so anyway there’s a kickstarter to make three different fully-articulated 1/6-scale scientifically-accurate raptor action figures and i figure if this doesn’t fund dina will leap out of your screens and murder every single damn one of you so here’s a link
and if dina leaping out of your screen to murder you sounds enticing, then she will NOT do this if the kickstarter does not fund
dina is canny
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heh well I wonder what award she thinks is coming to her with that shitty attitude. at least ruth is trying to be a better person.
Honestly from the bracers on both wrists I wonder how much of her hate for the world around her is over flow.
Unfortunately(?), this theory has been pretty much disproven.
Perhaps Mary could regard her WWJD bracelet and consider whether Jesus would use blackmail.
I like this one comic, i think a family circus, where the parent asks the kid about to eat the last piece of cake wwjd and the kid said something like “make enough cake to give it to everyone!”
Sometimes you can’t do what jesus would.
Clearly you don’t know Jesus like I—
Oh god, I’ve said to much already! Uh… no. No, Jesus. definitely wouldn’t use blackmail. Totally. Like, all the time.
Jesus would be like all, come on man, there is like enough fixings to make burritos for everyone and enough leftovers to fill every fridge on the dorm floor, if we were allowed to have fridges, which we don’t, like who would have a fridge in a dorm where they don’t allow fridges right?
Your dorm is a little backward there, then. All dorms at my campus are allowed fridges. There’s an expensive dorm building that even comes with fridges.
I think Mary is just a being of pure hatred and the bracelets give cohesion to her form. If you take them away she explodes!
Or she’s like the girl with the ribbon around her neck and if you remove them, her hands will fall off!
Or perhaps they’re a hate training device, and taking them off make her hate even stronger?
They’re not to protect my hate from you. They’re to protect you from my hate.
A nice spot in heaven, treat all people with respect, unless they are nonbelievers, or aren’t straight, or aren’t cis, and only sometimes if they aren’t white. I still don’t get why Ruth is “trying” though.
she wants to be more than the drunk miserable asshole she has been? I have darkness I am trying to move past and I can relate to ruth somewhat from todays comic.
I misread “or aren’t cis” as “or aren’t cats”. Mary doesn’t seem like the sort to be nice to cats.
She seems like the type who’s determined that animals don’t have souls and Adam was given dominion over every other species so she doesn’t think much of animals. Especially cats, since they don’t accept humans as their betters.
Cats promote pagan idol worship, and must therefore be destroyed
Also, musical theater, which is a gateway drug to the gay
Which makes sense, considering they are our betters.
Given how much of a foil Mary already is to Joyce…
Well, Joyce is more of a dog person, but in the Walkyverse she was never really shown to hate cats.
I imagine that Mary goes out of her way to hate cats, as opposed to how Joyce goes to great lengths to try and love them.
Pretty sure Ruth is “trying” to cover up the fact she’s suffering for alcohol withdrawal. And the fact she’s an asshole dictator with no right to be an RA, but that’s probably not the reason for the bubbles over her head.
Ruth has hit bottom I think. With the drinking, with Mary trying to blackmail her, and with giving up Billie so that neither of them would be thrown out of school. (as RA, Ruth would definitely loose her RA and likely student status).
I think the beginning of the uphill climb for her was after she thwarted Mary’s plans: and then got the cookies from Billie. She put the cookies on the second pillow of her bed and looked at them.
Next morning she started digging out of her depression, alcoholism and misery.
She showered, did her hair like Billie fixed it for her, put on the shirt Billie gave her: and went out into the world to try and be a real person.
I don’t think she’s trying to impress anyone. I think she’s trying to survive.
And maybe get Billie back. (they don’t have to live together to be together).
I wish her the best of luck.
I’m just thinking she’s still worried about getting fired. If she gets fired for how she is with the other students on her floor, it makes the pain of kicking Billie out a vain effort and that much more painful.
I propose that Mary’s merit badge be shaped like ‘bongo drums’, in honor of that particular autocorrect. Possibly some crosses on the sides of the drums, to drive the sanctimonious Christian bit home.
Mary, you are a stupid, stupid creature….
“Fly you foo-”
No Gandalf, I want to see where this goes.
Not gonna lie, you just reminded me of the scene from The Fellowship of the Ring where Lurtz is born. Except, in this scenario Ruth is Lurtz, Mary is the hapless Orc slave, and we are all Saruman, looking on in glee.
*stops, stares with mild horror, then begins looking on in glee*
I can’t believe Saruman goes to Indiana University.
I know, right? You’d think Oxford.
Or Yale.
Eton.
Er, Eton is a school, not a university.
I mean at least she’s being self-aware (for this panel, until she talks about how she’s literally the Best Person To Ever Judge You™)
And if there’s one guy who can write self-aware villains, it’s our Willis
Charades are fun mmkay
I love all the floats and balloons and marching bands.
No, no, that’s parades, which is what the Devil wears.
No no no, you’re thinking of Prada. You know, the Soviet newspaper.
No, no, that’s Pradva, that Sanscrit linguistic compound where multiple individual nouns are concatenated to form an agglomerated compound word in which the conjunction ‘and’ has been elided to form a new word with a distinct semantic field.
Wait, so what was the function of the junction?
Conjunction junction. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPoBE-E8VOc
No, no, that’s Dvandva. That Czech composer who has a keyboard named after him.
Mary thinks everyone is secretly as nasty as she is.
Many nasty people are like that. If you’re being nice, you’re getting something out of it, because that’s the only reason THEY are ever nice.
It reminds me of that old Subnormality strip, “We assume of others what we’d expect from ourselves.”
THAT’S the name of it, I couldn’t remember for the longest time, thank you!
My #1 red flag for dating is if the guy tries to educate me on how disingenuous and disgusting all the “other guys” really are when I exhibit a basic faith in strangers.
My Dad’s like that. He’s super Racist and Sexist and he seems to think me and my brother are 100% the same.
I certainly am.
In the bedroom
In that I also don’t get dressed before noon.
Truth talk right here.
So she’s either the Joker from the Dark Knight or Vorbus from Small Gods?
That second one, in particular.
Fits her to a T.
“Surely, there had been a voice? But all he could remember was the sound of his own thoughts, bouncing off the inside of his own head.”
So lemme get this straight: Mary thinks Ruth is being nicer to people to atone for defending queer people? And simultaneously thinks she’s defending queer people for “liberal brownie points”?
“No, I know defending Carla is a sin, but I want the devil liberals to like me, and I’m making up for it by being pleasant to other people!”
I’m thinking it’s more that Mary is thinking Ruth is kowtowing to the liberal / homosexual / antichrist agenda for whatever worldly benefit of admiration or wealth or whatever that agenda grants in Mary’s twisted mind, and is warning Ruth that no, God’s going to nuke the world in a few short years, so Ruth’s never going to get to collect.
I believe it is in fact something like this. One thing you find reading fundamentalist fiction is a common thread of belief that their opponents know their own ideology is a lie and simply deny the obvious truth of the protagonists beliefs.
Your first mistake was trying to apply logic to the mind of a hardcore fundie. Everyone knows they’re immune.
Your first mistake is trying to use logic to defend a fundie when you should be sacrificing them to the dark Lord Mike just so he stops killing puppies for a few hours and instead deciders to return from his extensive visit to the walkyverse
He only did that one time. That we know of. And I think it was just a threat.
Especially since Mary is one of the four people who knows that Ruth herself is queer.
“What were you trying to prove? That deep down, everyone’s as ugly as you? You’re alone!”
god, ruth! why must you be such a kettle???
I think it’s just morning sickness from the baby she is having with Billie since they had unprotected sex. All those hormones clouding her head. She would normally be all remove femurs, ask questions never.
Initiating femur harvest sequence
ha HA the use of excessive violence has been approved
3 2 1
PRIORITY OVER-RIDE. NEW BEHAVIOR DICTATED.
MUST BREAK TARGET INTO COMPONENT COMPOUNDS.
(Anyone who gets this reference is awesome.)
2418-B? Is that you?
Frungy, the sport of KINGS!
These parameters are acceptable.
She’s still here. Ugh!!!
Anyone hoping that Mary gets so fed up with all of the LIBERALIZMZ that she just straight-up switches school.
I mean, surrender isn’t really a big trait of Mary’s, but I still dream…
Perhaps what Mary is studying isn’t found at religious schools.
Art? I’m pretty sure it’s art.
I took art at a religious school. They definitely teach art at religious schools, since I went to a Nazarene college, aka a denomination that doesn’t believe in watching movies, women cutting their hair, dancing, any alcohol consumption ever, or tank tops.
Mary draws anime style, if I recall, so maybe she’s attending a secular college on the assumption that the program will try less hard to force her to produce classical, realistic-looking work.
(This is, of course, a false assumption. Fine Arts programs will always teach you foundations of classical realism whether you want it or not, but if you persevere you can come out the other side drawing all the cartoons you want, so long as you know how and when to apply everything you learned about realism when necessary.)
Pretty much. I’m not an artist but I do enjoy drawing and one persistent peace of advice is to learn life drawing (by all means draw other things too!) because it gives you all the foundation to create a style that will be both aesthetically pleasing and flexible.
Mary just needs to be backhanded /so much/ that it’s painful.
My hands are aching with the urge to wrap around her throat.
So your hands thirst for necks?
One neck.
I do not advocate violence against women. Right now, I am very much NOT advocating that Mary’s ass be swiftly introduced to somebody’s steel-toed boot. Nor am I currently advocating that somebody deck Mary in her smug, self-righteous hypocritical face. I just want to be clear.
But equality though.
Personally, I wouldn’t advocate it either. Violence is rarely the answer. What she needs is a mouth packed full of bleach, swallowing optional.
But it is cathartic.
There’s nothing wrong with Mary that a little near-death experience couldn’t improve…
Not really. She’d probably see the light and hear Jesus calling, and end up worse than ever.
So, we take out the ‘near’ part?
The little “drunk bubbles” make me think that the charade is that she is a functioning and sober individual.
Withdrawal bubbles?
Pretty sure those are sickness bubbles not drunk bubbles.
I tried to get my merit badge in speech writing but i never finished my
sandwiches
Best line in Frozen.
Not “…happy snowman!”
?
Just murder her already, Ruth.
Not murder. Not yet… we bide our time… her revelation shall soon come
No see, it’s actually really perfect ironic revenge. She dies, and then…well, doesn’t realise there’s a heaven. Because she’s dead.
(Oh god that’s dark. Just kidding, of course, Mary’s got plenty of time left to become a not-terrible person.)
Given how the comments section tends to view Ruth, I doubt they’d accept a not-terrible Mary even if by some miracle she managed to see the light, so to speak.
Or better yet, God pulls a South Park on Mary and tells her only Mormons get into heaven.
“Oh, my God! I’m dying. Now I’m moving towards the light. But wait a minute, there’s been a mistake! This is Hell! Hello, Hitler. Hello, Mussolini. Captain Kangaroo? That’s weird!”
“Bill Cosby? I mean obviously but you’re not even dead.”
Soon? SOON?
Nonono. Revenge shall be protracted and merciless. Forty years from now, when Mary has lost the strength to beg for the release of death…. THEN she shall be permitted to die.
“When your GPA is ashes, then you have my permission to die.”
Aw yes. The strip’s been short on violence lately.
physically? yup.
I can think of two rock songs where charades are mentioned and I’ve already played them both here, I think.
What about Eminence Front by The Who?
Pete must be laughing all the way to the bank over its use in those car ads. Didn’t the ad execs ever listen to the lyrics?
Personally, I’m thinking “This Suffering” by Billy Talent. No specific reference to ‘charades’, but “why don’t we end this lie” and “yes I’m calling on your bluff” seem relevant. And I can see Ruth really digging the song anyway, AND they’re Canadian.
Mary’s last line basically describes her relationship with Christianity, though she certainly doesn’t realize it.
Mary doesn’t have to distract herself from how horrible she is. She truly, genuinely thinks that she’s a good person, and that everyone else is completely horrible. If it weren’t religion, it’d be something else.
Actually, this makes me curious what would happen if you openly confronted her with “for all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God”. I can imagine a few ways that could go. The most likely is that she only picks on non-Christians because Christians at least openly admit they fall short, and ask God for forgiveness. (Even though the whole point of that verse was to say that specific people are not more deserving of special treatment due to holiness.)
You can be absolutely certain that Mary doesn’t give a flip about what any verse was actually intended to mean; she’s far too invested in them meaning what she wants them to mean.
(Joyce is the rare example of one who tries to see the actual meaning of scripture, and look where that’s got her.)
Yeah, she ended up like Flanders
“All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” is one of Mary’s favorite verses.
The beam in the eye, on the other hand…
So is Mary under the impression that she’ll get a medal for being a miserable, hateful person? Is this one of those “mansions in heaven” things?
Mary thinks that the only thing separating her from literally being Jesus is literally everyone else.
Yup. Exactly that.
God has demanded a list of bigoted awful ways of being in order to be rewarded eternally and avoid eternal punishment, but Satan’s emissaries are everywhere trying to corrupt and dissuade you, even convince you that sin is not as evil as God has decreed.
Through this you show your loyalty to God and your inherent “goodness” once and for all and thus may inherit the kingdom of Heaven.
So, basically, this is massively projection and she assumes that just because she’s desperately trying to make a show of doing harm to these communities for some extrinsic reward, so must those who support queer people and fail to condemn them and their lives.
I have the sneaking suspicion Mary is both more complex and less simple than she appears. I’m inclined, for example, to think she is less religious than Joyce by far even if she’s a homophobic transphobe.
I kinda think Mary’s parents might have thought she was gay and sent her to one of those horrid “pray away the gay”-type camps.
Willis has shown plenty of willingness to have completely unredeemable characters in shortpacked. I’m not holding my breath that Mary has any hidden depths.
I doubt it. My wife’s cousin was talked into going to one of those by her fundie mother. If she hated anyone when she got out it was herself, not the LGBQT community.
i imagine it affects different people in different ways though.
People think that, but it’s really easy to get into heaven.
Forgiveness is a big part of it.
Forgiveness for what?
Or, wait, am I supposed to be the one forgiving God? Because honestly I’m not confident enough in the accounts about him to actually believe he carried out any of the atrocities attributed to him.
Honestly this religion stuff is so confusing.
You’re supposed to feel bad for your sexual thoughts and stuff.
BTW you tell a Thirteen year Old hitting Puberty that “Sex is Wrong and dirty” it destroys their view on Sex for a long LONG time and makes them feel like they’re broken or wrong and think “why won’t God help me to stop touching myself I keep asking for help but nothings happening”.
Speaking from experience here.
If no one gets medals, then why try hard to earn no medal? Give the minimum effort and you’ll get the same amount of medal as everyone else. Which is zero.
And the medals are just meaningless tokens anyway.
As is everything else.
Eat at Arby’s
#NihilistArbys
Arby’s, we’re all going to Hell anyways, might as well send our colons there first.
What Mary fails to notice is, the queer is coming from *inside* the Ruth.
The queer is here! It’s all over us!
We’re here, we’re queer, Mary can SUCK IT!
How could Mary not notice it?
I mean, seriously. That’s the thing she was blackmailing her with in the first place.
Ruth is such a good ally that she’s actually got a girlfriend that she has sex with regularly and enthusiastically. What a good ally.
A queer has cum inside her. And she came inside a queer.
You got us Mary, we’re all part of the charade. Every queer person, every ally, we all know you’re right, but we’re just trying to be trendy. You’re an astute observer of the human condition. These are not lies.
I totally did it for the free toaster, idk about you.
Mary is just butthurt because she’s missing out on all the delicious gay cookies.
I wanted the cupcakes myself.
I just did it so that people would like me! Any day now…
Sad part is, there are a whole bunch of self-hating queer people out there who’d probably agree with Mary =/
If I were to take part in the charade, I do it to be trendy. I would do it to be faaaaabulous!
… I’d jazz-hands, but I think I need to attain the rank of Second Circle before I’m issued a jazz-hands permit.
*wouldn’t do it to be trendy
Mary doesn’t really need her femurs, does she?
NEED? No. But they do give her a leg up on life.
Sticking up for “the queers”? She is queer. Mary knows this.
Sticking up for queers and sticking it INTO queers are two parallel, but not synonymous points of view.
Well, Mary’s pretty much one spot for the very last sentence.
Not for anything else, tho.
Liberal Brownie Points are like the new Green Stamps (80’s kids will remember this). 10 LBPs can be turned in for a t-shirt, 30 for a ball cap, and 50 for a wallet. I’m currently saving up 250 LBPs for a jacket that says “QUEER CHARADES!” on the back.
Only 250? Not a bad exchange rate these days.
Could I wear that to Gay Bingo?
I’ll see you there. Today is the day I win the big prize of a freaking 1000 LBP!
Mary is the best at being the worst.
Seriously, no contest. They held an Asshole Pageant, and nobody else even bothered to compete. Even Mike was like, “Shit, I may be a stone cold asshole, but I’m not MARY.”
Mike, at least, had a relatively good relationship with Amber in Short packed. Don’t know if Mary did ANYTHING decent.
…. eh. She’s bad, but I’d rank her behind Toedad and Dickdad easilly, and maybe behind Carol and the previous generation of Siegals.
…. in other words, for her to TRULY be the worst, she’d have to have a kid to raise.
Watch that be a twist in her back history. Had one in high school, was going to raise it (we’ll assume her world view at the time was like how Joyce’s is right now), and it was taken from her. The grief forced a snap back, hard, and now hates the world.
Mary has won. She has forced Ruth to dance to her tune and change her behavior and life in fear of what Mary might do… and Mary is to wraped up in herself to understand it???
Come one, at least give us a good gloat, Mary.
I am… not seeing how she reconciles this with the previous blackmail attempt.
I’d have to go back and look to see if this holds up, but I think the implication here is that Mary has been misinterpreting the situation this whole time. She was only able to blackmail Billie and Ruth because they were hiding something, but she seems to have thought that what they were hiding is…an insidious plot to be nice to people who aren’t straight and/or cis.
And yes, that sounds really dumb, but keep in mind that the most influential series of fiction in white evangelicalism, Left Behind, included a scene where the villain gloated evilly about his plan to feed the poor. There’s this whole school of thought where, because the Antichrist would be someone pretending to do good, good deeds are inherently suspect (which also ties into the whole “faith vs. works” false dichotomy). The mindset really can be that warped.
“keep in mind that the most influential series of fiction in white evangelicalism, Left Behind, included a scene where the villain gloated evilly about his plan to feed the poor”
What. What.
They…they do realize that is literally a thing Jesus advocated for, right?
Prosperity Gospel has proven to me that Jesus or anything he said is literally not required for some forms of Christianity.
I can’t believe that POS got his airplane.
I have the odd temptation to pray to God that the jet crashes with only one lost life.
Can I thank you for saying ‘some forms of’? Because thank you.
Actually READING the Bible doesn’t seem to be a requirement for being Christian.
It’s actually often a detriment for the type of Christian Mary is. Because then it becomes obvious that the Bible is a disjointed and not at all consistent set of parables and random historical detritus that have little to nothing to do with the modern Fundamentalist obsessions.
Also, there’s like two major stories involving canonically queer relationships.
King David’s possible bisexuality caused one of my associates to get really really upset.
Now I’m curious. David and Jonathan I know about, but what’s the other one?
Ruth and Naomi
It must take an awful lot of thick-headedness to read it all and still believe that “it must all be literal truth, because god inspired those who wrote it”, considering the amount of outright contradictions.
But as usual, only the parts you agree with have been written by the truly god-inspired, I suppose. Because its easier to not change your mind about the fundamental things…
Apparently the Bible says exactly what you need to win an argument, and the parts you disagree with don’t count. (At least that’s what I’ve seen far too many times…)
Ehh…maybe, but she did directly accuse her of “defiling the cheerleader” which really only has one meaning as far as I’m aware…
Yeah, exactly. I don’t see how she gets here. Maybe we’ll find out tomorrow. It doesn’t make sense to me.
It’s very likely what mary considers defilement is not what others.
Er… sure? Most people wouldn’t agree with the fundamentalist (and ultimately sexist) view of such a thing being defilement, but at the same time it’s hard to imagine what else it could possibly mean but “doing sexytimes with”.
Perhaps “defiling the cheerleader” was just a stab in the dark? Mary doesn’t really know?
I’m guessing she just thinks Ruth is trying to be one of those trendy LGBQXYZ hipsters.
“He cared for the needy and fed the poor… BUT FOR THE WRONG REASONS!”
With that line of thinking, no wonder xenophobia is cultivated. It immediately puts suspicion on charities and philathropists that don’t allign with their denomination, and widens the gap between sheep and goats, to use the old biblical metaphor.
I don’t like GAYS for brownie points. That’s why I pretend to like BAKERS. BAKERS.
And sometimes Potheads.
Not gonna lie, friends who can bake are the best friends to have.
“Oh I baked all these cookies for an event but I still have so many left over! What ever shall I do?”
Me, I’m more the kind of baker friend that goes “Hey, close your eyes and try this.”
WHY IS IT SPICY! Delicious, but why is this croissant SPICY!
Ever tried candy with chili powder?
HRRKK!
But my child loves it.
As it happens, just yesterday I did in fact make fudge with cayenne pepper in it. The reasoning bounces through two different fandoms, but it’s actually pretty good if you like spicy stuff.
Recipe, or it didn’t happen.
http://www.instructables.com/id/Fever-Fudge/
Granted, I had to seriously tone down the spiciness (my roommate can’t really handle it), but it’s surprisingly tasty.
I have a gay friend who bakes a lot. Especially brownies with toffee in them.
I’m sorry I just got distracted. What were we talking about again?
Wedding cakes, and how the liberal / homosexual / satanic agenda is about cornering the baking industry.
Well that took a hard turn.
Never mind that, do you have any of those brownies left?
So that’s just two different kinds of “baker,” then.
So Mary, who is blackmailing Ruth over her relationship with Billie, also thinks Ruth is pretending not to be homophobic? That… actually kinda checks out with the logic of closeted Christian homophobes.
Mary is one of those people who thinks racists are “saying what other people are too PC to say” and “telling it like it is”. They quite literally think EVERYONE feels the way they do, they just can’t admit it.
Basically, everyone is straight deep down (because God doesn’t make people broken), but people throw themselves into perversion in their eagerness to serve Satan. Of course being gay is a charade, and the most gay people are the ones doing the most charading.*
*not actually my opinion. Redirect anger at the people I’m describing.
As if a merit badge can get you anything anyways.
I think you still need at least six of them to qualify for Star rank.
Hah! Take that, Ruth!
Go get triggered on Tumblr, you Special Snowflake SJW!
[/sarcasm]
“Glistening Phallus?” Oh, dear. That’s not what I typed!
I guess one too many trolls used the famous three-lettered “S” acronym unironically ’round these parts. Oh, well– I’ll keep that in mind for the future.
[/no sarcasm]
I don’t know– calling those folks glistening dongs is kinda poetic, in a way.
Glistening phalli?
And another filter answered for me.
Can we have Amazigirl beat Mary to within an inch of her life, then realize what a monster she’s become, put herself into therapy, and meanwhile Mary wakes up from a coma several weeks later as a real human instead of… Mary?
Two birds, one stone
It’s like Mary is trying to get punched so hard that her nose comes out the back of her head.
I don’t really want the action figure, can I pledge for having Dina murder me instead? Is that a pledge level?
did you even read the whole blog post
Well, the post is ambiguously worded. I took it to mean that if it doesn’t fund, then she’ll only kill the people who didn’t donate and don’t want her to come, but not the people who do. I take it you meant it to also mean that if it does fund, she will reward those who want her to come by doing so?
dina will not kill you if you want her to kill you, she is spiteful
Yes, she’s a clever girl.
…. but also a bit OCD. I think we might be able to deadlock her brain process with this variation on Russel’s Paradox.
So then people who do want her to kill them have no incentive to support the kickstarter.
Think about it this way: if it doesn’t fund, she’s going to be busy killing a lot of people who aren’t you, so your odds are better if it does just because she’ll have more free time.
MAN I SURE HOPE DINA DOESN’T COME OUT OF MY SCREEN
THAT WOULD BE
TERRIBLE
But what happens if you tell her it looks like an angry duck with a lizard’s tail?
I read it as ‘Dina will leap out of your dreams‘ at first, and that added a (not unpleasant) degree of surrealism to the post.
Um, it is perfectly possible for Dina to kill you for other reasons. Not likely, but possible. We already know about some things that annoy her. I wouldn’t push it, if I were you.
Tomorrow, there will be a strip of a puddle of blood being mopped up, and no one will know how it got there.
Willis, are you SURE no one ever dies in dumbing of age? Nobody would waste in-comic time mourning Mary. Your readers would love you FOREVER if you broke that rule just once… just saying.
I’d probably instantly hate anyone in the cast who wasn’t at least, like, “holy shit Mary’s DEAD? Dear God that’s terrible”.
I mean, I’d understand if their feelings were complicated and they didn’t feel any personal loss, but feeling absolutely no empathy for her? Simply saying “good I hope that bongo rots in the Hell she so fervently believed in”?
That puts you, ironically enough, at Mary-level terrible.
“You” as in, like, the character, I mean.
Apologies–your post wasn’t there when I started writing the post.
I still think you’re going overboard. Mary is bad enough that they still wouldn’t be that bad.
I fully understand not liking characters who would be spiteful towards Mary’s death. I wouldn’t like it, either.
But there is no way in hell that wanting the bad guy in a comic to die makes you as bad as a sanctimonious sociopathic bigot!
As much as I’ve defended characters who are fundamentally good versus people who hate on them, I’ve always made exceptions for the bad guys. Hating someone whose motivations are fundamentally evil is a whole other ball game.
I may be the type who tries to feel sorry for any death–even that of Osama bin Laden, mind you. But there’s no way I’m going to give people grief for wanting evil to get its comeuppance.
Hell, you’re being more like Mary than they are, with the sanctimony. And even then, you’re nowhere near Mary-level bad.
“if you broke that rule just once” — Next Kickstarter?
Can we please send Mary to the Sisters?
Y’know, we’re led to believe the charade is being a decent person, but I think the charade is being a functional person. Being up and about, reaching out to people instead of lying in bed hating herself. That’s the charade and she’s trying to keep it up as long as it takes to make herself able to push herself through her day and perform the role of good RA.
Also, yay Mandy and Grace’s relationship update. I love getting the little snippets of their life through these tiny moments.
Absolutely. I suppose that’s why Ruth has her “wait, what” moment, because for HER the charade is painfully obvious and should be for everyone else that sees her, so when Mary get into a dumb rant about the WRONG charade Ruth has to re-align her thoughts.
Were we led to believe that the charade was her being a decemt person? I always thought the take-away was “faking/attempting functionality”.
Yeah I was absolutely getting the “oh shit I have to act like a human being and interact with other people and like not lie there crying or being numb” vibe.
I was Just thinking the same thing.
Wow. I admit, I was thinking of the shallow joke (as of last strip), but I think you nailed it. (Again.)
Broadly speaking I think you’re right. But today in particular I think it’s the charade that she isn’t dragging around withdrawl like a ball and chain.
Can we just take a moment to acknowledge that apparently Mary genuinely believes that Ruth and she are alike? I mean, like, she obviously looks down on Ruth’s relationship with Billie, but she thinks that Ruth is as horrible of a person as she is and that she’s only pretending to be nice to get “liberal approval.” Mary’s wrong, of course, but I feel like that’s a telling reflection of how everyone views Ruth overall.
As an unrelated note:
I feel like people should cool it with commenting on Mary’s relationship with Christianity? Lots and lots and lots of modern Christians view faith as a glorified ‘if I collect enough gold stars I get into heaven!’ situation. Which, you know, as we’ve seen, probably not the best way to live one’s life.
But I feel like people are implying that that somehow makes her less faithful, or less of a “true Christian”, and it’s like…no. Mary probably genuinely feels a connection to G-d. She probably genuinely feels faith. If her expressing her faith is acting crazy bigoted that’s a problem and that makes her a horrible person, but that doesn’t mean her “relationship with G-d” is any less than, say, Joyce’s. Some people use religion to excuse bigotry, but that doesn’t mean all bigoted religious people AREN’T genuinely religious or faithful, y’know?
I have little doubt in her faith and her relationship with her G-d. Her actions and opinions, however, indicate that if this truly is what G-d commands, he probably isn’t worth worshipping in the first place.
Interesting point. Thanks!
‘Can we Just stop talking about …. Marys toxic Christianity’
NO, fuck no, and sorry this makes you uncomfortable, But seriously fuck no.
I hope that sufficiently answers your question.
But its clear you dont understand the pint of the comic, or Mary, or you wouldnt say this.
NO, Mary isnt any way superior for believing something totally toxic. I have to wonder how much of that Toxic-version , you do too?
You are basically defending Fundamentaist Xtian hate theology; and when that makes you uncomfortable you want to keep the Hate Theology but are asking it to divorce it from its hateful consequences.
Mary is actually expressing Religious Bigotry here toward liberal Christianity. Either you dont undertsand that or you do, and are trying to handwave it away.
No, Mary doenst have a connection to God. Except that Willis thought her up as the ideal Xtian girl archetype in Roomies.
It sounds like you are shitting on “works theology” ,
which in practical terms means ‘Do good and be a good person’ . This is derived from Luther ‘believing the right thing gets you heaven only’ , and especially Calvin ‘Gods detests you , and has presaved a few of you , the rest will be burning in hell forevah’
In short order, you are siding with the Theology of the Westboro Baptist Church, and asking us to consider it a mere coincidence. NOPE.
These beliefs have ALWAYS justified bigotry, exclusion and hate.
Its the very point of them. The world would be better off if you saw Mary as as a Mirror to the community you identify with , and started going after “gold stars” instead.
She may not be the face you see all the time , but she is inseparable.
But If Even Oversaved- Joyce thinks Mary’s being saved didnt work; its safe to assume shes right.
The problem isnt whether Mary is genuinely full of some faith or not. Shes clearly full of it ,regardless.
The problem is the belief that mere Faith is a magic card that actually counts and trumps being a decent human being. Thats what Mary has faith in. And thats what you are rushing to defend as faithful.
ITs BOnkers. You might as well say ‘Hilter believed terrible things, but at least he stood for something and stuck by it’
The sopcalled virtue you are defending here is barely even a vice. Its nothing. Its almost non-sequitur, inconsequential, meaningless.
Any meaning it does have, is the way it hand waves doing good as non-important and as an internal justifier of hate.
That’s not what that post was saying though? Like.. you two agree??? What I got from OP was they want people to stop taking about Mary as though she’s not “really” Christian, bc that implies ~real Christians~ aren’t bigots (like a no true scotsman kind of deal) and in reality real people (and Mary) ARE Christian and she ARE faithful, and they use religion to be a bigot. OP wasn’t saying there was anything positive or wonderful about Mary’s faith, but rather that we can’t ignore it or to take it out of the equation… which seems to also be what you’re saying. :/
Woah, hold up, the fuck? Where in TeaTime’s comment are you getting ANY of this?
TeaTime was just saying that Mary is as much of a Christian as any other Christian. Mary just happens to be a sack of shit. They were NOT defending Mary.
“Mary is as much of a Christian as any other self-professed Christian”, I mean to say.
Yeah, the fact that her form of Christianity is founded in severe spiritual abuse doesn’t spontaneously negate the fact that there are a lot of Christians that genuinely believe such things and do so, in the real world.
The “No True Scotsman” Fallacy doesn’t work, because there plainly ARE Scotsmen out there who fail to live up to that standard and they think behaving like that is fine and dandy, perhaps even REQUIRED, so people are allowed to say “No she is in fact a Christian she just also happens to be the kind of Christian who’s ABSOLUTELY AWFUL.”
And I was typing my own reply and didn’t see any of the above comments till just now, so: yeah, what they said.
In any universe I live in, saying someone has a “genuine connection to God”,
is defending them. Its pure Apologetics.
Teatime is bending over backward to justify Faith-alone theology, which Mary is implicitly endorsing in this comment. Its a 500 year old internal fight inside Xtianity that has slaughtered millions, and would keep doing it, if we hadnt collectively tamed it.
Teatime has also gone out of his way to ask us NOT to criticize Marys version of Christianity. Thats something Im willing to consider After IT STOPS trying to oppress me, or harrass me in public places.
Before then, Nope.
Teatime asked us to permanently shut down the conversation about “Marys relationship to Christianity” because it makes him uncomfortable.
I said NO.
Its the major theme of the comic. Its inseparable. IT isnt going away. The comic is per Word-of-God autobiographical. Ist intended as a criticism based on actual in-real-life experience.
DOA is designed carefully to get us to think about the exact things Teatime is asking us not to think about.
Teatime isnt killing the “no true scotsman” fallacy.
Or I would agree with him.
Hes asking us to divorce a hateful belief system from its hateful consequences. Which is i think the exact opposite purpose of DOA.
YMMV.
I dont have negative Feelings toward Teatime as a person, and I hope he keeps reading.
TeaTime’s exact words were “Mary probably genuinely feels a connection to G_d” and fwiw, I interpreted TeaTime’s preference for writing ‘G_d’ as a sign that they were either Jewish or from a Jewish family, so unlikely to have a personal attachment to any version of Christianity), and “I feel like people should cool it with commenting on Mary’s relationship with Christianity?”
In the first sentence, TeaTime’s not saying that Mary ‘probably genuinely has’ a connection to God; it’s that she ‘probably genuinely feels’ a connection to God. That is, that she is sincere and believes she has affirmation that she’s doing what God really wants. Which in no way implies that she’s necessarily right.
In the second sentence, for a start I don’t think TeaTime wanted us to stop saying Mary’s beliefs and actions were negative ones. They were just making the point that she’s quite definitely a Christian, of a particularly unpleasant variety. She’s not a ‘worse’ Christian than Joyce; she’s a very ‘good’ Christian. But what she thinks that means makes her a very nasty person.
“If her expressing her faith is acting crazy bigoted that’s a problem and that makes her a horrible person”
Ok, well, first of all, I’m a woman, so. I know the icon is of a male cartoon character, but those are kind of randomly assigned. And even if they weren’t randomly assigned, it’s really weird to base someone’s gender off of a cartoon character in an icon. Soooooo.
And yes, for those who caught it, I am Jewish, though that should have nothing to do with the conversation.
In no way am I saying not to “criticize her version of Christianity”. If anything makes me uncomfortable, it’s how people (and, trust me, it happens with Judaism too) use the excuse of “oh, well, these beliefs are traditional, so they can’t be bigoted!” or “wow, this person is an asshole and ~claim~ that they’re Christian but they clearly can’t be because I’M Christian and I’d never act this way!” What I’m saying is that claiming that Mary is somehow “less of a Christian” for her beliefs, though many, many real-life Christians share her beliefs, is ridiculous. The comic is about seeing the ugly side of genuine-held faith. We AGREE on this. I’m really confused on how you managed to misunderstand what I said so completely.
I…don’t really know what else to say to you, because literally everyone else understood what I meant, and at this point it would just be restating everyone’s points?
Also: honestly, the fact that you immediately painted me as a man, a crazy bigoted Christian, and a crazy bigot in general, for pointing out that calling Mary “not a real Christian”, is kind of…troublingly reflective of your own life? Protip: maybe don’t assume that everyone you don’t like on the internet is a Christian man?
Sorry about calling you ‘he’ in my first post, which I did indeed unthinkingly do because of the male avatar. I realised my mistake before writing the second post, and used ‘they’ there, but I couldn’t edit the one I’d already posted. My bad.
My only reason for mentioning my conclusion that you could be Jewish was to say that if so, it was unlikely that you were arguing from a POV of being invested in any particular version of Christian theology.
NP, friend, I only meant that whether or not I’m Jewish, or I identified as the same sect of Christianity that Mary does, is irrelevant to the point, and a little presumptuous of Adam Black.
I agree that is what TeaTime is saying, and that they are not saying anything good about Mary.
But I do disagree with TeaTime, and I do see why they could have been misinterpeted.
I disagree because, when people measure degrees of Christianity, they aren’t using the sociological definition. They are almost always talking about how closely the person adheres to what they believe to be the teachings of Christianity. For a Christian, this usually goes further, and is saying whether they think that person is really “born-again” or would really go to heaven when they die.
If you understand being a Christian in that way, Mary is definitely not as much of a Christian as the others.
—-
(I also doubt she is by TeaTime’s definition. The highly devoted put on at least a veneer of niceness, and convince themselves that their meanness is really niceness. I don’t see any sign of Mary doing any of that.
She appears to be the type that took all the bad parts of Fundamentalist Christianity without the good. I would definitely consider Carol or John or even Joyce more devoted to their beliefs than she is.)
I’m picking up what you’re putting down.
Though I’d argue in that case that it’s still judging another person’s faith off of your own personal interpretation, right? Not you, specifically, I mean, but the general ‘you’. There are many sects of Christianity and many interpretations of the bible and teachings and such. I think that claiming that Mary is “less Christian” because she doesn’t follow one person’s biblical interpretations is as silly as Mary claiming Joyce is “less Christian” than her for being accepting of her LGBT friends. Questioning the sincerity of a person’s faith, as others have mentioned, is a way to derail conversations or make up excuses for actions or oppress people (not that Mary is in any way being oppressed).
I would absolutely consider Mary highly devoted. I just think that whether or not she IS highly devoted shouldn’t be pulled into discussion. It’s irrelevant. I’ve seen some people in the comment section bring it up for various reasons, and it probably shouldn’t be, because whether or not she’s devout has nothing to do with her being a bigoted asshole, and the fact that she IS a bigoted asshole doesn’t negate the fact that she (probably) genuinely believes that she’s doing what her version of G-d wants her to do. This is exactly the “No True Scotsman” argument.
I don’t think that’s what TeaTime is saying. I don’t think he thinks Mary’s version of Christianity is a good one. He just thinks it should be recognised as a sincere one, if I understand him correctly. There are plenty of people who would say that my beliefs make me ‘not a real Christian’, and I once angrily said to a friend of mine about a group of people whose actions I disagreed with, “I don’t understand why they even call themselves Christians when they do things that go directly against the religion say they believe in.” His reply was, “Against your religion, not against theirs.” I opened my mouth to say, “Then their religion’s completely wrong!” and then didn’t, because I realised I was doing the same “We’re the Real Christians, and where you disagree with us, you’re wrong” thing that’s been done to me. “Not really a Christian” can only really mean ‘doing and saying this stuff not because they believe it is true and right, but for the sake of the credit they expect to get when other people see them doing it’. And Mary doesn’t do what she does because she expects to get credit from other people from it; she expects to get credit from God from it. And she’d be a very unusual version of a Christian if she thought it was possible to trick God into rewarding her by doing and saying things that she herself didn’t think were right, so she must be sincere about it. Which I think is the point TeaTime intended to make.
“He Just thinks it ought to be recognized as a sincere one”
Yes, I agree with you . I addressed that exact point.
Defending a sincerely hateful belief system, on the basis of its being sincere, is ridiculous and absurd. The comic already belabored this exact point when Joyce’s mother defended Ross.
What Teatime is saying has its roots in the exact same faith-only theology that Mary believes in. Hes saying its good, even when it produces bad results when followed. Then hes asking us not to criticize it.
When a sincerely-held belief, when sincerely followed, produces evil; it doesn’t get to be immune from criticism on the basis of it being “sincere” .
What you are describing ( in your life ) is called “No true Scotsman” fallacy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman
Teatime went far beyond that and played the Role of Joyces mother defending Ross.
Im saying NO. If you bring sincerity into it, that doenst make it better, it makes it worse. It means a person is sincerely deliberately doing bad things because they have a toxic belief system which justifies it.
Like Ross, or Joyces brother. Or even Joyce, until recently .
To say it’s sincere is not to say it’s right or that it’s good. That’s the point that you seem to be tripping over. Mary was saying Ruth was defending queers for brownie points. It was suggested that Mary’s religion was a case of doing things for brownie points too. The point is, when the brownie points you’re trying to gain are not from people and by doing things you don’t really believe in, but from God and by doing things you do really believe in, that’s a real faith, not a feigned one.
“Defending a sincerely hateful belief system, on the basis of its being sincere, is ridiculous and absurd. ” – and it’s also not what’s happening here. Saying that it’s a sincere form of Christianity is not a defense of it, it’s an indictment of “Christianity” (at least in so far as it knocks it down to “label that any asshole may self-apply” from the implied starting point of “something that is somehow less true of people who are assholes)
You are drastically misinterpreting what TeaTime said. At no point did they defend Mary’s point of view, and they actually directly called it out as being horrible. The one thing they asked was that people stop saying things like “she’s not a true Christian”, because quibbling over her supposed-connection to God does nothing to address the toxic parts of her attitude. That’s the entire reason that No True Scotsman is a fallacy, because trying to ignore someone doing something horrible because they’re “not really a feminist/Republican/gamer/vegan” is just you avoiding addressing the issue. Teatime is actually trying to tear down a defense being used for Mary, but you’re too caught up in your self-righteousness to actually read and understand what they are saying.
So, again, I am a woman. Very much a woman. Also Jewish! A Jewish woman, in no way defending bigoted behavior.
Thank you everyone who was watching the thread and could say what I could not.
Yup. She’s a Christian, as much a Christian as someone awesome like Fred Clark, the slacktivist. She’s just the type that gives the faith a bad name.
Everyone here is going off on how can TeaTime defend this sack-of-shit, saying how can she actually have any connection to spirituality, and I’m here wondering ‘G *dash* D? Is that self-censor of a filter?’
It’s a common thing, primarily among Jewish folks. (I’ve seen some gentiles do it, but they’ve generally picked it up from the Jewish usage.) Avoiding writing the name of God, so that it can’t be destroyed, struck out, or the like.
To clarify, to write out unhyphenated G-d means that the thing you write it on can’t be erased or destroyed or anything, because it would be disrespectful to destroy something with G-d on it. The dash is so that if I wanted to erase all of this I could. Man, us Jews and our superstitions. Anyway. #themoreyouknow
Huh, you poor bastard.
I thought about indicating respect for your preference by writing ‘G-d’ myself in response to you. Then I decided that my respect was demonstrated appropriately by showing that I knew why *you* had written it that way, so I kept to my own usual practice.
*hides from all the rabid disapprovers on both sides of the question*
No worries! I do it, myself, but I would never expect others to do it just because I do. It would feel like peer pressuring people into my own superstitions xD
Someday, somebody’s gonna punch Mary in the face. And then Mary will be happy at the proof that she’s on the right path because Good Christians Get Persecuted.
Heh, yes, I’ve run into this interesting piece of false logic before.
If you are a good Christian, you will be persecuted.
You are being attacked because of what you are doing currently.
Therefore, you are being attacked because you are being a good Christian.
Oh Mary. So awful. So dumb. So many bad things.
Ah, yes, liberal brownie points. Collect 12 and you can turn them in for a free brownie. Now a proud partner with Ally Cookies Inc.
To be fair you could also get some Conservative Cookie points but the cookies are like REALLY dry. They haven’t updated the recipe since the 30s.
No wonder they always taste like dust.
This now makes me wonder if the free liberal brownie is a brownie or a “special” brownie.
If you collect enough Feminist brownie points you get a cookie!
As a fellow cynical asshole I must agree with Mary. Everyone is out for their special merit badge and in reality no gives an f about half of what they spout.
Still one should always strive to rise above the irresistible urge to constantly judge others.
That…sure is an ideology you got there. I guess.
It definitely is uh.. interesting.
I try to, as often as I can, avoid bringing up my own race or sexuality because it tends to make people to treat my opinions differently. I’d rather people not like me OR hate me for anything beyond my control or feel the need to kiss up to me or talk down to me because of it.
Ummmmmm….
That is totally how the world works and I agree with you very much. These are not lies.
In all sincerity, I think you might want to got a psychologist. You sound either depressed or something else.
“Still one should always strive to rise above the irrestible urge to constantly judge others”
(Looks at preceding paragraph).
I think you’re failing to adhere to your own advice here.
Don’t judge, don’t judge, don’t judge, crap, I did. Guess I’m a bad person then.
There she is. I was just a day off.
I’m not sure if Mary’s delusion regarding Ruth’s problems is making the situation better or worse.
…..ok first off did Mary forget that she was in a homosexual relationship or did she never know in the first place.
Second off hypocrite.
Did Mary forget that RUTH was in a homosexual relationship
I have no idea how Mary’s crazy little Christian brain works.
I mean I guess it’s 90% fear, so that may explain some inconsistencies.
I, literally, think Mary doesn’t realize Ruth is gay/bisexual.
People like Mary believe that being gay is a choice tho. So if Ruth was having sex with Billie in Mary’s mind it was just because she wanted to for whatever reason.
Or she’s gay but hasn’t come to terms with it yet?
What better way to get liberal brownie points from the gays than to act gay?
‘Defiling the cheerleader” could have meant “encouraging drunken binges” and not “gay sexytimes” as Ruth thought.
I love Mandy. For obvious reasons.
Mary’s last reply is a description of her own strict evangelicalism.
Listen to me carefully Mary. I want you to, as quickly as possible, act with integrity; No regrets.
…At least Mary hasn’t explicitly used the words “virtue signaling” yet?
HURRRRRRGH
Liberal brownie points?
It’s pronounced “Librul Brownie Points”
You use them to buy liberal baked goods. Liberal pies. Liberal cakes. Liberal muffins. The liberal brownies are the most popular though and are named for it.
I’m more partial to the liberal muffins personally.
Muffintology is the best!
Also known as “virtue signalling,” the new version of “being politically correct,” a.k.a., “not being a total dickbag.” It’s a popular replacement for “PC” in the alt-right online.
Wait does this mean “Social Justice Warrior” is dead? Because I was just starting to love how stupid that term is.
Oh gods no. But Social Justice Warrior is the (sub-)person, Virtue Signalling is the act.
I love how they’ve decided that both “virtue” and “justice” are absolute negatives.
Apparently if you collect enough oppression points, you get free hash brownies and when you have enough hash brownies, you’ll be too busy giggling while watching MLP marathons to care about your shitty life.
So you use oppression and pretending to care together to exchange “the man” for weed?
Ah. Nice uncomplicated hate.
For now. I fear the day where it becomes complicated. Hopefully by then there’ll be a new hate-sink.
Yes, good job, Mary, people only don’t see your sense because we want ‘liberal brownie points’ and not because of actually caring about other people. You broke this whole thing wide open….
I kinda want to see Mary’s origin story, what could create someone like that?
In her case? Probably parental and/or local societal indoctrination. If it’s all you know, it seems so obvious that it’s the only correct way to think.
I had the theory Mary is a convert to fundamentalist Christianity from atheist parents.
My theory is that she was raised by a fundamentalist preacher who killed her parents and told her that a gay transgender atheist did it.
Maybe? But even in that case, I don’t think she’d be quite so hostile, and probably wouldn’t be a fundamentalist, just maybe a conservative Christian.
My general reaction has been converts are actually much much bigger individuals on the homophobia issue and other parties. There’s a certain zeal which comes from believing your previous life was a lie.
Obviously, this is not at all a 100% correlation but was an interesting alternative to the idea every really scary Christian grew up in the environment.
Atheist parents who were horrible people.
Aaaah, good old fashioned long-term spiritual abuse. Not a fun thing whatsoever.
We have seen Joyce’s and Becky’s origin story. I imagine Mary’s to be pretty similar.
I think the REAL change is what happened in college. Joyce befriended gays and atheists, tried her best to be opened minded and in general behave like a decent person. Mary did the opposite.
Joyce also tends to land more on the ‘even people that I think are going to hell for their sins are still trying to be good people’ side of things, so she tries to treat them nice even if she may not think the best of them.
Mary, on the other hand, feels like she should get to treat anyone that doesn’t meet her moral specifications as she wants, even though she is not, in fact, God, and therefore shouldn’t be judgemental cause it’s not her job.
Mary can be summed up by this line of hers:
“If evil weren’t nice, nobody’d bother with it”.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2012/comic/book-2/02-choosing-my-religion/avoid/
As you note, Joyce sees the good in people and believes the “nice” matters, even if she struggles with the fact that she believes it’s a sin and that that niceness is just there to corrupt her.
Mary values the sin more, and thus resists the nice more thoroughly and so to justify why the sinners seem to be so much nicer than her and her Church friends, invents conspiracy theories like this where everyone who’s evil is just putting on an elaborate charade to trick her into sympathizing so they can steal her soul.
And, in doing so, she does the exact opposite of what Jesus did. One of the reasons Jesus was harassed by the Marys of his day was because he would eat with tax collectors and sinners. Jesus summed it up by saying a doctor is called to the sick, not the healthy.
Being a jerk to the people you consider sinning is completely antithetical to what Jesus taught.
Sadly, it is not antithetical to what the loudest modern group of individuals who worship him say he taught.
My personal theory is that Mary had a very similar origin as Joyce and Becky, except earlier in her life her parents thought she might be gay so the sent her to one of those camps where they “pray the gay away”.
She was bitten by a radioactive homophobe.
And she became… the SPECTACULAR HOMOPHOBE-HOMOPHOBE, with powers proportional to ONE HOMOPHOBE.
MARVEL as she complains about the LIBERAL BIAS IN MEDIA.
GASP as she CLAIMS THAT RACISM IS OVER WHILE BLAMING MINORITIES FOR ALL SOCIAL ILLS.
WONDER as she speculates about THE GAY TAKEOVER.
In my experience, people who are as willfully evil as Mary are naturally bossy and fastidious, yet they’re twisted by institutional hatreds, lousy luck, and maybe even depression. My guess is there’s a hole in her heart, she was told it was God-shaped, but no matter how much she doubles down it never gets filled. It gives her an excuse to lash out (“Everyone’s done something wrong”) and promises a reward that never comes, so she just does it harder and harder until it comes out her mouth as an accusation against other people, like Ruth here. And in the mean time everyone around her just wants to throw her out a window.
Other people are jerks. The only people I love are me and Jesus. And I’m not even a huge fan of me!
Oh FUCK YOU, Mary.
You know, try as I might, I can’t hate Mary, I can only pity her.
I pity the fool!
Will someone eat Mary’s brain for the goddam Experience Points already?
Not worh the points in rhe slightest.
Pretty sure you get negative levels for even attempting.
Not even a starving zombie would.
Mary’s brain is so spiteful and hateful that eating it would reset you back to level one.
I- I’m actually surprised. I’m not saying that people never stand up for others to make themselves look good, but in the vast majority of environments, people get alot more shit for standing up for the Carlas of the world than not.
You’re not living in the world you think you are, Mary.
I know people who get upset because people lose their jobs or get banned from places for saying “They’re uncomfortable with themselves or their children sharing the bathroom with a trans person” and feel it’s a “beginning of the end” scenario.
Well, I said the majority of environments *shrugs*
I’m not actually sure how I feel about that. If people are uncomfortable with trans people, then it’s certainly a discomfort that people need to shut up and live with. But losing your job for making a shitty comment or two isn’t really a joke either. (so long as it is, in fact, only a shitty comment or two)
Oh, I think I misunderstood your comment before~
Yeah, I can’t imagine the level of delusion that’s necessary to interpret that as a ‘beginning of the end’ scenario.
Seriously. Societal transphobia has a way of shitting on everyone who dares support you in ways that always fucked me up a lot, because I can take a lot of abuse, but I don’t like seeing friends hurt.
Friends have been fired and harassed for standing up to me, have had contentious interactions with family and been threatened with disownment for dating me, have gotten the reflection of every time someone has threatened to kill me in public, denied me service because of my gender presentation, or become hostile to me in public.
And I imagine it’s going to get a hell of a lot worse now that we’ve got this major bigot push for calling us all child molesters and arguing that people should feel unsafe sharing bathrooms with us.
Fan of the meme going around that shows a woman with her head poking under a stall door, asking what kind of genitalia you have, so she doesn’t feel uncomfortable.
Stupid non-issue being paraded around. At least with the speed of which social bigotry seems to be being fixed for past issues, this one won’t be as long, or at least as systemic, as said past ones. Best of luck.
I actually wonder how much of Mary is about the religious element. She’s a fundamentalist but there’s plenty of fundamentalists who don’t live and breathe it the way Joyce or Ned Flanders does.
Eh, it’s an excuse.
…I want those figures to pose in deadly battle against my Star Platinum and S.I.C. #68 Kamen Rider 1.
So, Mary doesn’t actually even know Ruth is gay. That’s….wow.
Also, I feel for Ruth in multiple levels because while she’s trying, all of her situation is pretty much just proof she shouldn’t be in a position of authority but looking after herself.
NO, she knows. Mary probably doesnt believe being gay is a thing.
Joyce didnt either. Joyce thought it was just an action, a sin, anyone could do at any time.
See also: Joyce’s brother thinking it’s just a “trendy thing” to “get caught up in”.
Ruth is bisexual, not gay. Though Mary has no way to know she is specifically bisexual rather than gay as she doesn’t know about the boyfriend Ruth had in Canada.
Though, it is also quite likely Mary sees being gay or bisexual or pansexual or polysexual or asexual as a series of life choices. That are all of course incorrect and if the LGBT community was a wooden box, she’d use it as kindling for her bonfire of hatred towards everyone ever.
I think it’s considered to all be the same thing. Binary. You have cis-straight, and then you have ë̴̵͍͍̭̯̰́̃̏ͤ̐̊͞vͦ̇ͪ̓̎̄͛ͨ͏͎̘͈̪i̸̢̪͈̟͎͚̱̩ͯ̅͗ͪ̊̐l̜͉̔͑̅̈́͂.
Mary has got to be the most frustrating character ever, because unlike Blaine or Ross, I feel like I could change Mary or at least help. Must reach through panels to explain basic human decency and give hugs!
You can’t change people with hugs! You gotta give them some tough love. Or you could always just have a conversation with them, and try to understand their mentality so that you can figure out how to make changes. Nobody changes 100% but someone like Mary could be persuaded from Far Right to Slightly conservative.
Or just do what i do and bail out. Sometimes I find it better to just drop the folks I don’t like than stick around and try to understand em. Saves a whole lotta time.
Yeah, that too, but that’s more of a given. It’s easier to figure out how to give up on someone, just not WHEN to give up on someone. Personally I take a long time to give up on people. I’ve got a lot of patience.
I’d ask you to teach me, but it’d be hard given that i have about as much patience as an abandoned hospital. Eh? Eh???
For me, I figure that there are people who risk there lives to help people, I can at least try to change the odd bigot.
Just as I can at least try to change “their”grammatical errors. 😀
You can also change them by burying them in rotifers. The person will then have changed into a pile of rotifers.
“If evil weren’t nice, nobody’d bother with it”.
Granted, we don’t know much about Mary, but I find it hard to believe you could change her. I actually have more help for Blaine or Russ. Blaine could hit rock bottom and actually go to counseling–since there is actual counseling for abusive assholes. And I could see the hardness of jail changing Russ, if only because he’ll lament having no family.
But Mary isn’t really doing anything that would provide her with consequences. At most, she might learn to stop being so open with her bigotry. She clearly does not listen to anyone else–I mean, consider that she’s an art student–she’s hanging around some of the most open minded and liberal people in that school.
The only way I could see Mary changing would be if she really is fervent in her religion, and some preacher gets her scared of hellfire for the way she treats people. But, as I said earlier, I don’t think she is.
I do salute you for feeling sorry for her rather than hating her, though! I’m not even sure I can do that. I need some reason to think she’s had a shitty life for that. And I can’t get to know her like I might a real person–I’m beholden to what the almighty Willis pens.
Ruth is about to help Mary get her Merit Badge, real soon. Everyone look away, this is going to be ugly.
NO, GET YOUR CAMERA PHONES OUT, GRAB A SEAT AND SOME POPCORN
Darn queers, always getting people to pretend to tolerate them.
I love how Mary jumps to this conclusion for ABSOLUTELY NO REASON other than Mary constantly thinks about this stuff.
It’s like how I assume everyone else is having degenerate perverted thoughts all the time and it’s like “oh wait just me”.
Honestly, I think Mary is intrigued, if not obsessed. She seems incapable of letting this go for even a moment.
You’re always obsessed with something you’re opposed to.
Personally I’m obsessed with death.
Are you Thanos?
I get that reference.
why is mary awful. please mary you can be better than this yet you continue to be a little shit
She’s not awful, she’s just drawn that way.
Because she’s the normative member of society. She’s the reflection of every douchebag who’s whined about the gays forcing people to bake wedding cakes and the “transgenders” in bathrooms. She’s the folks who think Cruz and Trump are awesome and truly believes that muslims are coming to kill all our children. She’s the parts of our nation we run to fiction to avoid.
And it’s what makes her such a good villain to the rest of the cast, because she’s opposed fundamentally to so many of them simply for who they are in the world. And she’s petty, vindictive, and willing to stoop enough to be a persistent threat to anyone she decides to target.
I’ve overheard someone say that Trump is racist and still voted for him. How, just how?
Betting I’m older than most commenters, but Mary is what the whole country was forty years ago. Gays were there to be beat up. Asians and blacks were inferior. During the Sixties calling someone a gook or faggot was unexceptional. Eenie, meenie, minie mo didnt involve tigers and Brazil nuts went under a different name. My high school had 600 boys. Not one was openly gay, because that would have been very dangerous. That meant the rest of us could pretent they didn’t exist. Bigotry was like water and fish don’t notice the water they swim in.
That’s the value of things like the Feminist critique. It tries to force you to notice the water you swim in. T. Coates, who is writing Black Panther, had a good column on that and how, as a black man, he learned and changed those things he had taken for granted.
Change of subject. Christianity had been used to justify just about every evil known. So haS Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and original paganism. Few pagan societies treat women as anything other than property and slavery is a given. Maybe hunters / gatherers had it better, but there aren’t enough of those left to be sure. That’s not particularly an argument in favor of Christianity, but it isn’t necessarily worse than other water to swim in. The goal is cleaner water and being aware that you’re a fish.
It always baffles me how people seem to think “sticking up for the queers” is a liberal thing rather than a treat-people-like-human-beings thing. Mary is probably one of those people who whine about how things are too politically correct when they’re really just frustrated because they can’t act like an asshole without getting called out.
It’s the bigot playbook. Make an aspect of human decency a political thing and then it’s “controversial”. Cause if it’s controversial, newspapers and talking heads will trip over themselves to give credence to your bigoted cause and sow doubt over the humanity of the marginalized group you’re oppressing. And if it’s political, then it becomes distasteful to point out the obvious in media and culture, because that’s “bias”.
The downside of the strategy is it marries the political movement to the bigotry. Which is why we have Trump and why treating people like human beings is a “liberal” thing.
Why is Mary my ex GF? seriously almost word for word when she called me out on having a few gay friends
Because sadly some people are Marys and David Willis has obviously met some of them. Marys are real and they are terrifying.
Hence the “ex”, presumably.
Is Mary the Zodiac Killer?
Nah, the Zodiac killer would be dead by now.
Well you’re no fun
UNLESS the murders were part of some ritual to grant the killer eternal life and youth?
Coming soon, a scene where Joyce’s mom and dad show up to “save” her from being a student at a non-Christian college, only to find out the real threat is Mary, who they knew 30 some years ago and who hasn’t aged since.
I lol’d.
She doesn’t look like Ted Cruz. Maybe the second generation though.
I’m not familiar with the Zodiac killer in particular (I’m one of the younger commenters here), but I’m pretty sure that 9/10ths of serial killers (which America has the most of relative to its population, by the way) are probably nicer than Mary.
Zodiac was active in the San Francisco area in the late ’60s and early ’70s. He sent a number of letters to the San Francisco Chronicle and other newspapers during the period, with the last letter generally accepted as one of his being sent in 1974.
Then, according to the internet, the Zodiac Killer became the lead singer for Stryper, when he isn’t reigning over Hell as the physical embodiment of the First of the Fallen.
Oh, he’s also running for President. Does his evil know no bounds? 😀
OH, ok i see what’s up. she’s not torturing ruth because she’s gay. she’s torturing ruth because she thinks ruth is a sjw, someone who “stands up” for gays and minorities so she can virtue trigger (get a high off of feeling good.) (helping people because you want to feel good about yourself, not because that person needs help). I’m gay and i have seen people do this before. someone says faggot, they jump in and shout “THAT’S OFFENSIVE TO GAYS!!!”, I tell them that I’m gay, they ask why im not offended, etc. She’s still an asshole. no doubt about it. just, for a different reason.
Yeah, I’m never as offended as I guess I’m SUPPOSED to be. If I hear someone not black say Nigger or something, I’ll wince a bit but I’m not outraged or nothing. I’ll just be like “Hey guy. Watch who you say that around, because someone will break your knees about it”
My little brother who is 16-17 who because of were we lived has only had black friends all his life constantly uses that word in its less offensive ga form. He and his friends non-stop calling each other it.
Here I am a white guy watching this little white kid use the n word in ways that would make you blush around all these black kids sometimes with their parents and I’m like “Am I the only one who knows that’s an offensive word white people shouldn’t say?”
Offensive words to me are a mixed bag. A word may be inherently more offensive than another but not really offensive in context. Something like Nigga could be a term of endearment while something innocuous like “Boy” could be the most racist term you’ve heard in your life. Words certainly have power, but they only have the power assigned to them. If everyone around has accepted it and no one is taking offense, then the word loses its power in that circle. Just not in the grand scheme of things.
So, if a bunch of racists get together and talk derogatorily about black people, it’s all right? Racism is only wrong if there’s someone there to be offended by it?
This is silly. What you are doing is getting the reclaimed word “nigga” mixed up with the original word “nigger.” Black people took an offensive word and decided to take it back from the racists. They could do this only because they were the offended party, and they could be reasonable sure that no black person using it was actually racist against black people.
And if someone is using it that way, fine. If they’re a white person who is part of a black community, and use it that way, that’s great!
But if they are using it the racist way? It’s wrong no matter who is around. Because it means they are racists who think black people are inferior. Just because everyone around them is a racist doesn’t help.
And what if they aren’t okay with it, but don’t see anyone else getting offended? So they think they have to stay quiet? What if there’s more than one of those people? How are you going to know unless you can stand up and say something?
It’s the racism, not the word, that is offensive. It’s not that the word has power. It’s that the word has meaning. And that meaning is one that has causes all sorts of suffering.
If a group of racists all get together and talk shit about black people and no one is around to hear it but them, then I’m fine with it. It’s not like they’re not gonna think it anyway. So yeah I would not be surprised by a bunch of racists saying racist things in the privacy of their racist house. I don’t support the racism, but it’s gonna happen regardless of how I feel about it, and as long as they don’t do it around me, I don’t really care!
Also you seem to have misread my post or SOMETHING because you’re making the exact same point I’m making mostly. If you’re calling someone a nigger to be racist, then of course it’s shitty. But if you’re like “That’s my nigga” or “could a nigga borrow a french fry?” Or even “Nigga, Please!” then that ain’t really offensive. Unless you’re surrounded by people who ARE offended by the word “Nigga”. Then suddenly “Nigga” becomes a word you CAN’T say without the guilt of making someone uncomfortable and you need to decide “I don’t care and will keep saying it” or “I’ll try to avoid saying it until I’m out of their presence”.
I’m not REALLY sure what you’re arguing, if I’m honest.
…er, okay, so it’s offensive to gay people that aren’t you. I’ve never had that particular slur leveled at me, so I don’t have that deep gut hurt associated with it. However, to someone I used to know, that was the actual most hurtful thing you could call her.
Those “sjws” “triggering virtue”? Assume they’re speaking for people like my friend, not for you.
I think the way to avoid being perceived as “virtue triggering” is to protest not on behalf of other people who could be offended, who aren’t necessarily there, but rather to protest that you yourself dislike the language. I dislike the word ‘faggot’, feeling that it’s disrespectful to people I care about. If zombycow was present and heard the word ‘faggot’ and was not offended by it, that’s a choice of theirs, and doesn’t invalidate my right to object to it for myself and ask not to hear it again. My challenge to people who seem to me to be virtue triggering has been “Are you, personally, offended by this word/behaviour? Is there anyone present who is offended by it? If yes, fine. If not, how about you let anyone who *is* offended speak up for themselves, instead of telling other people what they ought to feel?”
Virtue triggering is not a thing. It’s merely the latest in a long line of derogatory terms made up to vilify standing up against bigotry.
Words like “faggot” aren’t offensive because they offend gay people. It’s why it offends gay people that is the important part. It is a slur, a way of treating gay people as less than human. A way of vilifying them for how they were born.
Someone who says the word is either clueless, and needs a lesson, or genuinely thinks badly of gay people. The explanation is to eliminate the first possibility.
If you start using words like virtue triggering, s-j-w, pc, femi-nazi etc, in response to my trying to explain that, you’ve just revealed that you have a repugnant world view–like the one Mary has in this comic.
I’m not saying that their being offended is irrelevant. I’m saying that people aren’t offended for no reason. There’s a reason behind it, and that reason is fundamentally what should make it offensive to everyone.
Someone who is not offended by that word is inherently only thinking of themselves–even if they are some gay person who has built up an immunity. It still should tell you that this is a shitty person to hang around.
Because they think of you, the gay person, as subhuman.
Isn’t the term used by bigots to describe people not being deliberate shitmongers “virtue signalling”?
Also, I gotta say that while I’m not necessarily going to feel strongly about the usage of every slur used against communities I belong to, a group where slurs and bigotry are casually thrown about and no one is objecting or acting like that’s a problem are spaces that feel real fucking unsafe real fucking quick. And that’s sort of the actual point.
Making it so bigots think twice about their casual hate and the attitudes they perpetuate is a good thing, because it helps make our world a better place and makes sure you don’t lose any members of a group that’s not bigots because they didn’t want to put up with a space where they can assume everyone tacitly supports bigots.
Re the term ‘virtue signalling’: you’re probably right. I’ve never been in a conversation where the expression was used, so I just borrowed from what I was reading here. I also don’t know the specific connotations of the term. Maybe I’m confusing it with other concepts that aren’t in fact the same. What I intended to convey is that in order to avoid the accusation that you are being Obviously Virtuous with intent to emphasise how much better you are than the people around you (and there are quite definitely people who do that), it helps to speak up firmly *for yourself* and not claim to be speaking for a group; especially when it’s a group you’re not a member of.
Urge… to kill…
…. RISING….
Don’t give into the Dark Side…Unless you want cookies.
Forget the cookies, I’d settle for a stale Graham cracker if it meant Mary dealt with permanently.
Oh Hell, just bust the bongo in her Jesus pie hole and let her get a glimpse of Heaven. She sure is gonna be disappointed when St. Peter shoves her in the ‘Down’ elevator. “Have a nice eternity in the Lake of Fire, Mary.”
Yet she herself is a horrible person for being a dick to gays and trans people. But I guess it’s ok because she’s a Christian. Ugh… This I why I hate religion.
There’s an entire few paragraphs I could say here involving my annoyance with “this is why I hate religion”, but I’m gonna try to cut it down as best I can.
The fact that most people who identify as religious are, as deeper understanding of the Bible easily reveals, incredibly SACRILEGIOUS. Between Jesus’ sacrifice making the Old Testament laws completely irrelevant and his teachings EXPLICITLY to love others sincerely, even if they are not Christian, ESPECIALLY if they are not Christian, behavior like Mary’s, behavior like the Westboro Baptist Church’s, is very obviously directly opposed to the book they claim to live their life on.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t hate them, but I am saying that their religion and the Christianity actually taught in the Book, the Christianity not necessarily attached to the people who currently practice under the name, are different things. And I say this as someone who no longer identifies as Christian for multiple reasons.
This storyline is really messing with me. Every time Ruth shows up, I get psyched for a few strips with one of my favorite characters, then I’m crushed when Mary shows up and I realize I have to deal with her in this storyline.
Fall into a wood chipper, Mary.
Is she allowed to be with Billie now?
Grammar Nazi time!
Absolutely spelled incorrectly.
That was a sentence fragment! As a possible fix, use the following.
“Absolutely” is spelled incorrectly.
Did Mary forget that Ruth is a certified Queer (TM) or does she think queer people don’t stand up for each other…?
Dating Billie is a charade too! Ruth’s doing it to, uh… get… brownie points from…. well, nobody knows about the relationship, so….
yeah, Mary, I have absolutely no idea what you’re even thinking here.
It’s a long con?
Nice, now Ruth’s sexuality is being invalidated by Mary as being…a charade? Seriously Mary, what does Ruth get out of dating Billie if it’s all a charade?
Literal brownies!
(wait, what, liberal brownies, how can baked goods have political preferences, stop being silly)
Brownies~! Makes sense since she gets gingersnaps without even dating her!
(I dunno, I’ve seen some rather conservative cookies in my time.)
By “Brownies” she means “small Girl Scouts”. Mary doesn’t approve of the Girl Scouts’ acceptance of queer girls. She prefers the Boy Scouts’ attitude, but, ironically, that very same attitude meant they wouldn’t have her.
Mandy looks weird with cyan hair.
Most people do.
Yes, even anime characters.
It depends on the anime character, for instance, Miku looks pretty good. http://safebooru.org/index.php?page=post&s=view&id=1741320
You say Miku, I say cyan Sophie from Tales of Graces.
“No Mary, I was referring to the charade of being nice to people and not strangling them on sight. But I guess I can drop it now since you’ve all but given me permission.”
No seriously, Ruth is me struggling to be polite to customers eight hours into my shifts at work. You know, minus the wrestling with sobriety thing.
Sidenote: Mary continues to be awful. The sky is blue. Water is wet.
please punch her ruth! PLEASE! She needs a good beat down!
Pretty sure that would ruin the whole “I wanna keep my job” thing Ruth is trying.
Ruth needs a fusion cannon.
Jeez, I hate Mary more every time she opens her mouth. But hey, at least Mandy’s in this one! I like Mandy. (Okay, so it’s pretty much just because she has rad hair, but still.)
There are worse reasons to like a strip with Mary in it.
Can someone fix that sentence for me? I’m having trouble parsing out the issue. Comment overload, I gouess.
The first thought I had when I saw Mandy was that it was actually a blue-haired Willis cameo.
What? Come on, they don’t look the same, they both wear glasses and they kinda have the same hairstyle, but….Ok it is possible to get the idea they look the same.
Remember when everyone thought it was easy to hate Malaya? Ah, the poor simple masses unfamiliar with the true bane that is Mary. So, how long until Joyce comes back and loses her temper, ultimately breaking Mary’s frail form with her pent up rage regarding this bollocks?
I’m certain that within hours of coming back to Indiana University, Joyce and Mary will have a confrontation about Becky. And whatever Joyce does to Mary will not be pretty. Joyce will fight anyone who tries to take Becky from her. She will.
Future Joyce quote: ‘FIGHT ME.’
i can’t say i ever expected to see ruth slowly dying from unaccustomed overuse of ‘customer service face,’ yet here we are.
(also, goddamnit mary.)
Those dino figures could be handy gaming minis.
Six inches tall seems a bit big for a gaming mini, unless this is a giant mutated raptor of some kind.
Closer to 4″ – the one shown next to the 6″ fig is rearing up (and on a thick base, whereas Starlord is just standing on the table). These are 1/6 scale, and Velociraptor, Atrociraptor, and Tsaagan were all around the same size, significantly less than 3″ tall (which is what a 6″ 1/6 scale fig would represent).
Still in ‘old dragon’ size range.
Er…3′ tall. >_<
*sings Stonehenge. because it seems appropriate at this juncture*
It’s rather difficult to pack a lot of difficulty into small figures. That’s why my attempts at an accurate LEGO Utahraptor ended up being, if minfigures are supposed to represent human-sized beings, about 12 meters long rather than the 6 or so it should be.
There has to be some aspect of Mary that isn’t 100% awful.
I think.
She draws nicely…
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/03-up-all-night-to-get-vengeance/pretty/
She’s entirely awful, but at least she’s a good artist…?
Remind me again, is Godwin’s Law still in effect, or did Donald Drumpf pretty much render it useless?
To my knowledge, it always is. But this is the only forum I partake in, so I have a limited scope of info for it.
I guess it was sort of nice of her to draw the pictures for Joyce and Sarah. But everything else about her is so awful.
You know who else was a talented artist?
I remember him specifically not being a good artist, actually.
I actually saw some of his work, it wasn’t bad. In fact, pretty decent!
Least, if we’re talking about the same guy.
Honestly, if he’d been born about a half century latter he probably could have made a living working as an assistant in the comic’s industry.
The picture frames sold better if they had pictures in them, so he did copies of picture postcard scenes.
Oh, c’mon! No one will say anything about those awesome raptor figures?
They’re funded? =D also, totes awesome!
Mary needs to be smacked with a dildo.
tbh im kinda surprised that no ones commented on the fact that mary is using a word which originated as a slur and is still considered a slur by a lot of sgagd people bc i think its pretty interesting that that was her go-to choice.
whether or not this was the intention, it has undertones of her lack of caring/understanding of the sgagd community & demonstrates a common scenario where people think they r using inclusive language when in reality they are alienating a large portion of the people they are trying to discuss and i think that suits her char pretty well
Google’s being singularly unhelpful on what sgagd means (it seems to think I mean “state”, nooooo google), so while I may well be wrong, do you mean the word “queer”? If so, Mary almost definitely does mean it in the slur sense. Inclusivity is pretty much the opposite of her intent.
it means same gender attracted and gender diverse!! i use it instead of lgbtqia+ or variations of lgbtqia+ bc imo its more inclusive and takes out the issue of people dropping the q or the i or the whole argument about what a is for and if it even belongs there. it actually originated as same sex attracted and gender diverse but ssagd has problems within itself of being transphobic (bc it implies that attraction is about peoples genitals instead of their gender) which is probably why it doesnt come up on google
and yeah i more meant i was curious about if that was willis’ intention or not because i totally read it as a slur but no one else in the comment section seemed to!! i totally agree with you though; marys intent was not meant to be inclusive at all
It’s not like she cares what anyone who doesn’t share her worldview thinks anyways.
“That’s a bad word.”
“I don’t care, they’re going to Hell, and so are you.”
“Why?”
“Because you do.”
Mary. Mary she’s literally a lesbian. Mary she’s literally a lesbian AND YOU KNOW IT.
…yeah, this isn’t actually unrealistic
Bisexual, but your point doesn’t lose validity.
do we actually know that? we know it about billy but i can’t recall anything about ruth
Word of Willis is that Ruth is bi.
Ruth’s also mentioned that she had a boyfriend in Canada.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5g196vURUDo
Orientation stays static across universes. Ruth had a boyfriend in Roomies she was attracted to. He was a d-bag, but she was attracted to him. So she digs boys and girls.
While I think that scene had more to do with Young Willis’s hangups about sex than anything to do with Ruth, per se, it’s pretty easy to read it as Ruth discovering that she’s really not as into dudes as she thought she was supposed to be.
But, yeah, Word of God is she’s bi. But that’s really all the evidence we have that she’s attracted to anyone but Billie, in either universe.
Maybe I’m reading you wrong, but “But that’s really all the evidence we have” seems to be suggesting that you think that maybe that isn’t enough. It is, in the same way that the fact that things fall down all the time is “really all the evidence we have” (or had, for a really long time) that gravity is real.
This.
Yes, I suppose it would make things easier for some readers if Ruth clearly expressed attraction for a man at some point, but that doesn’t somehow take away from the fact that she’s bi. Bisexuality does not exist on the pretense of needing to proven, and that a character must be gay because otherwise they’d have acted bisexual enough.
But Mary has no way to know that.
Remember what John said in his last appearance? “[Becky] is swept up in some trendy LGBQXYZ-whatever”. For people like Mary and John, you aren’t born gay or bi or trans, you just choose to act this way because it’s a trend.
This.
These people genuinely believe that no one is actually gay or trans. Rather it is a lifestyle choice to “fit in” and “be trendy”. Something they saw on TV not being condemned and so they’re trying it on much like a tween fashion trend.
Because, in their eyes, our world is so fallen and anti-Christian that openly defying God is the cool and trendy thing. This is also why they think waving around signs or being really snotty will “cure” us, because we’re so busy listening to this anti-Christian secular culture, that we’ve totally forgotten that God hates everyone not in this narrow section of human experience and that our sinful ways are condemning us to Hell.
Ruth’s expressions worry me.
Time to end the charade, Ruth!
Specifically, the charade of being someone who does not defenestrate bigoted assholes.
Hmm.. hey Mary. Socialism exists everywhere! and it is not a bad Word. 😀 *pokes her in the eye with the TRUTH*
JESUS SHIT CAN I BREAK MARY’S FEMURS YET
Wait, i’m confused. If Mary thinks that Ruth is trying to score ‘liberal points with the queers’ does that mean that she doesn’t think Ruth is queer (as i imagine someone with Mary’s perspective sees it in a very binary ‘you’re either a sexual deviant or you’re not’)?
I know from an earlier scene that she phrased it as ‘defiling the cheerleader’ but now it’s almost like she thought something else was happening.
You’re forgetting that people like Mary believe that no one is actually born queer, but instead people choose that sinful lifestyle for various reasons.
Yeah, but since when do they think that not having the queer sexings right at this very moment makes you stop being queer?
I really do not understand how Mary’s brain works.
It makes perfect sense for their brand of evil. See, if your choice to be queer couldn’t be undone at any time, then how could they justify claiming that all those child molesters they hold in such a high regard (See: Duggars, only don’t, because few real people are so deserving of a flamethrower to the face) shouldn’t really be held accountable for their actions before they found god and are now such great people and role-models?
Yup. It’s also why they don’t react much when people point out how immoral their leaders are. Because, yeah, duh, they’ve sinned, but now they’ve appealed to God for forgiveness and said the right magic prayer and so have set aside their sin and begun anew (even if they were spouting this shit back when they were being child molester assholes).
Whereas queer people are refusing to do the same in casting aside their sin and thus are being far more immoral.
There’s also the thing where in their eyes, all sins are equal, especially sexual sins. So, being gay equals raping kids equals being trans equals fornicating before marriage equals using contraception equals watching porn equals raping someone.
As such, they see no reason to feel that child molestation is somehow worse than being gay as both are simply sexual sins one begs God for forgiveness for for having been tempted by one’s “weakness”.
And they don’t understand how this makes them absolutely terrifying to share a planet with.
Mary is collecting her REAL merit badge in HEAVEN, eh?
So let’s send her there now.
*cue maniacal laughter*
Fuck off Mary.
So does Mary like, have a dog, or like to bake cookies, or have any redeeming characteristics whatsoever?
I mean, I know that she is literally people that you have known (and I have known as well) but damn, dogg. Is she a sanctimonious little shit 24/7/365 or does she have other hobbies and interests?
(I like to imagine she is semi-secretly a MASSIVE fan of like, American Girl Dolls and has a shitton of them at home.)
She likes to draw:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/03-up-all-night-to-get-vengeance/pretty/
…never noticed that.
Wait, does that mean Mary is a fan of anime/manga? Considering the sexual pandering usually associated with the medium, that must be an interesting, continuous game of dodgeball for her.
I once saw fanart of how atheists shouldn’t watch Evangelion, as all the Christian symbolism meant it wasn’t for them.
Oh god did Mary draw Sonic Turns To Jesus fanart?!
She probably only has the white ones. And being that hardcore of a mean, hateful, spiteful, bigoted, close-minded, discriminatory, prejudiced, intolerant, narrow-minded, racist, sexist, there’s-gotta-be-more-of-these-ist, person, takes up a lot of your time and energy.
Let us not be unfair. I can’t recall anywhere where it’s been so much as hinted that Mary is either racist or sexist. Woman has enough flaws of her own that we don’t need to make up more.
I’m not quite grasping what a “there’s-gotta-be-more-of-these-ist” is, though?
Bigotries are like bonbons – you can never just have one.
I was running out of things to think to call her, but knew there were more. Couldn’t one consider antitras sexist?
Mary really needs to see someone about that stick stuck up her ass.
Something tells me the next bystander comment is going to be, “Huh, I didn’t know people could bleed that much when their head is yanked off in a fit of incoherent rage.”
Can Ruth please defenestrate this bongo now?!
Fuck you, Mary.
…
On second thought, no, I won’t fuck you.
Instead I change the WiFi password and you’re the only one that doesn’t know what it is.
*gasp* you monster
There’s evil, and then there’s Evil™
So, is Mary like Fake!Christian Mike? Like, she believes the whole world is shitty and no one’s going to get anything out of it, so she goes around being shitty to everyone else and making them miserable, but instead of just owning up to being an asshole, she is a pretend fundie to justify it?
No, see, I could love Mike. I hate Mary with a passion. Though, to be fair, I only love Mike because of his adorableness with Amber in Shortpacked! which I highly hope is a continuous character trait into this universe because I love, love, love him.
“dina is canny”
Yes she is. Why, one might even say she’s a cle.. NO! That’s been done! We’re done with that.
I do wonder how much of Ruth’s struggle to be pleasant is:
* Clinical depression
* The fact she’s an alcoholic
* Her Amazi-Girl being a violent asshole from her background.
A lot of stuff going on there which makes her want to hurt and abuse people.
Mary?
Mary is just mean.
On the third bullet point, what?
i’m confused too. did i miss something
Femurs. FEEEEEEEEEMUUUUURRRRRSSSS!
Definitely found this comic last Thursday, plowed through the whole thing on Friday. 5+ years of luscious self-discovery, value-challenging content. Now I thirst for more panels like droplets from the hamster bottle of college feels.
Now you can click on Willis’ store and order the four books that have already been printed compiling all the online strips (plus a few other previously unseen goodies), along with the one just funded through his most recent Kickstarter.
Then you can find the other comics he has created online — like the version of “It’s Walky” that is being re-run, one strip at a time, right here.
I only fund non-feathered dinos.
ikr
whats with these awesome monsters being turned into giant chickens
Cockfights are the world’s most popular blood sport for a reason. Birds are vicious little bastards. See also: pictures of birds ripping the eyes out of various dead animals, including seals 500x heavier than them, keas stealing passports and eating the flesh off of living sheeps’ backs, etc.
You’ve clearly never hit a chicken with Link’s sword. 😐
Therefor, you are History’s Worst Monster.
When you live in Mary’s world, where being gay is a trend that popped up recently and is acceptable now as the latest sinful fashion craze, what Mary says make sense.
And to the rest of us living in the real world, Mary’s like a non sequitur of assholery. An exclamation of dickishness.
I’m like 99% sure that the person Carla is about to go apeshit on in the new preview panel is Mary …..and I cannot waiiiit.
On the one hand, hell fucking yes I want Carla to give Mary what’s coming to her. On the other hand, I know that wouldn’t change Mary in the slightest and would just give her more fuel for her “I’m a persecuted Christian” fire. But y’know. It’d be a fun bit of femur breaking for a little while I hope.
The thing is that Mary like most bullies will act awful ether way. If she goes unchallenged she immediately gets high on power and aims to hurt people even more. If she does get called out she uses the peoples hostility as an excuse for her own behavior.
Yeah, that’s my attitude. Mary doesn’t need a reason and has a completely Machiavellian attitude towards the whole dorm situation. She needs to get slapped with some consequences before she gets any worse.
Now I have never struck a child, and as a freshman student I count her as a child, but were I to meet Mary, well, I could learn to be proud of something else.
Y’know, for how horrible Mary is, she has great faces. That angry eye roll is the last pan-
Fuck Mary, those raptor figures are fricking awesome. But I’m curious – I was already going to pledge ever since I saw them mentioned in Willis’s twitter, but is there like a Dina-Beasts of the Mesozoic cooperation? Is there a stretch goal or up-and-coming pledge level that comes with “Dina’s Dinosaur Factsheet”? “Dina Raptors Becky?”
Just kidding, I know there isn’t. And the world is a poorer place for it.
TL;DR: Raptors Rock (but I’m hoping we get around to ankylosauria in the future), Mary’s to Mock
Mary is the kind of person who makes me think of the phrase: I wouldn’t piss on her if she were on fire.
My personal version is “I wouldn’t roast marshmallows on her if she was on fire”. Toasted marshmallows are delicious, but they would be tainted by her nasty.
“The only way she’ll make anyone happy is if she dies carrying an organ donor card.”
If you scroll too fast, the HTML converts into a PNG background file.
once again i get to see the worst characters reflected via my mother – mary’s self-righteousness and willingness to blackmail gets added to Blaine’s verbal and emotional abuse and Carol and Toedad’s intransigent religious thinking :/
Ouch. You need to get away from your mom. Seriously.
Mary’s comments remind me of the TV trope “Evil cannot comprehend good.” She can’t understand that someone could defend Carla out of their sense of humanity; because she would have to be compelled by an outside force, she assumes everyone must be.
It reminds me of a discussion in the AV Club comments where someone thought that the only reason we were claiming to enjoy “RuPaul’s Drag Race” was because it was PC. (At that point, I pointed out that drag queens tend to be anything BUT “politically correct.”) Then he made some comment like, “Well, I get that men dressing like women is funny, but I don’t see why you’re carrying on about it like you are.” He didn’t understand that we were laughing with them, not at them. He just could not comprehend that we enjoyed it for being funny on its own terms. Like Mary here, it would take some outside force (like the nebulous pressure to be “PC”) for him to feign enjoyment, so he assumed that it was that way for all of us as well.
I’ve always heard that every woman is three drinks away from a lesbian experience. I make no claims about this statement, and I have no evidence, either empirical or otherwise, about it’s truth. However, this article seems to agree. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-3305320/Women-bisexual-gay-NEVER-straight-Females-aroused-naked-videos-sexes.html With that said, it appears that a good bottle of booze could inspire Mary to some patreon worthy antics.
It’s a….problematic conclusion to draw from that study, though…
http://nypost.com/2015/11/18/no-all-women-are-not-lesbians-science-be-damned/
Sexuality studies are problematic for any researcher. The number of variables is large and hard to define. A former boss worked for Masters and Johnson during his psychiatric training. He said the studies usually raised more questions than they answered, and the conclusions they did provide were often contradicted in the next study. In any case, I’d still like to see what would happen if a few of Mary’s inhibitions were damped down. Would we see a wilder side, or just a bigger jerk?
Okay but you know that getting someone drunk with the intent of lowering their inhibitions so they’ll consent to something they wouldn’t usually makes it rape, right? Doesn’t matter that it’s a comic character.
If they get drunk knowing that their inhibitions will be lowered, it becomes consensual.
That’s iffy. If you’ve talked about it beforehand with the person you plan to fuck and stick to the things you’ve already discussed, sure. But that’s neither here nor there when you’re joking about getting a homophobe drunk so she’ll fuck a woman.
How about we not make assumptions about knowing others’ sexuality better than they know it, especially if alcohol and impaired ability to consent is involved?
Oh come on, if I can’t jump to conclusions, I won’t get any exercise.
Well as may just shut down the internet then
…and if we absolutely must go down this path, how about we do it with a more scientific and reliable source than the Daily fucking Mail?
I like flipping a coin. For yes/no questions, it has a 50% chance of being right, which is way, WAY better than the Daily Fail…
9 out of 10 times Daily Mail is far below other news sources…unfortunately this is one of those times that every other site reported it the same way.
Still a b.s. conclusion to draw from the study.
More accurately, it’s not a conclusion you can draw from the study. I went to see CA: Civil War last Friday night, and I’m pretty sure my pupils were dilated from 5 minutes in till the end of the movie. That doesn’t mean I want to have sex with every character in it.
Yeah, the Daily Mail being the source is just adding insult to injury. When it comes down to it, really any major news source is not going to be good for scientific news other than the most basic stuff.
Welcome back to the part where I want to puke because Mary exists.
I’ve always said that the greatest threat to Christianity is from within…
I do think Mary can offer some good advice to Ruth. Ruth needs to stop deluding herself she’s a good person. She likes hurting people and torturing those weaker than herself. Once Ruth embraces her inner evil, she can become the monster Amazi-Girl needs.
I like how Mary isn’t an idiot. I think it’s humanizing in an important way. Of course she’s nasty but I think her character has more depth than people realize. I hope we get so see her in a vulnerable moment soon.
I’m not sure she HAS any hidden depths. There was a period where the commentariat believed that Mary’s constant use of her leather bracelets was to hide suicide-attempt scars, but we’ve already seen her without them and no scars. When asked about any redeeming qualities, Willis said “she draws ok,” though, granted, that could just be him not wanting to give away plot points.
Sometimes people really are just horrible people without any redeeming justification. Not saying that is the case with Mary (only the Willis knows for sure), but it wouldn’t be unrealistic if that were the case.
I guess I feel like her cynicism is sort of interesting. I mean, she’s obviously being a dick here(and in most instances we see her) but at the same time, she isn’t totally wrong? Sometimes allyship really is just posturing. Sometimes I think, like, maybe she grew up with a certain religious/political background, encountered new ideas and people that told her that her and her way of thinking is evil and felt it was more honest to just embrace that. but that’s just my speculation. I hope Willis develops her more. And Mike too! the cast of assholes is too underdeveloped in the status quo.
Carla’s getting some development at the very least. Malaya’s… trying.
Darn it Marry you can’t even call people out right!
Mary is apparently too self-centered to realize that Ruth actually cares about her girlfriend, and thus the charade is to not look like she’s obviously moping around because of it.
Honestly, I’m hoping Billie and Ruth are actually done-done. They’re better as friends. Then again, I hope for Carla/Ruth the way I hope for Ethan/Danny (or Sal/Danny).
Does Mary really think being a total conga will get her into heaven? Because if so, then there are a LOT of horrible people like her to keep her company and complaining for eternity how not a SINGLE one of them deserve to be there with her!
She is just completely shut off from the real world
Have you SEEN the real world? Mary’s stance is not even uncommon, let alone rare.
Mary needs a beat down.
Damn it Mary can you try not being an asshole?
Mary is despicable.
well fuck
Methinks Mary hates people who aren’t Christian for some particular reason. Everyone that salty has a reason.
A non-Christian ate the last pudding cup at Mary’s house when she was five. Damn heathens!
Oh Mary, you always know exactly what to say to make me want to strangle something.