You may recall a while back I was trying to get people to see that we should try to be a bit more sympathetic towards Mary instead of jumping to conclusions and calling for blood. I said there may be a side of Mary we weren’t seeing.
And honestly? I’ll stand by it, but it’s REALLY hard for me to. The fact that she seems so smugly satisfied with herself, more than usual, makes it really hard for me to stay optimistic.
Still, a quick push down some stairs wouldn’t go against the aforementioned ideology. Please, someone do it.
Along those lines I’d like to remind everyone of Ruth’s theft and dismemberment of someone else’s clothing. _The fact that she seemed so smugly satisfied with herself_ while doing it encourages “messing with” Personal property/personal authority.
On the other hand, Ruth has a opportunity to dish some revenge on Mary over proper conduct of a Christian in the prayer.
I-Is this sarcasm, or are you really trying to defend Mary? Ruth can be a sadistic jerk, but she doesn’t deliberately go after vulnerable and marginalized people for the thrill of seeing them suffer.
Wait, if Jesus is a vampire and Catholics drink wine that has been turned into his blood, why aren’t there more vampires? Is that really what the afterlife is all about? Damm, this is going to make sleep tonight tough.
Clearly Jesus’ blood is massively diluted, not enough to actually turn anyone into a vampire. Think of it as an inoculation, it actually protects from vampirism.
Once preparations are complete (Billie moved back into her own room, Becky’s stuff hidden), Karma the Vengeful Elephant is gonna take such a big dump on Mary’s head, it’ll tale forever to dig herself out, & the smells NEVER going away… XD
“Dear Lord – please give me the strength to keep me from breaking my foot off in the ass of this transphobic cumfart. Please grant me the serenity needed to put up with her hateful garbage, so that I will not snap and beat Mary hard enough with a towel full of oranges until she requires a colostomy bag. Amen”.
It’s either circle 7 subsection 1 (those who cause harm to other’s) or circle 8 (hypocrites, simonists, the morally corrupt, money lenders, and blackmailers).
It’s rather a special place in heaven, surrounded with only like-minded angels. Well, at least that’s what it looks like. Satan has a twisted sense of humor.
Wait a minute. A focus on art. Pure irrational hatred of others outside of her group. Some form of sneaky political style acumen. A desire for power. I don’t want to be the guy who says it, but these traits are feeling eerily familiar.
The real question is if she’s any good at the art she does. If she’s not, she must be stopped. If she is, she must be stopped, but with slightly less violence.
Well yeah, but given the anime I’ve seen, I’m surprised she likes it and maintains her strict Christian attitudes.
Given what we’ve heard of what Joyce & Becky were allowed to watch, it’s hard to imagine much anime making the list – if it’s not flat out banned on grounds of furriners with weird non-Christian values.
Or is there Christian anime these days? Like Christian rock and their own weird little shows like the Hymnal thing.
It’s not that far fetched for her to be an art major. There was this super Christian girl in my department…. she couldn’t handle any negative critique of her work, which was always either repaints of classic Christianity pieces or paintings of flowers whose meanings she refused to research. More surprising is the anime, tbh, unless it was Mary’s guilty pleasure that her family doesn’t know about.
I think you are confusing “gloating” with happiness. Happiness comes from doing good. Gloating is a very selfish, thing to thinking about something with excessive, smug or malicious, satisfaction. I contend that schadenfreude is NOT happiness.
Just 1 problem tho, iPhail’s Siri thing no longer tells you where you can hide a body. Meaning you have to search for places for yourself & without thousands doing the same search & providing cover, it’s a lot easier to track down who dis it…
Perhaps, tho I doubt she’ll have as many people thinking about hiding her body in comic, & we don’t have a fully reliable way of breaking the 4th wall. Some have slipped in, but only getting as far as a mention or a background character, no deep enough piercings to actually affect the events, let alone bring vengeance to any characters…
Hm. If I really wanted to hide a body FOR SURE, and could fly a plane myself, and had a small one…
I’d fly out over northern BC and shove the body out of the plane. We’ve lost entire aircraft out there for decades, even, like, half a century. By the time anyone got near to her (if anyone ever did) the animals would have long since polished her off, leaving no traces of her.
Alternatively, hmm… Does the school have a medical program? Dumping bodies in the corpse tank for the medical students used to be pretty popular, according to 100-year-old crime novels.
Or you could kill her and make it look accidental, and just leave her body where it drops. Barium poisoning is hard to track down, because it looks like so many other things. You could have her accidentally OD on something; I’m sure it would be perfectly believable that she’d try something like that.
Or you could go the old-fashioned route, and just beat her head in with a brick and shove her out a window.
–I offer this purely as an intellectual exercise; personally, I would like to see her have her face rubbed in just what a horrible person she is, and then kicked out of school in disgrace.
Ooh, here’s something, how about she meets her perfect guy, they hook up, everything’s going great, she’s thinking wedding bells–and then he finds out what a thoroughly nasty person she is and dumps her like a hot potato.
Although I doubt even that would get through to her. Okay. How about she just gets herself knocked up out of wedlock?
BC might be closer, but I personally feel that if you want to ensure her body is never found, you should take her on a trip to Florida. I hear the Everglades are lovely no matter what time of year it is.
Still continuing the exercise, but if you want a hard-to-identify method, castor beans are better than barium. Barium is hard to acquire, where castor beans are less so.
See, castor beans contain ricin, a deadly poison for which there is no cure. It is slow-acting, meaning you can dissociate yourself from the death more easily. It starts off looking like the flu, progresses through great pain, and three or so days later, the victim is no more.
Now, honestly, I’d much rather Mary endure a different fate: the full and horrifying realization of the wrongness of her actions. There’s something about the darkness hating the light in that, for those who like irony.
♩♫
Mary Bradford disappeared that autumn,
she was on a power trip.
The last words she ever spoke
cost Ruthless her job.
She didn’t get another until 20*mumblemumble*,
the year she was discovered.
I stole this from a Hip album,
I keep stored up on my
MP3 server, I filked it up
I filked it up to go like this
It’s on my MP3 server
♪♬
(apologies to the Tragically Hip and Bill Barilko)
That happened twice in the other universe. Neither time stuck. (In fact, the “current” arc over at It’s Walky is dealing with the ramifications of Mary’s first one night stand.)
Yeah, it’s weird as fuck. But I trust David Willis’s skill at characterization. He’s probably capable of taking an absolutely despicable character, and giving them a believable redemption arc.
Eh. She doesn’t want to be effective, she just wants power. If Ruth gets found out, it’ll have a slight benefit, but having her scared enough to give in to demands like that is worth a lot more to Mary. I mean, look at that smile. She only ever smiles with such unmitigated joy when she thinks she’s fucking over someone “beneath” her.
Mary has been obnoxious and directly verbally offensive, but do you honestly think that’s so much worse than repeated physical assault as to call for actual lethal violence?
Frankly, I’m unable to take that question seriously given that we’re discussing a cartoon character. In real life, naturally it’s not ever. But many of us here have dealt with Marys in real life, and this is a safe and cathartic way to work through that for us.
One could respond with skepticism as to how healthy a community is that calls collectively for catharsis through simulated violence.
How might an evangelical Christian feel reading this comic and these threads given the arguably hyperbolic characterization of Mary and the readers’ calls to violence against her?
Presumably, they’d be able to exercise critical thinking skills and conclude we’re angry over Mary’s various and repeated attacks on others (rather than her religion), and unless they’re as bigoted and awful as she is, they’d despise her just as much as everyone else.
And if they choose not to exercise those critical thinking skills and instead take it personally, well, that’s on them.
Mary isn’t hyperbolic. I’ve known people that were just as bad as her, as I’m sure many others here have.
Also, while I can’t speak for anyone else, I want Mary dead because I want her out of the comic. I don’t want anyone from this comic to ever interact with her again, because if they do I might see it. Her being dead guarantees that, other, more apt or cathartic punishments would not.
“Oh no, one of the more powerful groups in america might, for three minutes, feel like there are people who despise them personally, WE MUST AMEND OUR LANGUAGE AND OUR DICTION!”
So, so, SO not feeling it. Maybe you can just fuck off instead if you’re feeling hurt.
Well, this evangelical Christian for one would want to see her a long way away from anyone she can harm, ideally with some gentle (or maybe not, I’d be interested in Shepherd Book’s opinion) lessons as she exits to help her understand the gravity of the harm she’s causing.
And this e.C. (TM?) fully understands anger against her and desires for retribution, because she and Carol are very concise expressions of the very worst features of evangelical culture. Why should we get upset about that, when the very real harm the likes of her are causing is our fault for not discouraging the sort of toxic behaviour and perverted demands for others to do her will that she’s displaying? Christianity keeps trying to claim victimhood for things we’re not remotely victims in, and that’s sickeningly wrong.
‘Course, her brand would ignore the likes of me: (a) raging egalitarian, (b) LGBT ally, (c) three mums, (d) long hair. *shakes head sadly*
I guess as Mainline Protestant, I’m not technically qualified to answer, but I not only understand that it’s evidence that the Church collective has hurt many, many people, but I appreciate the use of dark humor as a means of coping, and see more than a nugget of reality in characters like Mary.
But your mileage may vary.
Given how often fiction gives “blackmail” as a potential motive for murder, I’d argue that violence is potentially a valid response. Appropriate, no, but valid.
Ruth’s violence is usually comedic and, while I make an effort to keep it in mind, it honestly produces minimal emotional reaction from me because, like Mike’s fuckery, it tends to be one step away from a Bugs Bunny skit. Mary reminds me of a more subdued version of people I know. She actively works to emotionally hurt people who she disapproves of. I want her out of the comic so I don’t have to deal with her again, and like Ross, I don’t care how that ejection occurs.
I do kinda understand the idea of wishing fantasy violence on Mary as an outlet for shit that might be going on in real life. But do you really want her gone from the comic? She’s a great source of conflict, and all good stories need conflict.
i know a lot of people who habitually threaten with physical violence and…seem to not mean anything in particular for it?? which is bizarre and probably is worthy of investigation into the hows and whys but like. there it is.
They never specified what to fire at her. Squirt guns, paintballs, and spitwads are all well within the realm of possibility, in addition to being cheaper and quieter than bullets.
Plus anything gun-related on campus so soon after the Toe Incident would be cracked down on hard.
What ‘repeated’ physical assault?
I know Ruth slammed Billie against the wall and kissed her.
Also, think she threw someone over a couch at the last dorm meeting.
Like Willis says: Ruth’s bark is a lot worse than her bite.
Also, think she threw someone over a couch at the last dorm meeting.
That “someone” was Billie, so indeed repeated physical assault against Billie. (And at another time clotheslining her).
Those all seem a lot worse than Ruth’s “bark”, which mostly consists of loud verbal threats, you know, that thing that’s not okay to do even if you have “jk lol” as your motivation.
And some of those places, when you’re shot in them, will kill you.
Guns are dangerous. Never assume you CAN shoot to wound. Beyond bleeding out, infection, and the rest, guns are dangerous, people move when you aim a gun at them, and lots of other problems propogated by hollywood that makes guns more deadly than people think. And that’s not even mentioning “Firing at someone who has something behind them” thing.
Daniel here. Sorry about that, Screwball doesn’t tend to think about that kinda stuff. He likes how they sound, their power, doesn’t really respect them, just thinks of them as big noisy tools. Won’t go into more details (even tho he has), I’ll just go throw some magnets at him for a while, see if I can straighten him out a bit…
Mary doesn’t quite get it. Ruth broke some campus rules, but blackmail/extortion is an actual crime. And if your victim is self-destructive enough, or your demands outweigh the blackmail material, your position is suddenly much much weaker.
You should probably be made aware that providing alcohol to minor and physical assault are actual crimes too and not just actions proscribed by campus policy.
In addition, it ought to be noted that Ruth is in the process of destroying the evidence Mary would need to carry out her blackmail. So, it’s possible to throw the book vis a vis the law at Mary for attempted blackmail (with ‘faulty’ information, but that doesn’t matter in the eyes of the law, just the attempt), and Ruth would never see consequences.
This isn’t being petty. It’s classic blackmail tactics – part of what you get your victim to do is generate more blackmail fodder (in this case, leading a prayer at the mandatory floor meeting).
No, I don’t think Mary understands or believes that it’s something for which Ruth could get in trouble… because anyone on the floor could complain, and then Mary would no longer have an easily-blackmailed RA.
See, but if Ruth bowed to that, then everyone else would know that something is very, very wrong, and they probably would be looking to Mary as the culprit, because who else is that aggressively Christian? (Especially with Joyce not around at the moment.)
At least, I just hope that everyone can band together and toss Mary out a window. Please.
Add in Catholics after that comment Mary made about the saints. Also, we know for a fact there is at least one Mormon who would be rightfully pissed if she heard Mary’s last comment.
Probably not. Then again, Mary has probably pissed her and everyone else in the dorm off to no end, and it could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.
That would be glorious. And it would both fit in with Sal basically being Batman and Ruth’s whole “I’m going to ignore whatever anyone wants to do to you” statement. And the fact that she an Carla are pretty much unspoken friends.
I can see Mary definitely being one of those people that staunchly refuses to accept/acknowledge that there are people of other (or no) religions around her. Because Christianity is like the “default setting” in America so clearly anyone would be fine with it being shoved down their throats.
Which is not what the Founders planned. They were most of them ‘Dieist’, not sure of spelling here – on the same order as Angnostics. They were not Christians and made very sure to put it in writing…a clear separation of church and state. With the church to have no say in the government of the USA.
‘In God we Trust’ wasn’t on our early coinage. Nor was “One nation under God”, in our pledge until it was added in 1957.
The USA was original founded as an open country welcoming all religions and recognizing none as ascendant over any other.
Mm, no. I mean, it’s not supposed to take a role in GOVERNANCE, and we actually are legally obligated not to be a Christian nation (Putting aside the first amendment, we’ve signed treaties stating this outright, and treaties trump the Constitution), but the bulk of the Founders were completely okay with presiding over a nation of Christians, and some did feel that Muslims should have no place in the nation. And I’m pretty sure a bulk of the founders were Christian, but a strong minority (and many of the most prominent) were indeed deist.
Also, they only agreed on the various Christian churches having no say after the complete disaster that was the Articles of Confederation (wherein individual states *DID* have a state religion with strong powers delegated to it, which was about as disasteriffic as you expect). And even then, State religions persisted for some time (Some are STILL on the books)
This all notwithstanding that the primary reason that Christianity wasn’t enshrined as the state religion was because, well, y’all would have killed each other over it. It wouldn’t have been ‘Christian’, it would be some smaller sect of it.
Re. Treaties… 1. No, they don’t trump the constitution. 2. Are there any currently in effect? The Treaty of Tripoli (1797) is the only one I can think of, and it’s with a state that no longer exists, and it was broken in 1801.
Just a matter of trivia – I certainly don’t think the US is or should be a “christian nation”, whatever even that means. But the treaty point is more relevant to the intent of the founders than being anything actually binding.
Just remember, there is no way Willis is letting her get away with this. The only thing I’m holding on with is knowing there’s a megaton level Schadenfreude coming.
Still not as angering as “RWBY” where they ended the season by killing or crippling half the main characters. My reaction was “Even Willis wouldn’t do this to us”.
They did do a Willis style – do horrible things to the fan favorite characters for maximum shock value. And both like to set you up by long periods of mild action and light humor before they kick you in the feels.
Maybe I just don’t get psychologically trigger the way a considerable segment of the community here does, but I was specifically noting Mary language and physical actions in the fifth panel.
That sort of behavior breaks suspension of disbelief for me in what is (usually) a not too slapstick narrative.
My student council president did that to a black student once… That poor kid was jewish as well, so I can only imagine just how hellish things were for him on the regular, cause looking back, I don’t think that was the first time that things like that happened.
And it’s not so much psychologically trigger as it is I’ve known too many people just as petty and mindlessly cruel for Jesus as Mary for me to view her actions as cartoonish. Which probably says more about my life experiences than anything else.
Knew of. Saw that incident in particular. Knew it was some form of fucked up at the time, but didn’t realize the full scope of the history being evoked until later.
Note, this was a community where friend’s families calmly explained that black people were the color they were because they were stained with sin much like ink on a white cloth.
There was also an incident where a football player slammed a queer kid’s head into a stone pillar hard enough that the pillar had a red stain on it for a good year+ and was let off because the queer kid had “clearly instigated” because of “his inappropriate school behavior” (i.e. being out).
And another with our vice principal doing thong checks at a high school dance to ensure that the students weren’t getting down with Satan, by flipping up every girl’s skirt at the entrance to the dance in front of everyone.
So yeah… Mary’s more “familiar” than anything else.
Yeah, there are people everywhere who really are that incredibly awful. They hide in plain sight until they get power, and then they don’t hide anymore.
In our world of being mostly in control of our sources and acquaintances and what information we receive, it’s easy to imagine that we could never meet a true jackass, until we do, and then it can be pretty jaw-dropping and/or upsetting.
I don’t want others to have to meet terrible people, and yet, sometimes they just did! Also, I have a very strong need to see the best in everyone and to believe that everyone’s basically pretty good. Because of those wishes, I am likely to make the mistake of explaining away behaviours that actually shouldn’t be explained away. This can come off as sacrificing belief in somebody’s actual lived experience on the altar of belief in others as basically goodhearted, which is not cool. Whenever I start a thought process of “well maybe they didn’t mean to be that horrible…” I have to check myself before I wreck myself on Occam’s Big Paisley Tie. http://www.shakesville.com/2013/08/occams-big-paisley-tie.html
…And then we remember that the jackasses are consistently empowered by a messed-up society, and it becomes even more gross: we live in a country in which xyz can happen, and the perpetrator can get away with it (and people you tell about it will still doubt you). Messy stuff!
This is all absolutely horrifying but that Vice Principal anecdote literally turned my stomach into knots. How. How. HOW do people get away with that level of foulness. HOW do people not see it for what it is (public molestation of multiple victims) and get him put in fucking jail for it. HOW.
Oh the rest of that particular story is even more infuriating. That one was bad enough to actually get a good backlash going that cost her her job. But the district really liked the “moral intention” of said vice principal and so as she was being “let go” she was immediately hired for a much higher paying job in the district.
I’ve seen a black kid called “monkey boy” for the duration of the school year, while the school ignored it. I’ve seen a black coworker at a history museum referred to with racist terms and called “boy” because “historical authenticity,” too.
Unfortunately, I was too ignorant at the time to realize how screwed up what I was seeing.
Sometimes, you just have to let historicity hang, so that people can still have a good time. It’s a thing.
Museums are special, though, as they do have a responsibility not to whitewash the past. Ideally, a museum should present historical realities in a sensible manner, one that is sensitive to their workers and their modern audience, for fullest understanding. Sounds like that’s where this exhibit really screwed up. They didn’t think about racism carefully, or overtly put it into a historical context, and they didn’t get input from your coworkers, they just spewed hatred all up in y’all’s space without so much as a safeword. Gross.
Also: This dude had to 1, prove that black people lived there in that time and 2, threaten to sue for racial discrimination to get the job despite being by far the best-qualified student intern applicant. And ppl were PISSED when he was hired over a white kid. Goal was to harass him into quitting. Accuracy was just the convenient excuse.
But yeah. Bad exhibit design and worse employee discipline (management at least knew why it was bad for the harassers to do that and made some effort to stop it when they saw it in person. But they wouldn’t do anything about what they didn’t see).
Allow me to counter your paradox with multiverse theory. By the act of heading back in time, Ruth creates a timeline, separate from her own, where Mary does not exist. However, her timeline’s Mary will still exist, so only alternate Ruth shall be without Maryness in her life.
“If they don’t kiss at the Enchantment Under the Sea dance, they’ll never fall in love and Mary will never be born!”
*Ruth burns down entire high school*
They all line up with various weapons like with that hysterical woman from ‘Airplane!’. St. Joan of Arc’s got her sword, St. Francis of Asissi is cocking a pistol…
Ignatius of Loyola comes out full armor and regalia from his time in the Spanish army, St. Wencelaus comes out armed to the teeth like any good dark ages warlord King, and then St. Martin of Tours comes out in full late legionary attire.
The level of fighting experience he had as a crusader does not leave me feeling that looking confused would be inappropriate. Maybe that’s how he got taken prisoner.
Well he went to the Sultan with the intent of ending the whole thing by converting said Sultan to Christianity. And at first the Sultan and all his advisors thought he was coming to negotiate a truce. Still, Francis was many things. Overly intelligent was probably not one of them. Either that or he just had no sense of self-preservation.
Ugh. Mary’s just making me sick at this point…well, sicker than she was before. It’s really too bad no one else saw that, because the whole “monkey” and “pat pat” bit was over the line again, if Ruth weren’t having to put up with it.
Oh, and for the record, I have “accidentally” clotheslined people for lesser offenses before. If you make it a habit to crash around once in a while, no one can prove it wasn’t accidental when you crash into a dickwad with your arms outstretched and lay their fucking ass out on the floor.
Just saying, Ruth has options if she can make the right connections. There has to be SOMEONE besides Carla who would be willing to run down the hall unchecked.
Probably done that in your imagination, at least. Why do you think a measly little act of physical aggression is an appropriate response? Yeah, I know, o could pick on a number of commenters with that remark. There’s such a culture of celebrating immaturity and meaningless, gloating responses down here.
And the trouble is, this isn’t hurting just Ruth. Carla’s been hurt, too, and Becky is at risk. If it was “Ruth you’ve screwed up and those consequences come back around to you,” that’s one thing, but Mary does not limit herself to one deserving target. Mary is a hurricane of awful.
Mary’s all about the hubris. Pride coming before a fall, and all that. It’s going to be reeeeally satisfying when it happens, so of course Willis is going to make us suffer waiting for it.
They can be opened first. Glass panes are expensive, after all, as is their installation.
They’re on the second floor, right? That fall could kill Mary if she landed badly, but tossimg her out and having her live would be problematic. Even if she didn’t, it would be a bit of a mess for custodial, and worse, investigators might clue in to the nature of her desth.
But do they love her? I get the feeling she’s not the type to hold back on being awful just because it’s her family. Even if they’re from the same background, she’s probably pulled this shit on the other members of her church, and nobody wants to be on the receiving end of this.
Blackmail doesn’t end with a reconciliation like in a sitcom. It destroys relationships. If someone blackmailed me and later got killed by an angry mob, my first reaction would be more along the lines of “I guess she finally pissed off somebody with the chutzpah to take care of her. Good for them” than “oh no, I will mourn her loss forever!”
Only if the family has some reason to believe their daughter falling from a window wasn’t an accident.
It’s a bad idea anyway, but an interesting hypothetical.
true; best-case scenario they’d still probably sue the university over lax safety latches on the windows, and that poor janitor . . .
I guess I more enjoy the mental image of her being tossed out like something out of Looney Tunes, landing SPLAT on the ground, then peeling herself off and stomping off.
Billie needs to tell Ruth that Becky’s not there right now. Having spent most of the day tidying (read: getting rid of evidence) that’s the only loose end she had. And conveniently, it took care of itself for the entire weekend.
There are times when I see a hated character and wonder if there is a chance for redemption. I thought “hey maybe Mary will see the error of her ways” and maybe she will but for now I’m waiting for Ruth to teach her the meaning of defenestration.
Woah woah. You do not disrespect the saints like that Mary. A decent number of them were legitimate martyrs, and you happen to be named after a couple.
Also, to clarify, this is in no way saying that I support Mary’s prayer idea. I just got a little hasty with my comment because that statement of her’s struck a nerve close to home.
lol oh you meant the people on the floor, I was like… wait, why would the actual floor side with Ruth? Would the floor open up and swallow Mary? xD (though to be honest, that would be a+++ behavior for some sentient brick and carpet…. )
Let’s be real, if ever it’s going to happen in this comic, it’ll be this storyline. The school itself rises up to rid itself of a threat. It’s like Hogwarts!
I could absolutely believe the spirit of a building would take offense at someone willfully spraying glue on the carpet. If only this weren’t the “no magic” setting,
Would the floor actually side with Ruth? What’s the motive for them to do that? Carla would, Billie would, maybe Dorothy would (simply because she’d look into a situation more deeply.) but wouldn’t the rest of them simply use the opportunity to get rid of Ruth, before reporting Mary?
Basically this entire situation worlds like a game of chess
You are a student at Indiana University. Your R.A is Ruth, who has bullied and threatened you (You know nothing about her despression)
Another girl you hate is named Mary, she has been known to say offensive things to your friends.
You hear they are fighting and realize you have to choose a side. At first you want to side with Ruth, simply because of how awful you’ve heard Mary is.
But then you realize something…once Ruth is gone, Mary is easily dealt with.
Remember you are not a commenter, you are a student.
The only real power Mary has is over Ruth, she has nothing on any of the other students. Nor is Ruth just such a good R.A that her charges would ever betray her. Lets face it, they both have nothing.
1. Get rid of Ruth
2. Report Mary, who with Ruth gone has lost all power
3.???
4.Profit!
I know it’s for Roomies Mary. I was just commenting that it was awkward that the Roomies rerun ran that particular Mary strip at the same time DoA is running this one.
No. More because it’s a public university than because it’s not a religious school, though idk what the reaction would be if an RA at a private secular school did something like that.
Ugh. This just gives me all kinds of rage and anger. Yeah she has the upper hand and is using her power to abuse the situation but she can’t assume that everyone is christian and should take part in her religious views. She is such a narrow minded individual and I can’t wait for her comeuppance.
Oh, it’s even more angering, because the fact that not everyone is her exact flavor of Christian is why she wants to have a prayer in the first place. As a passive-aggressive way of pissing all over those who are not Christians as well as those who are not the “right” type of Christians in her eyes.
The shittiness is absolutely intentional and makes an already awful action somehow even worse.
The perfect girl is gone…
Joyce
Amazi-girl
Carla
Mary
Billie/Ruth (they just lost each other)
Becky
Dina (the “perfect”, dinosaur-analysing mind has been replaced with a lovesick doofus)
Walky (yes, yes, not a girl, please don’t tell me your shoe count)
Dorothy (the “gone” part is just in Walky’s fears for now)
GALASSO IS PEFECT BUT NOT GONE
This aspect of the storyline has just not held up for me. I get that Ruthless technically hasn’t followed all the rules of her position, but at the same time if she just came out I seriously doubt anyone in the administration at the college would do much to her. Just take away Mary’s supposed power.
I’m not entirely sure just what Ruthless has done wrong barring Billy living in her room which is a huge administrative nono.
I mean, different schools and all, but where I went, I don’t think there was any rule that an RA’s gf/bf couldn’t live in their wing. And nobody really cared if their RA was a lesbian.
Abusing the students under her care, sleeping with Billie and drinking on school grounds.
If it was just a matter of her sleeping with Billie, then, unless I’m mistaken, she’d only be fired. She’s not allowed to have relationships with anyone in her dorm.
To be clear, I’m not saying that’s okay. Ruth is in a position of some power over Billy and other people Billy regularly falls into contact with. But pretty much everyone in my dorm was aware of multiple RA’s having relationships with people on their floor.
Rules or not. The school only gave a crap if it became a problem. Which while I was there it never did.
She’s not vulnerable because she’s bi, she’s vulnerable because she’s banging a student under her power and had someone living on her floor off the books. Those are both against the rules, for good reason, and yeah she’s fired if Mary can prove that’s happening.
Both Ruth and Mary have loaded guns on each other.
Ruth for the student living with her, and Becky living illegally on the floor.
Mary knows this, so does most of the floor I think and they don’t care.
Mary is a bigot, and harassing Carla, with transgender slander. And she’s just managed to insult most the religions living in the dorm. She also physically tried to hurt Carla with that glue spreading trick.
Both of them could be kicked out for their behavior if the school plays rough. Suspended at least.
Everyone (or almost everyone) but Ruth knew about Becky. No one except Mary knows about Billie & Ruth as we saw with Sal a couple strips back.
Mary doesn’t actually have evidence, especially now that Billie’s moving out, and the rest of the floor won’t believe it. Becky living there for a week is against the rules, but not something Ruth will get in serious trouble for unless she was actually condoning it – which she wasn’t, since everyone was hiding it from her.
Blackmail is also a crime and probably a more serious one than any of the others.
Now, if Ruth’s drinking came out, then she could be in more trouble. Or the violence she’s used or the sexual assault on Billie. But that hasn’t come up, because Mary doesn’t think about it that way. She’s focused on the perverts and the defiling.
Yeah, Ruth is in a good position if she can clean out Billie’s presence from her room as well as the signs of underaged drinking. Cause, very few on the floor even believes that they would get together much less that they are together and we’ve seen a network of support for Becky.
So, I think Mary will lose this round, but Billie and Ruth will have another problem if they try and restart things afterwards as once Mary loses, I’m sure she’ll be hard at work at figuring another way to “have her revenge”.
Just over a week. If my calculations are right, she arrived on Thursday, fought with Toedad on Monday, then we skipped to Friday.
Technically, she moved into Sal/Billie’s room somewhere in there, so she’s been two different people’s guests, if that matters.
They’re breaking the rules, but I really can’t see that as anything they’ll get in serious trouble for, much less throw the book at Ruth – unless they’re looking for an excuse.
Please. These are college students. Even if they entire floor took a collection they couldn’t afford a wood chipper even with a discount.
Besides, all Ruth needs is a brick and an alibi.
Yup. Usually they thrive in similarly minded communities. If they are ever in slightly not similarly minded communities, they tend to overcompensate with a massive martyr complex and a faux victimhood shitck and a tendency to be even more insufferable in order to strike back at “heathenism” and “godlessness”.
I grew up with more than my fair share of Mary’s. Of all ages. Young holy warriors, bitter angry adults glaring at the secular world and its “sin”, and eventually curtain-twitching paranoids calling the cops anytime a kid plays in the street or they suspect a neighbor is smoking pot or having sex.
They’re the type of petty-minded bigot that would throw away their health and safety just to see a marginalized kid suffer. They can’t wait for the Rapture so they can get a front row seat to watch the burning of the heathens. They’re the ones who think Trump is “bringing America back”.
They are about 27% of American society and they are absolutely 100% terrifying.
Yeah but she probably doesn’t know that or is too excited about her impending victory to care.
It’s easy to forget that Mary is an 18-year-old girl. She lacks maturity and experience; combined with a usual teen’s impatience, she’s pushing too hard and too fast and it’s going to blow up in her face.
( I am totally expecting some commenter to spoil this moment with:
“All My real friends on 4chan always start our meetings with a group christian Prayer, and If you say anything bad against Mary you are bullying us”
or worse
“NO No No Willis. How can you get this soo wrong. And its so wrong. A real christian never jokes about prayer. I thought you understood Jeebus and now yoi uhave failed me forever and evah”
Even if they show up, I doubt their comments would stay up long. Willis’ vigil is long and his purges are thorough.
Most folks that go on 4chan don’t choose to announce it, either; the place has developed a rather nasty reputation we don’t generally care to be associated with.
I must confess what you took to be pure creativity on my part, was only very slight parody. What you thought was unlikely, was the part that was real. That was an actual meltdown 2 or 3 days ago.
In my experience, 4channer types are extremely easy to offend. Just say straight white males aren’t the center of the universe and they come running to cry at you.
I am TOTES offended… the way you made me laugh outloud
( without my express permission and consent ; in triplicate too. )
I say this as a white male too. Wicked Offensive.
Who gave you permission to be this funny? Do you have a valid white males comedy license?
You mean someone might be a bigot, and oversensitive, and yet a hypocrite —
( looks up at Comic )
and still think of themselves as funny –when only punching down ?
( looks up at comic )
yet attracted to 4chan for punching down and being ‘edgey’ ?
Oh no, those people exist. It’s just more likely someone from /b/ would visit here to piss people off with an insincere defense of something they couldn’t care less about.
Ah. Yes. Practiced faux-apathy. Because caring for things is for (sexist slur about gonads).
It’s amazing that edgelords still have us all convinced that they are genuinely as apathetic as they claim (jus’ doin’ it for the lulz rather than out of genuine BS that they retroactively try to blame on the lulz) when they so frequently meltdown at literally every challenge to privilege.
Also, is bigotry done “ironically” for the lulz really indistinguishable in a meaningful way from intentional or unintentional bigotry? Like, if Mary had tried to pretend her words to Carla had been a “joke”, would it have really mattered one whit?
I think it’s a mixed bag of actual bigots, and people who hold rather Darwinian social views, i.e. if one can’t laugh it off, they deserve to be laughed at.
As for Mary… did she even know Carla was trans? I didn’t until I read the comments, and still sorta suspect it’ll turn out she doesn’t and meant the comment as “you’re being rowdy like a boy”.
We don’t know how she knew, but that would be way too much of a coincidence for fiction. Horribly bad writing, completely clashing with the whole theme of the story arc. Accidentally stumbling onto an attack designed to skewer a transwoman.
Willis is far better than that.
Given Mary’s characterization in previous series, my guess is Mary is neither as sheltered nor as innocent as Joyce, and therefore was able to pick up on Carla being trans. I mean, being fair, Carla isn’t exactly closeted. She’s not as in-your-face about being trans as Becky is about being a lesbian, but that doesn’t mean she goes out of her way to hide it – she’s fairly open about being trans. From what I read of Willis’s writing of it, it’s basically fairly well-known, and Joyce only didn’t pick up on it because she is so sheltered and ignorant that she doesn’t have the background to pick up what the little cues mean – think Danny not picking up that Ethan was gay despite how much Amber talked about him. Danny’s not exactly socially oblivious, but he didn’t have the life experience to be able to recognize a gay guy who’s not a walking stereotype.
Mary, across all Willis-verse, has always been written as more worldly and experienced than Joyce, as well as a bit of a hypocrite (to put it mildly). Mary probably does have the experience to put together all the hints that have been dropped and come to the right conclusion.
To be fair to Dracula, he really just wanted to move to England and make a couple people more or less his adopted family so he could have people to chill out with. And he was apparently a good boss to his non-insane human henchmen back home in Romania.
Slip on an errant roller skate, crash through the window, fall n stories into a recycling dumpster full of glass votive candles, each one of them emblazoned with the Blessed Virgin Mary, Our Lady of Sorrows.
Ruth had prided herself on never following through her threat of removing femurs then Mary pushed a tad too far from then on Ruth was proud of the femur she had mounted over her fireplace
Matthew 25:31-46 is always good. It’s Jesus saying that if you were a dick to people, you were a dick to him, but if you were kind to people you were kind to him. Then the dicks burn in hell for eternity. More Christians need to read that. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+25%3A31-46&version=ESV
Ezekiel 23:19–21? “And she multiplieth her whoredoms, to remember the days of her youth, when she went a-whoring in the land of Egypt. And she was mad with lust after lying with them whose flesh is as the flesh of asses, and whose issue as the issue of horses. And thou didst look back to the lewdness of thy youth, in the handling of thy teats by the Egyptians, for the breasts of thy youth.”
Or too wrapped up in her delusion that God will protect her from the consequences of thoughtless actions. It is amazing how much trouble in the world was basically caused by someone thinking: “I want to do what I want, when I want to and I expect and demand that someone else protect me from the consequences.”
I know I should hate Mary, my brain is screaming SHES AWFUL, but I can really only pity her. She will fall, and she will fall hard….and when she’s sees what she has wrought, it will finally dawn on her how wrong she really was.
I’ve crossed past pity and into apathy. I rather doubt she’ll accept that she did anything wrong, though, even just tactically; there are so many heathen sinners for her to blame instead, after all.
IMO: No. She never will. She will be punished for this by ‘God’ (Willis), but she will never believe that she was wrong or at fault, or that any of it was deserved.
She will fall, for all her air she is not a very good bully – she overplayed her hand way too early and she has zero support from her peers. It will be a few days of glorious play with her shiny new toy, and then she will fall HARD.
I doubt she will learn anything from it though, other than confirmation that the entire world is full of sinners out to get her because they are jealous of her devout perfect purity.
Yup. Or rather she’s a very good bully, but she’s just got no stamina for the long con.
That being said… she’s got the pettiness for the long con. Like, when she’s got it in her head that you’ve slighted her for your existence, she’ll straight up hunt you for something to use against you (we’re seeing that here with Ruth). So when this collapses, I’m sure we’ll be in for her next little plotting and scheming for a nasty little barb down the road.
Very, very true. Her current blackmailing scheme will crash (and cause a lot of delightful suffering along the way) but Mary will remain to cause more suffering another day.
Yeah, if you’re actually good at blackmailing and your evidence isn’t rock-solid to start with, you use what control you have to get that rock-solid evidence before starting to really play with your victim.
Honestly, her main problem is assuming she’s already won. I mean, a blackmailer who actually was committed to it, would just be sitting outside of Ruth’s door right after that bomb to just start filming a long film clip of Billie’s “laundry trips” to Ruth’s room to prove that the assertion was true and Ruth tried to cover it up.
I get where you’re coming from, definitely. Basically what we have here is Joyce, but without friends. Just stewing in her own fear and hate without a way out.
That, or she’s just a jerk who likes power. Lately she’s been skewing hard towards the latter.
Not only a Joyce without friends – a Joyce without the REASON Joyce has friends, her openess, her friendlieness and her willingness to overlook perceived an real flaws in others (for some strange reason Mary does not seem to have an atheist and a gay best friend…).
And a jerk who likes power – specifically power over others. This is not the means to an end, this IS the end.
I guess I don’t quite understand why Mary has so much power, here. Anything she claims is just… a CLAIM, it needs proof before anything could actually come of it, no?
All that’s needed to blackmail someone is that they believe the damage of being revealed is greater than the cost of doing what the blackmailer wants. Ruth is suffering from deep depression and is very much primed to envision the worst case outcome. In addition being depressed makes it very hard to act in positive ways when faced with adversity.
That said, Ruth has played fast and loose with her authority and knows it. If it was any one else there would be quite a few people supporting an ouster of Ruthless.
One last thing, when you work for a public institution the appearance of improper conduct is an actionable offense.
She doesn’t have much power. She thinks she does, because she saw Ruth back down once. She even said this out loud.
Her power lasts exactly as long as there is proof that what she says is true. That’s why Ruth is cleaning up her tracks. Now all she needs to do is put Mary in a situation where it looks like she’s just making up crap because she hates the RA.
The raaaaaage I just experienced while reading this omg. I would never advocate for violence, but I still want something to happen like….. I want Mary’s favorite TV show to get cancelled or something. Or her favorite band to break up.
I mean, this is me assuming Mary is even capable of even being passionate about art in any way lol. But in my experience (as having previously been a teenage girl myself^^), every 19 y/o loves SOMETHING.
And not, like, her family or a pet or even her faith, I want something truly teenage-specific to go wrong for her. Because fuck you Mary, but even if you’re the worst I can’t wish anything on you that’s worse than that lmao, I’m too much of a Hufflepuff for that xD
Yep! This is an important point if you want to be a good guy.
(My policy regarding ill-wishes on other people has always been ‘make it something you really wouldn’t regret coming true because of your words’. I’ve been collecting creative minor annoyance ideas ever since)
Yeah, Mary keep poking that lion with a short stick. You may learn a valuable life lesson. If you push someone far enough, they won’t care about the consequences, they’ll take you down with them. Hard.
Mary cannot help herself, no one can resist that kind of power over someone. (Of course the catch is…anyone who does use such power, never had the inclination to resist anyway…)
No blackmailer has ever stopped at a single use of successful blackmail.
Honest question: this would be illegal – and any RA immediately fired/the school sued for a denominational prayer – in any public college I’ve ever heard of. Is this really the culture at Indiana Bloomington?
Also at most private colleges in the US, it would be a campus wide incident (at bare minimum) if an RA held a prayer. I’m really not questioning Willis here; I don’t know what goes on at Bloomington, I’m just genuinely curious, because I thought this sort of thing could only happen at religious private colleges
That! Maybe she realises that her blackmail material is not so good and will not impress Ruth in the long term, but in the short term it may be effective enough to press Ruth into an action that quite likely will get her removed as RA.
So total victory for Mary, as the RA who beat her in the face is away!
its not a swear filter, its specific to the word. there was a discussion a while ago and people were overusing it a lot. so willis took away our bongo privileges.
Wow. I had no idea. I thought it was just an inside joke, probably from a different comic.
It kinda sours me on the place a bit. It’s not in his rules. It would be one thing if he filtered all slurs, but a single word because he apparently got tired of it?
That’s the type of stuff I thought a comic with controlling people as the antagonists would be against. It’s kinda the theme of the comic. I mean, that’s what fundamentalism is about: control.
That is, assuming I get which word it is. I’d get it for a particularly bad slur. It refers to a body part, right? One that everyone has?
I dare not clarify more lest there is yet another unwritten rule about trying to get around the filter.
Note, I said “just a little.” It disappoints me, but not enough to stop commenting. It’s just that, given what you’ve said, I disagree with his action.
It wouldn’t be the first site where I’ve disagreed with the mods. Doesn’t mean I hate them or anything, and it doesn’t mean I’m going to break the rules.
I hope he’s at least the type that will allow dissent like that.
It’s more cause that words was being overused as a pouring of sexist hate on a character that was spilling itself over on commenters as well. So it wasn’t just that that particular word was bothering him for no reason and he decided to nix it. It was deliberately intended to stem the tide of people defaulting to casual sexism whenever a female character did something they didn’t like.
It’s the same reason there are a few other creative modifications to certain words, because they were being overused by bigot types and it’s amusing to fuck with bigots in minor ways because of how much they think their right to have their voice heard and no one else’s is sacrosanct.
And honestly, I’m thankful for stuff like that, because it’s not a pleasant reading experience most places that have laissez-faire commenting policies. I mean, for whatever reason, I’m not usually in a mood to weather an avalanche of t-slurs and f-slurs just to participate in a discussion thread. I guess I’m just weird that way.
No, it’s the word for a female dog that rhymes with witch, which is an unpleasant slur against women. You can say butt or boobies or whatever you want however much you want.
It turned into an inside joke, too. Lots of people just straight up type ‘bongo’ instead. As this comment section is much less misogynistically horrible than average society, the word bongo hasn’t acquired the awful connotations and associations that would make it as unpleasant to see overused as the original word.
To be completely honest, the word bongo does make me cringe a little. Because where I grew up, bongo was actually used as a racial slur against black people. Short for “Stupid savages who only sit and play bongo drums all day. My (white) culture is superior.”
Very white dominated place, don’t know if there was a single black person living there at the time, but there was a lot of talk on the news about refugees on the news at the time. It’s been at least 20 years since the last time I heard it used in that manner, so I can only assume it was a very local terminology, but it was one of the first racial slurs I was exposed to, so it’s one I remember.
Suffice it to say, when the comment section here began using it as a joke, even as a white male I thought it looked pretty racist.
I’ve actually started doing double-takes when I see the word “bongo” elsewhere. Like, “what, that doesn’t make sense, what’s a percussionist got to do with bi– OOOOOOOOH.” 😛
there’s some other word that gets filtered out too, still can’t figure out what it is, that gets replaced with a rather lengthy thing in brackets. Something about white priviledge or something, I don’t know.
As for bongo, I tend to just type “guarskin drum” instead because why not.
Conversely, that filter actually makes me feel more safe here, because I know I won’t get that particular sexist slur thrown in my face constantly. And it would be constant, I see how much that word gets used anytime a female character does anything (or sometimes nothing at all).
When I was in the military and some dude was being a real asswipe, he’d fall down the barracks stairs one night on his way to the latrine. Are there stairs in the dorm? Poor Mary. What a shame. Both legs? Wow!
Mike’s verbal psychological games rely on the person he’s bothering having some ability to feel shame… A quality Mary lacks.
Which leaves either something designed to piss her off (vulgarity or blasphemy works), or outright violence.
Now, if he were go with pissing her off (say, with another “HAIL SATAN”, maybe), she’d just walk away specifically angry at him and with ‘confirmation’ of her belief in her personal martyrdom.
Same with violence, except that also gives her more blackmail against Ruth, as Ruth would specifically be ignoring it, and Mary could go over her heady, point to any bruises, and say Ruth wasn’t doing anything about it.
Mary, you are the kind of person that makes me, even as an atheist, wish there was a Hell. Because, it’s only in a dimension made for your suffering that you will ever be forced to acknowledge that you’ve done wrong.
Perhaps. I find it hard not to. But, I don’t want eternal torment, just acknowledgement of the wrong done… or even of the actual possibility beyond the theoretical fallibility of “well, we’re *all* sinners.”
Yeah, this. When this arc is over, it might feel better paced and there might be some good pay of, but for now there are so many other characters I would much rather be following right now.
More that she suffered in service of Ruth’s narrative, like how the only reason Kyle Rayner’s girlfriend got turned into hamburger meat was to make him sad.
You know what would be good bongo if you went to a Christian college a real one. not one of the ones that encourages you to continue doing the Devil’s work like you’re doing right now.
You know, most times when I dislike a character, it’s because I think they have deficiencies in how they are presented or written and whatnot. Mary, on the other hand, is one of the few characters I hate as if she were an actual person.
Ok here’s an easy way to take care of this Mary shit, just convince everybody on the floor to hate her ( wouldn’t be hard) then when they’re getting ready to lynch her just don’t do anything just let it happen. There problems solved.
The bullying RA who steals and destroys other people’s belongings, sleeps with one of her charges, threatens physical violence, provides alcohol to minors in contravention of the school’s rules thus opening herself up to blackmail and the inability to defend one of her more vulnerable charges. I hope she gets what’s coming to her too.
I hope she realizes the problem, learns from it and cleans up her act.
I mean, for all that she’s awful at managing her own behavior, she at least realizes she SHOULD be taking care of bullying on her floor and is pro-LGBT. There are plenty of worse options out there.
I still hope she gets brutally fired. It’s all well and good she feels bad about it *now* and is taking steps to protect Carla *now* but it’s far too little too late IMO. Learning from an experience and cleaning up your act (or frantically shoving it back into its own dorm room) is not mutually exclusive with suffering the consequences of your actions.
And honestly, pro-LGBT only goes so far given that she’s willing to provide one of the younger students she’s responsible for drunk and to have sex with her. That is an unacceptable power dynamic, even if it didn’t put her in blackmail danger.
I don’t know about white hot rage, but I do know a certain Doctor comes by the comments section every now & again. Can’t remember the rest of his name tho, but you all know who I mean, right? Doctor Who-Was-He-Again…
Mary… MARY for god’s sake you are a fool. If you want Ruth to do things because she fears losing her job then you don’t make/blackmail her to do things… which could make her lose her job /anyway/. Or at least put her on thinner ice/ under deeper scrutiny- then getting her fired after other things come to light. (I’m pretty sure forcing in public prayer- especially to a mandatory meeting, especially only prayer for a specific faith/denomination is against the rules).
What if people talk? I mean if anything else they’ll find it weird.
There may be people who decide to watch the Clark wing and its RA more closely as a result.
If this type of thing gets out to the higher ups it will basically could come to a point where the outcome for Ruth is the same. And she’ll have a choice of doing what you say or taking you down with her in the process- and which I wonder will she pick?
I don’t think Mary intends this to be a long-term arrangement. She just wants to cram maximal amount of suffering and humiliation from Ruth (and as many others as she can), and hopefully get her fired before the thing come crashing down (with maximal amount of collateral damage).
One wonders if Mary has fantasies of arriving as a transfer student at Anderson to universal acclaim from students and faculty alike as “The Holy Warrior Who Destroyed the Pagan Fortress of Indiana University”?
Sadly, I think she may actually believe that she’ll be regarded as a hero here rather than someone else. That all the right thinking people will see how righteous she was fighting against the t-slurs and the queers and the non-(right type of)Christians.
Bagge, that would make her even dumber than I thought. She’s not Mike–we’ve never gotten the idea that she enjoys making people suffer for suffering’s sake. She has always been about control. Causing everything to come crashing down causes her to lose control.
She needs to milk it for as long as she can. I think she just doesn’t realize how badly she overplayed her hand. I don’t think she realizes that Ruth can get fired over this. When blackmailing someone, the thing you’re going to do has to be worse to the victim than the thing you make them do.
Here’s what’s going to happen, as I see it.
Ruth is gathering up all the elements that give Mary power over her and resolving them. Ruth will prepare a detailed report on all of these things to her boss, including the idea that Mary was guilty of blackmail and various crimes of bigotry to undermine her authority as RA.
Application for Eviction submitted, with the addition of a personal confrontation involving the entire residency + Ruth and her direct superior at a mandatory floor meeting.
Checkmate, Mary.
This being a Willis production, I fully expect something plausible yet awful to happen/have happened to Mary, making her ever-so-briefly a sympathetic figure in the narrative and all of us lose our minds in response.
This doesn’t mean Holy Mary Motherfucker’s ever going to redeem herself, though. Not for anything more than a nickel.
Seriously though, what DOES the bible think about blackmail? No verses really come to mind. Although I’m pretty sure it violates the “Treat thy neighbor as yourself” meta-rule.
Mary may have overreached this time. This college isn’t a religious one, right? That likely means that any attempt to actively proselytize could be grounds for an official complaint, during which time Ruth could say that Mary was the one who suggested it.
Ruth would still be the one to get into trouble. She’s still nominally the authority figure here. What is she going to say, “One of my charges blackmailed me into doing it”?
Here, Mary proves that she is a thoroughly vile and malignant personality who, unless she has a Damascene-level conversion, will never be in the good books of a God worth the name. I just take comfort in the fact that no matter how much she chooses to wave around a Bible, loudly proclaiming fundamentalist rhetoric and morality, she is not and never will be a Christian.
No, no, no. Mary was quite specific. You need to start the meeting with a Christian prayer. And not one with saints or mormons.
Then, in order to maintain balance, you follow that with the Wiccan ceremony, the Satanic ritual, and any others you find appropriate – including a Mormon version for Agatha and some kind of atheist acknowledgement for Dorothy and whatever other variations are present.
I get the impression here that Mary isn’t trying to be a vindictive jerk; this is her genuinely happy because she thinks she has done a Good Deed and the world is going to be a more Christian (ie, better) place as a result.
That’s a strange interpretation, I think. For one thing, she called her “monkey.” She’s gleeful about being in power, and being able to treat someone poorly. Her whole arc has been about her desire to control others, as far as I can tell.
Mary is that type of Christian who is in it for the ability to look down at everyone else, to shame and belittle those who don’t measure up.
I don’t think she’s even the type that needs to come up with a justification, let alone someone who is actually thinking that way.
People shit on Carol, but I do think Carol at least needs these justifications.
The reason I consider Mary even worse than Toedad and Carol is that these two are jerks because of their beliefs, while Mary is a Christian only to justify her jerkassery.
You know, there’s a quote from Clarence Darrow I’ve been using a lot these last few days in regards to Scalia and I’m starting to feel like I could apply it to Mary as well: “I would never wish death on someone, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure.”
Huh. I did not expect that. After what Mary said and how she said it, this pretty much has to go down at the meeting. I was fully expecting Carol to be the big bad of this arc, and the Mary stuff to be set up for later.
The meeting is about a guy who tried to shove his Christianity down everyone’s throats, albeit in a very violent manner. There is no way Ruth can make people pray a Christian prayer.
And that’s without the separation of Church and State issue. This is a public college. She can’t do a group prayer in her capacity as an employee of the college. Heck, when I was looking up the laws to be sure, the first result was this PDF from indiana.edu.
IF there’s a single student who wants to make a fuss, Ruth could lose her job. Mary’s an idiot–she’d lose her power instantly.
I mean this girl is clearly struggling with some mental issues, which are the results of her fundie upbringing. I’m not an expert in the field but I’d say she’s borderline psychopathic. The question is if you can really blame her for this. A lot of people don’t seem to blame Joyce, instead they place all blame on her parents, simply because her fundieness is not so extreme and not directly harmful. But this might only be the case because she got luckier with her parents, with her father possibly lowering the damage her mother has done to Joyce’s personality while growing up. Mary probably got less lucky, with parents that are just full on destructive fundies. Note that these are just theories, but if this was the case – could you guys blame her for this?
I disagree 100%. She’s proven herself to be a petty, vindictive and cruel person. Sure, you can sometimes chalk that up to a mental disorder of some sort, but I get the impression that Willis isn’t willing to throw real mentally ill people under the bus for the sake of a villain who’s almost cartoonishly evil.
We give Joyce a pass because she’s proven capable and willing to learn, and fight past her own biases to get at the truth no matter how much it hurts. We don’t give Mary a pass not because because her fundamentalism manifests in a more extremist way, but because she combines it with sheer pettiness and childishness. She blackmailed her way into having power over someone and relishes it. However you wanna justify it, it’s still a pretty shitty thing to do.
But I think believing that these outright evil actions are right because of god qualifies as a mental illness. I’d put fundamentalism as a whole into a mental illness category.
You’re right though, I don’t think Willis intends to give this girl any qualities that would redeem her even in the tiniest bit, so yeah, she’s probably just supposed to be a shit. But realistically speaking, she would probably be struggling with some crippling mental problems.
“believing that these outright evil actions are right because of god” is Toedad’s description. Very possibly Carol, too.
But Mary? Mary actually just likes hurting people. Religion for her is just a convenient pretext for being a horrible person.
Now you see, this is where it gets interesting, because we can’t actually know which of these theories are true, we can’t see into her head. She might just be a huge asshole, using the bible to justify her shit, but she might also be actually ill. There’s a higher chance of her being just an asshole though, I admit.
Huh. Looks as if my comment was deleted, but I’m curious as to why. If equating sociopaths with assholes is too much for the board (but wishing cartoonish/not-so-cartoonish violence on them isn’t), it’d be nice to know since dealing with their abuse in my life has left me with some experiences I feel strongly about.
Because your comment essentially equated Mary being a sociopath to her being a bad person, and that’s not okay.
“Sociopathy” gets scrutinized by people as something that only Evil people have, and what makes them Evil. We can’t encourage the stigmatization of the mentally ill.
Thanks for clarifying. I’m a bit embarrassed to have come across that bluntly. (Actually blushing seriously.) Admittedly we’ve found a big personal blind spot for tolerance because I’ve been targeted and abused by sociopaths. A lot. I’ll be more self-aware in further discussion.
I suffer from severe depression and anxiety so your comment about stigmatization hits home. I don’t mean to equate sociopathy with being evil (not useful for understanding it). Or stigmatize mental illness in general. Sociopathy is a tricky exception to me and I’ve had a lot of therapy and research trying to understand and cope with it effects. By its nature the ‘sufferer’ doesn’t perceive that they suffer from mental illness. Therefore they don’t seek acceptance for it. They just think they’re awesome and continue to enjoy exerting power and ‘winning’ over others. That doesn’t fit the experience of most people who suffer from different kinds of mental illnesses, who have awareness, want acceptance and work harder than they should have to for it. Hence it being a frustrating and tricky exception to me. Or hypocrisy to another. I can respect that.
A lot of the behaviors that sociopaths exhibit are described with words like ‘asshole’ to the casual observer. For the sake of this conversation, I was saying that if Mary is indeed a sociopath, those two descriptions don’t exclude each other. I could have worded it a lot better. Or not at all.
Or she could just be a petty awful person who likes controlling people. There’s plenty of people like that in the real world, many of whom don’t have any mental illness at all.
In any case even when it comes to fictional characters, I really wouldn’t play armchair psychologist. It’s way too easy to be a jerk when doing it.
Sorry, but belief and fundamentalism aren’t mental disorders any more than a political ideology like American liberalism is. You’ve based your argument on a false premise.
I’ve talked to people who actually have genuine psychiatric issues – psychotic, shizophrenic, borderline, what have you – and Mary doesn’t exhibit any sign of struggles characteristic of those.
Her behavior is pure gleeful grab for power, in a way all too normal for -neurotypical- people.
It’s Ruth who’s vulnerable because of her psychiatric issues – namely, depression impeding her functioning and reasoning.
How can you not sympathize with Ruth here? Look at that abusive jerk using her power to harass someone, up to the point of inappropriate physical contact!
The serious answer is that I think Billie does need to stay away from Ruth. They’re actively worsening their problems and are clinging to each other until they kill themselves, and they aren’t making each other better. Ruth’s caring about someone for the first time in who knows how long, but she’s still convinced this ends in their deaths, and Billie’s just been in an actively worsening place ever since she got together with Ruth.
The answer I actually want to give is that the last time Ruth died Billie went and married Danny, and nobody deserves such a fate.
I mean it seems kinda like a choice between “cling to each other until they maybe kill themselves or maybe actually cobble together a functionalish relationship” and “completely self-destruct on their own and definitely kill themselves” because neither of these two is going to seek proper help let’s just be realistic it’s not how they work. Like someone might intervene when they hit rock bottom but rock bottom could very well end up being death by alcohol poisoning.
I don’t think Billie would. It wasn’t until her thing with Alice that she suddenly became convinced that she was an entirely worthless human being, and even now she’s trying to treat their relationship beyond it just being a suicide pact.
Ruth? Almost certainly, but I think if Billie was in a healthier place, a place not found in a mutually destructive relationship that started as abuse, then if she had found out Ruth was in a bad place she could have done something more productive than “okay let’s die together.”
Like, what happens if it did have to end? If the school did find out about them? Does Billie need to be next to Ruth for the rest of her life to keep her from dying?
Hmmm. That was fun. Just typed out a little rant that ended with “At least Catholics know who developed their dogma; you don’t even know who set forth the biblically incorrect bile you’re spewing”. But there was so much hate in it that I decided the wiser course was to delete that little rant and just wish hot soup poured across her tits instead.
Admittedly, I tried to justify her previous behavior by playing devil’s advocate and saying that they both she and Carla were guilty of immature and petty behaviour, but it’s clear to me now that she really is a just a despicable piece of garbage. The whole “using prayer as a tool of revenge and control” really drove that home. I’m one of those idiots who likes to see the villain redeem themselves, but in this case, nevermind.
It’s not the actions. Those are bad, but not as bad as some of her other crap. It’s the attitude. Mary’s now got a sort of cock-sure (yes I know wrong gender for that term whatever) blatant power-trip arrogance that takes all the existing hate for her and magnifies it 10000x.
Well, I HAD a female-version alternative to “cock-sure”, but apparently that hit a spam filter or something and the post was deleted pretty promptly. Not even bongoed-out, just deleted. Oh well.
House meeting and the Browns eating dinner. Nice parallel there. Bunch of reasonable people and one bigot about to be put in her place. I think we can switch back and forth between then for a month or so.
I wouldn’t call Carol’s behavior reasonable so far, but maybe she’s curable. We’ll see how she reacts now that her attempt at passive aggressive shaming has been defied.
I wonder if Marys curable, she seems worse but she’s also pretty young. I’ve found its a lot easier to convience a 18 year old to change, then convience ing a 50 year old to change. Mainly because your brain is still developing at 18. It seems a lot of people like Mary grow out of it eventually, while people like Carol stay like that their whole lives, because if you haven’t changed by 50, you probably arnt going to. Also I harbor perverse sexual lust for Mary, and want to see her change.
I like to believe that everyone is curable at eighteen, but of course the the priority at the moment has to be stopping her. When she’s no longer capable of causing harm to others, then we can worry about helping her.
Part of the problem is that I think she’d be a bully even if she wasn’t a bigot. That needs to be cured, too, and that may be much harder.
It would be so cool if, when Joyce calls out her mom and Billie/Ruth/Carla/Whoever calls out Mary, the point of view switches between the Browns and the House Meeting during the calling out. Really, if the monologue is spun right, the same speech could apply to both Carol’s homophobia and Mary’s holier-than-thou attitude, and switching back and forth could make it seem like they’re saying the same thing.
You know that scene from Brave, where Merida and her mom are having the same conversation in different places altogether? Something like that.
Looks like Mary let her slight advantage go to her head, not realizing that Ruth is not the sort of person to let matters stand as they are, quaking in fear of what might happen.
Seriously. And it makes wonder what her life has been like to this point. Has she never experienced someone who got back up and fought back after she knocked them down?
But that’s not what is happening, in her mind. This isn’t simply a struggle between two people.
It’s a one-sided Ideaology fight.(One-sided because God is the only side, don’chaknow?)
In her mind, she is a Valiant and Just Warrior of God, putting the Evil People in their proper Place using their own tactics. He won’t let her lose this fight.
Their names even start with the same letter… Illuminati confirmed.
(…I don’t wish upon Mary what ultimately happened to Miko. That was kinda brutal. But I sure did like how in that ‘verse gods actually did personally go out of their way to point out that Miko was an ass)
Billie’s clearing out her stuff from Ruth’s room, so she can initiate a confrontation with Mary, and in response to any accusation just smile nicely and go “Wow, you sure have a vivid imagination there. Any proof? No? Thought so.”
I really hope a certain someone is getting evicted for calling someone else a monkey. I mean that’s like X-rated racism right there Mary. Pretty sure even the friggin’ psychopathic old geezers like my grandpa know that’s not right.
Mary I’m pretty sure even God would be flipping you off right now.
Theres like a quote in the bible that basically says “If you drive people away from me then you suck”
and theres no better way to drive people away from your religion then forcing it on others while being an absolute jerk.
I don’t think so… For one, it was never shown that Mary knew that Toedad even existed.
Also, Toedad wouldn’t have needed anyone to call him; as soon as he realized he had been tricked he would’ve came back to the school ASAP. Even if he hadn’t assumed that Dina had tricked him and sent him as far away as possible on purpose, he still would’ve came back because the school was still his only lead.
Lastly, if Mary HAD called him, that seems like the kind of thing that would’ve been revealed either before or after the big confrontation, if only because it would give the fans another legitimate reason to hate Mary.
I was just fuming the other day over someone pulling that “Catholics aren’t Christians” line. She seriously had never heard of the Protestant Reformation. She honestly thought all the different denominations of Christianity except Mormonism and Catholicism were “the same church”. The fact that there are multiple denominations that use the label “Catholic” would probably blow her tiny, Mary-like mind.
Anyways, Mary is garbage and likely has no concept of limits. She is pushing too far, too fast, for no gain.
When Mary says “Dumb Saints or Mormon crap”, does she mean Catholicism and Mormonism or something more along the lines of “Latter Day Saints or Mormons or whatever the hell they want to call themselves.”?
There is a certain logic in it, going back to the foundation of Protastentism. By which I mean, if I remember my historical studies correctly, that it’s always been part of Catholic dogma that the Church is the sovereign authority God’s representative and it is the task of the clergy to interpret the Bible for the masses. In other words, the Bible is not to be taken literally and does not stand above the Church.
Martin Luther on the other hand rebelled against this perspective and introduced the idea that every man could be his own priest, provided he had access to a Bible in his own language that he could read without the interpretation of a priest. In other words, in Luther’s Protestant movement, the Bible was considered above the Church and was to be taken literally.
So to an extreme Protestant like Mary, Catholicism won’t be considered Christianity because it doesn’t accept a literal interpretation of the Bible as a supreme authority. If I remember my studies correctly that is.
Well, yeah, there’s a “certain logic to it” if you ignore almost all of the historical documentation about how the Bible was written, and even Luther himself, who still considered Catholics Christian.
But it’s Mary, and she’s a fucking moronic bigot, so what should I expect.
Hey, hey, hey! Let’s not hate on all of Christianity because people like Mary give it a bad name! We have to be as respectful of people’s religion (or lack thereof) as we are of lifestyle choices and identities. I don’t agree with mormonism at all, but I’m not going to tell a Mormon what they believe is crap. Atheists who ‘cheer’ at someone being insulted for their beliefs are just as closed-minded as Mary is, and just as insulting.
My basic rule is that I’ll only use physical violence in defense of myself or others, and only when the assailant is an immediate physical threat. If there is a situation that can be solved without the use of violence, I will use the more peaceful method.
I was happy until I remembered that Mary existed. And that people like her exist in real life. And that people see real life Marys and go “lol Christians, eh?”
I have never wanted to kill someone quite like I’ve wanted to skin Mary alive.
I have watched the trainwreck that is Donald Trump running for President but I wouldn’t wish physical harm on him at all, yet alone to the extent I want to see Mary’s insides torn wholesale from her body.
I despise people like Mary. They are evil. It’s people like that who wind up being abusive clergy and doing horrible things to people. If I was living on that floor, I would risk arrest to beat that bongo into a bloody pulp.
Boy, Christians aren’t portrayed here the way the Christians i know in real life. Willis, have you spent any time with a normal christian? I guess cartoons are better when you stick to stereotypes. (Oh let the hate roll in commenters…) But seriously, most of the Christians I know are tolerant people. When are we going to see a litany of LGBT friendly folks acting like jerks? I don’t think there’s many in the “jerk” category, so we should be seeing more here than really exist if the pattern holds…
“Let the hate roll” doesn’t really apply when you say dumb shit that deserves to be hated.
I mean, jeez, three whole Christians in the entire series who are jerks. That’s so ridiculous! It’s not like Joyce, Becky, Danny, Sierra, Billie, and Jocelyne are positive characters or anything!
And I know right, all the Queer characters in the cast are suuch a pack of infailable, perfect snowflakes. David Willis has never devoted any time to showing any of the flaws or foibles of Ruth, Billie, Carla, Danny, Ethan, Dina, and Becky. Nope a nope. They never falter or act pettily or actually show outright abuse. They’re too busy being perfect gay butterflies.
In their defense, if you narrow the scope to fundamentalists, it is a bit of a different story. There’s no fundamentalists in the setting who can apparently just… Be polite. No-one who can feel homosexuality is sinful without also having an absolute fit over it. It’s why Hank was a bit of a breath of fresh air, and why Carol was a nauseous and noxious breeze.
Or what if, now stick with me here, this hypothetical fundie main character’s gay best friend, who has actively suffered at the hands of her religion to the point where she was held at gunpoint, kidnapped for the purpose of being sent to conversion therapy, and nearly died multiple times, still came out of that ordeal a faithful person, just willing to critically analyze it and decide for herself that, while some parts of it don’t apply, ultimately those parts don’t contradict the important lessons that she took to heart.
Perhaps I’m mistaken, but that doesn’t sound like being a fundamentalist so much as being closer to being a zealot. Which… now that I think of it, Toe dad definitely fits that categorization.
That’s pretty much the exact road that proper inerrancy leads down, yeah. In practice, it’s “Inerrancy according to Billy Graham/Bob Jones/C. S. Lewis”.
Either way, inerrancy requires literalism, though, and literalism requires acceptance of the Bible as a whole text. “Picking and choosing” is sort of the biggest accusation fundiegelicals like to level against anyone who disagrees with them, right up until the person actually follows the text in a harsher way than them.
Right, except… No. Joyce DID have a fit over homosexuality; she tried to “convert” a gay guy and, when her best friend showed up and said she was gay, Joyce quickly re-evaluated her principles (don’t get me wrong, a totally understandable reaction; I did the same thing eventually on my way out of fundie-dom) rather than go “I accept you, despite this”. She isn’t someone who thinks homosexuality is wrong and can politely disagree; she is, by your own admission, a semi-literal author avatar; an autobiographical character, following the same arc you did. One that, unless I’ve missed my mark, led you to atheism/agnosticism and acceptance of an old Earth. You even said that the idea of inerrancy – something Joyce has been shown to be shaky about recently – was fundamental to your resistance to letting go of belief and appears, in turn, to be fundamental to her doing the same.
Joyce is not, in short, an example of the sort of thing I’m talking about.
Hank is, though. Hank is someone who apparently still seems to think atheism and homosexuality and transsexuality are wrong, but is comfortable enough with living and letting live that he can be at peace around gay or trans people. That’s really what I’m getting at; that people can disagree and still coexist. Joyce isn’t an example of that because she’s actively given up any protest or opposition out of love for her friends.
Fundie characters in DoA thus far either come off as extreme wing-nuts or as people who are in the process of ceasing to be fundies anymore. Both categories of people exist, incidentally, and I’m not accusing you of strawmanning. I’m just… Disappointed at a lack of a spectrum, I suppose?
If a crucial part of being a fundie is being unjustifiably bigoted towards entire groups of people that have done nothing wrong then doesn’t that mean moving away from it is, inherently, a good thing?
Like, I think I get what you’re trying to say, that the narrative is saying “okay you can be a Christian as long as you’re the right kind of Christian” and, well, that’s kind of the case? Insofar as “the right kind of Christian” means “one who isn’t a massive bigot for no reason” and that other kinds are all right. People who spout “Love the sinner, hate the sin” are trying to come off impartial, but ultimately branding something as fundamentally harmless as being Queer the same way you would actual sins, it’s just completely unacceptable. It’s something that needs to be stamped out, and no amount “let’s agree to disagree” really counts when the argument is over something that doesn’t deserve to be argued about.
An on that note about Joyce, she did pull the “I accept you but not your sexuality” move on Becky,where she had to find physical proof that she was allowed to still be friends with Becky despite her sexuality, albeit it took her all of a day to get disabused out that notion.
I think there might be a misunderstanding. I am most certainly not arguing that being a fundamentalist is a good thing. I consider it rather bluntly the opposite. If I didn’t, I’d still be one, one imagines.
What I am arguing, though, is that there’s some caricaturization going on and maybe it’s fair and maybe it isn’t, but it’s still there; you’re either the Right Kind of Christian, or you’re the Right’s kind of Christian, if you get my drift.
I don’t like that. I don’t like it for a lot of different reasons. Whether or not I disagree with people, however vehemently, seeing them turned into editorial cartoons just… Doesn’t sit well with me. Especially not in something that, at the start, looked like it was trying to show these ideas as they actually exist in the opinions of some people. There is a nuance lacking that turns this from thoughtful exploration and character-driven arc into My Mother, The Strawman.
“…show these ideas as they actually exist in the minds of some people.”
This is literally exactly what Willis has been doing with characters like Mary and Toedad and Carol, and also Hank and Joyce and Becky. Emphasis on “some people.” There are people in real life who literally have the same beliefs as all of these characters. Just because characters like Carol and Toedad and Mary lack nuance doesn’t make them caricatures, because there are REAL LIFE PEOPLE who lack nuance in exactly the same way.
Hell, you don’t even have to take Willis’s word for it. Do some research online. Ask the people who oppose gay marriage or gay civil unions why they oppose those things. Turn on the fucking news.
Sure, there are people out there who believe gay sex is a sin but aren’t opposed to gay civil rights/aren’t smug bullying assholes, but neither their existence in real life nor their absence from the comic make the other fundamentalist characters “caricatures,” any more than Joyce is a “caricature.”
“…they actually exist in the opinions of some people.”
Hey, remember when the Mormon Church spent millions of dollars to campaign against gay marriage in California?
Remember when the now deceased Justice Scalia said that if we are to give legal protection to gay people, we might as well give it to child molesters?
Remember when a bunch of (mostly) Southern states voted not only to not allow for gay marriage, but sometimes indeed to make it specifically illegal? Even trying to put that last part into their state constitutions?
Remember Kim Davis and her supporters?
Remember how American Christians has been behind an anti-gay campaign in Uganda to make it illegal to even be gay?
Remember how Russia basically lets murderers off the hook if the victim was LBGQT?
These are just a few examples of people -in the third example, literally millions of them- pretty much holding and spewing forth the opinions found in Blain, Mary, and Carol.
I suggest you try to remember that. I suggest you try to remember that there is one big reason why suicide rates among teenagers that find themselves to be LBGTQ are much higher: Because of the “nuanced” intolerance found in all these millions of people I just talked about. They are the ones that throws out their own children from their homes in a “nuanced” manner. They are the ones sending their kids to a “nuanced” ‘correction’ camp that is designed to torture the kids back into straightness. They are the ones teaching their straight kids the “nuanced” message that it is OK to bully that gay kid in class; up to the point where said kid eventually just takes their own life.
Try to remember these and dozens of other things that are happening in the real world. Then after remembering all of these things, feel free to tell me where exactly the actions of Blain, Mary, and Carol turned unrealistic. Because I have a hell of a hard time finding it.
“Hank is, though. Hank is someone who apparently still seems to think atheism and homosexuality and transsexuality are wrong, but is comfortable enough with living and letting live that he can be at peace around gay or trans people. That’s really what I’m getting at; that people can disagree and still coexist. Joyce isn’t an example of that because she’s actively given up any protest or opposition out of love for her friends.”
so what you’re upset about is that i don’t have a character who exists to let people feel good about being a little bit of a bigot
Is the point of characters, or people, existing in a story solely so that they can either be lauded as correct or loathed as wrong? If not, why would you assume my wanting people who show complexity beyond easy categorization is because I want people to be able to thumbs-up bigotry?
A big part of confronting any of these issues is acknowledging that NOT everyone who disagrees with you is a screaming, raging bigot. It’s been brought up in the comments a dozen times now, especially around discussions of micro-aggressions; that people can become deaf to the subtler inconsiderate actions and quiet bigotries when they focus on the louder ones. And that’s just ONE of the problems with this.
… Also, why would Hank’s existence make anyone feel good about being a little bit of a bigot? I’m not even sure how your logic train got to that track.
I assume what I have been assuming of you because you have been given multiple examples of what you ask for, but you decry them all as not good enough because at one point or another they learned to be better. Joyce spent five years of the comic spewing all sorts of “subtler inconsiderate actions and quiet bigotries,” and she was the main character, and for some reason that doesn’t count because she eventually learned. You have taught me through this conversation that you want those practices validated, because you are repeatedly upset that I have done the opposite. If you were okay with merely showing these smaller aggressions, then I would think you would be fine, because there are countless examples, but for Some Reason you are apparently not.
First, let me start by saying that, you’re right, there have been examples of what I’m asking for. I contradicted myself even when I said so; Hank is an example of such a character.
I also want to add that a part of my upset and disappointment is precisely because, early in the comic, you showed Joyce exactly as that sort of character too. You didn’t have her be a conniving or evil so-and-so; just let her be herself, had the world react, and had her react to it. I -like- Joyce, and I like where she’s been.
But then we get Mary and Carol, the latter of whom acts like a Meryl Streep character and…
I dunno. Maybe I was just hoping for something other than more card-carrying villains.
I think perhaps I’m not articulating what I want here clearly enough, or perhaps I’m just not seeing clearly enough, but whatever the case, I think I’ve given an impression I really don’t want to give, so, for now, I’m just going to slink away for a while.
1: We’re dealing with fundamentalist Christians, not mainline protestants; problem is, the fundamentalists just call themselves “Christians.”
2: The comic is usually being told from the perspective of groups/individuals fundamentalists are ideologically opposed to; they would be seeing the dark sides of the religion far more frequently than someone the religion doesn’t have a problem with.
Uh, most the cast is Christian. Yeah they all have flaws but that’s because people have flaws. Mary is a bit of an outlier in how hateful and petty she is.
Wait, are you going to say that Becky, Danny, Sierra and Billie don’t count as Christians because they are LGBTQ? Because the last person I saw who went on the “Willis doesn’t know how real Christians act like!” rant started going down that path and it was a bit more revealing about their true attitudes.
“Willis, have you spent any time with a normal christian?”
You know how we know this isn’t a sincere question? There is an About link at the top of the page. It’s right freaking there! Allow me to quote it since you’ve deliberately ignored it:
This is important: Joyce is autobiographical. Consider this information before goin’ off on me about how I don’t know anything about Christians or whatever.
Not that your No True Scotsman BS would have between compelling anyway.
If you find yourself scapegoating LGBT folks as an opposing-faction to Christians in order to clothe yourself in self-righteousness, turns out that YOU are Mary.
Some Christians are jerks, some aren’t, some LGBTs are jerks, some aren’t. And some are bigger jerks than others. If you think DOA doesn’t reflect this aspect of reality adequately you haven’t been paying attention.
Ok, I mean, we had several strips dealing with how Roz, who at least sees herself as being super progressive and LGBT-friendly, being called out by multiple people (including a teacher) as being a total jerk, to the point of being told to leave the class for disruption.
Then there’s Mike, who seems to at the very least not care one way or another about LGBT issues (though, arguably, he’s probably not straight if the other version of him is any indicator) and his main character trait is being the biggest jerk of all.
I mean, to be honest there isn’t a character that hasn’t shown some flaws or been a bit of a jerk at times (the strip is titled ‘Dumbing’ of Age for a reason, dude), and that includes “LGBT friendly” ones.
Even looking at ‘antagonists’, we’ve got Blaine, who was probably the most hated character until Ross came around, and we at least don’t know that he has a beef with LGBT individuals (beyond seeming to be pretty nasty to everyone equally).
Just had a look at the about section. Sorry for my comment. I retract my “have you spent any time with” statement. Just want to say sorry for your experience in the church. It sucks that there are some bad people in churches. All the best to you Mr. Willis. I do really enjoy all of your work.
What the actually f… is she thinking? they will burn her on the stake and then piss on the remains. it is too stupid.. oh wait. it is perfect! let her try that. WHO will miss her anyway? 😀
So Willis. You really hard and firm about that “nobody gets hit by a convenient truck” rule? Like… really determined about that one? Because that would solve this problem in such a satisfying manner.
It’s weird. I can read comic after comic about horribly abusive parents, which is my childhood and which I know first hand the pain of… but Mary pisses me off far worse than any of them except Blaine.
I guess because, like Blaine, Mary knows she’s hurting people. She knows she’s hurting people, and she’s doing it anyway, because she’s freaking evil. Poetics demands she fall hard.
Sadly, Poetics doesn’t apply to real life. Or necessarily to Dumbing of Age.
I think its the knowledge that they hurt people with one added thing. Mary and Blaine are smug. They are amazingly smug and not in a way that’s funny like say…Ratigan from the Great Mouse Detective. There both cruel and they are so goddamned smug about it. Hell Mary is worst to me because not only is she unbelievably smug she also adds an extra sheen of self righteousness to that smugness.
That’s why Vincent Price is the best. He can be a murderous child-kidnapping Queen-of-England stealing RAT and people are still just like “But isn’t he fabulous though?”
I understand that anger, Ruth. As someone recently diagnosed as being on the Spectrum, whenever I find myself talking to an ant-vaxxer or an idiot who treats Autism like it’s a synonym for sociopath or an asshole who self-diagnoses themselves with Asperger’s and uses it in order to try to weasel out of the consequences of their actions, I often find myself thinking, “At some point, I’m going to reach my pre-set rage limit and finally hulk out. Always wondered what color I’d turn when that finally happened.”
I actually have a Moral Theory of Pie. Pie is, self-evidently, an absolute good. Therefore, the better a person you are, the more varieties of pie you enjoy. (To be fair, I have corollary hypothesis that some people invest their goodness as expressed by pie by enjoying a smaller number of pie varieties more intensely, but all my findings thus far suggest this is a relatively uncommon phenomena.)
Without doing a rigorous pie survey, this is speculation, but I feel like Mary is both in the ‘cream pie is too rich, is makes me nauseous’ camp as well as the ‘meringue is gross’ camp. I think it’s highly likely she might express distaste for several varieties of fruit, and she might consider pie as a dessert-only food. This would sharply limit her pie intake, demonstrating that she is, in fact, a crappy human being.
This may end up being deleted, but it is something that I thought of yesterday and seems to fit today’s strip.
A woman who is always depicted as wearing a hijab has a son who associated with criminals, disrupted temple grounds, started a religious cult, and was martyred for his faith. And Mary is named for her.
Make that generally depicted in a hijab. There is art of her that depicts her as a blue eyed blonde in clothing appropriate for the area and time that the artist came from. Like VanGogh putting a Dutch gardener in his painting of Easter.
I have a feeling Marys fall will be abrupt, sudden and will contain a large audience of her fellow College alumni and conclude with her being run out of town on a rail.
Everyone coming up with plans & theories here about how Ruth or Mary can perfectly resolve this situation is forgetting that this comic is not called Smart People Always Do the Right Thing.
Unless writing detailed paragraphs about how each character can resolve their situation in a way which makes nothing else bad happen is a category of fanfic. I guess, then, have fun.
I don’t read fanfic. Is “stories about how characters can stop making mistakes & ruining everyone’s lives” an actual fanfic genre? Does it have a shortname?
Of course I don’t mean the folks who are just wishing for bad things to happen to Ruth or Mary. The fanfic genre of “brutal revenge on my least favorite characters” is definitely one I’ve seen before.
It doesn’t really matter, Ana. A few years ago, they found out that 666 was a mis-translation. The “real” number of the beast was 616 all along.
I wonder if hotels and other places that conveniently skips 666 will follow suit and make sure it’s 616 that is skipped from now on. I mean, otherwise it would just be silly, wouldn’t it?
I was the one who made it 667, so yes, I ruined it. Because I am a ruiner. If I see anyone having fun with something that is somehow incorrect, I must inform them that they are having fun incorrectly! Look upon my ruined (but correct) world and despair!
It’d be nice to see what caused Mary to become such a shit. Because that right there? That’s not someone simply trying to push their belief on others. That’s someone gloating about their leverage over someone. It takes a real special kind of person to do that, and I’ve always been interested in the environs that produces them. Mostly because it helps me figure out how to write them.
I just realized that the only way Ruth’s right hand could have slapped a ding-dong onto Mary’s right cheek would if Ruth stood behind her, just like Mary is doing here.
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wagering the alt-text is some snarky Bible verse
(I’d look one up myself but I’ve been super busy this week)
huh, guess not
Mary is super-creepy when she’s getting her way, though
Looking at the preview panel with Sierra and Agatha, I have a feeling it doesn’t last.
You may recall a while back I was trying to get people to see that we should try to be a bit more sympathetic towards Mary instead of jumping to conclusions and calling for blood. I said there may be a side of Mary we weren’t seeing.
And honestly? I’ll stand by it, but it’s REALLY hard for me to. The fact that she seems so smugly satisfied with herself, more than usual, makes it really hard for me to stay optimistic.
Still, a quick push down some stairs wouldn’t go against the aforementioned ideology. Please, someone do it.
Along those lines I’d like to remind everyone of Ruth’s theft and dismemberment of someone else’s clothing. _The fact that she seemed so smugly satisfied with herself_ while doing it encourages “messing with” Personal property/personal authority.
On the other hand, Ruth has a opportunity to dish some revenge on Mary over proper conduct of a Christian in the prayer.
I-Is this sarcasm, or are you really trying to defend Mary? Ruth can be a sadistic jerk, but she doesn’t deliberately go after vulnerable and marginalized people for the thrill of seeing them suffer.
“Super-creepy” or “finally breaking out of her guarded exterior to reveal the happy and pleasant person underneath”?
We have very different definitions of the word “pleasant”, you and I.
If that’s “pleasant” then I’m Zombie Raptor Jesus. Which I’m not. I checked.
You are being redundant. It’s well-known that Jesus was raised from the dead and will be doing the rapture.
Beware Vampire Jesus. He gave his blood for you and he wants it back now.
Wait, if Jesus is a vampire and Catholics drink wine that has been turned into his blood, why aren’t there more vampires? Is that really what the afterlife is all about? Damm, this is going to make sleep tonight tough.
Clearly Jesus’ blood is massively diluted, not enough to actually turn anyone into a vampire. Think of it as an inoculation, it actually protects from vampirism.
Catholics are Jesus’ Renfields.
Jesus is a vampire so we don’t have to be.
he saves! he LIVES
Anyone counting on being uplifted during the rapture, know this: I’m taking your stuff.
And this is news in what way?
She thinks she’s getting her way. I sincerely hope she’s wrong.
Oh yes. I do believe she is very wrong.
Goodbye Mary. You won’t be missed.
Once preparations are complete (Billie moved back into her own room, Becky’s stuff hidden), Karma the Vengeful Elephant is gonna take such a big dump on Mary’s head, it’ll tale forever to dig herself out, & the smells NEVER going away… XD
She was going to get her way, and then she tried to bring together church and state.
She deserves violent and immediate comeupance for calling another human being “monkey”, if nothing else.
It’s meant to be a jab at the fact that Ruth is doing whatever Mary wants – “dance monkey dance” etc.
Or perhaps a jab at Evolution, and anyone who doesn’t buy into her Creationist beliefs?
Hey, I do that all the time. Generally in a kind of despairing anthropological way – “We are such clever monkeys, aren’t we.”
*Yeah, I know, we’re actually apes, not monkeys, but monkey sounds better.
Tell that to the Librarian.
He HATES being called a monkey
It’s all in the delivery. An old boyfriend used to call me monkey and it was pretty dang endearing.
You dated Dwight Schrute?
I CAN NEITHER CONFIRM NOR DENY
“Fine, Mary, what do you think of this prayer:
“Now we sit us down to meet.
I pray Shang Tsung your soul to eat.
If you should live before we’re done,
I’ll rip out your femurs one by one.”
Praytality.
These 2 comments right here? These are why we need a “Like” button…
I rather like “Faithality” as an alternative.
I like this, mainly because I can feel actual bile building up in me when I see Mary.
Not a fan of Shang Tsung, but there are plenty other soul-eaters who wouldn’t mind a soul as bitter and vile as Mary’s.
Shang Tsung, Master of Kung-Fu?
or was that someone else?
The evil sorcerer from Mortal Kombat.
You’re thinking of Shang Chi, I believe.
Everybody Shang Tsung tonight.
Excellent.
I think this would be a great prayer:
“Dear Lord – please give me the strength to keep me from breaking my foot off in the ass of this transphobic cumfart. Please grant me the serenity needed to put up with her hateful garbage, so that I will not snap and beat Mary hard enough with a towel full of oranges until she requires a colostomy bag. Amen”.
The oranges are a nice touch. 🙂
Mary’s femurs were never found that day, the search continues😆
Snakes don’t have femurs.
That’s because Ruth took them all. And their humeri for good measure.
But just one tibia…to augment the lopsided limp in her slither.
Yeah but you can opt out of the floor meeting this one time right?
There has to be a special place in hell for women like you, Mary.
She does look like the type to talk in the theatre.
she’s easily worth ten pedophiles.
Dude she’s bad, but she aint child molestation bad!
It’s a damn shame when people don’t get a perfectly fine Firefly quote chain. 😀
(to be fair, Mary ain’t no Saffron — that’s an insult to Saffron!)
Yeah. She’s barely a Decihitler.
Here, someone let me help you with your lack of knowledge: http://www.amazon.com/Firefly-Complete-Nathan-Fillion/dp/B0000AQS0F/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1455718987&sr=8-1&keywords=firefly
It’s called the throne.
It’s either circle 7 subsection 1 (those who cause harm to other’s) or circle 8 (hypocrites, simonists, the morally corrupt, money lenders, and blackmailers).
It’s rather a special place in heaven, surrounded with only like-minded angels. Well, at least that’s what it looks like. Satan has a twisted sense of humor.
“Shh… That’s where the [#intolerant_sect]s are. They think they’re the only ones here.”
That’s why I don’t kiss ’em on the mouth
Well, at least Mary is having a good time today… dear Bob, run for the hills, Mary is the only one having a good time today.
Honestly, despite all the crap she is pulling it’s nice to see her genuinely happy. Everyone should have a hobby, i suppose.
…OK, maybe she should focus more on the drawing than the bullying.
Wait a minute. A focus on art. Pure irrational hatred of others outside of her group. Some form of sneaky political style acumen. A desire for power. I don’t want to be the guy who says it, but these traits are feeling eerily familiar.
I think we’re safe until she tries out the Study Abroad Program in Warsaw.
The real question is if she’s any good at the art she does. If she’s not, she must be stopped. If she is, she must be stopped, but with slightly less violence.
Mary has not written a book outlining her plans for power. At least, not yet.
I still can’t grasp the idea of a religious fanatic doing a majoring in arts….I mean…considering
Worse. She has an anime style.
Until art school beats it out of her.
Well yeah, but given the anime I’ve seen, I’m surprised she likes it and maintains her strict Christian attitudes.
Given what we’ve heard of what Joyce & Becky were allowed to watch, it’s hard to imagine much anime making the list – if it’s not flat out banned on grounds of furriners with weird non-Christian values.
Or is there Christian anime these days? Like Christian rock and their own weird little shows like the Hymnal thing.
I don’t know I just thought we were doing that thing where we reference old comics sometimes auuugh
Plus I feel like a _lot_ of anime can be made into a Jesus metaphor with enough mental gymnastics.
imagine Mary having to do nudes.
So, she’d be doing hentai?
It’s not that far fetched for her to be an art major. There was this super Christian girl in my department…. she couldn’t handle any negative critique of her work, which was always either repaints of classic Christianity pieces or paintings of flowers whose meanings she refused to research. More surprising is the anime, tbh, unless it was Mary’s guilty pleasure that her family doesn’t know about.
Mary’s happiness is a zero-sum game.
I think you are confusing “gloating” with happiness. Happiness comes from doing good. Gloating is a very selfish, thing to thinking about something with excessive, smug or malicious, satisfaction. I contend that schadenfreude is NOT happiness.
Sschadenfreude can make one happy for a while, since happiness is transitory in nature, contentment is far longer term.
I think we can assume that if Mary’s having fun, no one else is.
Sure, how could she have fun if others are having fun too?
Is that from the Cult of Bob? Do you smoke a pipe?
Y’know, Billie, it would be quicker and easier to transport Mary’s body than all your stuff.
Just sayin’.
Just 1 problem tho, iPhail’s Siri thing no longer tells you where you can hide a body. Meaning you have to search for places for yourself & without thousands doing the same search & providing cover, it’s a lot easier to track down who dis it…
What, you’re telling me there aren’t thousands of people looking for a place to hide Mary’s body?
I present this comments section as counter-evidence.
Perhaps, tho I doubt she’ll have as many people thinking about hiding her body in comic, & we don’t have a fully reliable way of breaking the 4th wall. Some have slipped in, but only getting as far as a mention or a background character, no deep enough piercings to actually affect the events, let alone bring vengeance to any characters…
I think the time Sue/Jen aside was Roz’s partner in gender studies was a pretty big break. http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/02-that-perfect-girl/teams/
Hm. If I really wanted to hide a body FOR SURE, and could fly a plane myself, and had a small one…
I’d fly out over northern BC and shove the body out of the plane. We’ve lost entire aircraft out there for decades, even, like, half a century. By the time anyone got near to her (if anyone ever did) the animals would have long since polished her off, leaving no traces of her.
Alternatively, hmm… Does the school have a medical program? Dumping bodies in the corpse tank for the medical students used to be pretty popular, according to 100-year-old crime novels.
Or you could kill her and make it look accidental, and just leave her body where it drops. Barium poisoning is hard to track down, because it looks like so many other things. You could have her accidentally OD on something; I’m sure it would be perfectly believable that she’d try something like that.
Or you could go the old-fashioned route, and just beat her head in with a brick and shove her out a window.
–I offer this purely as an intellectual exercise; personally, I would like to see her have her face rubbed in just what a horrible person she is, and then kicked out of school in disgrace.
Ooh, here’s something, how about she meets her perfect guy, they hook up, everything’s going great, she’s thinking wedding bells–and then he finds out what a thoroughly nasty person she is and dumps her like a hot potato.
Although I doubt even that would get through to her. Okay. How about she just gets herself knocked up out of wedlock?
I doubt that last one would be effective. It didn’t work in the Walkyverse.
Hmmm, an interesting list. Perhaps she could meet her perfect man, his name being Ryan, the apparent son of a pastor…
Jesus fucking Christ, dude.
BC might be closer, but I personally feel that if you want to ensure her body is never found, you should take her on a trip to Florida. I hear the Everglades are lovely no matter what time of year it is.
Still continuing the exercise, but if you want a hard-to-identify method, castor beans are better than barium. Barium is hard to acquire, where castor beans are less so.
See, castor beans contain ricin, a deadly poison for which there is no cure. It is slow-acting, meaning you can dissociate yourself from the death more easily. It starts off looking like the flu, progresses through great pain, and three or so days later, the victim is no more.
Now, honestly, I’d much rather Mary endure a different fate: the full and horrifying realization of the wrongness of her actions. There’s something about the darkness hating the light in that, for those who like irony.
♩♫
Mary Bradford disappeared that autumn,
she was on a power trip.
The last words she ever spoke
cost Ruthless her job.
She didn’t get another until 20*mumblemumble*,
the year she was discovered.
I stole this from a Hip album,
I keep stored up on my
MP3 server, I filked it up
I filked it up to go like this
It’s on my MP3 server
♪♬
(apologies to the Tragically Hip and Bill Barilko)
That happened twice in the other universe. Neither time stuck. (In fact, the “current” arc over at It’s Walky is dealing with the ramifications of Mary’s first one night stand.)
Mary, there is a fire that needs your attention, please allow me to help you into it.
AND it helps that she knows how to unclog the garbage chute.
God Billie I know things are rough but put some shoes on or take off the socks. You’re attracting static.
She will have an accodent and become a superhero. What? That’s what usually happens.
Or a Supervillain, maybe call herself Megavolt? It’s happened before…
But don’t you see? That’s the plan. Build up enough static electricity so Billie can go all Raiden on Mary’s ass.
MK or Metal Gear?
First one, then the other, then both at once.
Given static electricity, probably MK. I…kinda want to see cyborg ninja Billie now, though. I guess I’ll have to try sketching that later.
Yes.
Alright can Mary suffer some tragic death here. I mean someone always dies in these comics can she be the first.
I kinda still want her to become a better person.
Yeah, it’s weird as fuck. But I trust David Willis’s skill at characterization. He’s probably capable of taking an absolutely despicable character, and giving them a believable redemption arc.
Capable? Sure.
Willing? Ehhh…
Ruth needs to give Mary the Jesus Jackhammer.
Is that a wrestling finisher or a really kinky sex act? ‘ cause I could see it going either way.
Would you believe, Yes?
It’s actually a dildo. It’s Jesus on the cross with a dick as the bottom of the cross xD
Pair it with the Baby Jesus Butt Plug for a truly divine intervention.
Well, there’s also a Virgin Mary buttplug. More fitting, perhaps?
That’s why it’s such a great time to be alive. Endless options for varied sectual desires.
Mary wants to have a bad time.
insert badly made Sans meme here
Insert Christoph Waltz “Sorry I could not resist” meme here.
Get dunked on?
Mary definitely overplayed her hand.
If she really wanted to be both petty AND effective, she should have gone to the authorities after Ruth slapped her who knows how long ago.
Eh. She doesn’t want to be effective, she just wants power. If Ruth gets found out, it’ll have a slight benefit, but having her scared enough to give in to demands like that is worth a lot more to Mary. I mean, look at that smile. She only ever smiles with such unmitigated joy when she thinks she’s fucking over someone “beneath” her.
Yeah, Ruth needed to be fired long ago, but not for any of the stuff Mary’s going after her over. Meanwhile, Mary needs to be fired at.
Well, she should be fired for one of the things Mary is after her for, but not for the reason Mary has a problem with it.
Mary has been obnoxious and directly verbally offensive, but do you honestly think that’s so much worse than repeated physical assault as to call for actual lethal violence?
She’s been quite a bit more than “obnoxious.” You’re downplaying how nasty, bigoted, and downright malicious she is.
I said directly verbally offensive, maybe I should have said “verbally abusive” instead.
At what point would you say harassment is properly responded to with murder or assault though?
Frankly, I’m unable to take that question seriously given that we’re discussing a cartoon character. In real life, naturally it’s not ever. But many of us here have dealt with Marys in real life, and this is a safe and cathartic way to work through that for us.
One could respond with skepticism as to how healthy a community is that calls collectively for catharsis through simulated violence.
How might an evangelical Christian feel reading this comic and these threads given the arguably hyperbolic characterization of Mary and the readers’ calls to violence against her?
Presumably, they’d be able to exercise critical thinking skills and conclude we’re angry over Mary’s various and repeated attacks on others (rather than her religion), and unless they’re as bigoted and awful as she is, they’d despise her just as much as everyone else.
And if they choose not to exercise those critical thinking skills and instead take it personally, well, that’s on them.
Mary isn’t hyperbolic. I’ve known people that were just as bad as her, as I’m sure many others here have.
Also, while I can’t speak for anyone else, I want Mary dead because I want her out of the comic. I don’t want anyone from this comic to ever interact with her again, because if they do I might see it. Her being dead guarantees that, other, more apt or cathartic punishments would not.
“Oh no, one of the more powerful groups in america might, for three minutes, feel like there are people who despise them personally, WE MUST AMEND OUR LANGUAGE AND OUR DICTION!”
So, so, SO not feeling it. Maybe you can just fuck off instead if you’re feeling hurt.
Well, this evangelical Christian for one would want to see her a long way away from anyone she can harm, ideally with some gentle (or maybe not, I’d be interested in Shepherd Book’s opinion) lessons as she exits to help her understand the gravity of the harm she’s causing.
And this e.C. (TM?) fully understands anger against her and desires for retribution, because she and Carol are very concise expressions of the very worst features of evangelical culture. Why should we get upset about that, when the very real harm the likes of her are causing is our fault for not discouraging the sort of toxic behaviour and perverted demands for others to do her will that she’s displaying? Christianity keeps trying to claim victimhood for things we’re not remotely victims in, and that’s sickeningly wrong.
‘Course, her brand would ignore the likes of me: (a) raging egalitarian, (b) LGBT ally, (c) three mums, (d) long hair. *shakes head sadly*
I guess as Mainline Protestant, I’m not technically qualified to answer, but I not only understand that it’s evidence that the Church collective has hurt many, many people, but I appreciate the use of dark humor as a means of coping, and see more than a nugget of reality in characters like Mary.
But your mileage may vary.
Given how often fiction gives “blackmail” as a potential motive for murder, I’d argue that violence is potentially a valid response. Appropriate, no, but valid.
Ruth’s violence is usually comedic and, while I make an effort to keep it in mind, it honestly produces minimal emotional reaction from me because, like Mike’s fuckery, it tends to be one step away from a Bugs Bunny skit. Mary reminds me of a more subdued version of people I know. She actively works to emotionally hurt people who she disapproves of. I want her out of the comic so I don’t have to deal with her again, and like Ross, I don’t care how that ejection occurs.
I do, it needs to be at terminal velocity, at a hard surface.
Escape velocity, into the darkness of space.
I do kinda understand the idea of wishing fantasy violence on Mary as an outlet for shit that might be going on in real life. But do you really want her gone from the comic? She’s a great source of conflict, and all good stories need conflict.
i know a lot of people who habitually threaten with physical violence and…seem to not mean anything in particular for it?? which is bizarre and probably is worthy of investigation into the hows and whys but like. there it is.
They never specified what to fire at her. Squirt guns, paintballs, and spitwads are all well within the realm of possibility, in addition to being cheaper and quieter than bullets.
Plus anything gun-related on campus so soon after the Toe Incident would be cracked down on hard.
What ‘repeated’ physical assault?
I know Ruth slammed Billie against the wall and kissed her.
Also, think she threw someone over a couch at the last dorm meeting.
Like Willis says: Ruth’s bark is a lot worse than her bite.
Also, think she threw someone over a couch at the last dorm meeting.
That “someone” was Billie, so indeed repeated physical assault against Billie. (And at another time clotheslining her).
Also this was the first dorm meeting.
The last dorm meeting happened after the fire alarm was pulled.
Those all seem a lot worse than Ruth’s “bark”, which mostly consists of loud verbal threats, you know, that thing that’s not okay to do even if you have “jk lol” as your motivation.
She did slap Mary that one time when Mary asked her to do something about the dicks drawn on everyone’s door.
Which, um… seemed a bit overkill, IMO.
Being shot doesn’t automatically mean death, there are plenty of places you can get shot in that won’t kill you…
And some of those places, when you’re shot in them, will kill you.
Guns are dangerous. Never assume you CAN shoot to wound. Beyond bleeding out, infection, and the rest, guns are dangerous, people move when you aim a gun at them, and lots of other problems propogated by hollywood that makes guns more deadly than people think. And that’s not even mentioning “Firing at someone who has something behind them” thing.
Daniel here. Sorry about that, Screwball doesn’t tend to think about that kinda stuff. He likes how they sound, their power, doesn’t really respect them, just thinks of them as big noisy tools. Won’t go into more details (even tho he has), I’ll just go throw some magnets at him for a while, see if I can straighten him out a bit…
Mary doesn’t quite get it. Ruth broke some campus rules, but blackmail/extortion is an actual crime. And if your victim is self-destructive enough, or your demands outweigh the blackmail material, your position is suddenly much much weaker.
You should probably be made aware that providing alcohol to minor and physical assault are actual crimes too and not just actions proscribed by campus policy.
Mary’s original blackmail rant didn’t mention either of those.
In addition, it ought to be noted that Ruth is in the process of destroying the evidence Mary would need to carry out her blackmail. So, it’s possible to throw the book vis a vis the law at Mary for attempted blackmail (with ‘faulty’ information, but that doesn’t matter in the eyes of the law, just the attempt), and Ruth would never see consequences.
So basically, everyone goes to prison.
This isn’t being petty. It’s classic blackmail tactics – part of what you get your victim to do is generate more blackmail fodder (in this case, leading a prayer at the mandatory floor meeting).
No, I don’t think Mary understands or believes that it’s something for which Ruth could get in trouble… because anyone on the floor could complain, and then Mary would no longer have an easily-blackmailed RA.
Maybe Mary’s just bad at this whole villain thing.
See, but if Ruth bowed to that, then everyone else would know that something is very, very wrong, and they probably would be looking to Mary as the culprit, because who else is that aggressively Christian? (Especially with Joyce not around at the moment.)
At least, I just hope that everyone can band together and toss Mary out a window. Please.
I wonder if there are any Muslims, Hindu or Buddhists at this dorm.
Asma in all likelihood. Probably others, but I don’t recall anything being outright stated.
Add in Catholics after that comment Mary made about the saints. Also, we know for a fact there is at least one Mormon who would be rightfully pissed if she heard Mary’s last comment.
Would Agatha be the type to get enraged by this?
Probably not. Then again, Mary has probably pissed her and everyone else in the dorm off to no end, and it could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.
Or heck, anyone who just objects to public prayer. Really hoping for Sal, she’s definitely the type to call mary out in front of everyone.
That would be glorious. And it would both fit in with Sal basically being Batman and Ruth’s whole “I’m going to ignore whatever anyone wants to do to you” statement. And the fact that she an Carla are pretty much unspoken friends.
My money’s more on Roz!
She has a tendency to loudly speak out against fundie bullshit.
Also she will not accept authority figures.
So even blackmailed Ruth won’t stop be able to stop her!
Note: Roz is Mary’s roommate.
I can see Mary definitely being one of those people that staunchly refuses to accept/acknowledge that there are people of other (or no) religions around her. Because Christianity is like the “default setting” in America so clearly anyone would be fine with it being shoved down their throats.
Which is not what the Founders planned. They were most of them ‘Dieist’, not sure of spelling here – on the same order as Angnostics. They were not Christians and made very sure to put it in writing…a clear separation of church and state. With the church to have no say in the government of the USA.
‘In God we Trust’ wasn’t on our early coinage. Nor was “One nation under God”, in our pledge until it was added in 1957.
The USA was original founded as an open country welcoming all religions and recognizing none as ascendant over any other.
Mm, no. I mean, it’s not supposed to take a role in GOVERNANCE, and we actually are legally obligated not to be a Christian nation (Putting aside the first amendment, we’ve signed treaties stating this outright, and treaties trump the Constitution), but the bulk of the Founders were completely okay with presiding over a nation of Christians, and some did feel that Muslims should have no place in the nation. And I’m pretty sure a bulk of the founders were Christian, but a strong minority (and many of the most prominent) were indeed deist.
Also, they only agreed on the various Christian churches having no say after the complete disaster that was the Articles of Confederation (wherein individual states *DID* have a state religion with strong powers delegated to it, which was about as disasteriffic as you expect). And even then, State religions persisted for some time (Some are STILL on the books)
This all notwithstanding that the primary reason that Christianity wasn’t enshrined as the state religion was because, well, y’all would have killed each other over it. It wouldn’t have been ‘Christian’, it would be some smaller sect of it.
No true Christian would live in [state] anyway.
Re. Treaties… 1. No, they don’t trump the constitution. 2. Are there any currently in effect? The Treaty of Tripoli (1797) is the only one I can think of, and it’s with a state that no longer exists, and it was broken in 1801.
Just a matter of trivia – I certainly don’t think the US is or should be a “christian nation”, whatever even that means. But the treaty point is more relevant to the intent of the founders than being anything actually binding.
It’s actually “Deist”, but “Dieist” amuses me.
Is it the worship of a small numbered cube or a religion based on telling people to Die.
Diests are a schismatic sect of Tool-worshippers.
“Lord, stamp me into your Perfect Form!”
“all hail the D100, the lord of all die!” “your crystal form will hold me forever!” “and his son D Twenty! who rolled for your sins!”
And you thought your local D&D group got upset over rolling a 1…
I may stop reading for a month or so. Love the comic, but damn, but Mary is pissing me off. She is not good for me at this point.
Take care of yourself. *hugs*
I don’t blame you.
Yeah Mary’s making my blood boil too. But I’ll stay the course and keep it down.
You may not have to. This very strip shows that Ruth is on the verge of being free to strike her down.
Yeeeeesssss, soon, SOON, THE SMITING SHALL COMMENCE!! AT LEAST 2 FEMURS SHALL BE REMOVED IN DUE TIME…
If Ruth strikes her down, she will become more powerful than we can possibly imagine.
Or want to imagine, anyway.
Just remember, there is no way Willis is letting her get away with this. The only thing I’m holding on with is knowing there’s a megaton level Schadenfreude coming.
Still not as angering as “RWBY” where they ended the season by killing or crippling half the main characters. My reaction was “Even Willis wouldn’t do this to us”.
It was obviously gonna happen, though. We’ve been predicting it for ages.
Willis’ writing can still blindside us.
They did do a Willis style – do horrible things to the fan favorite characters for maximum shock value. And both like to set you up by long periods of mild action and light humor before they kick you in the feels.
RWBY?
Ruth Wins, Billie Yelps?
Rice Wheaties, Bagged Yearly?
Red, White, and Blue Yiffing?
Random Writing Blargl Yondmnors?
*starts playing The Rains of Castemere*
Oh, Mary, this is gonna come back and bite you SO hard!
I am a very patient person. Mary makes my eye twitch.
It could be because this is literally mustache-twirling tier characterization going on here.
Well, no. It’s not literally mustache twirling unless she has a mustache to twirl.
hence the added qualifier “tier”, thanks.
I wish. She’s way too many people I grew up with. Right down to the ranting about the evils of “papists” and “mormons”.
Maybe I just don’t get psychologically trigger the way a considerable segment of the community here does, but I was specifically noting Mary language and physical actions in the fifth panel.
That sort of behavior breaks suspension of disbelief for me in what is (usually) a not too slapstick narrative.
My student council president did that to a black student once… That poor kid was jewish as well, so I can only imagine just how hellish things were for him on the regular, cause looking back, I don’t think that was the first time that things like that happened.
And it’s not so much psychologically trigger as it is I’ve known too many people just as petty and mindlessly cruel for Jesus as Mary for me to view her actions as cartoonish. Which probably says more about my life experiences than anything else.
you actually knew someone that patted a black student’s face and called him a monkey or similar?
really?
Knew of. Saw that incident in particular. Knew it was some form of fucked up at the time, but didn’t realize the full scope of the history being evoked until later.
Note, this was a community where friend’s families calmly explained that black people were the color they were because they were stained with sin much like ink on a white cloth.
There was also an incident where a football player slammed a queer kid’s head into a stone pillar hard enough that the pillar had a red stain on it for a good year+ and was let off because the queer kid had “clearly instigated” because of “his inappropriate school behavior” (i.e. being out).
And another with our vice principal doing thong checks at a high school dance to ensure that the students weren’t getting down with Satan, by flipping up every girl’s skirt at the entrance to the dance in front of everyone.
So yeah… Mary’s more “familiar” than anything else.
UUGGGGGHHHHHHHHH
Holy shit, and now I want to punch people. WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH SOME PEOPLE?!!?
This comic’s comment field never stops providing the following:
“This is too cartoonish to be believable.”
“Hey, let me tell you when these similar (except even worse) things happened in my life to either me or people I knew.”
It would be rather comical if it hadn’t been for the fact that it’s never about a happy incident.
Yeah, there are people everywhere who really are that incredibly awful. They hide in plain sight until they get power, and then they don’t hide anymore.
In our world of being mostly in control of our sources and acquaintances and what information we receive, it’s easy to imagine that we could never meet a true jackass, until we do, and then it can be pretty jaw-dropping and/or upsetting.
I don’t want others to have to meet terrible people, and yet, sometimes they just did! Also, I have a very strong need to see the best in everyone and to believe that everyone’s basically pretty good. Because of those wishes, I am likely to make the mistake of explaining away behaviours that actually shouldn’t be explained away. This can come off as sacrificing belief in somebody’s actual lived experience on the altar of belief in others as basically goodhearted, which is not cool. Whenever I start a thought process of “well maybe they didn’t mean to be that horrible…” I have to check myself before I wreck myself on Occam’s Big Paisley Tie.
http://www.shakesville.com/2013/08/occams-big-paisley-tie.html
…And then we remember that the jackasses are consistently empowered by a messed-up society, and it becomes even more gross: we live in a country in which xyz can happen, and the perpetrator can get away with it (and people you tell about it will still doubt you). Messy stuff!
This is all absolutely horrifying but that Vice Principal anecdote literally turned my stomach into knots. How. How. HOW do people get away with that level of foulness. HOW do people not see it for what it is (public molestation of multiple victims) and get him put in fucking jail for it. HOW.
ChrisHerself-
Oh the rest of that particular story is even more infuriating. That one was bad enough to actually get a good backlash going that cost her her job. But the district really liked the “moral intention” of said vice principal and so as she was being “let go” she was immediately hired for a much higher paying job in the district.
Cerberus –
[Screaming intensifies]
Also, her, wow. I guess I’ve read too many stories about male faculty pulling this kind of shit and assumed. Infuriating is an apt description.
I’ve seen a black kid called “monkey boy” for the duration of the school year, while the school ignored it. I’ve seen a black coworker at a history museum referred to with racist terms and called “boy” because “historical authenticity,” too.
Unfortunately, I was too ignorant at the time to realize how screwed up what I was seeing.
To be fair to Mary, though I’m not sure why I want to, calling Ruth monkey here lacks the horrific racial implications of those examples.
It’s “just” a means of emphasizing her control – “you’re my trained monkey and you’ll do as you’re told”.
Sometimes, you just have to let historicity hang, so that people can still have a good time. It’s a thing.
Museums are special, though, as they do have a responsibility not to whitewash the past. Ideally, a museum should present historical realities in a sensible manner, one that is sensitive to their workers and their modern audience, for fullest understanding. Sounds like that’s where this exhibit really screwed up. They didn’t think about racism carefully, or overtly put it into a historical context, and they didn’t get input from your coworkers, they just spewed hatred all up in y’all’s space without so much as a safeword. Gross.
Oh, totally. Just was responding to someone above who was asking if ppl actually use that in a racist sense.
Can’t see who because tiny phone screen is tiny.
Also: This dude had to 1, prove that black people lived there in that time and 2, threaten to sue for racial discrimination to get the job despite being by far the best-qualified student intern applicant. And ppl were PISSED when he was hired over a white kid. Goal was to harass him into quitting. Accuracy was just the convenient excuse.
But yeah. Bad exhibit design and worse employee discipline (management at least knew why it was bad for the harassers to do that and made some effort to stop it when they saw it in person. But they wouldn’t do anything about what they didn’t see).
Ah, so they -did- think about racism, in the sense that they were like ‘yes, racism is a good idea, let’s do that’. -.-
Lol.
I’m not sure how it will happen, but something tells me that Mary is going to somehow get that smug grin wiped off her face at the floor meeting.
You know it! …At least, I hope so.
Becky’s gone for the weekend and they’ve cleared out any tells of their co-habitation. And as the code-words imply, perhaps also tightening things up?
No Ruth, you don’t stab the mother of the person you want to get rid of. You make sure her mother never meets her father.
Eliminating the mother means the person can never happen.
realistically any change to the mothers past should mean the same thing
So it is enough if Mary’s mother has PTSD from that time some crazy redhead threatened her with a knife?
“Mary, my daughter, I must impart one lesson onto you: Fear the redheads, for they are a duplicitous and morally bankrupt pack of jackals.”
Oh. Oh! Oh dear.
So you’re saying it didn’t work.
as long as its not a self fulfilling loop
Time travel 101:
“Person can never happen means no reason for time travel exists, so elementary time paradoxon!”
What you do is implant a remotely controlled bomb (into Mary) that you then can activate in present time.
Or, if you want to be less brutal, something that causes digestive disorders and leads to fart jokes! Maybe even Mary farting in church!
Allow me to counter your paradox with multiverse theory. By the act of heading back in time, Ruth creates a timeline, separate from her own, where Mary does not exist. However, her timeline’s Mary will still exist, so only alternate Ruth shall be without Maryness in her life.
But she who farts in church, sits in her own pew!
“If they don’t kiss at the Enchantment Under the Sea dance, they’ll never fall in love and Mary will never be born!”
*Ruth burns down entire high school*
So when does an angry St. George come and punch Mary in the face?
Why stop at St. George? Let’s add in James, Denis, Louis, Joan, and Sebastion.
They all line up with various weapons like with that hysterical woman from ‘Airplane!’. St. Joan of Arc’s got her sword, St. Francis of Asissi is cocking a pistol…
Ignatius of Loyola comes out full armor and regalia from his time in the Spanish army, St. Wencelaus comes out armed to the teeth like any good dark ages warlord King, and then St. Martin of Tours comes out in full late legionary attire.
St. Francis comes by and just looks confused for a bit.
Well, to fair he was a soldier/minor knight before becoming the medieval world’s equivalent of a hippy.
The level of fighting experience he had as a crusader does not leave me feeling that looking confused would be inappropriate. Maybe that’s how he got taken prisoner.
Well he went to the Sultan with the intent of ending the whole thing by converting said Sultan to Christianity. And at first the Sultan and all his advisors thought he was coming to negotiate a truce. Still, Francis was many things. Overly intelligent was probably not one of them. Either that or he just had no sense of self-preservation.
Ugh. Mary’s just making me sick at this point…well, sicker than she was before. It’s really too bad no one else saw that, because the whole “monkey” and “pat pat” bit was over the line again, if Ruth weren’t having to put up with it.
Oh, and for the record, I have “accidentally” clotheslined people for lesser offenses before. If you make it a habit to crash around once in a while, no one can prove it wasn’t accidental when you crash into a dickwad with your arms outstretched and lay their fucking ass out on the floor.
Just saying, Ruth has options if she can make the right connections. There has to be SOMEONE besides Carla who would be willing to run down the hall unchecked.
Probably done that in your imagination, at least. Why do you think a measly little act of physical aggression is an appropriate response? Yeah, I know, o could pick on a number of commenters with that remark. There’s such a culture of celebrating immaturity and meaningless, gloating responses down here.
People are naturally violent and we like it when people give use an excuse to commit violence. Well that and Internet tough guys.
Wanting to punch Mary is fine because Mary’s a cartoon character.
Just, you know, it’d be really nice if we got less folks wishing Ryan onto her.
Yeah, fuck those guys, at least Willis deletes them pretty fast.
Lol to all of the good-natured parts of the above and eek to the Ryan remarks.
Ruth deserves everything shes getting here but its Mary giving it to her…so conflicted
And the trouble is, this isn’t hurting just Ruth. Carla’s been hurt, too, and Becky is at risk. If it was “Ruth you’ve screwed up and those consequences come back around to you,” that’s one thing, but Mary does not limit herself to one deserving target. Mary is a hurricane of awful.
The higher the highs, the lower the lows, Mary. Watch out.
Mary’s all about the hubris. Pride coming before a fall, and all that. It’s going to be reeeeally satisfying when it happens, so of course Willis is going to make us suffer waiting for it.
I get the feeling that if Ruth doesn’t remove Mary’s femurs, the comments section is gonna end up doing it.
Because God fucking damn, Mary. You are just One of The Worst.
I keep saying, the solution to Mary is defenestration.
Come on, now, that’s not an answer. Those poor windows don’t deserve to have something this nasty thrown through them.
They can be opened first. Glass panes are expensive, after all, as is their installation.
They’re on the second floor, right? That fall could kill Mary if she landed badly, but tossimg her out and having her live would be problematic. Even if she didn’t, it would be a bit of a mess for custodial, and worse, investigators might clue in to the nature of her desth.
The fact that she probably has a family would also be problematic. Remember guys even evil has loved ones.
But do they love her? I get the feeling she’s not the type to hold back on being awful just because it’s her family. Even if they’re from the same background, she’s probably pulled this shit on the other members of her church, and nobody wants to be on the receiving end of this.
Blackmail doesn’t end with a reconciliation like in a sitcom. It destroys relationships. If someone blackmailed me and later got killed by an angry mob, my first reaction would be more along the lines of “I guess she finally pissed off somebody with the chutzpah to take care of her. Good for them” than “oh no, I will mourn her loss forever!”
But are they as terrible as she is?
In a tumblr ask Willis mentioned that he thought Mary’s parents were probably fine, and she just learned all the wrong lessons.
Only if the family has some reason to believe their daughter falling from a window wasn’t an accident.
It’s a bad idea anyway, but an interesting hypothetical.
true; best-case scenario they’d still probably sue the university over lax safety latches on the windows, and that poor janitor . . .
I guess I more enjoy the mental image of her being tossed out like something out of Looney Tunes, landing SPLAT on the ground, then peeling herself off and stomping off.
Billie needs to tell Ruth that Becky’s not there right now. Having spent most of the day tidying (read: getting rid of evidence) that’s the only loose end she had. And conveniently, it took care of itself for the entire weekend.
Does anyone know how to contact Harlan Ellison? I need him to reprise his role as AM from I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream.
That story haunted me for years after reading it.
There are times when I see a hated character and wonder if there is a chance for redemption. I thought “hey maybe Mary will see the error of her ways” and maybe she will but for now I’m waiting for Ruth to teach her the meaning of defenestration.
Without googling it, if I recall correctly, defenestration is shitting through a window… right?
It’s getting tossed out a window.
No, being bodily hurled through a window.
The Defenestrations of Prague (yes, there were several) are some of my favorite historical events ever.
Mostly because when thinking about them my brain gets to run in circles passing the word “defenestration” about six times per cycle.
I just love that “throwing someone out of a window” was common enough that someone invented a word for it.
It’s getting tossed out of a window.
So in the case of Mary being defenestrated, yes, PM, that’s exactly what it is.
I’ll buy that for a dollar.
Go fuck yourself, Mary.
This. All of this.
Mary doesn’t believe in fucking oneself. Self-pleasure is vulgar. (Oh my God I hate Mary.)
I don’t think Butts means for it to be pleasurable.
Trying to think of something clever to post but the sound of a mouse chewing on something in the kitchen is distracting me.
Woah woah. You do not disrespect the saints like that Mary. A decent number of them were legitimate martyrs, and you happen to be named after a couple.
Also, to clarify, this is in no way saying that I support Mary’s prayer idea. I just got a little hasty with my comment because that statement of her’s struck a nerve close to home.
You’re related to one of the Saints?!
(Or you could be a Mormon, I guess.)
Ruth is about to cast Polymorph: Blood Slime on Mary, I think.
Okay, now I’m just curious if Willis’ solution to Joyce and Becky being away is going to be alternating every other day.
I mean, it means we get a daily cliffhanger, and that market’s been running dry ever since kickstarter.
Well he once interrupted the Billie/Ruth story for two days and berated Danny for it!
Mary was already doomed. Now she’s just adding pain points.
I think if push comes to shove, though, the floor will side with Ruth over her.
lol oh you meant the people on the floor, I was like… wait, why would the actual floor side with Ruth? Would the floor open up and swallow Mary? xD (though to be honest, that would be a+++ behavior for some sentient brick and carpet…. )
I clearly need sleep.
Let’s be real, if ever it’s going to happen in this comic, it’ll be this storyline. The school itself rises up to rid itself of a threat. It’s like Hogwarts!
I could absolutely believe the spirit of a building would take offense at someone willfully spraying glue on the carpet. If only this weren’t the “no magic” setting,
Would the floor actually side with Ruth? What’s the motive for them to do that? Carla would, Billie would, maybe Dorothy would (simply because she’d look into a situation more deeply.) but wouldn’t the rest of them simply use the opportunity to get rid of Ruth, before reporting Mary?
Basically this entire situation worlds like a game of chess
You are a student at Indiana University. Your R.A is Ruth, who has bullied and threatened you (You know nothing about her despression)
Another girl you hate is named Mary, she has been known to say offensive things to your friends.
You hear they are fighting and realize you have to choose a side. At first you want to side with Ruth, simply because of how awful you’ve heard Mary is.
But then you realize something…once Ruth is gone, Mary is easily dealt with.
Remember you are not a commenter, you are a student.
The only real power Mary has is over Ruth, she has nothing on any of the other students. Nor is Ruth just such a good R.A that her charges would ever betray her. Lets face it, they both have nothing.
1. Get rid of Ruth
2. Report Mary, who with Ruth gone has lost all power
3.???
4.Profit!
I am very cynical
that would be selfish though, i dont think the background characters are important enough to have selfish desires
“once Ruth is gone, Mary is easily dealt with.”
I dispute this given. I dispute it very strongly. Whoever comes after Ruth could be even worse at dealing with Mary, or worse, side with her.
They have proof that Ruth is a terrible RA now. Might as well gamble on the next one being better.
They’d probably refrain from physically tossing their charges.
Hello, Im your new R.A…Jack Chick
Carla: FUCK!
Don’t be silly, Jack Chick could never be the RA.
You have to be a sophomore to apply for that job.
With Ruth gone, Mary is still dangerous. I believe that she has collected dirt on everybody.
(Looks at Willis’s Twitter Feed)
Roomies!: “Maybe Mary meant what she said.”
That’s an awkward juxtaposition.
That may be for Roomies Mary, not DoA Mary.
Mary has a situation going there where she has apologized to Billie and ‘may have meant what she said’.
I know it’s for Roomies Mary. I was just commenting that it was awkward that the Roomies rerun ran that particular Mary strip at the same time DoA is running this one.
This is a secular college. Is it even legal to do that?
Nah, that’s why blackmail is so useful.
No. More because it’s a public university than because it’s not a religious school, though idk what the reaction would be if an RA at a private secular school did something like that.
Ugh. This just gives me all kinds of rage and anger. Yeah she has the upper hand and is using her power to abuse the situation but she can’t assume that everyone is christian and should take part in her religious views. She is such a narrow minded individual and I can’t wait for her comeuppance.
Oh, it’s even more angering, because the fact that not everyone is her exact flavor of Christian is why she wants to have a prayer in the first place. As a passive-aggressive way of pissing all over those who are not Christians as well as those who are not the “right” type of Christians in her eyes.
The shittiness is absolutely intentional and makes an already awful action somehow even worse.
She’s not assuming everyone is. That’s half of why she wants to impose it on them.
No more Becky, beer or giant bras around?
Tonight’s prayer meeting will end in bloodshed.
We can only hope ^^
The chapter title “That Perfect Girl”, surely it’s not Mary.
She is in her mind! Which makes the title kinda ominous.
Mary needs to absorb Carla and Ruth so that she can become Perfect Mary.
Wait, so she’s currently Imperfect Mary? That explains so much. Also, I’m now imagining Mary as voiced by Taka. Thank you for that.
Sadly, Mary actually believes she is “That Perfect Girl”.
She’s perfect-er than thou.
Well, Mary considers herself the perfect girl. If she goes away, yeah, it’s about her.
(Also, Willis loves making his titles apply to multiple storylines at once. I’ve lost track how many “Perfect Girl”s it could apply to at this point.)
Everyone’s “that perfect girl”. Even Galasso… especially Galasso.
Even Mike? Joe?
Joeena?
PEONS, BOW FOR GALASSO’S PERFECT PIZZA!!!!
GALASSO SHALL MASTER THE ART OF THIS ‘GIRL’ YOU SPEAK OF! NO DISCIPLINE IS BEYOND GALASSO! NO GENDER BEYOND HIS REACH!
The perfect girl is gone…
Joyce
Amazi-girl
Carla
Mary
Billie/Ruth (they just lost each other)
Becky
Dina (the “perfect”, dinosaur-analysing mind has been replaced with a lovesick doofus)
Walky (yes, yes, not a girl, please don’t tell me your shoe count)
Dorothy (the “gone” part is just in Walky’s fears for now)
GALASSO IS PEFECT BUT NOT GONE
Careful, Mary. Saint Corbinian might just ride in on his bear and maul you.
Really, it’s never a good idea to annoy militant demigods.
And she’s Christian! That’s close enough to a Catholic for them to have jurisdiction.
Hell, most Protestant churches love St. Augustine and the early church fathers. I’d say that gives the saints plenty of jurisdiction room.
This aspect of the storyline has just not held up for me. I get that Ruthless technically hasn’t followed all the rules of her position, but at the same time if she just came out I seriously doubt anyone in the administration at the college would do much to her. Just take away Mary’s supposed power.
I’m not entirely sure just what Ruthless has done wrong barring Billy living in her room which is a huge administrative nono.
I mean, different schools and all, but where I went, I don’t think there was any rule that an RA’s gf/bf couldn’t live in their wing. And nobody really cared if their RA was a lesbian.
Abusing the students under her care, sleeping with Billie and drinking on school grounds.
If it was just a matter of her sleeping with Billie, then, unless I’m mistaken, she’d only be fired. She’s not allowed to have relationships with anyone in her dorm.
(also Ruth is bi)
Except Mary isn’t black mailing her with any of the other stuff. Just her sleeping with Billy.
To be clear, I’m not saying that’s okay. Ruth is in a position of some power over Billy and other people Billy regularly falls into contact with. But pretty much everyone in my dorm was aware of multiple RA’s having relationships with people on their floor.
Rules or not. The school only gave a crap if it became a problem. Which while I was there it never did.
She’s not vulnerable because she’s bi, she’s vulnerable because she’s banging a student under her power and had someone living on her floor off the books. Those are both against the rules, for good reason, and yeah she’s fired if Mary can prove that’s happening.
Both Ruth and Mary have loaded guns on each other.
Ruth for the student living with her, and Becky living illegally on the floor.
Mary knows this, so does most of the floor I think and they don’t care.
Mary is a bigot, and harassing Carla, with transgender slander. And she’s just managed to insult most the religions living in the dorm. She also physically tried to hurt Carla with that glue spreading trick.
Both of them could be kicked out for their behavior if the school plays rough. Suspended at least.
Everyone (or almost everyone) but Ruth knew about Becky. No one except Mary knows about Billie & Ruth as we saw with Sal a couple strips back.
Mary doesn’t actually have evidence, especially now that Billie’s moving out, and the rest of the floor won’t believe it. Becky living there for a week is against the rules, but not something Ruth will get in serious trouble for unless she was actually condoning it – which she wasn’t, since everyone was hiding it from her.
Blackmail is also a crime and probably a more serious one than any of the others.
Now, if Ruth’s drinking came out, then she could be in more trouble. Or the violence she’s used or the sexual assault on Billie. But that hasn’t come up, because Mary doesn’t think about it that way. She’s focused on the perverts and the defiling.
Yeah, Ruth is in a good position if she can clean out Billie’s presence from her room as well as the signs of underaged drinking. Cause, very few on the floor even believes that they would get together much less that they are together and we’ve seen a network of support for Becky.
So, I think Mary will lose this round, but Billie and Ruth will have another problem if they try and restart things afterwards as once Mary loses, I’m sure she’ll be hard at work at figuring another way to “have her revenge”.
How long has Becky actually been there? Joyce can have a guest stay overnight, but only for four nights.
Just over a week. If my calculations are right, she arrived on Thursday, fought with Toedad on Monday, then we skipped to Friday.
Technically, she moved into Sal/Billie’s room somewhere in there, so she’s been two different people’s guests, if that matters.
They’re breaking the rules, but I really can’t see that as anything they’ll get in serious trouble for, much less throw the book at Ruth – unless they’re looking for an excuse.
I know where you can get a discount on an high end wood chipper and an alibi.
Love a one-stop shop
Please. These are college students. Even if they entire floor took a collection they couldn’t afford a wood chipper even with a discount.
Besides, all Ruth needs is a brick and an alibi.
I have a feeling Billie might be willing to cover the difference.
Ruth, make a sermon about donkey semen, it’s in the Bible after all.
you know what would be a good start to a group meeting? Murder. It really brings people together.
Just so long as you make sure everyone is equally incriminated.
how about if it’s done Orient Express style? One stab for each person in the corridor and a red herring?
Sometimes it breaks them apart. From their femurs.
Do people like this really exist? I’ve met some assholes, but Mary seems like an actual demon from hell that I can’t imagine meeting.
They exist for a while. They usually don’t make it to old age. Or middle age, for that matter.
Yup. Usually they thrive in similarly minded communities. If they are ever in slightly not similarly minded communities, they tend to overcompensate with a massive martyr complex and a faux victimhood shitck and a tendency to be even more insufferable in order to strike back at “heathenism” and “godlessness”.
I grew up with more than my fair share of Mary’s. Of all ages. Young holy warriors, bitter angry adults glaring at the secular world and its “sin”, and eventually curtain-twitching paranoids calling the cops anytime a kid plays in the street or they suspect a neighbor is smoking pot or having sex.
They’re the type of petty-minded bigot that would throw away their health and safety just to see a marginalized kid suffer. They can’t wait for the Rapture so they can get a front row seat to watch the burning of the heathens. They’re the ones who think Trump is “bringing America back”.
They are about 27% of American society and they are absolutely 100% terrifying.
Growing up around Deep South, fairly Fundie Christians, I’d say Mary’s a bit too mustache-twirly.
But I mean, it’s a cartoon, so…
Sadly, despite what you might wish, Fred Phelps was not a myth.
Why does everything suddenly smell like rage?
Sorry
Mary played her hand too soon – Billie is moving out, no proof she was there to begin with, and Becky’s not there right now.
She’s got nothing.
This has always been the flaw in Mary’s plan. Nobody else on this floor can stand her, Ruth’s word is infinitely more powerful than hers.
I thought the flaw in the plan was that when Billie joins the meeting, she might kick Marys ass.
Look, plans can have multiple flaws. Mary’s not the best at this.
Agreed. Mary isn’t much of a strategist.
Yeah but she probably doesn’t know that or is too excited about her impending victory to care.
It’s easy to forget that Mary is an 18-year-old girl. She lacks maturity and experience; combined with a usual teen’s impatience, she’s pushing too hard and too fast and it’s going to blow up in her face.
*evil laughter*
This won’t end well for her…
See, Mary can be the comic relief.
( I am totally expecting some commenter to spoil this moment with:
“All My real friends on 4chan always start our meetings with a group christian Prayer, and If you say anything bad against Mary you are bullying us”
or worse
“NO No No Willis. How can you get this soo wrong. And its so wrong. A real christian never jokes about prayer. I thought you understood Jeebus and now yoi uhave failed me forever and evah”
Even if they show up, I doubt their comments would stay up long. Willis’ vigil is long and his purges are thorough.
Most folks that go on 4chan don’t choose to announce it, either; the place has developed a rather nasty reputation we don’t generally care to be associated with.
I know, right?
I must confess what you took to be pure creativity on my part, was only very slight parody. What you thought was unlikely, was the part that was real. That was an actual meltdown 2 or 3 days ago.
Only if they were being ironic about it.
You don’t think somewhere with a reputation like 4chan’s would take their religion seriously enough to be offended by criticism toward it?
In my experience, 4channer types are extremely easy to offend. Just say straight white males aren’t the center of the universe and they come running to cry at you.
To be honest, the amount of gay porn I’ve seen demanded on /b/ makes me think “straight” isn’t a qualifier anymore.
Though demographic info is hard to gather, you understand. Ask for a gender and half of them will tell you they’re an attack helicopter.
everyone on 4chan is a genderfluid hypersexual demiboy im pretty sure
… that last sentence made me laugh so hard I love you so much right now
I am TOTES offended… the way you made me laugh outloud
( without my express permission and consent ; in triplicate too. )
I say this as a white male too. Wicked Offensive.
Who gave you permission to be this funny? Do you have a valid white males comedy license?
Carry On
You mean someone might be a bigot, and oversensitive, and yet a hypocrite —
( looks up at Comic )
and still think of themselves as funny –when only punching down ?
( looks up at comic )
yet attracted to 4chan for punching down and being ‘edgey’ ?
Yes, i do think that.
Oh no, those people exist. It’s just more likely someone from /b/ would visit here to piss people off with an insincere defense of something they couldn’t care less about.
If you are right, then i was fooled. Completely.
meltdown seemed sincere to me.
If there’s one thing they know how to do, it’s bait. Masterfully.
Master bait, if you will.
It’s a dying art.
Whatta buncha wankers, right?
Ah. Yes. Practiced faux-apathy. Because caring for things is for (sexist slur about gonads).
It’s amazing that edgelords still have us all convinced that they are genuinely as apathetic as they claim (jus’ doin’ it for the lulz rather than out of genuine BS that they retroactively try to blame on the lulz) when they so frequently meltdown at literally every challenge to privilege.
Also, is bigotry done “ironically” for the lulz really indistinguishable in a meaningful way from intentional or unintentional bigotry? Like, if Mary had tried to pretend her words to Carla had been a “joke”, would it have really mattered one whit?
I think it’s a mixed bag of actual bigots, and people who hold rather Darwinian social views, i.e. if one can’t laugh it off, they deserve to be laughed at.
As for Mary… did she even know Carla was trans? I didn’t until I read the comments, and still sorta suspect it’ll turn out she doesn’t and meant the comment as “you’re being rowdy like a boy”.
We don’t know how she knew, but that would be way too much of a coincidence for fiction. Horribly bad writing, completely clashing with the whole theme of the story arc. Accidentally stumbling onto an attack designed to skewer a transwoman.
Willis is far better than that.
Given Mary’s characterization in previous series, my guess is Mary is neither as sheltered nor as innocent as Joyce, and therefore was able to pick up on Carla being trans. I mean, being fair, Carla isn’t exactly closeted. She’s not as in-your-face about being trans as Becky is about being a lesbian, but that doesn’t mean she goes out of her way to hide it – she’s fairly open about being trans. From what I read of Willis’s writing of it, it’s basically fairly well-known, and Joyce only didn’t pick up on it because she is so sheltered and ignorant that she doesn’t have the background to pick up what the little cues mean – think Danny not picking up that Ethan was gay despite how much Amber talked about him. Danny’s not exactly socially oblivious, but he didn’t have the life experience to be able to recognize a gay guy who’s not a walking stereotype.
Mary, across all Willis-verse, has always been written as more worldly and experienced than Joyce, as well as a bit of a hypocrite (to put it mildly). Mary probably does have the experience to put together all the hints that have been dropped and come to the right conclusion.
I dunno, that doesn’t seem at all a stretch. In real life maybe, but fiction often runs off of coincidence.
Ruth: “You insulted Carla for being trans!”
Mary: “… Carla is trans?”
*Drama Intensifies*
Oh, that Mary, up to her wacky hijinks again. What-eeever will she do next? *laugh track*
What could she do next? Spontaneous human combustion?
Well, she is a vampire according to the alt text many strips ago.
She makes Dracula seem like a nice person, compared to her.
To be fair to Dracula, he really just wanted to move to England and make a couple people more or less his adopted family so he could have people to chill out with. And he was apparently a good boss to his non-insane human henchmen back home in Romania.
Slip on an errant roller skate, crash through the window, fall n stories into a recycling dumpster full of glass votive candles, each one of them emblazoned with the Blessed Virgin Mary, Our Lady of Sorrows.
[sad trombone sound, fade to credits]
*plays “Mary’s Prayer” on the hacked Muzak*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hqgC3W9GUI
This one!
Ruth had prided herself on never following through her threat of removing femurs then Mary pushed a tad too far from then on Ruth was proud of the femur she had mounted over her fireplace
What happened to the other one?
It got put back in, but it didn’t really fit into Mary’s ear very well, so there was some damage done in the process.
Caught between two highly intense confrontation storylines!
Darn you Willis!!!!
Can anyone who actually knows the Bible suggest some good verses?
There have to be some good sermons out there on ‘love thy neighbor.’
Matthew 25:31-46 is always good. It’s Jesus saying that if you were a dick to people, you were a dick to him, but if you were kind to people you were kind to him. Then the dicks burn in hell for eternity. More Christians need to read that.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+25%3A31-46&version=ESV
Man I love that passage. It’s one of the parts of the bible that has aged incredibly well.
Ezekiel 23:19–21? “And she multiplieth her whoredoms, to remember the days of her youth, when she went a-whoring in the land of Egypt. And she was mad with lust after lying with them whose flesh is as the flesh of asses, and whose issue as the issue of horses. And thou didst look back to the lewdness of thy youth, in the handling of thy teats by the Egyptians, for the breasts of thy youth.”
What.
This is exactly why I’m athiest.
What version is this from because my NIV Children’s Bible was way, WAY filthier.
Something from the Song of Solomon maybe?
I know the Ruth and Billie storyline is important, too, but damn you, Willis, get back to the Browns!
they put the ‘mental’ in fundamental
I’m curious to see how this floor meeting turns out, as well as seeing how things turn out in the Brown household.
Mary really has a deathwish…
Mary is a Darwin Award Candidate, too arrogant to see she is playing with fire.
Or too wrapped up in her delusion that God will protect her from the consequences of thoughtless actions. It is amazing how much trouble in the world was basically caused by someone thinking: “I want to do what I want, when I want to and I expect and demand that someone else protect me from the consequences.”
I know I should hate Mary, my brain is screaming SHES AWFUL, but I can really only pity her. She will fall, and she will fall hard….and when she’s sees what she has wrought, it will finally dawn on her how wrong she really was.
Knowing Mary, she’ll probably refuse to believe she did anything wrong and instead that it’s a conspiracy against her or some shit.
This.
People like Mary don’t admit faults.
Yeah, this. I have no doubts she’s a “Christians are under attack in this country” type.
I’ve crossed past pity and into apathy. I rather doubt she’ll accept that she did anything wrong, though, even just tactically; there are so many heathen sinners for her to blame instead, after all.
IMO: No. She never will. She will be punished for this by ‘God’ (Willis), but she will never believe that she was wrong or at fault, or that any of it was deserved.
She will fall, for all her air she is not a very good bully – she overplayed her hand way too early and she has zero support from her peers. It will be a few days of glorious play with her shiny new toy, and then she will fall HARD.
I doubt she will learn anything from it though, other than confirmation that the entire world is full of sinners out to get her because they are jealous of her devout perfect purity.
Yup. Or rather she’s a very good bully, but she’s just got no stamina for the long con.
That being said… she’s got the pettiness for the long con. Like, when she’s got it in her head that you’ve slighted her for your existence, she’ll straight up hunt you for something to use against you (we’re seeing that here with Ruth). So when this collapses, I’m sure we’ll be in for her next little plotting and scheming for a nasty little barb down the road.
Very, very true. Her current blackmailing scheme will crash (and cause a lot of delightful suffering along the way) but Mary will remain to cause more suffering another day.
Yeah, if you’re actually good at blackmailing and your evidence isn’t rock-solid to start with, you use what control you have to get that rock-solid evidence before starting to really play with your victim.
Honestly, her main problem is assuming she’s already won. I mean, a blackmailer who actually was committed to it, would just be sitting outside of Ruth’s door right after that bomb to just start filming a long film clip of Billie’s “laundry trips” to Ruth’s room to prove that the assertion was true and Ruth tried to cover it up.
I get where you’re coming from, definitely. Basically what we have here is Joyce, but without friends. Just stewing in her own fear and hate without a way out.
That, or she’s just a jerk who likes power. Lately she’s been skewing hard towards the latter.
Not only a Joyce without friends – a Joyce without the REASON Joyce has friends, her openess, her friendlieness and her willingness to overlook perceived an real flaws in others (for some strange reason Mary does not seem to have an atheist and a gay best friend…).
And a jerk who likes power – specifically power over others. This is not the means to an end, this IS the end.
More likely she would wallow in self-righteous indignation at how wrong everyone else is.
It’s never a good thing when someone pushes their luck, and Mary is pushing it with the wrong people.
Ruth may be biding her time until Billie is safely out of the line of fire, before she goes Fallout 4 on Mary’s a**.
… She’ll keep us waiting for several years, and then be ultimately shallow and disappointing?
HA!
That’s actually a proper description of Mary now!
That happpened in October 2014 and we waited for Mary using it until late January 2016!
I guess I don’t quite understand why Mary has so much power, here. Anything she claims is just… a CLAIM, it needs proof before anything could actually come of it, no?
In a nutshell, Ruth is scared, and a claim might spark an investigation. Once there’s nothing for the investigation to find, the hammer will fall.
All that’s needed to blackmail someone is that they believe the damage of being revealed is greater than the cost of doing what the blackmailer wants. Ruth is suffering from deep depression and is very much primed to envision the worst case outcome. In addition being depressed makes it very hard to act in positive ways when faced with adversity.
That said, Ruth has played fast and loose with her authority and knows it. If it was any one else there would be quite a few people supporting an ouster of Ruthless.
One last thing, when you work for a public institution the appearance of improper conduct is an actionable offense.
She doesn’t have much power. She thinks she does, because she saw Ruth back down once. She even said this out loud.
Her power lasts exactly as long as there is proof that what she says is true. That’s why Ruth is cleaning up her tracks. Now all she needs to do is put Mary in a situation where it looks like she’s just making up crap because she hates the RA.
So, topic switched from terrible Carol to horrible Mary.
Yay, I guess.
The raaaaaage I just experienced while reading this omg. I would never advocate for violence, but I still want something to happen like….. I want Mary’s favorite TV show to get cancelled or something. Or her favorite band to break up.
I mean, this is me assuming Mary is even capable of even being passionate about art in any way lol. But in my experience (as having previously been a teenage girl myself^^), every 19 y/o loves SOMETHING.
And not, like, her family or a pet or even her faith, I want something truly teenage-specific to go wrong for her. Because fuck you Mary, but even if you’re the worst I can’t wish anything on you that’s worse than that lmao, I’m too much of a Hufflepuff for that xD
May her best pen sprout a leak.
May all her hairbands snap, all her stockings run and all her favorite clothes get unwashably stained.
Also step on a Lego.
More importantly, others shouldn’t get hurt just to make Mary suffer.
Yep! This is an important point if you want to be a good guy.
(My policy regarding ill-wishes on other people has always been ‘make it something you really wouldn’t regret coming true because of your words’. I’ve been collecting creative minor annoyance ideas ever since)
* ever since I first saw people other than me using that principle. I’d stew in unarticulated resentment before that
someone is asking to die
Im really not
Quiet Someone, you don’t wanna’ end up like Nobody.
He was my friend Dammit!
Wait, Nobody was your friend, Dammit? I thought Dammit was Elseperson.
He would have avoided all those problems if he’d just stopped picking on that cyclops…
Yeah, Mary keep poking that lion with a short stick. You may learn a valuable life lesson. If you push someone far enough, they won’t care about the consequences, they’ll take you down with them. Hard.
Mary cannot help herself, no one can resist that kind of power over someone. (Of course the catch is…anyone who does use such power, never had the inclination to resist anyway…)
No blackmailer has ever stopped at a single use of successful blackmail.
Not one.
Honest question: this would be illegal – and any RA immediately fired/the school sued for a denominational prayer – in any public college I’ve ever heard of. Is this really the culture at Indiana Bloomington?
Yup, it would. I feel like Mary is going to be slighted here and will be planning her retaliation in stride.
That was on my mind also. Last I knew Public prayer is not allowed in general public schools. But its been awhile since I’ve been in school.
Also at most private colleges in the US, it would be a campus wide incident (at bare minimum) if an RA held a prayer. I’m really not questioning Willis here; I don’t know what goes on at Bloomington, I’m just genuinely curious, because I thought this sort of thing could only happen at religious private colleges
Of course Ruth isn’t allowed to hold a prayer. The only question is whether Mary knows that.
Or cares.
That! Maybe she realises that her blackmail material is not so good and will not impress Ruth in the long term, but in the short term it may be effective enough to press Ruth into an action that quite likely will get her removed as RA.
So total victory for Mary, as the RA who beat her in the face is away!
Evil.
Loathsome.
bongo.
ELB
Wait… did I type “bongo” or did something auto change bongo to that?
Fuck, that’s funny.
So, bongo it changes, but not fuck… sure, why not.
its not a swear filter, its specific to the word. there was a discussion a while ago and people were overusing it a lot. so willis took away our bongo privileges.
Wow. I had no idea. I thought it was just an inside joke, probably from a different comic.
It kinda sours me on the place a bit. It’s not in his rules. It would be one thing if he filtered all slurs, but a single word because he apparently got tired of it?
That’s the type of stuff I thought a comic with controlling people as the antagonists would be against. It’s kinda the theme of the comic. I mean, that’s what fundamentalism is about: control.
That is, assuming I get which word it is. I’d get it for a particularly bad slur. It refers to a body part, right? One that everyone has?
I dare not clarify more lest there is yet another unwritten rule about trying to get around the filter.
Note, I said “just a little.” It disappoints me, but not enough to stop commenting. It’s just that, given what you’ve said, I disagree with his action.
It wouldn’t be the first site where I’ve disagreed with the mods. Doesn’t mean I hate them or anything, and it doesn’t mean I’m going to break the rules.
I hope he’s at least the type that will allow dissent like that.
It’s more cause that words was being overused as a pouring of sexist hate on a character that was spilling itself over on commenters as well. So it wasn’t just that that particular word was bothering him for no reason and he decided to nix it. It was deliberately intended to stem the tide of people defaulting to casual sexism whenever a female character did something they didn’t like.
It’s the same reason there are a few other creative modifications to certain words, because they were being overused by bigot types and it’s amusing to fuck with bigots in minor ways because of how much they think their right to have their voice heard and no one else’s is sacrosanct.
And honestly, I’m thankful for stuff like that, because it’s not a pleasant reading experience most places that have laissez-faire commenting policies. I mean, for whatever reason, I’m not usually in a mood to weather an avalanche of t-slurs and f-slurs just to participate in a discussion thread. I guess I’m just weird that way.
No, it’s the word for a female dog that rhymes with witch, which is an unpleasant slur against women. You can say butt or boobies or whatever you want however much you want.
It turned into an inside joke, too. Lots of people just straight up type ‘bongo’ instead. As this comment section is much less misogynistically horrible than average society, the word bongo hasn’t acquired the awful connotations and associations that would make it as unpleasant to see overused as the original word.
I’ve started using it elsewhere too, which I’m sure confuses people.
There are a couple others. I think “social justice warrior”? Or maybe just “SJW”?
thejeff- Yup, the second one!
To be completely honest, the word bongo does make me cringe a little. Because where I grew up, bongo was actually used as a racial slur against black people. Short for “Stupid savages who only sit and play bongo drums all day. My (white) culture is superior.”
Very white dominated place, don’t know if there was a single black person living there at the time, but there was a lot of talk on the news about refugees on the news at the time. It’s been at least 20 years since the last time I heard it used in that manner, so I can only assume it was a very local terminology, but it was one of the first racial slurs I was exposed to, so it’s one I remember.
Suffice it to say, when the comment section here began using it as a joke, even as a white male I thought it looked pretty racist.
I’ve actually started doing double-takes when I see the word “bongo” elsewhere. Like, “what, that doesn’t make sense, what’s a percussionist got to do with bi– OOOOOOOOH.” 😛
there’s some other word that gets filtered out too, still can’t figure out what it is, that gets replaced with a rather lengthy thing in brackets. Something about white priviledge or something, I don’t know.
As for bongo, I tend to just type “guarskin drum” instead because why not.
As I tried above, the acronym for Social Justice Warrior gets replaced with “SJW”.
Not sure about the “lengthy thing in brackets”.
TV Trope – fans got removed their Tuesday joke privilege.
(Google and M. Bison will help you with that one).
*U*l*t*r*a*-*C*a*r* once was forbidden, (see FAQ, it’s a character from the Walkyverse), let’s test if it still is: “Ultra-Car” / “Ultracar”.
So quite set of rather arbitrary rules.
OK seems like the last one is no longer filtered.
The other word that gets filtered is easily discovered if you think hard on what might be ‘correctly political’. Hint. Hint.
So “politically correct” is also filtered.
Conversely, that filter actually makes me feel more safe here, because I know I won’t get that particular sexist slur thrown in my face constantly. And it would be constant, I see how much that word gets used anytime a female character does anything (or sometimes nothing at all).
Yep, same.
“Getting around the filter”?
Protip: Do not, ever, type “banjo”.
Awww, poop…
That word cannot be overused.
Case in point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9AT3jjAP0Y
Jesus H Shit.
I normally advocate against violence, but really…
She just.
She really needs a punch to the face.
Well Ruth already slapped her face so hard once that a dick appeared on her cheek.
I know what you actually mean, but that’s conjures a really strange mental image.
Christian blackmail, the most holiest thing ever
Man I really hope the payoff for this is good. Between this and Joyce’s fun filled family weekend, I feel like the set up is massive.
Well… I’m disappointed. Again. Ah well…
When I was in the military and some dude was being a real asswipe, he’d fall down the barracks stairs one night on his way to the latrine. Are there stairs in the dorm? Poor Mary. What a shame. Both legs? Wow!
see also “blanket party”.
Mary is playing real dirty, I have a feeling only one member of the cast has moral flexibility to smite her.
We need Mike
We do not need Mike.
Mike’s verbal psychological games rely on the person he’s bothering having some ability to feel shame… A quality Mary lacks.
Which leaves either something designed to piss her off (vulgarity or blasphemy works), or outright violence.
Now, if he were go with pissing her off (say, with another “HAIL SATAN”, maybe), she’d just walk away specifically angry at him and with ‘confirmation’ of her belief in her personal martyrdom.
Same with violence, except that also gives her more blackmail against Ruth, as Ruth would specifically be ignoring it, and Mary could go over her heady, point to any bruises, and say Ruth wasn’t doing anything about it.
Mike is no help here. Mike is no help anywhere.
When Becky comes back, she’ll likely take up the sexed teacher’s offer of shelter if the dorm is off-limits as an outsider.
Heck, big Desantos sister might even drop in for another tolerance pep talk about sexual freedom and stuff.
Of course she will drop in, she lives on that floor!
She is the roomie of Mary, after all!
I think she meant the biggest Desanto sister. The Congresswoman.
Robin.
And so we say goodbye to Mary. She will not be missed.
Real Christianity – blackmailing others. Good to know.
i’m pretty sure no one else on the floor is gonna go for the forced christian prayer, even if the person being forced to force it is ruthless
As I said & predicted before…
No blackmailer ever stops at just one use of blackmail.
Not one.
Truly blackmail is the Pringles of social interaction
Mary is digging a deep grave, but I’m fairly certain Ruth isn’t going to leave enough left to bury.
Mary, you are the kind of person that makes me, even as an atheist, wish there was a Hell. Because, it’s only in a dimension made for your suffering that you will ever be forced to acknowledge that you’ve done wrong.
Doesn’t wishing eternal torment upon someone make you just as bad as they are?
No upon Mary not you.
Well, I know I’m going to hell but it’s not like I want to drag anyone else down with me, except maybe Blaine, and Ross is also pretty awful.
Don’t forget Ryan, they’ll at least keep company to each other.
Perhaps. I find it hard not to. But, I don’t want eternal torment, just acknowledgement of the wrong done… or even of the actual possibility beyond the theoretical fallibility of “well, we’re *all* sinners.”
Yyyyyyyyyyyyyep and even the villain of the arc gets more screentime than the person wronged, the trans girl. cool
yeah. but theres a lot of preview panels of carla in the near future, im sure this is just a temporary thing
Mary has managed to wrong a lot of people: Carla and now Ruth are just her latest victims.
Yeah, this. When this arc is over, it might feel better paced and there might be some good pay of, but for now there are so many other characters I would much rather be following right now.
This.
Carla got fridged for Ruth, and it’s gonna suck bad until we get the promised focus later on.
Carla’s not dead though?
…I hope she’s gone out to a spa or put on reruns of Cars or something, she deserves a break.
More that she suffered in service of Ruth’s narrative, like how the only reason Kyle Rayner’s girlfriend got turned into hamburger meat was to make him sad.
Mary is dousing herself in gasoline like it’s goin’ out of style.
You know what would be good bongo if you went to a Christian college a real one. not one of the ones that encourages you to continue doing the Devil’s work like you’re doing right now.
I’ve been to plenty full of real nice people who don’t deserve Mary.
But then she wouldn’t be better than all the people around her!
You know, most times when I dislike a character, it’s because I think they have deficiencies in how they are presented or written and whatnot. Mary, on the other hand, is one of the few characters I hate as if she were an actual person.
Of all the icons I love in these comment sections, I love yours the most-est. Is it from a Patreon strip or did you make it yourself?
I suppose everyone’s caught on, but I’ll say it anyway… Mary is a prime definition of evil.
Ok here’s an easy way to take care of this Mary shit, just convince everybody on the floor to hate her ( wouldn’t be hard) then when they’re getting ready to lynch her just don’t do anything just let it happen. There problems solved.
The bullying RA who steals and destroys other people’s belongings, sleeps with one of her charges, threatens physical violence, provides alcohol to minors in contravention of the school’s rules thus opening herself up to blackmail and the inability to defend one of her more vulnerable charges. I hope she gets what’s coming to her too.
I hope she realizes the problem, learns from it and cleans up her act.
I mean, for all that she’s awful at managing her own behavior, she at least realizes she SHOULD be taking care of bullying on her floor and is pro-LGBT. There are plenty of worse options out there.
I still hope she gets brutally fired. It’s all well and good she feels bad about it *now* and is taking steps to protect Carla *now* but it’s far too little too late IMO. Learning from an experience and cleaning up your act (or frantically shoving it back into its own dorm room) is not mutually exclusive with suffering the consequences of your actions.
And honestly, pro-LGBT only goes so far given that she’s willing to provide one of the younger students she’s responsible for drunk and to have sex with her. That is an unacceptable power dynamic, even if it didn’t put her in blackmail danger.
Oh, and Ruthless *is* the Queen Bully of that floor and revels in the reputation. No wonder Mary thought she’d get away with this.
I don’t know about white hot rage, but I do know a certain Doctor comes by the comments section every now & again. Can’t remember the rest of his name tho, but you all know who I mean, right? Doctor Who-Was-He-Again…
Mary… MARY for god’s sake you are a fool. If you want Ruth to do things because she fears losing her job then you don’t make/blackmail her to do things… which could make her lose her job /anyway/. Or at least put her on thinner ice/ under deeper scrutiny- then getting her fired after other things come to light. (I’m pretty sure forcing in public prayer- especially to a mandatory meeting, especially only prayer for a specific faith/denomination is against the rules).
What if people talk? I mean if anything else they’ll find it weird.
There may be people who decide to watch the Clark wing and its RA more closely as a result.
If this type of thing gets out to the higher ups it will basically could come to a point where the outcome for Ruth is the same. And she’ll have a choice of doing what you say or taking you down with her in the process- and which I wonder will she pick?
I don’t think Mary intends this to be a long-term arrangement. She just wants to cram maximal amount of suffering and humiliation from Ruth (and as many others as she can), and hopefully get her fired before the thing come crashing down (with maximal amount of collateral damage).
One wonders if Mary has fantasies of arriving as a transfer student at Anderson to universal acclaim from students and faculty alike as “The Holy Warrior Who Destroyed the Pagan Fortress of Indiana University”?
I’m starting to have fantasies of her arriving there trussed up like Faz.
Sadly, I think she may actually believe that she’ll be regarded as a hero here rather than someone else. That all the right thinking people will see how righteous she was fighting against the t-slurs and the queers and the non-(right type of)Christians.
Bagge, that would make her even dumber than I thought. She’s not Mike–we’ve never gotten the idea that she enjoys making people suffer for suffering’s sake. She has always been about control. Causing everything to come crashing down causes her to lose control.
She needs to milk it for as long as she can. I think she just doesn’t realize how badly she overplayed her hand. I don’t think she realizes that Ruth can get fired over this. When blackmailing someone, the thing you’re going to do has to be worse to the victim than the thing you make them do.
Here’s what’s going to happen, as I see it.
Ruth is gathering up all the elements that give Mary power over her and resolving them. Ruth will prepare a detailed report on all of these things to her boss, including the idea that Mary was guilty of blackmail and various crimes of bigotry to undermine her authority as RA.
Application for Eviction submitted, with the addition of a personal confrontation involving the entire residency + Ruth and her direct superior at a mandatory floor meeting.
Checkmate, Mary.
This being a Willis production, I fully expect something plausible yet awful to happen/have happened to Mary, making her ever-so-briefly a sympathetic figure in the narrative and all of us lose our minds in response.
This doesn’t mean Holy Mary Motherfucker’s ever going to redeem herself, though. Not for anything more than a nickel.
I wonder what the Bible thinks about blackmail……. hmmmmmm……… I wonder……………………………….
Seriously though, what DOES the bible think about blackmail? No verses really come to mind. Although I’m pretty sure it violates the “Treat thy neighbor as yourself” meta-rule.
Mary may have overreached this time. This college isn’t a religious one, right? That likely means that any attempt to actively proselytize could be grounds for an official complaint, during which time Ruth could say that Mary was the one who suggested it.
Ruth would still be the one to get into trouble. She’s still nominally the authority figure here. What is she going to say, “One of my charges blackmailed me into doing it”?
Yes. That’s exactly what Ruth could say.
Sure, Ruth would still get fired, but I doubt things would turn out much better for Mary.
Of course, Ruth already had the chance to do that and hasn’t taken it, but it’s still a possibility.
Not only is it not a religious school, but it’s a public university. Meaning Mary’s little demand would be a constitutional violation.
Here, Mary proves that she is a thoroughly vile and malignant personality who, unless she has a Damascene-level conversion, will never be in the good books of a God worth the name. I just take comfort in the fact that no matter how much she chooses to wave around a Bible, loudly proclaiming fundamentalist rhetoric and morality, she is not and never will be a Christian.
Ruth, idea: Start the meeting with a Wiccan ceremony.
Better yet, a Satanic ritual.
No, no, no. Mary was quite specific. You need to start the meeting with a Christian prayer. And not one with saints or mormons.
Then, in order to maintain balance, you follow that with the Wiccan ceremony, the Satanic ritual, and any others you find appropriate – including a Mormon version for Agatha and some kind of atheist acknowledgement for Dorothy and whatever other variations are present.
If anyone can will herself back in time through sheer rage alone, it’s Ruth.
Someone’s pushing her luck here.
i wish a fate worse then death upon her
I get the impression here that Mary isn’t trying to be a vindictive jerk; this is her genuinely happy because she thinks she has done a Good Deed and the world is going to be a more Christian (ie, better) place as a result.
That’s a strange interpretation, I think. For one thing, she called her “monkey.” She’s gleeful about being in power, and being able to treat someone poorly. Her whole arc has been about her desire to control others, as far as I can tell.
Mary is that type of Christian who is in it for the ability to look down at everyone else, to shame and belittle those who don’t measure up.
I don’t think she’s even the type that needs to come up with a justification, let alone someone who is actually thinking that way.
People shit on Carol, but I do think Carol at least needs these justifications.
…yeah, nope. Her behaviour is all gloating.
The reason I consider Mary even worse than Toedad and Carol is that these two are jerks because of their beliefs, while Mary is a Christian only to justify her jerkassery.
And you said it much better than I did, and in fewer words.
She doesn’t have a gun, though.
You know, there’s a quote from Clarence Darrow I’ve been using a lot these last few days in regards to Scalia and I’m starting to feel like I could apply it to Mary as well: “I would never wish death on someone, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure.”
I’m not usually that guy but… that girl needs injuries.
Huh. I did not expect that. After what Mary said and how she said it, this pretty much has to go down at the meeting. I was fully expecting Carol to be the big bad of this arc, and the Mary stuff to be set up for later.
The meeting is about a guy who tried to shove his Christianity down everyone’s throats, albeit in a very violent manner. There is no way Ruth can make people pray a Christian prayer.
And that’s without the separation of Church and State issue. This is a public college. She can’t do a group prayer in her capacity as an employee of the college. Heck, when I was looking up the laws to be sure, the first result was this PDF from indiana.edu.
IF there’s a single student who wants to make a fuss, Ruth could lose her job. Mary’s an idiot–she’d lose her power instantly.
I mean this girl is clearly struggling with some mental issues, which are the results of her fundie upbringing. I’m not an expert in the field but I’d say she’s borderline psychopathic. The question is if you can really blame her for this. A lot of people don’t seem to blame Joyce, instead they place all blame on her parents, simply because her fundieness is not so extreme and not directly harmful. But this might only be the case because she got luckier with her parents, with her father possibly lowering the damage her mother has done to Joyce’s personality while growing up. Mary probably got less lucky, with parents that are just full on destructive fundies. Note that these are just theories, but if this was the case – could you guys blame her for this?
I disagree 100%. She’s proven herself to be a petty, vindictive and cruel person. Sure, you can sometimes chalk that up to a mental disorder of some sort, but I get the impression that Willis isn’t willing to throw real mentally ill people under the bus for the sake of a villain who’s almost cartoonishly evil.
We give Joyce a pass because she’s proven capable and willing to learn, and fight past her own biases to get at the truth no matter how much it hurts. We don’t give Mary a pass not because because her fundamentalism manifests in a more extremist way, but because she combines it with sheer pettiness and childishness. She blackmailed her way into having power over someone and relishes it. However you wanna justify it, it’s still a pretty shitty thing to do.
But I think believing that these outright evil actions are right because of god qualifies as a mental illness. I’d put fundamentalism as a whole into a mental illness category.
You’re right though, I don’t think Willis intends to give this girl any qualities that would redeem her even in the tiniest bit, so yeah, she’s probably just supposed to be a shit. But realistically speaking, she would probably be struggling with some crippling mental problems.
“believing that these outright evil actions are right because of god” is Toedad’s description. Very possibly Carol, too.
But Mary? Mary actually just likes hurting people. Religion for her is just a convenient pretext for being a horrible person.
Now you see, this is where it gets interesting, because we can’t actually know which of these theories are true, we can’t see into her head. She might just be a huge asshole, using the bible to justify her shit, but she might also be actually ill. There’s a higher chance of her being just an asshole though, I admit.
Huh. Looks as if my comment was deleted, but I’m curious as to why. If equating sociopaths with assholes is too much for the board (but wishing cartoonish/not-so-cartoonish violence on them isn’t), it’d be nice to know since dealing with their abuse in my life has left me with some experiences I feel strongly about.
Because your comment essentially equated Mary being a sociopath to her being a bad person, and that’s not okay.
“Sociopathy” gets scrutinized by people as something that only Evil people have, and what makes them Evil. We can’t encourage the stigmatization of the mentally ill.
Thanks for clarifying. I’m a bit embarrassed to have come across that bluntly. (Actually blushing seriously.) Admittedly we’ve found a big personal blind spot for tolerance because I’ve been targeted and abused by sociopaths. A lot. I’ll be more self-aware in further discussion.
I suffer from severe depression and anxiety so your comment about stigmatization hits home. I don’t mean to equate sociopathy with being evil (not useful for understanding it). Or stigmatize mental illness in general. Sociopathy is a tricky exception to me and I’ve had a lot of therapy and research trying to understand and cope with it effects. By its nature the ‘sufferer’ doesn’t perceive that they suffer from mental illness. Therefore they don’t seek acceptance for it. They just think they’re awesome and continue to enjoy exerting power and ‘winning’ over others. That doesn’t fit the experience of most people who suffer from different kinds of mental illnesses, who have awareness, want acceptance and work harder than they should have to for it. Hence it being a frustrating and tricky exception to me. Or hypocrisy to another. I can respect that.
A lot of the behaviors that sociopaths exhibit are described with words like ‘asshole’ to the casual observer. For the sake of this conversation, I was saying that if Mary is indeed a sociopath, those two descriptions don’t exclude each other. I could have worded it a lot better. Or not at all.
Or she could just be a petty awful person who likes controlling people. There’s plenty of people like that in the real world, many of whom don’t have any mental illness at all.
In any case even when it comes to fictional characters, I really wouldn’t play armchair psychologist. It’s way too easy to be a jerk when doing it.
True, but in reality, where does being a control freak asshole end and where does having an actual mental illness begin?
Well being an asshole isn’t a mental illness. Conflating the two is an unfair generalization for people who actually have mental illnesses.
Yes, this, thank you.
Sorry, but belief and fundamentalism aren’t mental disorders any more than a political ideology like American liberalism is. You’ve based your argument on a false premise.
I really don’t think so.
I’ve talked to people who actually have genuine psychiatric issues – psychotic, shizophrenic, borderline, what have you – and Mary doesn’t exhibit any sign of struggles characteristic of those.
Her behavior is pure gleeful grab for power, in a way all too normal for -neurotypical- people.
It’s Ruth who’s vulnerable because of her psychiatric issues – namely, depression impeding her functioning and reasoning.
Yes. Yes I can. Plenty of people grow up in worse situations without turning into petty vindictive bullies.
I hope Mary’s going to get interesting character development; don’t get me wrong she’s horrible, but the worst characters can often be the best ones
And I’ve officially emotionally disconnected from this arc entirely. Now it just kinda annoys me.
How can you not sympathize with Ruth here? Look at that abusive jerk using her power to harass someone, up to the point of inappropriate physical contact!
I see what you did there.
But for which abusive jerk are we supposed to root for? 😀
jk, nobody ever roots for Mary
I’d be okay with them collapsing into a Horrible Jerkface singularity and vanishing from space and time.
I’d feel bad for Billie though. Like, ATM Ruth is her primary source of caring at all about her life.
The serious answer is that I think Billie does need to stay away from Ruth. They’re actively worsening their problems and are clinging to each other until they kill themselves, and they aren’t making each other better. Ruth’s caring about someone for the first time in who knows how long, but she’s still convinced this ends in their deaths, and Billie’s just been in an actively worsening place ever since she got together with Ruth.
The answer I actually want to give is that the last time Ruth died Billie went and married Danny, and nobody deserves such a fate.
I mean it seems kinda like a choice between “cling to each other until they maybe kill themselves or maybe actually cobble together a functionalish relationship” and “completely self-destruct on their own and definitely kill themselves” because neither of these two is going to seek proper help let’s just be realistic it’s not how they work. Like someone might intervene when they hit rock bottom but rock bottom could very well end up being death by alcohol poisoning.
I don’t think Billie would. It wasn’t until her thing with Alice that she suddenly became convinced that she was an entirely worthless human being, and even now she’s trying to treat their relationship beyond it just being a suicide pact.
Ruth? Almost certainly, but I think if Billie was in a healthier place, a place not found in a mutually destructive relationship that started as abuse, then if she had found out Ruth was in a bad place she could have done something more productive than “okay let’s die together.”
Like, what happens if it did have to end? If the school did find out about them? Does Billie need to be next to Ruth for the rest of her life to keep her from dying?
She seems nice.
Hey, if you want to use Cassie to satisfy her wish, you’re more than welcome to. 😉
Ruthless doesn’t come by her name by accident. She already has a plan that not even Billie knows about because she’s the GODDAMN BATMAN!
Billie IS the plan. HEAD CHEEEEERLEEEEEEEADER ALPHA BOOOOONGO!!!
Ok, so that Mary crashes and burns during this meeting is a given, right?
The only question is whether Ruth and Billie go down with her. Hurry, Billie! Hurry! (And tell Ruth that Becky isn’t here!)
isn’t there something in the bible against blackmailing someone into prayer?
I also recall something about what you need to do with your neighbour. Hate?… Control?… Blackmail?… No, that was not it… Some sort of L-word? Lick?…
Hmmm. That was fun. Just typed out a little rant that ended with “At least Catholics know who developed their dogma; you don’t even know who set forth the biblically incorrect bile you’re spewing”. But there was so much hate in it that I decided the wiser course was to delete that little rant and just wish hot soup poured across her tits instead.
You exercised grace AND gave us the hot soup on the tits expression? Truly you’re a saint. <3
Okay, screw any lame ass arguments I made before, now I want her to suffer.
…but she draws nicely… (# My lame ass argument before)
Admittedly, I tried to justify her previous behavior by playing devil’s advocate and saying that they both she and Carla were guilty of immature and petty behaviour, but it’s clear to me now that she really is a just a despicable piece of garbage. The whole “using prayer as a tool of revenge and control” really drove that home. I’m one of those idiots who likes to see the villain redeem themselves, but in this case, nevermind.
Wait, why does the strip tip you over the edge? How is this worse then anything else she’s done?
It’s not the actions. Those are bad, but not as bad as some of her other crap. It’s the attitude. Mary’s now got a sort of cock-sure (yes I know wrong gender for that term whatever) blatant power-trip arrogance that takes all the existing hate for her and magnifies it 10000x.
Chicken-sure just doesn’t have the same ring, does it?
Well, I HAD a female-version alternative to “cock-sure”, but apparently that hit a spam filter or something and the post was deleted pretty promptly. Not even bongoed-out, just deleted. Oh well.
Vigina-sure
House meeting and the Browns eating dinner. Nice parallel there. Bunch of reasonable people and one bigot about to be put in her place. I think we can switch back and forth between then for a month or so.
I wouldn’t call Carol’s behavior reasonable so far, but maybe she’s curable. We’ll see how she reacts now that her attempt at passive aggressive shaming has been defied.
I wonder if Marys curable, she seems worse but she’s also pretty young. I’ve found its a lot easier to convience a 18 year old to change, then convience ing a 50 year old to change. Mainly because your brain is still developing at 18. It seems a lot of people like Mary grow out of it eventually, while people like Carol stay like that their whole lives, because if you haven’t changed by 50, you probably arnt going to. Also I harbor perverse sexual lust for Mary, and want to see her change.
I like to believe that everyone is curable at eighteen, but of course the the priority at the moment has to be stopping her. When she’s no longer capable of causing harm to others, then we can worry about helping her.
Part of the problem is that I think she’d be a bully even if she wasn’t a bigot. That needs to be cured, too, and that may be much harder.
Then she’d just be Mike.
It would be so cool if, when Joyce calls out her mom and Billie/Ruth/Carla/Whoever calls out Mary, the point of view switches between the Browns and the House Meeting during the calling out. Really, if the monologue is spun right, the same speech could apply to both Carol’s homophobia and Mary’s holier-than-thou attitude, and switching back and forth could make it seem like they’re saying the same thing.
You know that scene from Brave, where Merida and her mom are having the same conversation in different places altogether? Something like that.
But whatever happens will be fantastic too.
Looks like Mary let her slight advantage go to her head, not realizing that Ruth is not the sort of person to let matters stand as they are, quaking in fear of what might happen.
Seriously. And it makes wonder what her life has been like to this point. Has she never experienced someone who got back up and fought back after she knocked them down?
But that’s not what is happening, in her mind. This isn’t simply a struggle between two people.
It’s a one-sided Ideaology fight.(One-sided because God is the only side, don’chaknow?)
In her mind, she is a Valiant and Just Warrior of God, putting the Evil People in their proper Place using their own tactics. He won’t let her lose this fight.
Oh my god, she’s Miko Miyazaki!
From OOTs
Their names even start with the same letter… Illuminati confirmed.
(…I don’t wish upon Mary what ultimately happened to Miko. That was kinda brutal. But I sure did like how in that ‘verse gods actually did personally go out of their way to point out that Miko was an ass)
Ah! Blackmail! What a great way to promote Christian Values!
Sooooo . . . what are “laundry” and “loads” a keyword for? Part of the revenge plan, yes?
Billie’s clearing out her stuff from Ruth’s room, so she can initiate a confrontation with Mary, and in response to any accusation just smile nicely and go “Wow, you sure have a vivid imagination there. Any proof? No? Thought so.”
I wouldn’t put it past Mary to have used a camera to gather evidence though
Mary’s got some perplexed and outraged faces in the preview panels, coming up soon. So, I guess she hasn’t used a camera.
Hey! Hey, Mary! Remember your Matthew 6:1-16? He was talking. About. YOU.
I really hope a certain someone is getting evicted for calling someone else a monkey. I mean that’s like X-rated racism right there Mary. Pretty sure even the friggin’ psychopathic old geezers like my grandpa know that’s not right.
Except that it’s not racism, because it’s not directed at someone of a race the “monkey” slur would apply to. The connotations are entirely different.
Mary I’m pretty sure even God would be flipping you off right now.
Theres like a quote in the bible that basically says “If you drive people away from me then you suck”
and theres no better way to drive people away from your religion then forcing it on others while being an absolute jerk.
Why do I get the feeling that Mary was the one who called Becky’s dad back to the campus?
I don’t think so… For one, it was never shown that Mary knew that Toedad even existed.
Also, Toedad wouldn’t have needed anyone to call him; as soon as he realized he had been tricked he would’ve came back to the school ASAP. Even if he hadn’t assumed that Dina had tricked him and sent him as far away as possible on purpose, he still would’ve came back because the school was still his only lead.
Lastly, if Mary HAD called him, that seems like the kind of thing that would’ve been revealed either before or after the big confrontation, if only because it would give the fans another legitimate reason to hate Mary.
I was just fuming the other day over someone pulling that “Catholics aren’t Christians” line. She seriously had never heard of the Protestant Reformation. She honestly thought all the different denominations of Christianity except Mormonism and Catholicism were “the same church”. The fact that there are multiple denominations that use the label “Catholic” would probably blow her tiny, Mary-like mind.
Anyways, Mary is garbage and likely has no concept of limits. She is pushing too far, too fast, for no gain.
When Mary says “Dumb Saints or Mormon crap”, does she mean Catholicism and Mormonism or something more along the lines of “Latter Day Saints or Mormons or whatever the hell they want to call themselves.”?
Agh! Sorry, meant to post this separately, not as a reply.
She definitely means Catholicism and Mormons.
I’ve run up against the “Catholics aren’t real Christians” argument before. It’s super weird.
There is a certain logic in it, going back to the foundation of Protastentism. By which I mean, if I remember my historical studies correctly, that it’s always been part of Catholic dogma that the Church is the sovereign authority God’s representative and it is the task of the clergy to interpret the Bible for the masses. In other words, the Bible is not to be taken literally and does not stand above the Church.
Martin Luther on the other hand rebelled against this perspective and introduced the idea that every man could be his own priest, provided he had access to a Bible in his own language that he could read without the interpretation of a priest. In other words, in Luther’s Protestant movement, the Bible was considered above the Church and was to be taken literally.
So to an extreme Protestant like Mary, Catholicism won’t be considered Christianity because it doesn’t accept a literal interpretation of the Bible as a supreme authority. If I remember my studies correctly that is.
Well, yeah, there’s a “certain logic to it” if you ignore almost all of the historical documentation about how the Bible was written, and even Luther himself, who still considered Catholics Christian.
But it’s Mary, and she’s a fucking moronic bigot, so what should I expect.
Right. I’m guessing this strip exists purely to remind us why we don’t feel sorry for Mary for the wrath that’s about to descend upon her.
It also shows us what someone like Mary would do with UNLIMITED POWAH!!!
But, yeah, that too.
*Sees mormon crap* *cheers because atheism*
Hey, hey, hey! Let’s not hate on all of Christianity because people like Mary give it a bad name! We have to be as respectful of people’s religion (or lack thereof) as we are of lifestyle choices and identities. I don’t agree with mormonism at all, but I’m not going to tell a Mormon what they believe is crap. Atheists who ‘cheer’ at someone being insulted for their beliefs are just as closed-minded as Mary is, and just as insulting.
Look at the opportunity here.
Mary is SO getting kicked out of the dorms.
Latter Day Saints are the same as Mormon. Unless he means another saints?
What Mary considers “Dumb saints stuff” is probably Catholicism.
It’s nice to see how many people in the comment thread are sociopaths who believe in the bullshit mantra of “no bad tactics, only bad targets.”
My basic rule is that I’ll only use physical violence in defense of myself or others, and only when the assailant is an immediate physical threat. If there is a situation that can be solved without the use of violence, I will use the more peaceful method.
Sadism is not the same as sociopathy. They clearly feel empathy for others.
Thank you for actually knowing the definition of a sociopath.
I was happy until I remembered that Mary existed. And that people like her exist in real life. And that people see real life Marys and go “lol Christians, eh?”
And that makes me sad. Hold me.
*hug
*hugs*
What really sucks is this is the happiest smile I can recall in this series 🙁
I have never wanted to kill someone quite like I’ve wanted to skin Mary alive.
I have watched the trainwreck that is Donald Trump running for President but I wouldn’t wish physical harm on him at all, yet alone to the extent I want to see Mary’s insides torn wholesale from her body.
Testament to your ability to write, Willis.
I despise people like Mary. They are evil. It’s people like that who wind up being abusive clergy and doing horrible things to people. If I was living on that floor, I would risk arrest to beat that bongo into a bloody pulp.
Boy, Christians aren’t portrayed here the way the Christians i know in real life. Willis, have you spent any time with a normal christian? I guess cartoons are better when you stick to stereotypes. (Oh let the hate roll in commenters…) But seriously, most of the Christians I know are tolerant people. When are we going to see a litany of LGBT friendly folks acting like jerks? I don’t think there’s many in the “jerk” category, so we should be seeing more here than really exist if the pattern holds…
“Let the hate roll” doesn’t really apply when you say dumb shit that deserves to be hated.
I mean, jeez, three whole Christians in the entire series who are jerks. That’s so ridiculous! It’s not like Joyce, Becky, Danny, Sierra, Billie, and Jocelyne are positive characters or anything!
And I know right, all the Queer characters in the cast are suuch a pack of infailable, perfect snowflakes. David Willis has never devoted any time to showing any of the flaws or foibles of Ruth, Billie, Carla, Danny, Ethan, Dina, and Becky. Nope a nope. They never falter or act pettily or actually show outright abuse. They’re too busy being perfect gay butterflies.
In their defense, if you narrow the scope to fundamentalists, it is a bit of a different story. There’s no fundamentalists in the setting who can apparently just… Be polite. No-one who can feel homosexuality is sinful without also having an absolute fit over it. It’s why Hank was a bit of a breath of fresh air, and why Carol was a nauseous and noxious breeze.
Still a bit of a hyperbolic knob, though.
oh man can you imagine if dumbing of age even had a fundamentalist christian MAIN CHARACTER who didn’t have an “absolute fit” over homosexuality
maybe even dating a gay guy for a while
or ultimately siding with her gay best friend while still maintaining the bible is inerrant and that the world is 6000 years old
how crazy would that be
Or what if, now stick with me here, this hypothetical fundie main character’s gay best friend, who has actively suffered at the hands of her religion to the point where she was held at gunpoint, kidnapped for the purpose of being sent to conversion therapy, and nearly died multiple times, still came out of that ordeal a faithful person, just willing to critically analyze it and decide for herself that, while some parts of it don’t apply, ultimately those parts don’t contradict the important lessons that she took to heart.
*Citizen Kane applause* for this comment chain in particular, aside from the comment that started it.
Well, if she did that, she’d not be a fundamentalist anymore, since being a fundamentalist requires a belief in Biblical inerrancy.
Being Christian isn’t the same thing as being fundamentalist, any more than it means you’re a Catholic.
Perhaps I’m mistaken, but that doesn’t sound like being a fundamentalist so much as being closer to being a zealot. Which… now that I think of it, Toe dad definitely fits that categorization.
That’s pretty much the exact road that proper inerrancy leads down, yeah. In practice, it’s “Inerrancy according to Billy Graham/Bob Jones/C. S. Lewis”.
Either way, inerrancy requires literalism, though, and literalism requires acceptance of the Bible as a whole text. “Picking and choosing” is sort of the biggest accusation fundiegelicals like to level against anyone who disagrees with them, right up until the person actually follows the text in a harsher way than them.
Right, except… No. Joyce DID have a fit over homosexuality; she tried to “convert” a gay guy and, when her best friend showed up and said she was gay, Joyce quickly re-evaluated her principles (don’t get me wrong, a totally understandable reaction; I did the same thing eventually on my way out of fundie-dom) rather than go “I accept you, despite this”. She isn’t someone who thinks homosexuality is wrong and can politely disagree; she is, by your own admission, a semi-literal author avatar; an autobiographical character, following the same arc you did. One that, unless I’ve missed my mark, led you to atheism/agnosticism and acceptance of an old Earth. You even said that the idea of inerrancy – something Joyce has been shown to be shaky about recently – was fundamental to your resistance to letting go of belief and appears, in turn, to be fundamental to her doing the same.
Joyce is not, in short, an example of the sort of thing I’m talking about.
Hank is, though. Hank is someone who apparently still seems to think atheism and homosexuality and transsexuality are wrong, but is comfortable enough with living and letting live that he can be at peace around gay or trans people. That’s really what I’m getting at; that people can disagree and still coexist. Joyce isn’t an example of that because she’s actively given up any protest or opposition out of love for her friends.
Fundie characters in DoA thus far either come off as extreme wing-nuts or as people who are in the process of ceasing to be fundies anymore. Both categories of people exist, incidentally, and I’m not accusing you of strawmanning. I’m just… Disappointed at a lack of a spectrum, I suppose?
If a crucial part of being a fundie is being unjustifiably bigoted towards entire groups of people that have done nothing wrong then doesn’t that mean moving away from it is, inherently, a good thing?
Like, I think I get what you’re trying to say, that the narrative is saying “okay you can be a Christian as long as you’re the right kind of Christian” and, well, that’s kind of the case? Insofar as “the right kind of Christian” means “one who isn’t a massive bigot for no reason” and that other kinds are all right. People who spout “Love the sinner, hate the sin” are trying to come off impartial, but ultimately branding something as fundamentally harmless as being Queer the same way you would actual sins, it’s just completely unacceptable. It’s something that needs to be stamped out, and no amount “let’s agree to disagree” really counts when the argument is over something that doesn’t deserve to be argued about.
An on that note about Joyce, she did pull the “I accept you but not your sexuality” move on Becky,where she had to find physical proof that she was allowed to still be friends with Becky despite her sexuality, albeit it took her all of a day to get disabused out that notion.
I think there might be a misunderstanding. I am most certainly not arguing that being a fundamentalist is a good thing. I consider it rather bluntly the opposite. If I didn’t, I’d still be one, one imagines.
What I am arguing, though, is that there’s some caricaturization going on and maybe it’s fair and maybe it isn’t, but it’s still there; you’re either the Right Kind of Christian, or you’re the Right’s kind of Christian, if you get my drift.
I don’t like that. I don’t like it for a lot of different reasons. Whether or not I disagree with people, however vehemently, seeing them turned into editorial cartoons just… Doesn’t sit well with me. Especially not in something that, at the start, looked like it was trying to show these ideas as they actually exist in the opinions of some people. There is a nuance lacking that turns this from thoughtful exploration and character-driven arc into My Mother, The Strawman.
“…show these ideas as they actually exist in the minds of some people.”
This is literally exactly what Willis has been doing with characters like Mary and Toedad and Carol, and also Hank and Joyce and Becky. Emphasis on “some people.” There are people in real life who literally have the same beliefs as all of these characters. Just because characters like Carol and Toedad and Mary lack nuance doesn’t make them caricatures, because there are REAL LIFE PEOPLE who lack nuance in exactly the same way.
Hell, you don’t even have to take Willis’s word for it. Do some research online. Ask the people who oppose gay marriage or gay civil unions why they oppose those things. Turn on the fucking news.
Sure, there are people out there who believe gay sex is a sin but aren’t opposed to gay civil rights/aren’t smug bullying assholes, but neither their existence in real life nor their absence from the comic make the other fundamentalist characters “caricatures,” any more than Joyce is a “caricature.”
“…they actually exist in the opinions of some people.”
Hey, remember when the Mormon Church spent millions of dollars to campaign against gay marriage in California?
Remember when the now deceased Justice Scalia said that if we are to give legal protection to gay people, we might as well give it to child molesters?
Remember when a bunch of (mostly) Southern states voted not only to not allow for gay marriage, but sometimes indeed to make it specifically illegal? Even trying to put that last part into their state constitutions?
Remember Kim Davis and her supporters?
Remember how American Christians has been behind an anti-gay campaign in Uganda to make it illegal to even be gay?
Remember how Russia basically lets murderers off the hook if the victim was LBGQT?
These are just a few examples of people -in the third example, literally millions of them- pretty much holding and spewing forth the opinions found in Blain, Mary, and Carol.
I suggest you try to remember that. I suggest you try to remember that there is one big reason why suicide rates among teenagers that find themselves to be LBGTQ are much higher: Because of the “nuanced” intolerance found in all these millions of people I just talked about. They are the ones that throws out their own children from their homes in a “nuanced” manner. They are the ones sending their kids to a “nuanced” ‘correction’ camp that is designed to torture the kids back into straightness. They are the ones teaching their straight kids the “nuanced” message that it is OK to bully that gay kid in class; up to the point where said kid eventually just takes their own life.
Try to remember these and dozens of other things that are happening in the real world. Then after remembering all of these things, feel free to tell me where exactly the actions of Blain, Mary, and Carol turned unrealistic. Because I have a hell of a hard time finding it.
*Ross
Not Blaine. Sorry about any confusion.
“Hank is, though. Hank is someone who apparently still seems to think atheism and homosexuality and transsexuality are wrong, but is comfortable enough with living and letting live that he can be at peace around gay or trans people. That’s really what I’m getting at; that people can disagree and still coexist. Joyce isn’t an example of that because she’s actively given up any protest or opposition out of love for her friends.”
so what you’re upset about is that i don’t have a character who exists to let people feel good about being a little bit of a bigot
no thank you
and that is super gross
Is the point of characters, or people, existing in a story solely so that they can either be lauded as correct or loathed as wrong? If not, why would you assume my wanting people who show complexity beyond easy categorization is because I want people to be able to thumbs-up bigotry?
A big part of confronting any of these issues is acknowledging that NOT everyone who disagrees with you is a screaming, raging bigot. It’s been brought up in the comments a dozen times now, especially around discussions of micro-aggressions; that people can become deaf to the subtler inconsiderate actions and quiet bigotries when they focus on the louder ones. And that’s just ONE of the problems with this.
… Also, why would Hank’s existence make anyone feel good about being a little bit of a bigot? I’m not even sure how your logic train got to that track.
I assume what I have been assuming of you because you have been given multiple examples of what you ask for, but you decry them all as not good enough because at one point or another they learned to be better. Joyce spent five years of the comic spewing all sorts of “subtler inconsiderate actions and quiet bigotries,” and she was the main character, and for some reason that doesn’t count because she eventually learned. You have taught me through this conversation that you want those practices validated, because you are repeatedly upset that I have done the opposite. If you were okay with merely showing these smaller aggressions, then I would think you would be fine, because there are countless examples, but for Some Reason you are apparently not.
First, let me start by saying that, you’re right, there have been examples of what I’m asking for. I contradicted myself even when I said so; Hank is an example of such a character.
I also want to add that a part of my upset and disappointment is precisely because, early in the comic, you showed Joyce exactly as that sort of character too. You didn’t have her be a conniving or evil so-and-so; just let her be herself, had the world react, and had her react to it. I -like- Joyce, and I like where she’s been.
But then we get Mary and Carol, the latter of whom acts like a Meryl Streep character and…
I dunno. Maybe I was just hoping for something other than more card-carrying villains.
I think perhaps I’m not articulating what I want here clearly enough, or perhaps I’m just not seeing clearly enough, but whatever the case, I think I’ve given an impression I really don’t want to give, so, for now, I’m just going to slink away for a while.
Well,
1: We’re dealing with fundamentalist Christians, not mainline protestants; problem is, the fundamentalists just call themselves “Christians.”
2: The comic is usually being told from the perspective of groups/individuals fundamentalists are ideologically opposed to; they would be seeing the dark sides of the religion far more frequently than someone the religion doesn’t have a problem with.
Ruth is bi, for one…I mean, perfect example right in front of our noses.
Uh, most the cast is Christian. Yeah they all have flaws but that’s because people have flaws. Mary is a bit of an outlier in how hateful and petty she is.
Wait, are you going to say that Becky, Danny, Sierra and Billie don’t count as Christians because they are LGBTQ? Because the last person I saw who went on the “Willis doesn’t know how real Christians act like!” rant started going down that path and it was a bit more revealing about their true attitudes.
“Willis, have you spent any time with a normal christian?”
You know how we know this isn’t a sincere question? There is an About link at the top of the page. It’s right freaking there! Allow me to quote it since you’ve deliberately ignored it:
Not that your No True Scotsman BS would have between compelling anyway.
Hey, guess what?
If you find yourself scapegoating LGBT folks as an opposing-faction to Christians in order to clothe yourself in self-righteousness, turns out that YOU are Mary.
Some Christians are jerks, some aren’t, some LGBTs are jerks, some aren’t. And some are bigger jerks than others. If you think DOA doesn’t reflect this aspect of reality adequately you haven’t been paying attention.
Ok, I mean, we had several strips dealing with how Roz, who at least sees herself as being super progressive and LGBT-friendly, being called out by multiple people (including a teacher) as being a total jerk, to the point of being told to leave the class for disruption.
Then there’s Mike, who seems to at the very least not care one way or another about LGBT issues (though, arguably, he’s probably not straight if the other version of him is any indicator) and his main character trait is being the biggest jerk of all.
I mean, to be honest there isn’t a character that hasn’t shown some flaws or been a bit of a jerk at times (the strip is titled ‘Dumbing’ of Age for a reason, dude), and that includes “LGBT friendly” ones.
Even looking at ‘antagonists’, we’ve got Blaine, who was probably the most hated character until Ross came around, and we at least don’t know that he has a beef with LGBT individuals (beyond seeming to be pretty nasty to everyone equally).
Just had a look at the about section. Sorry for my comment. I retract my “have you spent any time with” statement. Just want to say sorry for your experience in the church. It sucks that there are some bad people in churches. All the best to you Mr. Willis. I do really enjoy all of your work.
why do i sense a beatdown in the not so distant future? i get this feeling that somebody is going to lose their teeth privileges…
Oh! 😀 This is good. Soon the whole floor will be rebelling against Mary.
What the actually f… is she thinking? they will burn her on the stake and then piss on the remains. it is too stupid.. oh wait. it is perfect! let her try that. WHO will miss her anyway? 😀
So Willis. You really hard and firm about that “nobody gets hit by a convenient truck” rule? Like… really determined about that one? Because that would solve this problem in such a satisfying manner.
It’s weird. I can read comic after comic about horribly abusive parents, which is my childhood and which I know first hand the pain of… but Mary pisses me off far worse than any of them except Blaine.
I guess because, like Blaine, Mary knows she’s hurting people. She knows she’s hurting people, and she’s doing it anyway, because she’s freaking evil. Poetics demands she fall hard.
Sadly, Poetics doesn’t apply to real life. Or necessarily to Dumbing of Age.
I think its the knowledge that they hurt people with one added thing. Mary and Blaine are smug. They are amazingly smug and not in a way that’s funny like say…Ratigan from the Great Mouse Detective. There both cruel and they are so goddamned smug about it. Hell Mary is worst to me because not only is she unbelievably smug she also adds an extra sheen of self righteousness to that smugness.
That’s why Vincent Price is the best. He can be a murderous child-kidnapping Queen-of-England stealing RAT and people are still just like “But isn’t he fabulous though?”
I understand that anger, Ruth. As someone recently diagnosed as being on the Spectrum, whenever I find myself talking to an ant-vaxxer or an idiot who treats Autism like it’s a synonym for sociopath or an asshole who self-diagnoses themselves with Asperger’s and uses it in order to try to weasel out of the consequences of their actions, I often find myself thinking, “At some point, I’m going to reach my pre-set rage limit and finally hulk out. Always wondered what color I’d turn when that finally happened.”
Mary’s the anti-Christ.
The door in panel 1 and in panel 3 is not the same door, despite the fact Ruth and Billie are walking in opposite directions.
I am looking forward to what I’m desperately hoping will be a brutally effective takedown of Mary
-Everyone else, who of course still think that Ruth and Billie hate each other, laugh their collective asses off when Mary claims they’re a couple.
-They start getting mad as Mary’s ranting grows more insane and hateful.
-Mary loses it and goes after Ruth, allowing Ruth to employ a quick and efficient beatdown.
-Mary is kicked out of the dorm.
-Mary is mauled by a cougar. (Are there cougars in Indiana?)
-Everyone enjoys pie. (Even Mary is given pie through a tube, I’m not a monster.)
Let her be drowned in pie.
I actually have a Moral Theory of Pie. Pie is, self-evidently, an absolute good. Therefore, the better a person you are, the more varieties of pie you enjoy. (To be fair, I have corollary hypothesis that some people invest their goodness as expressed by pie by enjoying a smaller number of pie varieties more intensely, but all my findings thus far suggest this is a relatively uncommon phenomena.)
Without doing a rigorous pie survey, this is speculation, but I feel like Mary is both in the ‘cream pie is too rich, is makes me nauseous’ camp as well as the ‘meringue is gross’ camp. I think it’s highly likely she might express distaste for several varieties of fruit, and she might consider pie as a dessert-only food. This would sharply limit her pie intake, demonstrating that she is, in fact, a crappy human being.
Which is why we won’t feel too sorry for her when she chokes on her pie tube.
Mary makes me miss Ross. At least he was open and honest about being congealed shit in human form.
This may end up being deleted, but it is something that I thought of yesterday and seems to fit today’s strip.
A woman who is always depicted as wearing a hijab has a son who associated with criminals, disrupted temple grounds, started a religious cult, and was martyred for his faith. And Mary is named for her.
Make that generally depicted in a hijab. There is art of her that depicts her as a blue eyed blonde in clothing appropriate for the area and time that the artist came from. Like VanGogh putting a Dutch gardener in his painting of Easter.
You must have left safe search on then
The old testament God will be there.
Keep tickling the dragon’s tail, Mary.
What a bully
That girl is such a bully and a troll. You shouldn’t push your beliefs on others.
Of course she should. Pushing your beliefs on others is the very core of what religion does and is.
Not all of them. http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=81617
Oh, Mary, this is not going to end well for you.
I have a feeling Marys fall will be abrupt, sudden and will contain a large audience of her fellow College alumni and conclude with her being run out of town on a rail.
Don’t do it don’t do it don’t do it
By the time Mary complains, there will be no sign of Billie, and ALSO Becky isn’t there.
The irony.
Ha. Oh wow. Now that’s perfect timing.
I heard taunting someone who enjoys watching the world burn is a good practice. 10/10 Would Watch The World Burn again.
And I thought Mary couldn’t be any more hated.
…they’ll never find the body.
What a fuckin bongo.
Everyone coming up with plans & theories here about how Ruth or Mary can perfectly resolve this situation is forgetting that this comic is not called Smart People Always Do the Right Thing.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/blog/smart-people-always-do-the-right-thing-by-brian-daniel/
Unless writing detailed paragraphs about how each character can resolve their situation in a way which makes nothing else bad happen is a category of fanfic. I guess, then, have fun.
I don’t read fanfic. Is “stories about how characters can stop making mistakes & ruining everyone’s lives” an actual fanfic genre? Does it have a shortname?
Of course I don’t mean the folks who are just wishing for bad things to happen to Ruth or Mary. The fanfic genre of “brutal revenge on my least favorite characters” is definitely one I’ve seen before.
Yeah no one would want that…except for the rack on Billie, that’s pretty well done
Is “stories about how characters can stop making mistakes & ruining everyone’s lives” an actual fanfic genre? Does it have a shortname?
Does “Everybody Lives” count?
Can we just push Mary down some stairs and get back to life as normal?
Actually, no. Ask her if she’s named after Mary Magdalene.
And then have Skywarp push her down some stairs.
Some very large, fatal stairs.
665 comments?? Quick, someone else post, then NO ONE ELSE post >=D
It doesn’t really matter, Ana. A few years ago, they found out that 666 was a mis-translation. The “real” number of the beast was 616 all along.
I wonder if hotels and other places that conveniently skips 666 will follow suit and make sure it’s 616 that is skipped from now on. I mean, otherwise it would just be silly, wouldn’t it?
DID YOU RUIN IT, WAS IT YOU
=P You know it’s all superstition anyway
I was the one who made it 667, so yes, I ruined it. Because I am a ruiner. If I see anyone having fun with something that is somehow incorrect, I must inform them that they are having fun incorrectly! Look upon my ruined (but correct) world and despair!
668 – the neighbor of the beast.
It’d be nice to see what caused Mary to become such a shit. Because that right there? That’s not someone simply trying to push their belief on others. That’s someone gloating about their leverage over someone. It takes a real special kind of person to do that, and I’ve always been interested in the environs that produces them. Mostly because it helps me figure out how to write them.
I just realized that the only way Ruth’s right hand could have slapped a ding-dong onto Mary’s right cheek would if Ruth stood behind her, just like Mary is doing here.