
I think most of the characters in this strip – with the exceptions of Mike and Mary, and the possible exception (we haven’t seen enough of her to really tell) of Penny – are fundamentally good people.
I don’t like all of them at least some of the time, and I can’t honestly articulate why I like some of the ones I genuinely do like a lot (Jason and Joe are the primary presences on that list) despite their jerkish/uncaring behavior that is legitimately similar to my reasons for disliking other characters. But I do believe they’re good people (with the aforementioned exceptions) and they’re interesting characters to read about.
He posted on twitter that anyone who thinks she’s being an asshole actually just has a problem with her haircut. Which post is the subject Spencer’s comment.
Random832 said what I meant to say in much fewer words. Thank you! I need to learn brevity.
And for the record, Becky’s haircut is one of the few things about her I don’t have a problem with. It’s very cute, and it at least actually is awesome and sassy.
Please start living up to your haircut, Becky. Gendered insults and generalized verbal jerkitude are unworthy of it.
That’s not what Willis said. Based on later responses to some replies, Willis seemed to be pointing out just how ridiculous it is that some people now dislike Becky because of that haircut, and have said so in so many words. According to Willis, that is; I’m not about to dig through several comments sections for proof.
Now that I’ve read the rest of the comment section, I should apologize for my statement on the reception of her haircut. Sure it’s okay not to like it but it shouldn’t be used as a springboard to attack real people who have that cut.
Above Willis talked about how since Becky debuted her new hairstyle he’s been inundated with comments about how ugly it is and how nobody actually has it.
It’s fine to be cross with Becky right now, and it’s fine not to like the haircut, but probably shouldn’t endlessly rag on it in a forum with members who actually have it.
Doesn’t the Girls With Slingshots author have the same haircut? This might also be a little bit personal on top of the “people with that haircut no longer feel safe to comment here” problem.
Frankly, I’m sick of the hair talk. I’d vote to have repetitive comments where the hair is dissed scrubbed, and make it point #11 in the “Read about before posting” section.
I think it’s a testamony as to how good a writer you are Willis, nobody criticizes your characters for being “Unrealistic” (well some do but poo on them) or for being “Boring”
They criticize them because they remind them of REAL people.
I dunno…there are people that dress up in costumes and go around doing good deeds. The real superhero movement or whatever. And I’ve met people like Mike…that go out of there way to be as harsh and intentionally jerky as they can.
Amazi-Girl doesn’t really fit with the normal Real World Superheroes, though. Most of them do standard boy-scout style good deeds, rather than being costumed vigilantes (and the one I know about who has pulled the vigilante thing has drawn the ire of the authorities, not just the eye of the press), plus her parkour skills are very much in the ‘only in a comic-book’ realm.
But I agree on Mike…the only unrealistic thing about him is his record for choosing exactly the right thing to needle somebody about to get them to better themselves.
Most of Mike’s OTT-ness is from the other universe, honestly. The only really unrealistic thing about him here is, ironically enough, his haircut (it’s always pointing to a side, and not always the same side, regardless of whether or not he’s in profile).
It already did. Her family betrayed her and she got kicked out of school and she now has nothing but the clothes on her back and a friend who she was in love with and has rejected her. I don’t like her either, but don’t wish more ill on someone like that. If anything someone needs to give her a talking-to, not humble pie.
Oh man, I think I’m finally getting Becky’s weird cruelty to Dotty: she’s jealous!
She’s spent most of her adolescence secretly hoping Joyce was gay, and Joyce’s slavish, girlcrushy obsession with Dotty was simultaneously elation (she’s gay!) and frustrating (she’s gay… for DOROTHY).
And with this observation, I can finally be promoted to LIEUTENANT OBVIOUS.
You might want to wait a bit longer for that promotion, soldier. Becky has in fact only been secretly hoping Joyce was gay for the past month (conciously, anyway).
I doubt it, Sal seems to actually like Dorothy, and even if she didn’t, there’s a distinct difference: Becky irrationally dislikes Dorothy simply because she exists and in spite of the fact that Dorothy is nothing but nice to her. Sal is reacting predicably to a fairly generic situation, while Becky is acting unpredictably because the situation is so complicated.
So I think people are so vitriolic towards Becky because the last arc was about her as, for lack of a better term, a perfect victim; incredibly sympathetic, loveable, funny as all hell, playing off the rest of the cast, and then being severely hurt by her father and school’s bigotry through
no fault of her own. Now, every time we see her acting rudely, it feels like a betrayal of the image of perfect, funny, Becky that we’ve built up due to the last arc, when in reality, we’re just seeing the parts that have always been there, and are coming out the woodwork due to all the emotional bombshells she’s been weathering in the last two days.
(And just to clarify, even if Becky was as much of a jerk in the last arc as she is now, that would never justify the bullshit she’s going through in a million years.)
People lash onto jerks who show softer sides (Mike in the Walkyverse, Sarah) a lot more than nice enough people who occasionally act like jerks (Danny, Ethan, Becky now).
Yeah, I’ve been suspecting that, too. Not sure why, and it certainly doesn’t serve as a good justification, but I think this is a big part of what’s happening here in the comments. I don’t doubt that there are other factors in play, of course.
Becky’s been Joyce’s closest friend for how long? Now suddenly she has friends that Becky doesn’t know? And Joyce was the most “socially adjusted” of the two? Of course Becky’s jealous. Why would anyone have expected otherwise? She’ll get over it. Eventually. After throwing a few barbs and having some slices of pizza. You’re always ruder when you’re hungry, after all.
Haha. Becky’s sure blooming.
Makes sense she can let loose finally~
I wonder if she’ll melllow how once she’s there for a few weeks like everyone else or if she’ll hold onto the wave and ride it for a s long as she can.
While I think that this side of Becky isn’t the most pleasant, I don’t think that Becky’s a total jerk. The fact is that Becky’s had to hide facets of her personality and identity for so long, and now that the floodgates are open, she may be overcompensating. This is Becky without a filter. The Mr. Hyde to the Dr. Jekyll we’d always seen before. If’n you want to get all high-school-literature-level Freudian about it, this is her Id – the side of her personality that’s all about impulse, instinct, and emotion.
However, that means that although this side of Becky may not be false, it’s not her “true self” either. Going back to watered-down Freud, the Id is one of three parts of the psyche – the others are the Superego and the Ego. The Superego is about morals, reason, and restraint – a part of Becky that’s had a grip on her brain her whole life, and is now down for the count. So now instead of denying her impulses and feelings, Becky’s denying her morality and brains. So the Becky we’re seeing now is no more her “true self” than the Becky we met at the beginning of this comic.
So yeah, there’s that pesky third part of the psyche, the Ego. Not to be confused with the kind of ego you mean when you talk about someone being full of themselves, the Freudian Ego is about balancing the Id and Superego… which suggests that Becky’s Ego hasn’t been doing a very good job.
The way I see it, we’ll probably see the true Becky – or something close to it – soon enough, because if Becky stays in “Id mode” too long, I predict that one of two things will probably happen:
1. She’ll get all this impulsiveness out of her system and her Superego will begin to slowly reassert itself, until she’s finally balanced out
2. She’ll do something stupid, and her guilt will cause her Superego to overwhelm her; she’ll only be able to find balance after dealing with her guilt and her emotions.
I have a suspicion that it will probably be the latter; easing back into a mental homeostasis would probably be psychologically better for her, but violently shifting between impulse and conscience allows for more drama.
Mark my words: this isn’t even Becky’s final form.
I agree in that I don’t think it’s all that accurate for real-life people, but I think it’s a valuable tool for analyzing fictional characters. At least, it works with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Or so I was taught in high school.
Ugh … so that means there has been even worse … if you actually are reading all those then your … irritability … about the Becky hate makes even more sense … maybe you could filter ‘hate’ and turn it into ‘love’ 🙂
this may not be the place to put is but i just found this and couldnt wait for another mike show up
are mike and joyce sith and do they follow the rule of two
and i think i see why people like dina
*clip form joyce and walky* http://joyceandwalky.com/d/20011228.html
nah mike would ahve ahd to get his training somewhere and after he killed his master he became the master and in this strip he took joyce on as his apprentice.
Two there should be; no more, no less. One to embody the power, the other to crave it.
So, I’m curious. Here’s a hypothetical:
Let’s say Becky continues on her present trajectory, and somehow manages to alienate Dorothy from Joyce. Unlikely, but not impossible (Mike could probably manage it).
Would Joyce be willing to kick out Becky, upon realizing just how toxic Becky has become by that point? Better yet, should she? Not saying based on how toxic Becky is now, but how on toxic she would need to be to pull that off. Life would be much better for Joyce; no one deserves that in their life. But if the price is forcing Becky out, and likely onto the street, is that worth paying for your own well-being?
Perhaps I’ve been unclear. I don’t dislike Becky because of or since she got the haircut. I *like* the haircut, and I think it looks good on her. I just never have liked Becky, because we’ve never seen her do a generous or kind thing, and that “never change, always stay the same for *meee*!”/”don’t let *other people* change you” schtick strikes me not as sweet or romantic but as superficial, creepy, and possessive. You know the song “The Way You Look Tonight”? Romantic classic that I find very off-putting.
It seemed to me that some of the people commenting here were saying that Becky had changed drastically, sometimes with an implication that her characterisation was inconsistent. I posted because I don’t take that view. I think she has been consistently drawn as a possessive, jealous, encroaching, and selfish person, and that we were lead to sympathise with her by skilful writing. By making Becky brave and the enemy/victim of characters and social features that we detest, Willis has cunningly alloyed pity with terror into a classic example of dramatic tension. Bravo! That makes Becky a good character, a dramatic character, not a likeable character.
I identify strongly with Joyce’s situation here. She’s torn, or about to be torn between “I am loyal and generous to my friends because I am a loyal and generous person” am “I am loyal and generous to my friends because they are fun and cheap to run”. I had a major issue with that in the two years after I graduated: it ended up costing my thousands of dollars in rent, utilities, and groceries that I got stiffed with while I was trying to establish my career at the shallow end of the salary pool. In the end, on the gripping hand, I was loyal and generous to my friends because I was a sap, and one of them was a bludging, manipulative parasite. Until I stood up for my self, which I still feel guilty about doing. I’d like to see that issue dealt with dramatically, perhaps see how it turns out for Joyce. And that’s why I am not among the posters here who are calling for Becky to straighten up and fly right. I’m happy for her not to change into a likeable character. I’m happy for her to remain a small, hand-struck drum. Dramatically and for realism, the strip needs some.
Too many people are giving Becky a free pass and it’s because she’s a girl. If Becky was a man and told Joyce he loved her, but Joyce rejected him and then he went and verbally shat on most of her best friends, nobody would be making excuses for him. He would be called a self-entitled butthurt douchebag, and rightly so. One can’t make the excuse that Becky’s feeling messed up and confused after coming out as gay either. Becky is not confused, she’s absolutely certain of her identity. And even if we suggest that Becky does need time to “find herself”, that doesn’t give her leave to treat people like shit. Joyce has been trying to be as kind and empathetic to Becky as she possibly can and Dorothy is doing the same. Becky is responding by being a self-entitled butthurt douchebag. Willis needs to stop insulting the intelligence of his audience and retract his statement about it having anything to do with the new haircut.
What comic are you reading? Most comments I’ve seen are very much about pointing out how she’s being too abrasive and not at all respectful of her friend and her friend’s friends.
I disagree w/ this, personally? Yes, if Becky was a straight guy and was alienating her from her friends because Joyce rejected him, that would be plain shitty. But that is not the context of the situation, and despite what you said that we can’t use the excuse that Becky is messed up/confused about coming out, I really think that’s probably the most important thing to consider. Becky has just come out in a horrible way, with her father not accepting her and being kicked out of college, she’s homeless, and her childhood best friend who has always been w/ her AND she’s in love with not only rejected her, but has also seemingly replaced her. That doesn’t give her an excuse to act shitty towards them, but it does explain why, and considering the tiny amount of time her visit has actually elapsed, it’s really unfair to attack her based on just that. Not to mention so many of the criticisms lobbed at her are ridiculous – she’s a mooch for spending her money on a haircut instead of food, ignoring that she probably never even learnt to be responsible w/ money, that a haircut probably gave her some sense of confidence and being kicked out of college and becoming homeless kinda can make you act impulsively!
Also, despite how confident she is about being gay, that doesn’t mean she’s not confused – she knows about as much about being gay as joyce does, seeing as they are both homeschooled buddies. She doesn’t even know that bi people exist. TRUST ME, understanding you are gay and being confident in that doesn’t mean that it can’t be confusing.
(I hope this is posted as a reply, this is my first time posting so sorry if this just appears as a random out of context post)
People keep on complaining about Becky for not handling her situation “correctly” but, seriously, suddenly finding yourself far away from a home you don’t feel welcome in with a friend you have more-than-platonic feelings for that aren’t reciprocated and realizing she has a life outside of you can’t be easy. I’m not saying Becky is on the right (because she isn’t) but I am enjoying the way the story is moving on forward for all these characters.
If you can’t understand why a queer teenager who has lost control of everything in her life would get this haircut I will NEVER EVER EVER be able to relate to you bye
Also can I just point out that all those other characters Willis mentioned on his tumblr post – even Malaya – people had years and years to get to know, get attached to, etc. Whereas AIUI the last several months of DOA is basically 99% of all the Becky ever. There’s no Strategic Becky Reserve of walkyverse memories to “always plenty of people to explain his circumstances and his excuses and reminders of his inherent humanity.” – everyone’s getting the same highs and lows with no established characterization to cushion it out.
Malaya was unpleasant in her first (tagged) appearance. (I think she had one appearance before that, because I know there was 0-day porn of her, which became funny as soon as she developed a personality. But it may have just been a promotional image he put up.)
And, despite, as a result, being one of the most universally despised characters in Shortpacked! (along with Roz), Becky’s apparently still managed to beat her on level of vitriol.
a) That’s not what he said. He was talking about the historical reactions to his characters.
(Here’s the very first sentence of his post: ‘Yeah, all my characters are pretty rude, and all those folks you mention got some hate, but never this much concentrated hate.’)
b) Your point is now internally inconsistent. People do not have goodwill toward Malaya now because of her history. They have goodwill toward her despite her history (of being one of the two most hated characters in that universe) because DoA Malaya is significantly more chill than her Shortpacked! equivalent.
Nowhere did he say he was talking about the DoA characters, alone, and even, again, said ‘all of [his] characters’.
If he was restricting himself to DoA, Malaya would be a silly example to use. Malaya has had 15 appearances, 4 of which she appears for one panel and doesn’t actually do anything. And the one time she is anything more than mildly snarky (on par with exactly everyone else in her substantive appearances), she immediately received payback. She is a lousy example of someone to get hated. Becky has had 64. Most substantial. 8 since the haircut, alone.
Far from being an explanation for why Malaya doesn’t get hate, the connection to her Shortpacked! self is the only way she possibly could.
Sorry all this Bong, bongo has me thinking “Bongo, Bongo, we drink it in the Congo, a hippo took an apricot, a guava and a mongo, they mixed it all together and said “HEY let’s call it un bongo!”
This isn’t even like looking a gift horse in the mouth anymore. This is like actively hitting on the horse while insulting all its horse friends but still expecting it to just roll over and bare you along while you continue to guilt trip it
Man, I liked Becky, then I realized she was “that kind” of friend. The one who, once they got out of their parent’s house, immediately changed their entire lifestyle, outlook, and attitude, typically tipping towards the jerk side, but who also seems to expect all of their other friends to both shift to accept their new life, while also staying exactly the same. *sigh*
I’ve had this friend a couple of times, and it really is a sucky situation, exactly like you described. Once they were out of the closet, they either became someone who expected that I suddenly know their new ways and keep up, without warning or forgiveness, or became someone I wouldn’t even be friends with. *sigh* indeed.
Loading ...
stealth-a-feel
You will rue the day you made a lewd reference before perv-master yoto!
so she insulted her while getting free food and coped-a-feel, dude she needs to teach me her ways
I know, how on Earth did she manage to insult Dorothy while accepting an offer of free dinner AND copping a feel? Dangit, Becky’s got SWAG.
You must pass three tests before you will be allowed entrance into the Temple of Becky-Fu.
1) Who is your favorite Indigo Girl?
2) Alison Bechdel: Best cartoonist or bestest cartoonist?
3) Mullets: totally acceptable when only lesbians had them?
˙ǝsɹnoɔ ɟo ‘ʇsɹıɟ sɐʍ ǝıʍoq ¡ɐɥ (3
˙ǝɥs sı ɹǝɥʇıǝu (2
˙ssǝuǝʌıʇıʇǝdɯoɔ pǝɔɹoɟ snboq ɹnoʎ oʇuı ʇ,uǝɹɐ ʎǝɥʇ (1
Dear Jen Aside: it took me YEARS of reading DOA to realize your name is supposed to sound like genocide. I just thought your name was jen and this was the handle by which you wrote your witty asides.
Thanks to reading Xanth books as a teenager, my pun senses are sharp.
Or maybe Jen’s name just reminds me of a Garbage Pail Kid.
+1 – Piers Anthony was one of my favorite authors when I was younger. I don’t miss puns, anymore.
Pier Xanthany. Just so ya know.
… I’m pretty sure he hasn’t been knighted … though based on some people’s feelings about puns he might be considered benighted …
You poor man. Nobody should be reminded of the Garbage Pail Kids.
I read so many that I even submitted some puns and my name is in the back of one of the books. I don’t know whether to be proud or ashamed.
But I still didn’t get “genocide” until you said it just now.
Don’t feel bad, it took me a few months to realise the double meaning of her name as well.
Oh my god. Whaaaaat
I had never really taken the time to consider it, so I didn’t catch the double meaning until you said something. lol
Oh, geez. I feel slow now. Welp, at least I got the pun in the Truman Show. (True-Man Show) 🙂
Oh my god, I just now got that, and I even saw the movie when it came out in 17 years ago. (… Although I was 10 then, so maybe that’s why.)
I didn’t get it until I read the top comments right here. Dang, I missed such an obvious play-on-words! xD
Is that even a pun? It feels too obvious to qualify.
Puns don’t have to be subtle.
Ain’t that the tooth.
…I just got it. :-/
I was reading aloud when I saw it, so I got it pretty much immediately.
As far as I know, I’ve never missed an instance of wordplay in my life. I probably have, regardless, since that’s the nature of ‘missing’ it. I didn’t miss ‘Jen Aside,’ though.
I have the worst pun sense ever (which makes puns absolutely hilarious to me). Thank you for pointing this out. I never would have noticed.
Can’t it both?
Who’s to say it can’t be both?
It’s because puns are a plague upon humanity and noone would use them subtly or cleverly.
You get caught off-guard is what I’m saying.
I knew what it meant before I even saw the name.
*adjusts hipster glasses*
Pff – puns aren’t as cool, now that EVERYBODY uses them.
I though Jen Aside was a 30-rock reference.
Took me until just right now, as in having you explain it.
Haha, I was gonna do something to throw y’all off AGAIN (but not really) but I forgot comments get moderated if I do that
Well, at least is isn’t Hover Hands. Those are less molesty, but 50x more creepy.
…
…
I ship it.
Is there anything in this comic that isn’t by SOMEONE?
*Looks at two-person comment chain*
…I ship it
OT3 right here
Threesomes. Solve. Everything.
EVERYTHING.
NO EXCEPTIONS.
I dunno. I think there are a few catastrophic events that require a four-way.
It doesn’t solve the problem of how to repopulate the earth with a viable genepool from a single male and single female survivor.
AAAAAAH! My default gavatar got changed from Walky to Marry! SOMEONE MUST DIE FOR THIS!
You’re not doing a very good job of convincing us that the gravatar doesn’t suit you…
There’s possibly a way. There’s a way for everything.
Add a monkey into the fun. BOOM. Problem solved. Interspecies relationships fixed forever. The monkey-human empire can now truly begin.
Repeat after me. Threesomes. Solve. EVERYTHING.
Indeed.
On the contrary. Threesomes rarely solve anything, and often contribute to the drama. Which is why I love stories that focus on them.
Clearly, you haven’t been in the right threesomes.
Okay, Ben Affleck.
Sal & Walky? Wait, I don’t think I want to know the answer…
Malaya – Anyone except maybe Carla?
NO. NO. GIVE ME BACK RUTH.
Ha ha! Danning it up again, Danny!
Neva! She’s MINE!
Took me a minute to figure that one out!
Time to get a gravatar?
She’d have 20 bucks if not for that haircut… 😉
I’m so cheap I woulda cut my own hair. If it looks terrible I’ll grow it back and have saved 20 bucks.
$20 gets you two footlong Meatball Subway meal deals.
The arithmetic of a college student.
Or one Green Curry Chicken plus a small steamed rice.
OR 4 Ultimate Breakfast Sandwich combos at Jack-In-The-Box.
Ultimate Breakfast Combo is like six bucks where I’m at.
Tacos, though, are 2 for a dollar. So for the same price you get more calories. And when you’re THAT broke, you gotta play the calories per dollar game and not mess about with combos.
Or an infinite supply of Ramen.
Why would you go for two full mealdeals when you could instead get 4 meatball subs? Ask for a water cup, skip the chips/cookie, and you double how long your money lasts, while still getting the sandwich you really want as opposed to 20 boxes of ramen or whatever.
i go the other way on saving and haircuts and only cut my hair every 2-4 months.. I however am also of the philosophy, “its only hair, it grows back” but i do appreciate the hairdresser washing my hair for me and stuff too much to not have it done by professionals every onve in a while :3
She’d also look like Danny with boobs if not for that haircut. $20 is a good deal to not be Danny. He’d pay it in a heartbeat.
Sad truth.
Man, he’s bangin’ a superhero. I mean, sure he’s also poppin’ the occasional boner for her super hot Jewish friend, and it’s awkward, but there’s a lot worse people to be than Danny.
Like Sarah, who just chased off her own crush in the saddest way possible.
Yeah, but then she wouldn’t have such a bongoin’ haircut. And, that’s just not an option.
I think that’s my favorite instance of a swear filter altering a word that *contains* the banned word and having it still make sense.
Yeah, I’m going to start trying to get bongoin’ into my daily lexicon.
“Bongoin'” is never going to be a thing, Seagull!
? bongoing ? Banging ?
I thought you meant that literally , and the banned word was within ” bongoing “.
I spent 10 minutes trying to anagram that!
The B-word that rhymes with Glitch is auto-filtered into “bongo.” Slapping a person is rude, but slapping a hand drum is festive.
B-O-N-G-O
B-O-N-G-O
B-O-N-G-O
And BONGO was his NAME-O!
Sorry, I though of that incredibly stupid joke back when the word substitution first started, then I didn’t post it soon enough, and then it would have been awkward. It’s probably still awkward, but I’m doing it now anyway.
Stupid jokes can still get a laugh, though!
The bongo substitution is the gift that keeps on giving.
Indeed. She nearly missed an opportunity to eat out.
Ba-dum-PSH!
*Statler and Waldorf laughter*
Whoever gave her that haircut and took the twenty bucks should be shot. That person obviously has no soul. Or taste.
I didn’t want to make this joke for a few days since I did start two threads that ende dup being about her hair when she got the cut but it reminded me of a tumblr post that made me laugh:
I walked into the barber’s today:
Barber: What do you want us to do to your hair.
Me: Just fuck me up.
It was Sierra. Now Yotomoe will have to murder you.
Explains why only the left side was cut!
20$ For a haircut?! Not in my America! 12$ tops!
Are you a guy, Kris?
Of course! 🙂
As a rule, men’s haircuts are cheaper even if it’s for the exact same haircut.
That plus the fact we make more money without doing a thing?!…..Women have it hard..-_-
When it comes to haircuts and clothing men can get away with cheap boring styles while women peer-pressure and attempt to one-up each other with over-priced fanciful styles.
Ad agencies go to great lengths to reinforce that, of course.
I can’t stop dying my hair pink/raspberry, though with a haircut and everything I get it cheap compared to what the average is in my area thanks to being a regular for the past two years or so. I have no clue if peer pressure has anything to do with it in my case; I just love having bright hair as opposed to dull dark brown hair.
… and we don’t get real pockets!!
Cannot blame that one on the Patriarchy as there are more than enough female fashion designers who could add real pockets to their garments if they wanted to but refuse to as it might create “unsightly budges” or some other weak-ass excuses.
Yeah c’mon, it’s not like women themselves can or do participate in any patriarchal or oppressive practices in any way shape or form in perpetuity throughout the multiverse in all known or conceivable timelines.
I went once to a place that did men’s haircuts only. Apparently people who work in such an environment think it doesn’t matter what haircut you’ve actually asked for.
Conclusion:
The Theory: Women’s haircuts cost more because women care more about the haircut
In Practice: I will not be going back there. I told him three times.
(Real Conclusion:
Anecdotal evidence proves nothing.)
I’ve been getting my hair cut at the same place since 1972. It’s a family-owned barber shop and I’m now getting my cuts from the granddaughter of the guy who was running the shop back then. Trust me, they know what I want.
And just in case I have to go somewhere else (out of town, for example) I carry a photograph of myself to show them so they can see for themselves what I expect.
WHY HAVE I NEVER THOUGHT OF THIS?
Would save me from the awkward conversation about what haircut I want because I don’t really know what I want or how to describe it
“This is me. I want to look like me.”
And then you end up visiting an Amish village.
“An image of your own visage?! WHAT SORT OF IDOLATRY IS THIS?!”
A few hours later, they’ve brought out the stake and torches, but you’ve managed to escape into the night, where you manage to elude capture by smearing yourself with bear feces and covering yourself in leaves.
And then the wolves came…
What I’m saying is I’m never gonna get a haircut at an Amish village again.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/innovation/06/22/amish.tech.brende/
I realize it’s extremely unlikely that there are any Amish people here to be insulted, but Amish people probably know what photographs are.
I spend $5 for my haircuts when I don’t just shave my head like I’m going to do in a couple of weeks. My wife can sometimes get one for $15, but usually spends $20 or more.
This is why I don’t cut my hair.
I just have three feet of beautiful brown hair.
Yeah, that’s my solution, too. Last time I got my hair cut, Reagan was President.
Where do you keep it?
In a jar that contains a fragment of her soul. It is the source of her power: a haircrux.
+1 for Harry Potter references.
Can’t get a haircut for less than $40 in my town.
… Which is why I drive about 40 minutes to get a haircut.
I think you’re burning enough fuel to make any savings from the haircut moot.
Depends on the mileage of the car, the cost reduction of the haircut, the current price of gasoline in the area…
…give us numbers Incomitatus! Math for the Math God!!
If we assume Incomitatus’ car gets about 30 miles per gallon and the average driving speed is 60 mph to the next town, then the car would use 1.5 gallons of fuel. Prices have been cheaper lately, but for the sake of argument let’s say they’re still $3/gallon. That means Incomitatus would spend $4.50 on fuel to get there and another $4.50 to get back. So, as long as a haircut can be had there for less than $31, it seems like it would be worth it.
Crap, my math is wrong. It works out in Incomitatus’ favor, though. 1.5 gallons should be 1.33 gallons (40/30).
Thank you, Cesium. The Math God is pleased with your offering.
Yes, I realize that this will peg me as another crazy chemist, but using an isotope as a username is BRILLIANT!
I don’t know … it doesn’t seem very hot to me 😉
I would NOT spend 20 dollars just to get a hair cut. For anything over 10, I’d insist the barber cut at least two of them.
I saw that.
Twenty for a hair cut. You guys are adorable.
I hurt my arm a few years ago and couldn’t raise it high enough to wash that side of my head on my own. Called the hair dresser, asked how much for just a shampoo. No cut, nothing. Maybe towel-dry it and throw it into a braid for me.
It was going to be $20 JUST FOR THAT. No cutting/styling involved. If I want actual scissors to be involved, it’s always been at least fifty, and usually closer to $80. Which is why my hair is now past my butt.
Bad enough asking for a significant portion of a C-note each time; when I have yet to have had anyone with scissors near my head without fucking it up, I refuse to play the game at all. Fuck all y’all and your $50-80 for screwing up my head. Ends up that past a certain length, you don’t actually need it cut to any particular shape, and you can do a wide variety of different styles.
Opt out, people! Free your follicles from the tyranny of stylists! 😀
>Which is why my hair is now past my butt.
I took that route once.
I’d really just rather pay for the haircut than dealing with hair that I keep sitting on, shutting in car doors, gets tangled in my everything, tries to strangle me if I dare fall asleep without braiding it…oh…and was causing chronic headaches from all the tugging.
Spending money to avoid irritation is kinda my thing, though 😀
I made a similar calculation to Kryss back in grad school, fortunately my follicles also seem to have a touch of ADHD and my hair ends at just below shoulder length … I guess it is nice that something in my background bucks the trend and acts against things getting hairy …
My facial fur is also relatively short … hmm … do I have time to look into hair growth genetics …
Christ. It costs more than that just to have my ends trimmed 😛
This entire conversation tree is an entirely forign concept to me. I’ve never paid for a haircut… pros of having a realitve that does hair?
For some reason I really want Becky to meet Dina. I just feel like any interaction between them would be amusing.
Or maybe I’m subconsciously thinking about Peppermint Patty and Marcie from Peanuts.
Dina will mention dinosaurs, Becky will cal her stupid and Dina will snap and maul the shit out of her.
I don’t recall Marcie doing that to Peppermint Patty. 😀
…Well, ok, kidding aside, there was one time where Marcie did finally step out of her subservient role (no giggling in the back!) and angrily call Peppermint Patty out for not realizing after so long that Snoopy was a beagle and not a “funny-looking kid with a big nose.”
I wonder if Dina’s dinosaur impression would compare with one of the British comedian’s gay dinosaur impression I saw on Thursday night at PJ O’Brian’s pub.
Joyce actively dislikes Dina. Following her current pattern, Becky would either be indifferent to Dina or possibly actively friendly.
Considering Becky gets along with Walky (at least until she dissed his girlfriend repeatedly), I’d have to agree with this assessment
Dina was one of the attractions on the nickel tour Joyce gave Becky.
Was your mom also an attraction? Because Becky might be into that.
Beckyyyyyyyyy, STOP IIIIIIIIIT!
I don’t know I like when there’s a character who’s constantly stirring the pot, Mike used to do that for me but he’s been inactive
Watch the hands Becky
Oh, she KNOWS where they are.
Every word that comes out of Becky’s mouth just makes them all appreciate Joyce more and more.
I still can’t tell if she’s trying to be funny and get them to like her or if her mouth is just stuck on constantly spraying her thoughts everywhere.
I think she’s just heartbroken and dealing with it badly. She just got rejected yesterday, and she’s been hiding it, but she definitely is not over Joyce.
She’s also been trying to push herself away from Joyce – chasing after Billie, for instance. Probably trying to force herself to heal from the heartbreak.
Yeah, there are lot of things going on. Heartbroken and jealous, high on stress, fear and coming-out-rush, socially inexperienced and overcompensating – and also just plain rudeness and flippancy.
Mostly I don’t think she realize the effect she’s having on people. She’s trying to play up the goofy-card and misses.
Maybe she should just throw a toy in Dorothy’s head instead.
Um, the kinds of toys of that are close to hand right now aren’t really the best for throwing at heads. And Sarah would be so pissed if Becky accidentally broke any of them.
“Other Jacob – Nooooooo.”
I think it would be hilarious, though. Dorothy would have a rather cross look on her, with Other Jacob tangled in her hair. Sarah would have a look of abject horror. Walky would be doubled over in a futile effort to contain his laughter. Joyce would gasp, and possibly give herself hiccups again.
Hey, this strip is intended to be funny, too!
I … I think I want you start your own strip … or if you don’t draw, maybe you could team up with some who can … maybe you an Yotomoe could collaborate …
I love the detail with which you have envisioned this scenario.
I think sometimes she’s trying to play up the goofy card and missing, but more than once I think Becky’s meant exactly what she’s said/done.
As she does here – ‘friendstealing hussy’ in an undervoice so Joyce won’t here? That’s Becky being awful and meaning it. And the more we see of Becky, the more I think she’s probably turned up her tormenting of Joyce (which I do believe was in fun in the past, but has reduced Joyce to near-tears at least once or twice already in the present) to eleven to punish her for not being the lesbian Becky wants her to be and for having non-Becky friends.
It also seems like Becky’s personality is like Joyce without a filter. Joyce will consider other people. Becky will blurt out whatever. It’s funny though.
Joyce’s filter is pretty intermittent. ‘I would have freaked out before, but now I accept your decision to live one foot in the grave!’
This is why you need to change your filter every few months.
Becky got rejected by Joyce, who immediately went starry eyed at the thought of spending time with Dorothy. “Friend”stealer indeed.
In this comic: Becky finds it harder to hate Dorothy.
Yeah, I was worried her jealous sniping at Joyce’s friends would reach critical mass, but she seems to have reined herself in a little, most noticeably with Ethan but definitely with Dorothy too. This might just work out after all.
I don’t think she intends to be nearly as rude as she comes across. She aims for flippant (with a defiant undertone of “mine”) but misses. Since Dorothy and Ethan chose not to make a big thing out of it they all get a chance to get to know each other.
Yeah, totally calling someone a “Friend stealing hussy” is totally reining yourself in.
I’m pretty sure it’s supposed to be a joke, seeing as after her conversations with Joyce, she was fairly sure Dorothy had swooped in and taken the Best Friend rug out from under her feet.
You don’t “Jokingly’ call a stranger a hussy (which means slut) after they offer to buy you dinner, especially after calling them a bony poindexter.
And Jokes are supposed to be people laughing with you, if just you are laughing you’re not joking you’re being an asshole.
It’s kind of interesting that Willis puts that word in the mouth of the character he’s mad at people for disliking so soon after being so high-handed about gendered insults.
He put the word in her mouth months ago. The gendered insults came long after this was written.
However, he posted claiming everyone who dislikes her for anyone reason is secretly a haircut hater after the comic containing the word was made public.
What Random832 said:
>However, he posted claiming everyone who dislikes her for anyone reason is secretly a haircut hater after the comic containing the word was made public.
What Willis actually said:
>becky was awesome and sassy but then she got a nontraditional haircut and now i suddenly think she’s an asshole for some reason
>Some people have said, verbatim, that they cannot empathize with her now that she looks like that.
So…do I get a prize for correctly using “strawman” in the comments? ’cause Random832 is beating that strawman to hell and gone.
“for some reason” strongly suggests he’s talking about the people who didn’t explicitly mention the haircut.
It really really doesn’t.
Willis’ twitter comment can be read in different ways. I think the wording sounds a bit suggestive in the way Random832 implies, but I can’t actually say what Willis meant.
But Willis has also implied on tumblr that the reason for the rampant Becky hate and intolerance of her rudeness is a mixture of unattractive haircut and casual sexism and classism. While I think these do play a factor in some people’s (snap-)judgements of Becky, the majority of Becky-hate can be much more easily explained by a problem in the way the narrative introduced Becky and has framed her actions since (ie. “hussysayswhat” is that a punchline? am I supposed to find that funny?). So, yeah, I think the Becky-hate has gotten disproportionate, but I also don’t appreciate Willis’ comments trying to discredit criticism and say this is clearly the product of haircuts and -isms, when it’s also the product of a bunch of legitimate factors.
I think you nailed it, Arashi. Also, damn – I should have spotted that sooner!
Wait, really? I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody use the word “hussy” sincerely. It’s a fairly archaic word that most people don’t use at all anymore, so when it is used, it’s used by somebody that isn’t being particularly serious. When you want to throw a pejorative at somebody for being sexually promicuous, Hussy might’ve been the go-to insult in, like, the 50’s, but these days, it’s pretty mild.
Considering that Joyce and Becky don’t swear, ‘hussy’ and ‘harlot’ are probably about the worst things they can say to another human woman. Most people wouldn’t be serious, but they are.
Just because something is meant to be a joke, doesn’t make it less inappropriate or offensive. Especially when it contains a demeaning slur.
At least Becky has a reason for being kind of bongoy to Dorothy, but I can’t help but feel someone’s going to call her out, and it will be awkward and saddening for all…
Haha, bongo-y. That censorship suits me just fine. 🙂
What exactly is that filtering? I thought maybe bang, but branch is very much not a word.
Bangy*
As evidenced by.
It’s filtering a word that starts b-i and ends t-c-h.
Because it made willis uncomfortable how freely it was used regarding Roz a while back, esp given it’s gender-specificness.
Bongo is censoring a word that rhymes with witch. After the comic where Roz berated Joyce, people used that word a ton, and then it became censored.
Wait, is it automatically censored? Let me try.
“bongo”
I’m very sorry if this doesn’t work.
Oh hey it did work! Technology, yay!
The only problem with auto-censoring is the filter’s inflexibility. There’s another site I go to where the word ‘screw’ is censored and gets replaced with a grawlix. The problem is that the word gets censored regardless of whether you are talking about pre-marital hanky-panky or referring to the Philips-headed wood-fastening device made of metal and utilizing the principle of the inclined plane.
We would have the same problem here if Joyce were to go to the pet shop and come home with a puppy of the female persuasion.
Except the technical term for a female dog is almost never used to actually refer to a female dog (at least colloquially) for precisely the reason it’s filtered.
You know, I looked it up once, but were you aware that there’s no word for “male dog” besides just “dog”? It’s weird. With cats you get queens and toms, cattle are bulls and heffers, there are hens and roosters….but dogs? You get the b-word and dogs.
I heard some where that the technical term for a breeding male dog is “king”.
Also, “queen” is reserved for a breeding cat. Most of the time it’s “she-cat”.
Also also, a female cow is a cow. “Heifer” is reserved for a virgin cow.
Wait. Then the breeding male dog is a King, but the Queen is the breeding female cat?
…
… ok, I think I won’t joke about that.
…Huh. I’d always though that “cur” was the male version, but apparently that only applies to aggressive dogs or mongrels, non-gender specific. Learn something new every day.
Spoken like someone who’s never watched the Westminster dog show. It’s very jarring to hear them use it so causally….
Yeah, my grandmother bred German Shepherds, and said “bongo” almost constantly. I feel like you, well, don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, claiming that people don’t use it to mean female dogs.
Your grandmother bred dogs. That’s not really your everyday context. There are a lot of people who use the words, but largely they exist in the dog world.
People in this comment section would be using it as an excuse to use the word, and nothing more.
But it’s a gross and inappropriate reason for being a jerk to Dotty. I’m actually REALLY looking forward to somebody holding her accountable for being an ass because these characters have already displayed a tolerance for her jackassery far in excess of my own.
Oh no, I totally agree with you that Becky’s being a jerk, it just makes me sad to see anyone called out, even when they do deserve it. I get all empathetic and shizz.
Not everyone can keep time. Its hard work.
bongoing players deserve your respect, not stigmatization.
Think of all the bongo players right here , in this fandom, reading this, and no one has even publicly come to their defense.
How do you think they feel to have their artform held up as signifier of disrespect?
People train for year to learn.
You dont jokingly calls someone a … bongoy. You just dont.
You probably didnt even mean it.
Wait, people calling Dorothy ‘Dotty’ in the actual comic is a thing now? It always bugged me when she was called that in the comments because I couldn’t recall it ever happening in the comic.
It IS the short form of Dorothy. No different than calling Sal Sal instead of Sally.
And here I always thought her full name was Salad.
Salvador!
She ain’t a “dolly” though.
What’s a….. saaaal-ad?
It’s a poster that says, “WANTED: More Sal”, with a pic of Sal, and words that describe the awesome benefits of Sal.
I’ve got that poster up. *looks at it longingly*
I mean…not really? At all? Not only is Sal never called Sally, but it’s been revealed that she loathes it. Whereas Dorothy is always called Dorothy. I mean, it’s whatever, obviously, but I kinda always hated her being called Dotty, because I identify with her a lot and I hate that nickname.
Whether you hate it or not doesn’t change the fact that it’s stilla short form. I hate being called the short form of my name, doesn’t change what it is.
Me hating it was not really the point of the comment, though. I mean, I even actually prefaced that addendum by saying that it was whatever. My point was it’s not the same cause Sal hates being called Sally (I just remembered that her parents call her that, but regardless) and no one has ever called Dorothy Dotty before now.
I’m not disputing that it’s an accepted variant of that name. It’s just that it’s never been used as HER name. You could call Billie ‘Jenny’ and be technically correct, but it wouldn’t stop it from being weird.
I always keep thinking Sal’s full name is Salvador.
I always thought it was Salacious Crumb Walker.
Its Walky! touched on that once, I think.
Ah, here!
http://www.itswalky.com/comic/salvador/
I called her Dotty first in the comments as Dotty is a variation of Dorothy.
It’s also an old-school slang for someone who isn’t quite right in the head.
So it fits! 😀
Just be glad there isn’t anyone named Margaret.
Maggie, Madge, Maisie, Marge, Meg, Megan, Rita, Molly, Peggy, Peg… and that’s not all of them.
I feel for the Margarets of the world. So many ways for people to get their preferred name wrong!
Oops, I forgot… Daisy is short for Margaret (no, really). So I was wrong about there not being anyone.
Not many people will call Daisy Margaret.
Well, yeah. It helps to have the short version already known. If she’d been introduced as “Margaret”, though, who can say what people would call her?
Peggy? Peg? Those are also short for Pegeen! And yes, there are people named Pegeen. My mother, for one.
Wow, even when I make a point to get here at 12:02 so I can say something like “Becky’s got wandering hands”, I’m still a distant third.
Oh wait, are these comics posted at 12? I totally thought they were posted at 9. What time zone is Willis from?
Why am I even asking that?
“Where is David Willis’s house?”
Midnight Eastern Time. Which makes it 9PM Pacific.
I dunno where Willis is (Where’s Willis?) but the comics post at 12am here on the east coast. Tends to be a thing among daily webcomics.
There is a new DoA comic at 00:01 New York Time.
I would totally buy that book. I bet that, despite being a hidden object book, it would manage to be emotionally damaging nonetheless.
No matter where you find him he’s drawing porn of Mike banging your mom.
Becky, that line you weren’t supposed to cross? You’re currently river dancing on it…
“You just crossed the line”
“sorreeee I didn’t see it!”
…What reference, Yotomoe?
Girl Chan in Paradise! Episode 2.
Not sure if I would like her in real life or not…
I’d hate her in real life.
I’ve met people like her.
I’ve been hurt by people like her.
I hope she burns.
It should be noted that Becky has the same background Joyce does. How was Joyce when we first met her? Go to the early strips if you really want to test your affection for her, she was quite a jerkmobile at first.
Naïve but trying not to insult anyone and apologetic whenever her foot went in her mouth. Becky is actively insulting people, loudly and repeatedly, and not caring.
Does that mindset still work if we still don’t like Joyce?
Was wondering that myself since I’m still annoyed at Joyce most times. I don’t enjoy her character.
She wasn’t manipulative and controlling with her friends, though. I think that’s why some people here dislike her more than, say, Mike.
No, wait, Mike is manipulative, too.
Joyce was never intentionally insulting, nor was she anywhere near so manipulative as to try to get someone to buy her a meal in between trying to make that same person seem unattractive to her crush.
“Never intentionally insulting” She’s implied people are godless heathens, she’s called Roz “Morally stripped to the roots” she does’t say “Slut” or “Godless tramp” but her past facial expressions and views are the same as them
where the fuck are people getting this “becky’s trying to scam a meal” shit from
It’s how the second panel comes off. I take it that it wasn’t intended to though.
I think they have dealt with people IRL who do the whole “Oh I’m not REALLY hungry, not really…”-sad face and possible look of expectantness- and are imposing that on Becky, don’t think she’s bumming a meal myself, just think she’s actin like a butthole.
While it’s not the impression I got saying things like “Oh, I’m not hungry anyway, not that I’d have the money to go” sounds kind of passive aggressive, I can see where they got the wrong impression.
I just took it as “I have no money to feed myself, therefore I am going to excuse myself from this invitation”. I think people who already have decided they don’t like Becky are doing overtime in the “Let’s interpret everything she says in the worst possible context!” game.
See also the apparently serious claims that she’s copping a feel.
I read that as Becky genuinely excusing herself and giving a valid reason why too, Heavensrun, and lord knows I’m happy to ascribe ill motive to Becky in general at the moment. That’s not a panel I’m going to do it in.
One thing you can say about Becky: her aggression is not all that passive.
Basically, people who don’t like her will tend towards the worst interpretations while people who like her will assume benign intentions. Naturally both sides are wrong at times.
I never thought she was trying to scam a fee meal, Joyce is already covering her food.
The “I can’t afford to go out to dinner with you guys” routine can be used for completely different ends. On the the one hand, it can be used to politely excuse yourself from joining them. On the other hand, it can be used to bum a meal off of someone (I wouldn’t say scam, though – that implies deceit).
So, we’re jumping to conclusions here, but these conclusions aren’t completely unreasonable ones to be making – just presumptuous.
Remember how you noted on Tumblr that since she’s poor now, the only emotions she’s allowed are shame and contrition? Turns out those aren’t allowed either, since they’re clearly being faked to mooch and scam further.
Depends if, when told to back off, she does. I know some folks who do, and I’ve known* some who pretend to for about five seconds.
*emphasis on the past tense.
Crap, Becky’s back…
I know, I miss Danny.
My gravitar misses him too.
Did Becky stick her hand in Dorothy’s armpit in the fourth panel?
Becky has already discovered the beauty of cleavage.
Just not the one you’d think.
I always thought the armpit looked like a butt to be honest.
To be honest I don’t know, I focused more on the other hand…
She’s really touchy feeley with these people she’s barely known for a day and a half.
“You’re alright Thin Mints. Us orange lipped women gotta stick together”
Don’t be jealous, Becky. There is enough Joyce for both of you.
All things considered, Becky’s first meeting with an atheist went better than Joyce’s.
Joyce had hiccups, ran away and accepted her the enxt time they ran into each other.
You’re forgetting the best part, though.
Give it time. Becky’s not done saying things.
Oh this is gonna be a friendship for the ages!
Becky’s totally wrist-groping Dorothy.
(Did I coin “wrist-groping”? I hope I did!)
She’s just bonding with her.
Covalent or Ionic?
Van der Waals.
I was thinking more like an F-F bond; it’s unstable & caustic.
At this point, it’s more like F-O-O-F.
Oh, shit. Shit shit shit…
*backs away slowly, then runs like hell*
That’s the one that hates all of existence and makes it burn, right?
Pretty much.
http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2010/02/23/things_i_wont_work_with_dioxygen_difluoride.php
Yet, worse does exist. Another fluoride compound chlorine trifluoride, will set sand on fire. That chemical really does want to burn the universe.
http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2008/02/26/sand_wont_save_you_this_time.php
Wait, I shouldn’t say ‘worse’. FOOF probably could ignite sand, too. Which is just crazy.
She’s getting some sweet ribcage action.
She’s going to bang them like a xylophone. 😀
Bang them like bongos!
*looks to see if anybody ever recorded a song titled “Winner Winner Chicken Dinner”*
That was easy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8C6pcLVloMs
Wow – Becky’s getting dinner AND some boob off of Dorothy.
What’s for dessert?
Some boob off of Walky?
Soooo, some boob off of Sal if she doesn’t stab you first…eh worth it
Becky, here’s some good advice from my favorite high school teacher:
“When you’ve dug yourself in a hole, stop digging!“
That or dig some steps to climb out with…
Maybe she’s excavating?
So she WILL get along with Dina!
Unless her shovel blade accidentally damages a dinosaur bone. Then there will be hell to pay.
Dig deep enough, and you won’t HAVE to climb out!
No! Never stop! Even if you’re digging your own grave you keep digging and when you dig yourself right back out again that is your victory!! Becky’s drill is the drill that will pierce the heavens!
But there’s something that’s making this hole deeper, and Becky’s going to get to the bottom of it. (Yeah, fine, I stole that joke)
This dinner, tables will be flipped.
Is Amber invited?
Either that or Jesus.
In a world where societal norms collide, one woman’s journey out of the closet takes her farther than she could have imagined. When everything she fights for threatens to fall apart, she must rise to her greatest challenge. This dinner — tables will be flipped.
Everyone was right about Becky being intentionally terrible to people! I guess in those few hours before Becky knew for sure Joyce was straight and AFTEr she found out about Dorothy, a raging envy was formed that cannot be sundered.
More like Tsundered amirite?
That is an excellent pun.
Becky has crossed so many lines that the ‘poor Becky she’s all sad cause she made a homosexual move on her best friend who had not invited it”, is getting freak’in old.
She is just flat rude, self centered, and overbearing.
She is living in the dorm on Joyces’ dime; and this is how she repays her: but being an asshat to her friends, ordering Ethan around and pulling a pity I’m broke routine?
Nope, don’t like Becky at all. However, I’m sure when either one or both parents show up and the excrement hits the revolving object, I’ll likely feel sorry as Hell for her situation.
Becky only has her dad, so it’d just be him or uh, Joyce’s mum?
I miss strip one Becky who only wanted to take poops.
Agree 100%, Beckys nothing but a mooching, arrogant, obnoxious bongo but its ok because lesbian I guess whereas Danny gets all the hating because he doesn’t have the same information we have
You are wrong. Becky is the best. It’s okay, I forgive you.
Like anyone cares what a Llama has to say. Everyone knows Alpaca’s are the real philosophers.
Meanwhile, camels are great mathematicians.
I’m one sixty fourth alpaca.
To be fair (and I’m no great fan of Becky) she’s only been there for a day, and she has just acknowledged that she has no money.
Well she had twenty bucks but she thought a haircut was a good idea
So do I. She was feeling crappy, had $20, and used that $20 to make herself feel better. What’s wrong with that?
What’s wrong with that ? Maybe the fact that she is still hungry and has no money left.
Yeah, but if she’d spent the money on food, she wouldn’t have the bangin’ haircut.
My point being that the haircut isn’t necessarily less valuable than the food. I mean sure, you can argue the food fulfills a more basic need (I don’t, mental health goes down on the bottom with food, shelter and physical health), but $20 wasn’t going to get her very close to controlling her food supply for more than a few days. It wouldn’t give her control over her living arrangements, or get her back into Anderson, or make her dad change his mind about homosexuality. The only thing it DID give her control of was her hair, which would obey her will for at least the next few months. It would also give her some control over what people initially think of her for that time. Now instead of being “Candy corn girl,” or “That red-headed kid who’s friends with Joyce,” she’s “That super-rad lesbian chick who probably rides motorcycles and everyone should totally ask out.”
In other words, the haircut was the only purchase she could make which would give her any modicum of control over her life. You can argue she should’ve tried to take control of some other part of her life, or saved it so she could get more control later, and that’s ultimately down to what things you value most. But the actual decision has to be determined by what Becky values most, and right now, she probably values the ability to get something nice for herself and that tiny bit of control over her life more than anything else.
In Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, I’m pretty sure food comes before haircuts.
If the haircut served some mental health purpose (like helping her hold herself together) that puts it on tier 2. Joyce has kindly taken care of tier 1 for her, so it’s up to Becky to work on the next one.
You can also argue that health (including mental) belongs on tier 1 with the physical needs. It’s the one on tier 2 that you take care of before all of the others.
Looking good is the road to recurring dinners. Not just for latrodectus.
I’m changing my answer. Yours is much better.
I’m tired of her, and I’m tired of *being* her.
Get a gravatar?
Or use a different email to post under
One of these is definitely in my near future.
This is better!
Congrats on becoming Sal.
Yes, good choice.
She has only been there a day, and just came out to and got rejected by her best friend last night, and is pretty much homeless. Her rudeness is getting old, but I get where it’s coming from. And on re-reading today’s strip, it seems like she’s figured out she’d better at least try to get along with Joyce’s new friends, because they’re not going anywhere.
And I can’t blame her for spending her $20 from Billie on a haircut. Does anyone actually remember being a college student, flailing around trying to find your identity, and emotionally draining shit is going on constantly? It probably never occurred to Becky at the time that she had no money besides that $20 and might need to eat sometime. (Plus, it’s not like $20 would feed her for the rest of her stay in Joyce’s dorm room. So she’s broke today instead of a couple days from now; does that change much?)
Okay, I see this. What you’re saying is fair. I think a lot of the grief she’s getting comes from the fact that she’s hurting the feelings of characters we’ve invested emotions in for years. She’s the new kid on the block. We were prepared to like her . . . but not to suddenly like her more than our long-term favorites.
Seriously. People are ragging on her spending the $20 way too hard, like she had to have a financial plan already set out after her life was uprooted.
Hurray! People are voting for Sal and Jason! I’m excited about this!
That people want to see that breaks my brain. At leats this time it’s not everyone voting for someone whose mentally unstable. But that’s not really a high bar to set.
I’d want to see that. XD Sal and Jason I mean.
There’s been some indication that what people really want to see is Sal/Jason from the Walkyverse. Although understandable, that once again would involve the mentally unstable. Hmm.
Their all mentally unstable; they’re people, after all.
Dammit, why did I only realize what was bugging me about the first part of that sentence until after I posted it?
I’m still peeved we’ll likely never get some dude on dude action outta’ Willis. Shucks even pinky finger would suffice at this point.
If all the gay votes were combined that would be winning, so…
And that means we’d have like five gay dudes! Jeez that’s a lotta’ ding dong for poor ol’ Willis to draw. Literally how would you even go about doin’ that? Does each ding dong get it’s own panel? Will there be back stories? Did one of the ding dongs live on the dick version of Krypton and get sent to Earth where he gained super ding dong powers?
The lore behind this is amazing.
That sounds less like porn and more like a comic about sentient dildos.
And it wouldn’t be complete without a dingdong jail, of course.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/04-the-whiteboard-dong-bandit/earliest/
Presumably they escaped from Pintsize’s production facility.
I can’t remember where the comment is (maybe on one of the Slipshine news posts?), but he said he would do a male-male one at some point. So we’ll probably get some form of something with Danny and Ethan in, you know, a year or so.
I think there would first have to be a canonical male-male relationship, and this comic is apparently falling into a black hole, judging by the time dilation.
Exactly, a gay themed slipshine comic is possible, but since they’re all canon we need a canon guy on guy scenario first. Ethan’s still closeted, Danny’s still confused and with Crazy-Girl and Mike would only do it to mess with them.
I think Willis mentioned a while back that he only Slipshines what appeals to him, and dude-on-dude doesn’t. It’s too bad, really, but I can understand, from an artist’s perspective.
I seem to recall he said he’d be willing to do it, though, just to see if he could and what he’d learn.
It’ll happen. I never said I wouldn’t.
I thought there was one of two random background charcters
There was some picture on his tumblr a while back of Ethan and his partner from Shortpack. I don’t know if there was a whole story.
That was a one-image Christmas gift I drew, so there’s no full story. But, yeah, drawing dude/dude is no problem. It’s just, y’know, kind of clinical for me, is all.
Ah, well this explains some things: Becky’s feeling as if she’s been replaced in Joyce’s life. After her mom’s death, Kaitlin throwing her to the wolves, and her father making it clear he’s not going to take her as she is, she’s probably racking up some abandonment issues. It’s understandable.
It doesn’t justify her behavior, but it’s understandable.
Pretty much this. After this strip I find that I am much more forgiving of Becky’s shot at Dorothy earlier as I can see where it comes from now, it was motivated by simple jealousy. Before it was just this hyper tactless remark that seemed to come out of nowhere.
Mandy, stop talking to yourself! Just because you have a very good point doesn’t mean you can go crazy!
Yeah, stop embarrassing Grace in front of other people!
Wait…its MORE okay for it to be motivated by petty jealousy than a case of the mouth running faster than the brain?
Yeah, I dunno. Mouth-faster-than-brain is fairly forgivable too.
Agreed. She has no one but Joyce left, as far as she knows. But I hope she realizes pretty quick that Joyce has some awesome friends who will be on her side too if she quits trying to alienate them.
Cute hair, K O’P! ;D
Welp. I don’t hate her as much as Mary. That’s good, right?
Whyyyy is she so ruuude to Dorothyyyy
Leave my favorite character alone Beckyyyyyy
As long as she does not pick on Dina, although I’m sure she will T_T
Think of how Joyce reacts to Dina.
Add Becky’s tactlessness.
… It would be bad.
The raptors would be released.
why you gotta be so ruuuude
don’t you know i’m human too
why you gotta be so ruuude
i’m gonna marry her anyway
Getting really tired of her shit
Boom, Just when you thought there was no beef between the 2 of them this comes up
Theres no beef between the two, its all on Becky
So they’re going to get dinner at Wendy’s then. Here’s the beef.
Have an internet for that.
Becky is being a jerk, but can we still call Dorothy “Dotty” from now on?
Why not, I have been calling her Dotty for the past few years now.
Becky keeps fluctuating from “cool” to “terrible” with each passing comic
sigh…haircut still cool tho
She hasn’t been cool for quite a few episodes…
Maybe instead of “cool” I should of said “occasionally likeable, though unintentionally rude”
In this very comic she confirms that it’s all intentional.
She gets money from Billie and does she offer it to Joyce for giving her a roof over her head, clothes and food (for which Joyce is going without) naah she gets a haircut instead
Ooops wrong reply
WHAT THE ASS BECKY.
I was on the fence about you, but now I’m firmly on the ‘fuck you’ side of the argument.
y’know, becky is growing more abrasive every time we see her… I’m hoping for a U-curve character growth on this one!
I think maybe reality is setting in more and more for her, not only is she homeless and without family, but all her fantasies are sort of collapsing on her. Joyce isn’t into her and wouldn’t have sexed her up even if she was, she can proudly announce herself a lesbian but nobody cares, which is both good but also bad because she was likely hoping that outside her religious community she could just join the lesbian crowd but whoops, real life gay people don’t work how she was taught and the only other same-sex inclined person she’s met told her to fuck off.
Meanwhile, Walky wonders what’s in the water in Joyce and Becky’s hometown that makes them all want to grope Dorothy.
Yeah, I think Becky’s turning into a shitty person. Or maybe she was like this all along, this is the first time we’ve seen her interact with Joyce’s friends directly. Jealous, controlling…she struck me as a sympathetic character at first but I’m running out of sympathy real quick.
Well, at least it lasted longer than your sense of humor.
Oh snap!
Becky being jealously passive aggressive and trying to alienate everyone close to Joyce was never funny.
Exactly. I can take a joke as well as the next guy. In fact, humor is a major part of who I am. But having had real experience with a person like this, I fail to find it funny.
“In fact, humor is a major part of who I am.” If you say something like that, it probably isn’t.
Welp, Becky had been too good to be true; here come the flaws.
Those flaws have been evident for a while now…
Are ya’ll usin’ ‘flaws’ as a codeword for ‘terrible haircut’?
There is a decent correlation between her shitty haircut (yes I said it, its a shiity-ass haircut) and her even shittier behaviour
So it’s agreed then, the haircut has taken over Becky’s conscious and is causing her to be a dingus to everyone. The plan is simple then, we must burn the hair.
Burnt hair smells awful, shaving her bald would be sufficient I think
Hey, are You really Mitt Romney?
Cmon, you can tell us!
Do you honestly not see the amazing contradiction when you get angry with Becky for being an unfiltered loudmouth while also calling a very common haircut which SOME REAL PEOPLE READING THIS FORUM HAVE “shitty-ass.” Congratulations, YOU are Becky.
You’re probably right which explains why Becky annoys me so much at the moment as shes echoing some of my own behaviors
That’s a straight up false equivalence. Insulting the haircut of strangers on the internet you’ve never even spoken to isn’t really the same as actively harassing and alienating the friends of a person who spurned your romantic advances with mean-spirited jabs. The former is kind of rude and insensitive the latter is emotional abuse.
Why yes, there is a false equivalence between a real person insulting a real haircut that real people have and a fictional character saying mean things to other fictional characters. Do you know how many fucking messages I’ve gotten about how horrible this fucking comment section has gotten once Becky got that haircut? Some people don’t think this place is safe for them anymore. People write on Tumblr how they’ve started avoiding the comment section specifically because the over-the-top, meanspirited haircut hatred, which is all directed towards (SURELY COINCIDENTALLY) a haircut that’s not seen as traditionally feminine. And I’ve kind of had it. So fuck y’all if you use this as a springboard for attacking a fictional character. I need to start throwing people into the spam folder.
Thanks for this Willis. I haven’t really posted in the comment section since then either, but it means a lot that you empathize with the issue, it’s frustrating.
First of all, NO ONE has that hair cut, except cartoon characters, NO ONE, because that exact hair cut is physically impossible in real life. If someone thinks they have one they are just wrong, and even so, who cares ? It’s just a hair cut, it wouldn’t matter if you got bold tomorrow and everyone called you cueball. And this statement is certainly not true when it comes to Beckys hair style “haircut that’s not seen as traditionally feminine” It’s not unfeminine, it’s just not aesthetic. The closest I’ve seen a RL look like this are usually different hair styles chosen by people ONLY to look like some pop-star or model, not because they actually liked it themselves. And I don’t see why you are surprised with peoples reaction to your choice in character design for Becky ? You’re the one that intentionally chose that hair cut to symbolise her increasing annoyingness towards Joyce and friends. Everytime you draw a character, every part of that character. from feet to fingers is up for scrutiny (and usually is in these comments), I believe there are more people out there with sweaterwests than something even resembling Beckys hair.
In the hope that some of the people who left are reading this, I’ll repeat my appreciation of The Haircut: it’s a bangin’ haircut! 😀
@MindLink:
“that exact hair cut is physically impossible in real life”
What universe do you live in?
Unless you’re saying it’s impossible to have a haircut consisting of a few black lines and exactly three shades of orange, in which case NO DUHH?
This… is not the time to nitpick, or whatever the hell you’re doing.
Is it too late to apologize? If its not then can I say it was stupid, thoughtless comment which I shouldn’t have made and I’m sorry if I’ve hurt anyone by it
Hey chris73. Thank you for being so quick at acknowledging it and apologizing. It means something and it’s nice of you.
I have to thank the crazy person who thinks undercuts aren’t real. I was going to try to make a point by linking some of them…but got distracted by all the cuties in undercuts on Google Image Search.
I’ve never been a fan of the hairstyle… but damn!
> I have to thank the crazy person who thinks undercuts aren’t real.
It’s entirely possible that they (also are we using crazy as an insult now?) simply think that Becky’s haircut is not an identifiably realistic depiction of one (compared to mostly everyone else’s, though I have serious questions about Mike’s haircut), or is noting other problems (like the fact that her haircut is not drawn consistently changing with the angle of her head vs the camera), problems not shared with everyone else in the comic.
>It’s entirely possible that they simply think that Becky’s haircut is not an identifiably realistic depiction of one
I knew it was an undercut, so they’d be wrong, I guess.
And I wasn’t aware that ‘crazy’ was hurtful, unless I was trying to insinuate that there was an actual medical condition at play. In any case, apologies for hurtful language. Substitute an appropriate word that says “what the hell is this person talking about?”
You’re right, MindLink, this haircut is definitely impossible. No one can possibly have this hair.
LOL.
I compulsively read each comment in the ghead-voices and I have for each gravitar, and in their expression.
As a consequence I ALWAYS read yours cheerfully. ( which is why it struck me as funny )
ITS A GREAT HAIRCUT. ( Its almost as good as Joel Watson’s. ) Dont listen to the haters. You draw it nice, too.
Maybe its time to give the whole cast haircuts. OH! You have a 3 month buffer. Damn shame.
I do think the criticism of the haircut is all about Gender-roles. It may have started off symbolic , but turned.
My take on it is also this: The fandom has had longstanding double-standards about whats acceptable behavior for a man and a woman. And this has been heavily policed in the comments. You have used Becky as a cypher to directly challenge this vast cognitive dissonance. ( which I am totally enjoying and heartily approve of )
Rather than face this dissonance, ( or admit to central conceit of the comic: sometimes characters actions just don’t count as “real” , its for comic relief, and other times they DO count as very real ) people are projecting their Bullshit onto the her awesome , yet slightly noncomforming haircut.
( ITS AWESOME! )
( OMG she called Dorothy a “hussy”. Nobody is allowed to say that about Dorothy. It must be that haircut willis gave her. )
I think Becky has been partially tagged as ‘male’ by the fans and this has lead to some excessive criticism . But She is also partially read as female and this makes people confront ( or ignore ) their cognitive dissonance, ( and shield becky from criticism too ) . The less she behaves in a ‘permissible’ female way, the less worthy she is seen for any any privileges.
The only day I felt outraged at fan-intolerance was when people suggested becky shouldnt be an out-happy lesbian, and should consider Joyces feelings first. ( Which is literally the thing that is used to keep real gays in the closet their entire lives in real-life. Actual People reading this.
Slipshine: My first choice is Becky & Joe. Right in the middle, ( or right after )She gets up and tells him “thank you: because of you I now know I am a lesbian”
Which immediately throws Joe into an existential crises.
(You can still do this with Penny. )
Second Choice: Danny with Drunk Joe. Or Drunk Danny with Drunk Joe. ( Which is a LOT more realistic than people may give credit for ) It would drive the fandom wild, drive the homophobes INSANE , ( you know this is true ) , and still give Joe an existential crises .
Thanks for your hard work.
The comments on DoA have been toxic for years. I read them *because* of how awful they are. The majority of posters crush dissent and stop conversation. A bit of rage in the morning perks me up!
You know, like half of Tumblr!
Thanks Willis. It makes me happy that you’re calling people out for their reactions; and the point about femininity.
I like the haircut, personally. I love undercuts and partial shaves, especially on ladies. My best friend (and the best lady at my wedding) goes through phases of having not dissimilar styles, growing it all out, then getting it redone. I’m sad that I probably can’t pull it off, but I don’t want to grow my hair out anyway.
A bunch of people: I have that haircut or know someone who does.
Some jerk: no one in the world has that haircut.
Repeat for every bloody circumstance that happens in the comic. The lack of self awareness is staggering sometimes. Constant whining about how Joyce’s childhood wasn’t 100% identical to their own and so it’s implausible, usually directly after a dozen comments about how closely it matches those posters’ experience.
Neither of the images people have actually posted have more than a superficial resemblance to Becky’s haircut.
None of the people in Dumbing of Age have more than a superficial resemblance to human beings, but I don’t see you claiming they must be aliens.
The haircut is immediately recognizable as an undercut. Stylized it may be, but no more so than anything else in the comic.
Wow, that’s awful. I’m sorry to hear it.
I have to say, I quite like the haircut myself. I don’t like the way Becky’s been behaving to Joyce’s friends; but I really don’t think it’s tied to the hair cut. Maybe I should actually say that more often.
Well, MindLink, that was a beautiful demonstration of the hostility that Willis was just talking about. You flat-out state that this haircut isn’t aesthetic, claim it doesn’t matter if people get called names such as ‘cueball’ due to a haircut, use anecdotal ‘evidence’ to assert that nobody gets this haircut because they actually like it, and to top it all off, you use the ‘nobody cares’ argument despite evidence to the contrary in the post you’re replying to. (Yes’ I’m ignoring the ‘physically impossible’ remark; it’s been hammered on enough by others)
Do I need to go dredge up more examples of how this has become so caustic? This thread alone should be evidence enough.
“Nobody has that haircut” “None of those images resemble Becky’s hair”
trendy-hairstyles-for-women.com/pictures/hairstyles/short-hairstyles-for-women/short-undercut-hairstyles/undercut-hairstyle-for-women-10_b.jpg
If the hair was straightened, that would be pretty much exactly her cut.
Dude, regardless of the haircut being feminine, manly, or asexual, it doesn’t matter to me. Do I go over the top with my posts about my obviously deep hatred for this haircut? Yes, because it’s just something to nitpick but keep the mood light. Also are you seriously telling me that people are staying away from the comments section because of haircut hate and not because whenever someone proclaims their opinion sides start getting drawn and the whole place get’s turned into a clusterfuck.
Also, just to put this out there in case somebody is having a panic attack, no I don’t really think the hair cut is stupid and should be purged with fire. I’m associating Becky’s suddenly shit behavior with her new hair cut, it’s a joke. Obviously the hair cut isn’t mind controlling her. That we know of
To the persons posting real-life “examples” of Beckys hair-cut: Really ?! I can’t even tell what part you found similar, I would NEVER recognize any of them as even trying to look a like. Some of them was so generic you could have just as easily claimed that it was Billys hair-cut you posted. I think some people will always feel attacked, even when nobodys targeting them, maybe because they have had bad experiences previously. Still, I fail to see how anyone could be upset over a comment on something as transient as a hair-style, it’s like getting upset that someone says your clothes are ugly, it’s just something you chose to wear that day, nothing else.
Okay, one, who the hell cares if people who read this have the same haircut? Two, the issue isn’t her being an unfiltered loudmouth, it’s her being a complete bongo to Joyce’s friends for no apparent reason. It’s like she’s going full-on Gatsby where she wants it to just be the two of them again, and maybe she can eventually convince Joyce to love her.
Um, a lot of people care? Did you not read Willis’s comments?
True, there is a lot of dislike of Becky because she’s trying to alienate Joyce’s new friends, which is a horrible thing to do. But that doesn’t detract from the issue regarding the state of the comments section.
Why? It’s a fucking haircut. Who the hell cares? I’d be more apt to blame Willis for giving her a shit personality to go with it than anything else.
is it wrong that I love undercuts but I think becky’s kinda makes it look like she’s wearing a toupee in some panels? So my issue with hating it may just be how it’s drawn.
Her shitty ass-haircut?
The strangest yet strongest Bach of aphrodisiac ever made by man.
“Bach of aphrodisiac”? Was old Johann just that sexy?
26 kids. Aphrodisiacs may have been necessary at some stage.
You know Dorothy is the worst kind of friend stealing hussy. The kind that only puts out to her boyfriend. So she really isn’t holding up to her end of the bargain.
Not forgetting the temerity to offer to buy her dinner which the mooching Becky will no doubt take full advantage of
She’s a horribly abrasive person, but I’m not sure it’s fair to call her a mooch when Dorothy had to twist her arm to get her to accept the charity.
She gets money from Billie and does she offer it to Joyce for giving her a roof over her head, clothes and food (for which Joyce is going without) naah she gets a haircut instead
that’s not what mooching is
Fair enough but she still should have offered Joyce some of her money
So she needs to help out the girl with parents who are paying for her room and will ensure one way or another that she will be fed and taken care of, rather than use what windfall she does get to help herself?
Accepting generosity does not make you shit. You could argue that she’s not being fiscally responsible but she’s eighteen years old, with homeschooling and about two weeks of college experience. Why are we expecting her to handle everything perfectly again? Why do we expect her to be a fun, unoffensive person who does not make mistakes after dealing with probably the worst shit in her entire mostly-cloistered life?
When Ruth first kissed Billie she had practically forced herself on her after throwing Billie around in a fight. Amber flew into a rabid rage and attacked Sal and all her friends for drinking beer in a wal-mart parking lot. Roz has thoroughly shut down Sarah with emotional badgering that’s turned her into a cynical misanthrope for looking out for her own best interests and trying to do what she thinks is right.
I still don’t understand why Becky is supposed to be so bad. Does she got problems? Yah. Point to a dumbing of age character who isn’t Dina. They also have problems, and probably worse problems than Becky. None of this hate makes any sense to me.
It’s Raidah, not Roz, who has been giving Sarah hell. Just correcting the record, since Roz has had enough criticism for things she actually did.
Wow. Egg on my face. Opps. I shoulda figured that, really should.
Still don’t understand why Becky’s getting the sudden serge of hate for comparatively minor and understandable things, but I go that bit about Roz REAL wrong.
Becky being annoying is one thing. That is minor leagues compared to some of the other characters here.
What crosses the line, in my mind, is Becky deliberately trying to alienate Joyce’s new friends here in a fit of jealousy. This reeks of a toxic friendship.
When Joyce is skipping meals so Becky can eat then yeah offering Joyce some money (Joyce probably wouldn’t accept it but thats not the point) is the polite thing to do
I don’t really get all the love for Becky. So far her character comes off as really self-absorbed, inconsiderate, and rude =\
Right under your post was someone else posting “I really hate Becky” and I laughed & laughed.
I’m sorry, but I really hate Becky. She’s irresponsible, rude, obnoxious, insensitive… She’s really just the kind of person who’s unpleasant and difficult to be around in all but small doses. I know she provides a sharp contrast to Ethan on the issue of being a gay kid with a terrible and unsupportive family, but she just does not play nice even with people who do their best to accommodate and reach out to her.
No need to feel sorry. Other people dislike her too. I sorta, don’t like her personally, but like her as a villain. She gives some antagonism.
In summary, she’s 18.
*rimshot*
People like Becky why now?
Actually everyone seems to hate Becky because apparently moral integrity and social conduct are like…important when it comes to what characters people like.
And yet, we all still like Mike…
Mike’s a force of nature, like and dislike are abstract concepts that slowly lose meaning when referring to him.
My headcanon is still that he’s secretly a trickster god/spirit/hero. Which is a role he fits to at T and means he isn’t really classifiable as ‘morally good’ or ‘morally bad’ in the sense we often use that term.
Do you think of Walkyverse Mike when you call him a force of nature? ‘Cause I can understand that. This version of Mike, however…
I’m personally waiting for Joe to get some payback and give Mike one helluva beat down
Joe is an even more unpleasant character than Mike, so…
How do you figure that?
Mike’s never told his nominal best friend that they’re a terrible person for having feelings.
Mike’s never gone into a gender studies class and objectified a whole class of people during a discussion on the shit they have to go through.
Mike is a jerk. Joe is a grade-A asshole.
Joes never physically assaulted anyone
A lot of people possibly still remember and are fond of Mike from Shortpacked, he gets some grace because we hope he’ll develop some? Becky is just being a butthole.
Not everyone
I think Mike gets a far less negative reaction because he’s been this way for decades now, across both universes. Becky is changing, meanwhile, and we don’t like the new Becky.
Yet, a world chock full of thoroughly nice people would be an awfully dull comic.
Becky seemed like a fun and awesome happy and friendly character. Then Joyce didn’t respond to her advances, which broke her. It wasn’t immediately obvious – when decided to announce to the world she was gay it was still quite cool, if a bit more off-putting to the characters around her. But then she got rejected by Billie too and completely snapped: she got that awful haircut and simultaneously turned into a gigantic asshole, taking out her frustrations on every innocent in reach.
Why do we like Mike and not her? Because she betrayed our impression of her as a fun and nice character, and also stopped being pleasant to watch.. Mike has been faithful to his role all along, and remains entertaining.
“Fun and awesome and happy and friendly”? She was deleting messages off Joyce’s phone. She’s a self-centred, boundary-ignoring, rude, intruding, ungrateful b*ngo.
Whom Joyce has sworn to stick by come what may.
This is going to be an interesting, if very trying, test of character for Joyce. It’s easy to be a loyal friend to a fun and awesome happy friendly person. Much harder to be a good friend to a selfish user whom you ate paste with.
I agree. If Becky becomes worse, and actually manages to alienate some of Joyce’s friends, what will Joyce do? Will she turn on Becky? Would Joyce be willing to kick out Becky if she felt it were necessary? Sarah would, but Sarah is bitter and jaded. Yet Joyce?
Ah, but we didn’t know that then. The only one who figured it out was Sarah, and she’s so cynical practically no-one believed her.
I’d forgotten Sarah said that. Sarah is smarter than me.
Wait, do we even know that -now-? Did I miss a strip where somebody that isn’t the biggest misanthrope in the cast revealed that Becky was actually interfering with Joyce’s phone?
Sarah is one of the few characters I do believe, she gives it to you straight!
>She was deleting messages off Joyce’s phone.
No one ever says that. They say she was screening calls. You know, to intercept calls from her dad or Joyce’s parents to keep Joyce from learning she was ‘on the run’. For all she knew, Joyce was going to reject her entirely once she learned the truth. Desperate irrational damage control is exactly the sort of thing a frightened person whose world is falling apart will do.
It’s also worth noting that Sarah just suspects this. Joyce just repeats what Sarah says. Unless I missed something, it’s not actually confirmed. She was probably just playing Angry Birds 😉
Screening calls no matter the reason, is still just as bad. Doing evil to stop another evil, still makes you evil, no matter how you want to justify it.
See the second half where we only have the suspicions of the person who suspects EVERYONE of trying to wrong Joyce as proof that it even happened in the first place.
And using ‘evil’ to describe ‘screening calls’ just cheapens the word.
I think it’s because Becky is basically acting like a spurned Nice Girl(tm) right now and it’s super toxic and realistic behaviour that plenty of people have been on the receiving end of whereas Mike is so much of an over the top jackass that it’s completely divorced from reality and thus it doesn’t really resonate emotionally.
Three things:
1) No,. no we all don’t like Mike.
2) People in universe dislike Mike for his behaviour which increases our tolerance for him. Nothing is more annoying than an annoying character the author expects the readers to love
3) While people like characters with depth they greatly prefer mean people who are secretly nice than nice people who are secretly assholes.
Eh, MIikes jackassery is usually played for laughs with no real long standing consequences.
Pajama jeans. Just sayin’ that arc lasted months
Except the time he persuaded Ethan to stuff himself back in the closet, either intentionally or sarcastically. Kinda messed things up a bit.
It’s possible to see the characters flaws AND like the character at the same time, I think the people talking about “hating” Becky just means they wouldn’t like the character in real life but still like her as a literary character.
The tip of Becky’s hair in the third panel is uncoloured.
Maybe it was fixed? Or are you talking about her ear.
It’s not fixed. I’m talking about the hair at the front, near her eye.
I see it. Third panel.
It’s hanging over her eye. I think the white spot is part of the “pupil,” you can compare the size and shape to her other unobstructed eye. Some art styles allow the eye to “pass through” hair that partially hangs over it. In this case it might have been a mistake to color that white spot in.
I Don’t Like Becky Anymore
Arc title.
becky you were so cool before you started being an a s s h o l e
This is going to be one interesting dinner…
No no, Becky, you’re a Friend of Dorothy now.
That will never get old.
BONGO-ING INTENSIFIES!!!
What. a. asshole
‘hahah I call you a hussy and sorta cop a feel and call you a friend stealer after you offer to pay for food for meeee ahaha I’m quirky!”
I really don’t like Becky.
Dorothy asked what Becky used to think of her now that she’s been declared “not so bad”. Becky, with a sheepish expression and attempt to make it a joke, answered the question honestly.
History’s greatest monster.
She should not make jokes if they involve calling people hussies 😛
I know, right? Next she’ll be using slang she didn’t learn from Audrey Hepburn movies!
Oh the humanity!
Becky is annoying me too.
I was hoping the alt-text would take care of this for me, but that didn’t happen, so here I go:
Dorothy, if you fall for that one, it means you haven’t watched Wayne’s World in far too long. I’m sure Walky would be glad to help you out with that.
Yeah, so Becky is awkward and issue-ridden. What else is new? If she immediately acknowledged her anger and panic instead of covering it up with a fine layer of jackassery, she would be both less convincing and less interesting. When Joyce’s friends get tired of shrugging off her jerkiness, she’ll have some fences to mend. So it is with most of the characters. I mean, Walky has been more insensitive to Joyce on multiple occasions than Becky has been to anyone yet. She’ll learn.
Now, does Dorothy’s kindness to Becky complicate her goal of discussing Ethan’s man-oriented nature over dinner? Or does Dorothy, for whatever cheese-forsaken reason, actually want her to be part of that conversation? Dang, Willis, they will all mainly be eating feels for dinner, won’t they?
Well to me it just proves Beckys immaturity that she’d use that as a way to insult someone thats willing to buy her dinner even though the first time they met Becky insulted and ignored her
Why would she watch Wayne’s World? It was relevant pop culture four years before she was born.
Yes, but much of the humor is not dependent on its ’90s-ness. Dorothy has responsible parents who would have been in college or recently graduated in 1992, so I don’t think it’s a stretch to think they might have shown it to her at a young age.
Because it’s a funny film, regardless of age, and is often on lists of Great Comedies, the kind that kids their age like to go through.
Heh. I saw it in the theatre when it came out, great fun (much more funny at the midnight showing with all the headbangers who knew the sketches and banged along with Bohemian Rhapsody and did the “diddily-doo” hand-wavy cut thing than with all the straitlaced mundanes the next night, interestingly) and I just played it for my kids about a month ago.
Some things (like Back to the Future and Army of Darkness and other cinematic greats) just need to be passed down to the next generation. 😀
You remember that Walky and Joyce are not friends, right? Walky’s insults have consequences and the only reasons she spends time with him are because she wants to be around Dorothy and because she views him as someone safe to be around.
They are, though. They’ve been doing the, “I hate you so much! Where are we having lunch today?” dance all along; it’s not entirely a consequence of Joyce’s insecurity following the party.
It’s almost like they’re physically and emotionally compatible on a deep level that they’re concealing behind a façade of insults and teasing. But that’s crazy, right? Joyce and Walky together, who could imagine that?
Even before the party they were only spending time together because they shared classes and a single spare period. It was convenience, not affection.
This was Friday before the party, before Walky was monopolizing Dorothy’s time, or even capable of talking to her without his brain boiling over. Walky’s lampshading how they’re “not friends”, but they’re going to lunch together, at Joyce’s invitation, and they’ve been doing it all week.
It’s also worth noting that Walky’s not only one of the few guys Joyce feels safe alone with, and one of the few people who know about the party incident, he’s the only person she chose to let in on that secret. Everyone else who knows knows because they were there, or (Sal) accidentally overheard. She hasn’t even told Becky. She told Walky. Even after he wouldn’t promise not to make fun.
And that was still before he was Dorothy’s boyfriend and came as a package deal with hanging with her new best friend.
Sure, I remember the consequences of Walky being a tool to Joyce. Becky’s actions will have similar consequences. She and Dorothy will probably not be friends any time soon unless they bond over some crisis, and that tension will strain Becky’s friendship with Joyce more than she realizes. She will, like Walky, eventually be forced to develop some introspection.
Dorothy may have never -seen- Wayne’s world. It came out before she was born.
I’d say whether it gets played on TV or not is more important than its age, and I haven’t run across it on any of the US channels I have access to in a long time.
Wayne’s World is a movie I, as someone born in the 80s, barely saw.
Dotty was born in the LATE 90s, man.
god i kinda really, really dislike becky already. but i guess it’s mostly intentional.
I really love the art on the last two panels. Dorothy’s facial expressions are some of my favorite from this strip’s history. Awesome work.
Oh, absolutely. Immaturity, insecurity, neurosis, paranoia… Becky has the whole deluxe bundle of problems, and no one else who’s close to Joyce can avoid getting a faceful of that right now. It’s deeply annoying. I just think her creator, with all the wisdom of Willis, will ultimately cause her to recognize what she’s doing and try to put all that nervous energy to better use. It might take months’ worth of strips, but she’ll probably develop at least a little more self-awareness by the end of the weekend in comic time.
Ah, drat. That was a reply to chris73’s reply to me.
Yeah probably but its annoying watching her act like such a dick at the moment
You’re likely right, the question is, will the reader’s goodwill be able to last long enough for her to change? Or will we all be sick of her by that time that we won’t care that she’s changing?
“We all,” the general DoA readership? Or “we all” in the comments? Because things can get pretty Bizarro World down here, and from everything Willis has said on Tumblr and Twitter, I get the impression that reader feedback about Becky outside the comments is much, much less angsty and heated. Plus, what are the consequences for Willis if a few dozen people get fed up before he has time to show us Becky’s emotional range beyond various shades of fear, anger, and relief? An infinitesimal percentage of readers rage-quits the comic? The comments don’t get nicer even after Becky becomes less alienating? Business as usual, and not something that’s gonna make him break out in a sweat and start writing out characters who still interest him.
Well … most of the haters will eventually forget they hate her (or at least mercifully shut up — really, why are we still hearing a drumbeat of criticism about her haircut … ) … just like the relentless Danny hate eventually trailed off …
Ahhhhh Beckyyy. I never know how to feel about Becky. I love her one strip, and cringe the next. C’mon Becky let me like you againnn
is it just me or is she being kind of a dick ?
Becky is a sincere Mike.
Mike is a sincere Mike. The basis of his character is that he delivers harsh truths by the most dickish means possible.
Often unintentionally. He’s just as often trying to hurt people solely for the sake of hurting people, and circumstances just happen to line up to give positive consequences once in a while.
He doesn’t have a 100% win rate on “help-by-hurting” (trying to pull Ethan out of the closet has only resulted in Ethan stapling himself to the wall inside of it), nor does he have a 100% positive-consequences rate on “hurt-just-to-hurt” (did Walky manage to save his DVD collection in the end?)
And I don’t even know what to call the pajama jeans order thing. That’s all over the hurt-and-help-and-positive-and-negative chart.
But insincere in any of those things he was not, which is my main point.
Perhaps that’s Becky’s real problem. She’s secretly been an e-mail pal with Mike, who has been instructing her of the ways of the secular world. Unfortunately poor Becky has no idea that Mike is absolutely the last person you’d want doing that.
what just… wow…
Becky is kind of a bongo in sheep clothing to anyone who she sees as a threat to her relationship with Joyce.
Now I’m imagining a red-headed sheep with the raddest haircut. Thanks, Jordan.
Bingo. Becky’s relationship with Joyce is just about all she has in the world. No family. No money. No home. No job. So after Joyce rejects her but go starry eyed over Dorothy, yes Becky is a green eyed monster.
If she can’t cling to Joyce as a lifeline, her next option is not as pleasant. Expect her to defend what’s left of the relationship to the death.
So… The truth comes out as the reason why Becky doesn’t like Dorothy. 😉
Although… This makes me wonder now if Becky thinks that Joyce IS into girls (or is at least bi) and hates Dorothy because she thinks Dorothy has stolen Joyce’s heart.
Becky, have you ever heard an old saying that says something about biting the hand that feeds?
A) She’s offering to buy you dinner at a time when you’ve hit a hard spot. Insulting her might not be a good idea.
B) People frequently have more than one friend, no theft necessary.
C) Kindly stop being a caustic ***.
Ah, Becky. Never change.
You will always get the most comments.
She has a long way to go to beat Roz’s record.
Thing is, up until recently Roz was actually fairly well liked by the readers.
Dorothy literally gave her an opening to stop being a massive jackass and instead she uses that opportunity to be even more of a massive jackass and also make a joke so old it could be carbon dated.
Catfight time?
Also I just wanted to say to all those who have Becky’s haircut!
Your hair looks awesome, you rock that hair, and you shouldn’t take any crap for how you chose to make your hair look!
I personally like Becky’s hair cut, the sharp angles and interesting shaved side is cool!
Her sharp tongue and rudeness however not so much but the two aren’t exclusive to each other, I mean Dorothy’s hair makes it look like she’s wearing a hairy onion but the hairy onion doesn’t affect her personality!
I just got a Gravatar with a picture of my Becky hair from two years ago just because of someone saying no one in real life has hair like that. 😀
Awesome. 😀 I like it.
I got that hair cut in college. It is the raddest.
And you look cute as shit !~
Every comic like this, I’m like “Jeez, Becky, turn it down a notch” or “FFS Becky, that’s not where the foot goes” or “Becky, just stop talking for five seconds”, and then I read the comments and I’m like “Fuck you, Becky’s awesome!” out of pure defiance.
So now you know where “all the Becky love” comes from. It comes from you.
By this point I’m guessing Becky is subconsciously seeking to make people really angry at her, because she’s feeling uncomfortable at the extreme levels of acceptance she’s been getting. It’s been more than a DAY since she last had someone tell her she’s going to he’ll.
Don’t worry, Mary’ll fill that quota for her.
Becky continues to be who I was when I was the same age.
This is disheartening for her, rather train-wrecky for me 🙂
“becky was awesome and sassy but then she got a nontraditional haircut and now i suddenly think she’s an asshole for some reason”
Are you for real, Willis? She’s spent the last two week acting like a jerk to Ethan and Dorothy for kicks. Obviously there’s a long list of interpretations and justifications for why she’s acting that way, some blatantly being shown on panel right now, but acting like an asshole “for reasons” still means the character is acting like an asshole and it’s ridiculous to think people should keep liking her as much as they did earlier now that we’re exploring the more negative aspects of her personality, if we’re even supposed to see them negatively and not find her hilarious and sassy when she completely steps out of line.
I know we all liked Becky because she was Joyce’s irreverent foil and she burped and made fart jokes, but she never acted like this much of a total assclown until now. Nobody worth listening to dislikes Becky because of her hair and even if they don’t like it, so what? It’s a haircut. It doesn’t make her Rosie the Riveter.
“When Somebody Loved Me” was my favourite arc in all of Dumbing of Age, and I still really like Becky, and if anything I’m even more interested in her now that she’s acting like kind of a jerk, in the same way that I like, say, Guy Gardner, but interest and likeability are two different things. Becky is going through unimaginable hardship right now and she’s not dealing with it perfectly, and that’s fine, she’s not a robot, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable for some of your readers to be annoyed at a character when they are being annoying.
I half suspect he thinks that to be a True Artist he has to call his fans jerks, which is why he’s so eager to say that someone who calls someone a “hussy” is perfect and deserves no criticism so soon after putting a word-filter around a different gendered insult.
Except, he isn’t? Where has Willis said that Becky is immune to criticism? There is a lot of middle ground between “Becky is wonderful and perfect and noone can ever say anything about her.” and “Becky is an irredeemable asshole and a villain even though villains aren’t really a thing slice of life comics have. Also I hate her haircut.”
anything bad, that is.
My personal feeling is that those of us who currently dislike Becky feel like we’re being assigned a motivation we don’t necessarily have. It sounds like the assumption is that if we don’t like Becky, we must be shallowly disliking the haircut because there’s no other reason to possibly dislike her. Because she is objectively ‘sassy and awesome’.
I personally don’t find Becky sassy and awesome, though I see how she could get there. I dislike her rudeness and thoughtlessness, her casual verbal cruelty to her alleged best friend (disclaimer: if Joyce did anything but sag in hurt, like fire back or roll her eyes, I would not care about the torment so much), and her less-casual verbal cruelty towards Dorothy.
No doubt she will learn. I hope she learns quickly.
Totally understandable. I think there’s been a lot of jumping to conclusions and talking past each other on both sides. Honestly, a lot of the vitriol would probably go away if everyone kept in mind that thing I said up there, which incidentally applies not just to Becky, but pretty much every character and also people in general.
And before anyone says something about how you can’t expect reasonable viewpoints and arguments on the internet, so why bother: just because something is a terrible place doesn’t mean we shouldn’t strive to make it less terrible.
Oh, and for the record, I’m not really a fan of Becky’s behavior right now either, understandable and in character though it may be, but I still think she’s fundamentally a good person.
Alright, I’ll get off my soapbox now.
I think most of the characters in this strip – with the exceptions of Mike and Mary, and the possible exception (we haven’t seen enough of her to really tell) of Penny – are fundamentally good people.
I don’t like all of them at least some of the time, and I can’t honestly articulate why I like some of the ones I genuinely do like a lot (Jason and Joe are the primary presences on that list) despite their jerkish/uncaring behavior that is legitimately similar to my reasons for disliking other characters. But I do believe they’re good people (with the aforementioned exceptions) and they’re interesting characters to read about.
He posted on twitter that anyone who thinks she’s being an asshole actually just has a problem with her haircut. Which post is the subject Spencer’s comment.
Random832 said what I meant to say in much fewer words. Thank you! I need to learn brevity.
And for the record, Becky’s haircut is one of the few things about her I don’t have a problem with. It’s very cute, and it at least actually is awesome and sassy.
Please start living up to your haircut, Becky. Gendered insults and generalized verbal jerkitude are unworthy of it.
Okay, yeah, that’s admittedly a bit presumptuous. That rant I just typed still stands, though.
That’s not what Willis said. Based on later responses to some replies, Willis seemed to be pointing out just how ridiculous it is that some people now dislike Becky because of that haircut, and have said so in so many words. According to Willis, that is; I’m not about to dig through several comments sections for proof.
Now that I’ve read the rest of the comment section, I should apologize for my statement on the reception of her haircut. Sure it’s okay not to like it but it shouldn’t be used as a springboard to attack real people who have that cut.
i’d like to believe that nobody in the comments here actually “hate” any real people that have that hairstyle…i know i don’t!
it’s just that ever since Becky got her hair cut…her attitude has left little to be desired. 🙁
Well I mean…I dislike people that have that haircut.
Nothing to do with the haircut, though.
Even before cutting her hair Becky was being very obnoxious at times. See pretty much every interaction she had with Billie, for example.
Above Willis talked about how since Becky debuted her new hairstyle he’s been inundated with comments about how ugly it is and how nobody actually has it.
It’s fine to be cross with Becky right now, and it’s fine not to like the haircut, but probably shouldn’t endlessly rag on it in a forum with members who actually have it.
Doesn’t the Girls With Slingshots author have the same haircut? This might also be a little bit personal on top of the “people with that haircut no longer feel safe to comment here” problem.
I think Danielle’s is symmetrical, while Willis has said Becky’s is not, but it is very similar, yes.
Frankly, I’m sick of the hair talk. I’d vote to have repetitive comments where the hair is dissed scrubbed, and make it point #11 in the “Read about before posting” section.
Let’s word filter the word hair. We’ll swap it with the word…anus! Everyone hates Becky’s new anus!
Nah; unless you want a bunch of comments about ‘anuscuts’ (*cringe*), we need a better replacement.
I appreciate that Becky is now a friend of Dorothy.
“friend” is a strong claim…
aquaintance maybe…but she definitely hasn’t earned the title of friend with how she treats Dorothy!
I dunno if you haven’t seen the other comments on this, but the Friend of Dorothy comments are making a bit of a joke…
oh! i didn’t realise that was a term lol
…Now i know!
And knowing is half the battle!
(the other half is violence!)
It’s a pretty old term- it comes from a time when Judy Garland was still a pop singer. In modern parlance you could probably say “a friend of Britney”
I think it’s a testamony as to how good a writer you are Willis, nobody criticizes your characters for being “Unrealistic” (well some do but poo on them) or for being “Boring”
They criticize them because they remind them of REAL people.
A couple are pretty realistic (Mike, Amazi-girl), but for those that’s really the point.
…..*Un*realistic…
I dunno…there are people that dress up in costumes and go around doing good deeds. The real superhero movement or whatever. And I’ve met people like Mike…that go out of there way to be as harsh and intentionally jerky as they can.
THEIR way. Derp.
Amazi-Girl doesn’t really fit with the normal Real World Superheroes, though. Most of them do standard boy-scout style good deeds, rather than being costumed vigilantes (and the one I know about who has pulled the vigilante thing has drawn the ire of the authorities, not just the eye of the press), plus her parkour skills are very much in the ‘only in a comic-book’ realm.
But I agree on Mike…the only unrealistic thing about him is his record for choosing exactly the right thing to needle somebody about to get them to better themselves.
Most of Mike’s OTT-ness is from the other universe, honestly. The only really unrealistic thing about him here is, ironically enough, his haircut (it’s always pointing to a side, and not always the same side, regardless of whether or not he’s in profile).
“becky was awesome and sassy but then she got a nontraditional haircut and now i suddenly think she’s an asshole for some reason”
If your best friend is willing to let you stay with her indefinitely when you have no other place to go, it’s good manners not to shit where you eat.
I made a really long post with links and shit, and I think the spam detector eated it. I can haz back? 🙁
No, so I can’t award you an internet. Here, take +1 BSS database
Bulletin… Sword System? 😉
“Here, post this on the bulletin sword”
“You got it”
*impales sheet of paper on sword*
becky
becky no
stop being a douche becky
stop it
Becky is quickly becoming my least favorite character in this comic. Kinda hoping something very humbling happens to her soon.
It already did. Her family betrayed her and she got kicked out of school and she now has nothing but the clothes on her back and a friend who she was in love with and has rejected her. I don’t like her either, but don’t wish more ill on someone like that. If anything someone needs to give her a talking-to, not humble pie.
cmon willis at least let something awesome happen to dorothy the poor girl
She just finished something fairly awesome with Walky less than an hour ago.
And she has awesome friends, who she is going to spend a Friday afternoon with with pizza (and subs)
Lot of bongos around here today.
Ongo bongo bongo.
So many bongos we can start a beatnik band.
… I don’t think I like Becky anymore
Oh man, I think I’m finally getting Becky’s weird cruelty to Dotty: she’s jealous!
She’s spent most of her adolescence secretly hoping Joyce was gay, and Joyce’s slavish, girlcrushy obsession with Dotty was simultaneously elation (she’s gay!) and frustrating (she’s gay… for DOROTHY).
And with this observation, I can finally be promoted to LIEUTENANT OBVIOUS.
You might want to wait a bit longer for that promotion, soldier. Becky has in fact only been secretly hoping Joyce was gay for the past month (conciously, anyway).
Very, very secretly.
oh man i JUST realized that sal and becky are going through similar “friend-stealing hussy” situations right now. man i’m slow.
maybe they’ll become the ~best of friends~
“Three is a crowd”
I doubt it, Sal seems to actually like Dorothy, and even if she didn’t, there’s a distinct difference: Becky irrationally dislikes Dorothy simply because she exists and in spite of the fact that Dorothy is nothing but nice to her. Sal is reacting predicably to a fairly generic situation, while Becky is acting unpredictably because the situation is so complicated.
Malaya on the other hand…
Wow, Becky is such a richard. Extra points for copping a feel though.
Heh, clever. Yet, those of us who come from LFG are now thinking “What makes you think Becky is a homicidal maniac?”
Becky is being a bit of a jerk at the moment but I agree with everyone saying the hate is a bit OTT.
On the other hand Dorothy looks super cute in purple, I want her to wear it more!
Considering the way this comic goes, it’ll be weeks before the day ends and she has to change. So, you’ll get your wish for a while!
It seems to be a favourite colour of hers. A lot of her outfits feature some shade of purple.
So I think people are so vitriolic towards Becky because the last arc was about her as, for lack of a better term, a perfect victim; incredibly sympathetic, loveable, funny as all hell, playing off the rest of the cast, and then being severely hurt by her father and school’s bigotry through
no fault of her own. Now, every time we see her acting rudely, it feels like a betrayal of the image of perfect, funny, Becky that we’ve built up due to the last arc, when in reality, we’re just seeing the parts that have always been there, and are coming out the woodwork due to all the emotional bombshells she’s been weathering in the last two days.
(And just to clarify, even if Becky was as much of a jerk in the last arc as she is now, that would never justify the bullshit she’s going through in a million years.)
People lash onto jerks who show softer sides (Mike in the Walkyverse, Sarah) a lot more than nice enough people who occasionally act like jerks (Danny, Ethan, Becky now).
Yeah, I’ve been suspecting that, too. Not sure why, and it certainly doesn’t serve as a good justification, but I think this is a big part of what’s happening here in the comments. I don’t doubt that there are other factors in play, of course.
Becky’s been Joyce’s closest friend for how long? Now suddenly she has friends that Becky doesn’t know? And Joyce was the most “socially adjusted” of the two? Of course Becky’s jealous. Why would anyone have expected otherwise? She’ll get over it. Eventually. After throwing a few barbs and having some slices of pizza. You’re always ruder when you’re hungry, after all.
Let’s hope for that outcome. Otherwise, Joyce’s life is about to get darker.
Haha. Becky’s sure blooming.
Makes sense she can let loose finally~
I wonder if she’ll melllow how once she’s there for a few weeks like everyone else or if she’ll hold onto the wave and ride it for a s long as she can.
We’ll find out in 2020.
While I think that this side of Becky isn’t the most pleasant, I don’t think that Becky’s a total jerk. The fact is that Becky’s had to hide facets of her personality and identity for so long, and now that the floodgates are open, she may be overcompensating. This is Becky without a filter. The Mr. Hyde to the Dr. Jekyll we’d always seen before. If’n you want to get all high-school-literature-level Freudian about it, this is her Id – the side of her personality that’s all about impulse, instinct, and emotion.
However, that means that although this side of Becky may not be false, it’s not her “true self” either. Going back to watered-down Freud, the Id is one of three parts of the psyche – the others are the Superego and the Ego. The Superego is about morals, reason, and restraint – a part of Becky that’s had a grip on her brain her whole life, and is now down for the count. So now instead of denying her impulses and feelings, Becky’s denying her morality and brains. So the Becky we’re seeing now is no more her “true self” than the Becky we met at the beginning of this comic.
So yeah, there’s that pesky third part of the psyche, the Ego. Not to be confused with the kind of ego you mean when you talk about someone being full of themselves, the Freudian Ego is about balancing the Id and Superego… which suggests that Becky’s Ego hasn’t been doing a very good job.
The way I see it, we’ll probably see the true Becky – or something close to it – soon enough, because if Becky stays in “Id mode” too long, I predict that one of two things will probably happen:
1. She’ll get all this impulsiveness out of her system and her Superego will begin to slowly reassert itself, until she’s finally balanced out
2. She’ll do something stupid, and her guilt will cause her Superego to overwhelm her; she’ll only be able to find balance after dealing with her guilt and her emotions.
I have a suspicion that it will probably be the latter; easing back into a mental homeostasis would probably be psychologically better for her, but violently shifting between impulse and conscience allows for more drama.
Mark my words: this isn’t even Becky’s final form.
Interesting analysis. Unfortunately, Freudian psychology is quackery.
I agree in that I don’t think it’s all that accurate for real-life people, but I think it’s a valuable tool for analyzing fictional characters. At least, it works with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Or so I was taught in high school.
Huh, never thought of it like that. He was hugely influential, after all.
At least nobody’s wished for Becky’s death yet. Can’t say that about some of the other characters the readers have hated over the years.
those go into the trash can immediately
Ugh … so that means there has been even worse … if you actually are reading all those then your … irritability … about the Becky hate makes even more sense … maybe you could filter ‘hate’ and turn it into ‘love’ 🙂
this may not be the place to put is but i just found this and couldnt wait for another mike show up
are mike and joyce sith and do they follow the rule of two
and i think i see why people like dina
*clip form joyce and walky*
http://joyceandwalky.com/d/20011228.html
The Sith would be too scared of Mike to offer him membership.
nah mike would ahve ahd to get his training somewhere and after he killed his master he became the master and in this strip he took joyce on as his apprentice.
Two there should be; no more, no less. One to embody the power, the other to crave it.
looks liek joyce died to him and hes manipulateing dina now
Lotta bongos up in here.
I love Becky’s haircut. I do. I wish I could pull off a side shave like that.
That said, she’s still acting totally rude and jerky to Dorothy.
Given that is has come up as a point, I should say that I really like Becky’s hair cut.
The jerkiness not so much. But hey, character development!
So, I’m curious. Here’s a hypothetical:
Let’s say Becky continues on her present trajectory, and somehow manages to alienate Dorothy from Joyce. Unlikely, but not impossible (Mike could probably manage it).
Would Joyce be willing to kick out Becky, upon realizing just how toxic Becky has become by that point? Better yet, should she? Not saying based on how toxic Becky is now, but how on toxic she would need to be to pull that off. Life would be much better for Joyce; no one deserves that in their life. But if the price is forcing Becky out, and likely onto the street, is that worth paying for your own well-being?
*but on how toxic
Grr, really missing that edit button.
I love Becky and I love the hair-cut. That people could get so upset over a hair-cut is a little … insane.
One of my previous haircuts had both sides shaved, as in Carter, The Unstoppable Sex Machine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGaX9lWBTMQ
So, go haircut, go rudey, go BECKY!
Bongo out.
Throw her out, Joyce. Bonus points if you do it from a window.
Perhaps I’ve been unclear. I don’t dislike Becky because of or since she got the haircut. I *like* the haircut, and I think it looks good on her. I just never have liked Becky, because we’ve never seen her do a generous or kind thing, and that “never change, always stay the same for *meee*!”/”don’t let *other people* change you” schtick strikes me not as sweet or romantic but as superficial, creepy, and possessive. You know the song “The Way You Look Tonight”? Romantic classic that I find very off-putting.
It seemed to me that some of the people commenting here were saying that Becky had changed drastically, sometimes with an implication that her characterisation was inconsistent. I posted because I don’t take that view. I think she has been consistently drawn as a possessive, jealous, encroaching, and selfish person, and that we were lead to sympathise with her by skilful writing. By making Becky brave and the enemy/victim of characters and social features that we detest, Willis has cunningly alloyed pity with terror into a classic example of dramatic tension. Bravo! That makes Becky a good character, a dramatic character, not a likeable character.
I identify strongly with Joyce’s situation here. She’s torn, or about to be torn between “I am loyal and generous to my friends because I am a loyal and generous person” am “I am loyal and generous to my friends because they are fun and cheap to run”. I had a major issue with that in the two years after I graduated: it ended up costing my thousands of dollars in rent, utilities, and groceries that I got stiffed with while I was trying to establish my career at the shallow end of the salary pool. In the end, on the gripping hand, I was loyal and generous to my friends because I was a sap, and one of them was a bludging, manipulative parasite. Until I stood up for my self, which I still feel guilty about doing. I’d like to see that issue dealt with dramatically, perhaps see how it turns out for Joyce. And that’s why I am not among the posters here who are calling for Becky to straighten up and fly right. I’m happy for her not to change into a likeable character. I’m happy for her to remain a small, hand-struck drum. Dramatically and for realism, the strip needs some.
I’ll just add that she is rocking that haircut!
Too many people are giving Becky a free pass and it’s because she’s a girl. If Becky was a man and told Joyce he loved her, but Joyce rejected him and then he went and verbally shat on most of her best friends, nobody would be making excuses for him. He would be called a self-entitled butthurt douchebag, and rightly so. One can’t make the excuse that Becky’s feeling messed up and confused after coming out as gay either. Becky is not confused, she’s absolutely certain of her identity. And even if we suggest that Becky does need time to “find herself”, that doesn’t give her leave to treat people like shit. Joyce has been trying to be as kind and empathetic to Becky as she possibly can and Dorothy is doing the same. Becky is responding by being a self-entitled butthurt douchebag. Willis needs to stop insulting the intelligence of his audience and retract his statement about it having anything to do with the new haircut.
What comic are you reading? Most comments I’ve seen are very much about pointing out how she’s being too abrasive and not at all respectful of her friend and her friend’s friends.
Yeah but those people are clearly only doing it because they can’t fap to her hairstyle, so they don’t count. (seriously, Willis?)
I disagree w/ this, personally? Yes, if Becky was a straight guy and was alienating her from her friends because Joyce rejected him, that would be plain shitty. But that is not the context of the situation, and despite what you said that we can’t use the excuse that Becky is messed up/confused about coming out, I really think that’s probably the most important thing to consider. Becky has just come out in a horrible way, with her father not accepting her and being kicked out of college, she’s homeless, and her childhood best friend who has always been w/ her AND she’s in love with not only rejected her, but has also seemingly replaced her. That doesn’t give her an excuse to act shitty towards them, but it does explain why, and considering the tiny amount of time her visit has actually elapsed, it’s really unfair to attack her based on just that. Not to mention so many of the criticisms lobbed at her are ridiculous – she’s a mooch for spending her money on a haircut instead of food, ignoring that she probably never even learnt to be responsible w/ money, that a haircut probably gave her some sense of confidence and being kicked out of college and becoming homeless kinda can make you act impulsively!
Also, despite how confident she is about being gay, that doesn’t mean she’s not confused – she knows about as much about being gay as joyce does, seeing as they are both homeschooled buddies. She doesn’t even know that bi people exist. TRUST ME, understanding you are gay and being confident in that doesn’t mean that it can’t be confusing.
(I hope this is posted as a reply, this is my first time posting so sorry if this just appears as a random out of context post)
People keep on complaining about Becky for not handling her situation “correctly” but, seriously, suddenly finding yourself far away from a home you don’t feel welcome in with a friend you have more-than-platonic feelings for that aren’t reciprocated and realizing she has a life outside of you can’t be easy. I’m not saying Becky is on the right (because she isn’t) but I am enjoying the way the story is moving on forward for all these characters.
If you can’t understand why a queer teenager who has lost control of everything in her life would get this haircut I will NEVER EVER EVER be able to relate to you bye
I kinda love you for this comment. 🙂
Also can I just point out that all those other characters Willis mentioned on his tumblr post – even Malaya – people had years and years to get to know, get attached to, etc. Whereas AIUI the last several months of DOA is basically 99% of all the Becky ever. There’s no Strategic Becky Reserve of walkyverse memories to “always plenty of people to explain his circumstances and his excuses and reminders of his inherent humanity.” – everyone’s getting the same highs and lows with no established characterization to cushion it out.
Malaya was unpleasant in her first (tagged) appearance. (I think she had one appearance before that, because I know there was 0-day porn of her, which became funny as soon as she developed a personality. But it may have just been a promotional image he put up.)
And, despite, as a result, being one of the most universally despised characters in Shortpacked! (along with Roz), Becky’s apparently still managed to beat her on level of vitriol.
Yes, but he’s talking about reactions to the characters _now_. She’d been in Shortpacked for plenty of time before her first DOA appearance.
a) That’s not what he said. He was talking about the historical reactions to his characters.
(Here’s the very first sentence of his post: ‘Yeah, all my characters are pretty rude, and all those folks you mention got some hate, but never this much concentrated hate.’)
b) Your point is now internally inconsistent. People do not have goodwill toward Malaya now because of her history. They have goodwill toward her despite her history (of being one of the two most hated characters in that universe) because DoA Malaya is significantly more chill than her Shortpacked! equivalent.
I got the impression he was talking about the historical reactions to the introductions of the characters in DOA, which is not the same thing.
Nowhere did he say he was talking about the DoA characters, alone, and even, again, said ‘all of [his] characters’.
If he was restricting himself to DoA, Malaya would be a silly example to use. Malaya has had 15 appearances, 4 of which she appears for one panel and doesn’t actually do anything. And the one time she is anything more than mildly snarky (on par with exactly everyone else in her substantive appearances), she immediately received payback. She is a lousy example of someone to get hated. Becky has had 64. Most substantial. 8 since the haircut, alone.
Far from being an explanation for why Malaya doesn’t get hate, the connection to her Shortpacked! self is the only way she possibly could.
Sorry all this Bong, bongo has me thinking “Bongo, Bongo, we drink it in the Congo, a hippo took an apricot, a guava and a mongo, they mixed it all together and said “HEY let’s call it un bongo!”
This isn’t even like looking a gift horse in the mouth anymore. This is like actively hitting on the horse while insulting all its horse friends but still expecting it to just roll over and bare you along while you continue to guilt trip it
Ayyy, Mike. I’ll accept this gratefully
Man, I liked Becky, then I realized she was “that kind” of friend. The one who, once they got out of their parent’s house, immediately changed their entire lifestyle, outlook, and attitude, typically tipping towards the jerk side, but who also seems to expect all of their other friends to both shift to accept their new life, while also staying exactly the same. *sigh*
I’ve had this friend a couple of times, and it really is a sucky situation, exactly like you described. Once they were out of the closet, they either became someone who expected that I suddenly know their new ways and keep up, without warning or forgiveness, or became someone I wouldn’t even be friends with. *sigh* indeed.
I’m liking becky less and less
I didn’t know people still used “hussy” as an epithet.