It was getting there when she broke in and slept beside her. Were it not for alternate universe expectations, we’d be in full on Criminal Minds territory. A male character doing this would be a serial killer villain in a movie.
“Congressman stalking me. Sleeps in my bed. Lords power over me.”
Dammit, now I have Robin doing the “Cat” conversation of Trump and wondering why Leslie isn’t throwing herself at her since Robin is famous and thus is entitled to her.
And the sheer disproportionate level of power just wiggling beneath the surface makes it more terrifying. Like, Robin has made it so Leslie has few options besides calling the cops. What the fuck are the cops going to do against a sitting congressperson? That will matter? You think any are going to be willing to enforce a restraining order? That any judge will take the risk to grant one in the first place?
Especially when Leslie is just a soft-butch lesbian college teacher with little in the way of funds or any real institutional power.
I’m not sure it is all that bad. While there is a definite power imbalance between a queer Uni junior lecturer and a US Senator, she also has the power of this exchange going down in her house, which Robin essentially broke into, with both of them acknowledging that Leslie has the power to kick Robin out. Which she promptly uses.
They both know that Robin’s position is too precarious for her to really be throwing her power around, even if either of them believed that was the sort of thing that she would actually do. To me, Robin’s actions are not that of a predatory stalker (even if they do look similar), but instead those of a petulant teenager who’s being denied a lolly.
@Librain Aren’t a lot of young stalkers/sexual assaulters/etc effectively young males who never grew out of the “denied a lolly” phase? Just because the motives are childish doesn’t make the actions any better.
Also, slight nitpick – Robin’s in Congress, not the Senate.
Are you aware you are complaining about a lack of sensitivity and heaping abuse on a socially isolated and powerless segment of the population in the same breath?
The second that Leslie woke up in bed with Robin, this whole arc swerved into territory that I am seriously uncomfortable with. There’s no comedy in breaking and entering into someone’s house—especially someone who has reason to both hate and fear you—and then invading their most personal space. Not to mention the “hand holding” and “make out”(!?!?) session, which are so forced as to be horrifying.
This is literally rape culture. Leslie is not some prize to be won by Robin’s persistance, and the fact that Robin was physically tossed from the house means that consent is over.
This is no longer a joke (if it ever was) and someone’d better find themselves in a cop car soon, headed to jail and impeachment.
This… actually makes a good example of how insidious rape culture can be. :/ What was hilariously dysfunctional in Shortpacked is cringingly disturbing here. My brain keeps flipping between the two perspectives, trying to resolve the cognitive dissonance, and there’s a strong desire to rationalise away the problem so I can keep liking Robin.
It’s very… educational. I’ve seen the same cognitive dissonance play out in the real world, where someone does a Very Bad Thing and even the people witnessing it reflexively rationalise it into having not really happened (at least for a while). It’s fucking scary to discover your own brain edited out memories behind your back. But having experienced it does seem to make for quicker recognition the next time. :/
We see this a lot when people from “our side” do things that are horrible, but we rationalize it away as “crazy uncle behavior” or “they didn’t mean it”.
But when someone from the “other side” does it, they are rightly thrashed.
This goes for all sides.
Cognitive dissonance is a serious problem. One can’t stand for social justice and excuse horrible behavior because we happen to agree with someone’s politics.
I wonder if it’s deliberate – a way to say “look how bad Robin is, she’s not only doing terrible thing after terrible thing, she thinks people should like her for it!”
I get that, but the comic is not playing on that angle; Robin’s complete lack of self-awareness and her abuse of Leslie is being played out -as- the joke.
‘Abuse’ is a bit of a strong word for what is happening here. Robin isn’t harming Leslie in any way. Criticize Robin for breaking and entering, invasion of privacy, whatever, and you’re not going to hear me object. But this isn’t in any way analogous to the abusive partner who is forgiven time and time again after beating up their supposed love interest. It’s not even verging on being close to that, at all.
Leslie is the only one to get physical here, and even that was clearly done for comedic effect.
I think everyone needs to take a deep breath and realize that this is a comic strip.
You might want to read some of the comments from people saying how this is analogous to their real life experience with abusive partners, and reconsider what you are saying here.
Back when my mom was a kid (teenager, I think) she saw someone hit by a car.
She laughed.
Not because it was funny, but because that was her “what the hell?” reaction to the totally unexpected.
I saw a schoolmate hit by a car when I was in high school. (Broken arm in a cast for a couple of months, otherwise okay, complete recovery.) I almost laughed too, for the same reason. The… fact that I focused on how one of her shoes went flying at least 20 feet in the air in the subjective slow-motion didn’t help. (She had an arm in a cast for the next month or two, but complete recovery.)
So, yeah, I’m laughing at this train wreck. Because… seriously, what the hell?
Awful confession time: I laughed when I saw my friend have a stroke.
I didn’t know it was a stroke at that very second but it did look fucked and I laughed because of her weird facial expression.
(She, um, did not recover).
I do know that it’s how our brains react to things it can’t process sometimes, but that comment did help make me feel a little better.
I read somewhere that laughter evolved as a form of social enforcement – we laugh to gently ostracize someone or something, as a way of saying, ‘This is not Us, it is Other’. Perhaps, on some level, you knew her behavior looked WRONG, and you were encouraging her to stop.
I think that’s a bit of a narrow view for the cause of laughter. It doesn’t explain, say, laughing in delight or relief.
I think it’s more likely that laughter is an expression of emotion, usually playfulness, a sense of ease or wonder, or surprise at the unexpected or bizarre.
The theory behind that boiled down to laughter being prompted by something outside of the ordinary – in that view, laughing at a stroke or car crash makes sense, because neither are things that are common for any given individual to see, and you might laugh at first before realising the gravity of the situation.
I keep thinking about this one T&J episode where Tom (I believe) winds up at heaven’s gates, and a bag of mewling kittens comes up the escalator behind him.
It’s not immediately obvious to the viewers, if they’re not perceptive, but those kittens were drowned, and that’s how they wound up there.
I’m pretty sure the creators were going for morbid humor, but in retrospect the episode is pretty revealing about the way society has been. And that’s what this feels like.
It is a comedic comic strip with a setup, a pause and a punchline (or punch-image). It is meant to be funny as a way to examining a real-life issue from a safe, vantage point, using humour as a lens.
It is clear that as inappropriate as this all is, Robin is just ludicrously dense, not intently evil, so by allowing her a ridiculous comeback, the conversation can continue until either a) Robin finally understands how and why what she’s doing is wrong or b) humorous comeuppance is visited upon her.
“Are we supposed to be laughing a this?” Yeah. I really don’t think so. But then, much of this comic is not expected to be laughed at. (Ask Joyce if every strip is supposed to be amusing)
A lot of people in Leslie’s position would have trouble seeing that danger line. It is as easy for Leslie to see the cute side of a stalker level “crush” as it is for someone newly discovering they are actually attracted to someone they never thought they’d be attracted to to believe that “this is the one.”
Basically, I think they’re both in for some painful awakenings in the next few strips. Leslie first since she’s already partway there.
Except he keeps throwing punch lines and cranking up the wacky aspects. It would be easy to turn the tension up on this story arc and make it wholly serious. He’s done it before.
Instead the creepy stalker overtones stay on that level and the narrative treats it as wacky hijinks – she breaks back in (with flowers! (well, weeds)) and Leslie just sighs
Different folks cope in different ways. Humour is one of them. If you are someone who copes with humour, you look out for comedic outlets that deal with the issues that are important to you. This is one of them: a more often than not goofy comic strip, as opposed to a militant blog or a cut and dry educational or analytic tool. To constantly give you the super sober treatment that you expect to see these issues dealt with, would diminish the experience for its /intended/ public.
Yeah, but enforcing crimes against sitting congresspeople is… spotty at best and extra hard when you’re an easily dismissed lesbian with a history of living on the streets.
… though I suppose the media’s now got video footage of her being forcibly expelled and then breaking in, so there’s a better chance of enforcement now.
Not to mention the fact that often the difference between romantic comedy and stalking comes down to how the other person reacts.
Coming home to rose surprise petals and champagne – the perfect gesture of apology to make up for past transgressions, or someone refusing to accept that it’s over? Making a crazy-stupid public declaration of love over the school PA system – a cutey putting himself out there for you in the most romantic fashion, or a creep who doesn’t know when to stop?
I was told i should be one once. Of course i was told by my dad i should be a mortician/funeral home director. my little personality test said actor and nothing else and i have been set up on a blind date with a guy despite being straight because “they could just tell i was gay” which with this icon is ironic i know.
I think i got off subject but i wonder why some people think i would be good at certain jobs.
Why does anyone judge what other people would be good at doing? I think it just gives people a weird illusion of control, like if everything plays out exactly the way they want it to, they’ll be happy. Which is why so many people walk around pissy, probably.
‘Cuz shit just don’t work that way.
the personality test was done by a computer and it said actor. i doubt it had a reason to say so, but unlike everyone else in that class i was the only one to get just one job suggestion.
You probably scored very high on creativity and expressiveness, plus something social, with a tolerance for the unknown. (I got that too, when I’m in an extroverted mood; when I’m in an introverted mood it says Artist. I’m in school for social work.)
Also I’ve only met morticians who are hilarious. They think of jokes all day long but can’t tell ’em when they’re on the job; give one enough permission to show off that gallows humour.
The agenda was probably “following their own preconceptions about career suitability, based on the implications of statistical survey of many industries as they existed at a certain point in time, provided and framed by an oft-published third party”.
Which basically just means they were following a philosophy ingrained in them by their own education, so the author of the test is only as good as their intuition for reality and as their understanding of dubiously-reliable, if peer-reviewed, material.
No one can really do better than that, in the department of assessing someone’s potential usefulness in various industries.
I think Robin is just going to use Leslie as stress relief until the election is over and has all manner of sleazy ways to get elected anyway. I totally believe she’s going to win since a lesbian “scandal” hurting Robin still requires them to vote Democrat.
Robin would not function. People like Robin do not function. They wake up one day without any friends or a job because everyone’s tired of being their parent and getting back a relationship that’s about as deep as a puddle.
Based on my experience with former coworkers who act this way? They drift from one job to the next, charming their way into each one, and constantly reinvent themselves socially. I feel sorry for them, mostly.
Except Robin isn’t even charming. She can’t actually fake it long enough for a talk to a class of college kids or a not-a-date with the professor.
She’s a toon.
Which is why I can’t actually get upset at her behavior – even though it would be horrible in real life. She’s not realistic enough.
That worked in SP. It fit the cartoonish, outlandish tone of that strip. Robin, transplanted to DoA without any adjustment, is a terrible person.
DoA has this sort of dissonance off and on… another example, the “comedy gag” of Ruth’s early kidnapping and assault of students who didn’t show up for her floor meeting.
This IS still a comic, guys. It’s a bit MORE realistic than SP and the Walkyverse, but it still clings to some vestiges of a cartoon reality. Slapstick violence, discomfort humor – the goofy defiance of reality allows us to separate it from the real world, making it easier to look at things we otherwise wouldn’t want to look at.
It does some weird things with that though, which is why this is striking such a chord, I think.
Like the early apparently slapstick violence of the Joe/Joyce date, which has been called back to more seriously a few times.
I think this is being played as a joke FOR NOW and it’ll get ugly sooner rather than later. Kinda like Ruth being an asshole has been played for a joke before being called back to as very valid reasons to lose her job.
It’s not wackiness in a realistic setting though, it’s just being a borderline sociopath with no regard for the boundaries of others. Like this is super fucking creepy.
Maybe the setting isn’t as realistic as you think? The level of “realism” or seriousness does vary from scene to scene and plot arc to plot arc. Maybe this is just intended to be wackier?
Arguably, it’s not working here. Thus the “tone” problems some have been complaining about.
If you’re in a cartoon, sure. That’s not real life. Neither is this comic strip.
We find plenty of things funny in fiction, especially in less realistic fiction, that we wouldn’t find funny in real life. Even find horrifying in real life.
Actual stalkers aren’t funny in real life. Things kind of resembling stalkers can be funny in fiction.
Really? To this extreme? This completely unaware and this completely open about it? But somehow also magically functional enough to hold a job, much less a Congressional seat.
Maybe we’re just interpreting Robin differently? You may be reading her as much more aware and duplicitous than I am. I’m taking her pretty much at face value – she’s doing horribly creepy, boundary violating things, but with no awareness that she’s doing something that would bother anyone.
I’ve met some damn creepy people. Some who would do this kind of thing, but they would always be doing it intentionally. Deliberately pushing past boundaries to get what they wanted. Robin doesn’t even seem aware the boundaries exist.
I’ve known and known of plenty of people like Robin. This is going to require me to go into my reading of Robin.
Robin wants to be liked, fundamentally. It’s something she’s always going to crave. Hence why she goes so hard on the slang and all of that. It’s also why politics is pretty much her career, because she can point to vote totals and use that as proof she is ‘liked’. It’s also why she’ll so happily acquiesce to others in congress, particularly men, ask her to help. She’s eager to be liked and approved of.
She’s incredibly oblivious to boundaries and no matter what will not bother with them, even if someone screams in her face to stop doing things. It’s in one ear and out the other.
She HAS to be ‘wacky’. Serious things are Bad Things. Someone’s mad, hurt, leaving, whatever. It brings her down, she doesn’t want to be brought down, and she doesn’t want things to be serious, so she’ll keep things up up up. If YOU try to be serious, she’ll bring things further up to compensate. Up to and including crapping on whatever you try to say because it’s too serious for her.
She’s impulsive, selfish, and obnoxious and has no intent of changing because her ‘science’ box is marked ‘seriousness’.
I know a lot of people like that. If I had to guess, I’d say this is probably because Robin has a million sisters and parents who had a nasty divorce, so Serious is marked bad forever , so if it makes her happy and liked (or ‘liked’) and is sufficiently shallow, she will just do whatever she wants.
BBCC — that’s a very constructive way of looking at Robin’s behavior here.
I think it’s still having a harmful effect, however. Before someone says “see, Robin’s OK!”… just because it’s born out of understandable pain, fear, etc, on her part, doesn’t mean that her coping mechanisms are excusable or that they aren’t toxic to everyone around her.
I think we’re still talking past each other. I’ve known some wacky people. I’ve known people desperately wanting to be liked, playing class clown and the like.
Your description of Robin, while I suspect you’re hitting most of right psychological motivation, seems much tamer than how I read Robin. Much more like real people I’ve known. Robin’s all that but cranked up to 11. So far that all those defense mechanisms backfire with everybody. Far from making her liked or even ‘liked’, she’s pissed off nearly everybody she’s interacted with – From the Dean to her aides to Leslie to the whole class. No just with her political stances, but the whole blatantly fake persona “Which ‘myself’ d’ja want? I got plenty.”
I’ve known people who could and did present differently like that, but none who’d announce it so casually to a bunch of strangers (and potential voters.)
And I don’t think it’s me being sheltered. I’ve dealt with people easily as creepy – mostly friend’s exes and the like. People who, as I said, would walk over boundaries and gaslight and all the nastiness. Some I could see breaking into their ex’s house, but not to hold hands and watch cartoons. That’s the part where it breaks for me.
Where she goes from creepy stalker to annoying 8 year old. And where I can’t take her seriously any more.
@ Killjoy – Oh, no, none of this is meant to excuse, only to explain! Robin’s actions are inexcusable. She is a grown ass adult woman. She should know better on EVERY level. Robin is messed up – it’s on her to get help or back off. And that’s gonna be hard because it’s going to be hard to crack past the shell of ‘love me dammit, I’m wacky’ to make her realize how awful she’s being. In SP! it took her alienating everyone she knew and Leslie dumping her flat on her ass for being an impulsive, two timing jerk to crack that shell. And, iirc, she was older at the time than she is now and had more time to mature a little (nigh imperceptibly to the casual viewer!). This is going to take something somehow worse than that to crack through – or she won’t realize it and the lesson will be on how to avoid horrible, destructive people like this.
@ thejeff – I think that the ‘up to 11’ is the point. Becky is ‘wacky’. Sometimes Walky is ‘wacky’ when he doesn’t want to talk. Robin’s going a mile a minute keeping everything everything EVERYTHING as up up up as she can. Anything remotely serious is dumped into the bad box. At best, she’ll consider it for a moment and then dump it. And if people don’t like it, well, clearly she’s being TOO serious and needs to amp it up more until she’s shown herself to be fun and likeable. People like fun and wacky and over the top. So that’s how she’ll be.
The problem is she’s not a 20 year old kid party hopping. She’s a grown ass woman in congress. She’s got responsibilities waaaaaaayyyyyy over her pay grade (which she only earned by playing all the right platforms and avoiding consequences like a plague) that she’s not taking seriously because she’s floating by by using the right keywords and the right dogwhistles and going along with what people who ARE taking it seriously are telling her (hence why she’s so willing to let Freida – a woman she’s barely met – boss her around and tell her what to do). There’s also plenty of people who, on only meeting her once or twice in non-serious circumstances, would think Robin’s charmingly silly or even the life of an event, because they’ve never seen ‘boundary stomping, consequence dodging, dear lord make her STOP’ Robin.
I don’t think other people’s boundaries really register with her anymore. Because she’s spent so long focusing on being the ‘fun’ one or the ‘silly’ one to be ‘likeable’ (even if only in her mind) that anything serious is automatically filed away into the bad box and other people are either buzzkills coming at her to make her feel bad or talk about boring or sad shit she doesn’t want to talk about or they’re easily tuned out so she can keep believing that it’s working and they like her. And if people ‘like’ her, then anything she did to make them ‘like’ her is okay. It’s fair game. And nooooo, whaddya mean, the dean TOTES likes her, after all she likes him so he MUST like her back (in her mind). And well, if he doesn’t, she’ll crank it up louder and make him. I doubt she’s even conscious of it anymore – it’s just how she operates now. Think if, instead of Becky only turning ‘wacky’ when she’s scared out of her mind, she got so wrapped in doing that ALL THE TIME that she didn’t register that it’s happening and it keeps going on and on ad nauseum forever. Like she’s on autopilot.
As for the break in – she came to yell at her about the photos, got distracted by how comfortable her bed was (probably not helped by the booze, it being late, and her attention span of a gnat – useful for changing courses and distracting from anything serious, I’ll grant) and then woke up to Leslie yelling at her. Holding hands and cartoons came later. It was also a thing Leslie came up with. So now it’s in her head ‘Huh, this girl who I like FOR SOME REASON wants to do this with me. If I do this, she’ll like me – more than she does already. Okay, let’s do it, I’m so likeable now, she’s gotta like me!’ And so by god, Leslie will LIKE HER DAMMIT.
Even if, no, Robin, she doesn’t. She’s attracted to you. There’s a bit of a difference.
And yeah, Mary mentioned the divorce as one reason she didn’t consider Robin a real family values candidate (and fuck you, Mary).
Roz also mentioned she has a zillion sisters, and Willis said that, while their origins is nothing tragic or overly dramatic, it was bad enough that Roz, at least, has no relationship with her father.
I think that would imply Robin would need to see Leslie as a human being. She doesn’t since clearly everything Leslie says is something she ignores and her wishes are similar. It may be a Republican/gay thing or a Robin/Everyone else thing or this Robin is a high functioning psychopath. You know, who doesn’t kill but just doesn’t CARE what anyone else thinks.
I think it is more just Robin is very self-centered and selfish, which she also was in Shortpacked, but because Shortpacked was more slapstick, it didn’t feel like it mattered as much until she did something that was over the top wrong in a way everyone could see and recognise as wrong.
This is actually terrifying rather than endearing. Mostly because I’m terrified Willis will have this wear down Leslie’s defenses versus her reacting like she has a dangerous stalker in her home.
She’s a stalker who has all the institutional power and immunity of a sitting congressperson.
Given the amount of terror and damage a mere Assistant Attorney General of a state did when stalking a gay student they had a weird obsession/crush on…
I don’t buy that as an excuse here. That’d be fine if this were a matter of ‘but lasers don’t work that way!’ or something, but this is about human behavior that is ENTIRELY too easy to model to actual unbelievably creepy and abusive things in real life.
If Willis is going to establish an overall tone of relative realism for his characters and the consequences and implications of their actions he doesn’t get to just exempt one of them from the established rules of the setting and expect people to accept it. If Amber can’t be a costumed vigilante without it being a symptom of serious personal issues than Robin doesn’t get to be home invader and have us wave it off as some endearing quirk.
I think (hope?) Willis will not take that approach — Robin not respecting Leslie’s boundaries was a theme throughout Shortpacked!, and taking a serious look at that would be in keeping with his tendency to retread old ground with a more critical (and less “wacky hijinks!” oriented) eye.
Like the Becky trying to get Dina’s hat off thing — Becky’s attempts were treated as a silly sitcom scenario, until suddenly they weren’t, and Becky just TOLD Dina what she wanted, and it was suddenly like a real relationship and not a joke about a very questionable act.
I think this may go a similar route, perhaps in tomorrow’s strip. Even in this arc, the plan to out Robin was so silly until suddenly Leslie had the opportunity to actually do it. Then it got grounded.
Yeah, this is more or less what I’m hoping for–and I’m hoping for it soon, because this installment creeped me the hell out and I am ready for this to be done now.
Hmmm… In general, it takes about 6 weeks to fully train a dog into reliably not doing something it’s not supposed to do, such as f.ex. lying in a bed it likes lying in.
Think it’ll take more or less than 6 weeks to teach Robin to reliably understand boundaries?
Another thing that would make this okay: this story having a payoff in which Robin goes away forever. Like, I don’t care if she redeems herself or not, Leslie ending up with her under any circumstances would be a tacit endorsement of this shit.
I get what you’re saying, but people can fall for creepy manipulation, and it’s not necessarily endorsement to portray that in a story. Like it could be really interesting if Robin “redeems” herself continues to be mistreated and disrespected
Question to US people: is it common for young adults like Leslie to be able to afford a house on landed property and not some flat? Especially on a lecturer’s salary.
I mean, maybe they’re cheaper in Indiana or she’s taken on a huge loan to handle the mortgage or something.
I’m going with renting, too. Decent sized houses with land around it are a dime a dozen here (outside of the major cities, at least), and like A Scientist said, it’s really cheap in some areas (including the area where this is set). Plus, unless she has tenure (and only maybe, even then), she probably wouldn’t want to commit to owning a house unless she knew she would have a position at the school for a while. Adjunct (and to a lesser degree, non-tenured but non-adjunct) professors don’t always have the job security that would warrant that kind of land investment in one place.
Landlord was mentioned earlier – when Robin first got in. Possibly she’s renting half a duplex or something. Or we just skipped the scene where they went down the hall from the apartment door to the front door.
Leslie in Shortpacked was kind of sad and devoted. This is actually disturbing and dismissive. The power dynamics are completely different. I’d say this was Sexual Harassment but Leslie doesn’t work for Robin. So it’s just stalking.
…A person doesn’t need to be employed by another to be sexually harassed by them. A person doesn’t need to be in a position of power at all in order to sexually harass- just look at how many men yell at random women in the street. (Although one could argue that a random man has social power over a random woman.)
Regardless, Robin IS in a position of power here, as Cerberus is good at pointing out. Her role as a politician and the fact that- BECAUSE of her- there are now press invading Leslie’s space and affecting her ability to live her life are both very real aspects of power that Robin has over Leslie.
Yup, being raised as a dude means WAY fewer messages that you must constantly protect yourself from stalkers, and people inviting themselves into your bed, and unhinged people who won’t take No for an answer (particularly if they want to kiss you). It gets really ingrained.
Yeah, this stuff gets a lot less funny when you’ve dealt with stalkers in real life.
Like, shit like this, right down to the ex climbing through the windows to “show their love” is why some of my friends have had to very quickly change residences and make sure no one ever mentions their home address in any semi-public forum ever again.
This is going to sound really strange, but I was going to say “I have to admit there are twisted people out there” but to separate ourselves into us and them (As a community, not just as commenters) doesn’t really help it. People have extremely different narratives based upon their surroundings, so we have to work to open people up to the fact that their point of view is making others uncomfortable or causing distress/hurt, rather than calling them names which just closes them off to the idea.
When I was 14, I sat by my girlfriends wall until she came out and gave me a kiss goodnight (I’d just walked her home). She didn’t, instead her dad came out and drove me home and to this day it’s still one of my most shameful and cringeworthy moments. Since then I have come to respect personal space and comfortability, being 6″4 works into that as you are perceived as threatening at any first meeting, but at the time romantic pop songs (FOBs a little less sixteen candles for instance) Led me to believe it was a normal thing to do. I didn’t know any better, and noone was actively trying to teach me. Even the act of dealing with stalkers (Only happened once) is completely different because as a man, I have no real threats.
the conversation that I see happening in the comments need to happen on a bigger scale, man to man, the same way a whole bunch of conversations need to happen. But I agree, the cliffhanger of her walking away with no sense of resolvement doesn’t help, but I do also want to point out that in dirk gently we see the quirky detective climb through a window and its not shocking, and I think that was what david was trying to go for, rather than a serious event (We did just see a character comically picked up and thrown out, rather than, say, pushed out the door in a normal fashion)
I’m sorry, but somehow I find the remark “being a guy might factor into it” extremely offensive. As in, even I’m surprised by how angry I become at reading it. The implication that a person’s sex or gender determines our sense of humour seems to me to follow the same train of thought as “boys will be boys”. Or the implication that being a woman makes a person more probable to be offended because of their gender and/or sex.
I personally enjoy gallows humour. Everyone in my family does. Everyone in the area I grew up did. Men and women alike. Neither sex nor gender was a factor. It’s a part of the local culture. It was a place where every adult could remember close friends or family being lost at sea. Being able to laugh at injury or the prospect of death became natural.
I have been in situations where I think I’m saying one thing while by my choice of words I’ve actually said something completely different and I sincerely hope that’s the case here.
Given everyone else’s remarks, I took him to mean
“being a guy I haven’t had to deal with creepy stalkers as a potential threat and am therefore able to laugh at this situation because it is abstract to me”
Yeah, my take too. Also, internet opacity means sometimes one doesn’t know a person’s gender, and here the nym and avatar (which might be random) are like that.
Yup, exactly. The commenter has the luxury of laughing at it from a distance, without feeling affected by it. What’s important is if that is your first reaction, that your second is to acknowledge the problems and ways that this mirrors problematic behaviour in real life.
But this may have to do with being relentlessly bullied throughout elementary and middle school. I still don’t like people walking too close behind me, and I always get a little “watch out” instinct going off when there are blind spots I have to walk by, and have to resist the urge to flinch when people make sudden movements nearby or get into my personal space. When I walk to my car, I avoid walking too close to other parked cars and approach from an angle that allows me to see around my car without getting close — I do this by instinct.
So I’m not really coming at this from the same place as most “dudes”.
Just saying, we might not get a comment from Cerberus on account of her brain exploding (understandably so) from this hyperblatant example of Robin just disregarding Leslie’s wish that Robin would just damn well leave her alone!
Oh yeah. Cerberus believes in consent, boundaries, and respect. You can justify her boundary stomping if you try up until this comic. This is just wrong no matter how you slice it.
… I still laughed my butt off at the last panel though.
Yeah, I can laugh at the last panel separated from the rest, but the whole thing is messed up. It reminds me of college.
I had a guy I talked to on the phone for a couple weeks when I was home sick. He was a church friend of a neighbor. I just wanted a friend. I even told him that. Then I got better and he’s still calling, texting, and emailing a lot. I tried to tell him I had to cut back to catch up, but he didn’t listen. He wanted to be more, but I turned him down gently saying I didn’t want that with anyone at the time and that I didn’t see him that way.
He started walking with me around campus which I didn’t ask him to do. He went in the library where I worked and talked to all my coworkers and boss (they said it was about me and “strange random things”). When he came to the library and I was working, he would sit at one of the computers out front near the main desk with the uncomfortable chairs (instead of the computer lab) which students normally only used when the computer lab was booked for something. He would sit there and stare at me sometimes broken up with moments of doing something on the computer. It got really creepy. I told some people including the lady that knew him from church. It lightened up after that.
When he found out I was seeing someone, he was suddenly seeing someone too. He called and told me about her and I (in my relief) told him about the guy I was dating. Sometimes I’m too nice for my own good and I was pretty gullible back then. I even introduced him to the person I was with when he happened to be at the same place as we were on a date. He had a very pissed off expression on his face when he looked at the guy I was with. I brushed it off because he was seeing someone.
I sometimes got a call or text from him, but it was rare. I didn’t mind bumping into him or the occasional touching base because neither of us was single and he was engaged to the girl he told me about though. I had been with my guy about a year when I happen to talk to my neighbor. She was kind of shocked to hear that creepy guy was dating someone much less engaged. I showed her the picture of them and she got instantly pissed. Creepy guy called me soon after to say his fiancée had left him for another guy from another country. I later learned that the woman in the picture was his cousin. He still tried to ask me out when he found out I was single though. I blocked him on everything after the cousin thing so he asked in person at my graduation.
The last creepy thing he did was by far the worst in my book. I had to drop my dog off at the vet who is located in a pretty off the beaten path place far from any other businesses. There was a lot of people parked in his lot that day for various reasons. I walked out the door and there he was waiting on me. The vehicle he had been driving hadn’t been there when I went in. He wasn’t picking up a pet or dropping off a pet or anything; he was just there. He still played it off as oh my god how funny to run into you here. I was outside alone with him and was freaked the fuck out. I tried to find an excuse to leave. He tried to find an excuse to talk. I left and he did too. I didn’t feel safe until it was no longer behind me. The more I thought about it, the more I freaked out. My car at the time wasn’t especially distinctive. There were even several people at the time with the exact same car. He was in a company vehicle (how I knew for sure I hadn’t seen it before going inside), but not a company that would have any reason to stop at a vet. I was scared for weeks worried he had made the leap from creepy person to all out stalker. I hope I never see him again.
I just want him to get some help. He obviously has something wrong that needs to be treated with therapy and/or medication. Even if he’s not stalking me, he could be hyper focused on another person or in a downward spiral destroying his life and burdening others. I wish bad on my super abusive mother (haven’t seen her in over a decade), the physically abusive father of my nephews (no longer in their lives thank goodness), and Trump/Pence (duh), but not him.
I think you should seriously consider reporting him to the police. IANALawyer but it seems like you don’t have enough to get a restraining order. But if things should escalate it would be good to have a report on record.
I don’t think I could because it’s been 3 years since the last incident. It went on far too long, but it’s over as far as I know. God… I just now realized how long it went on.
The Double Standard is very often misused by the misogynists of society but oh god is it the case here. If Robin was a dude, this would be so terrifying and serial killer like.
While not condoning what just happened, a dude climbing into another dudes window is a plot point in Dirk gently, while a guy climbing into a girls is a thriller movie, and a girl climbing into a guys is a comedy. There needs to be a larger talk on the true weight of gender and this is like my 5th comment so I’m gonna stop-
If there’s one thing we can all learn from Hollywood, it’s that all acts of violence towards women are perfectly fine as long as it’s another woman doing the beating.
Call the fucking police Leslie, this is NOT OKAY on ten different levels, at this point you could deck Robin in the face and it would be justifiable defense against a home invader
While I don’t disagree with you on him being physically more able but it doesn’t really how big or strong you are when someone breaks into your room when you’re asleep
True. I knew somebody who had a dude sneak into her tent and sleep beside her, which was/is very very scary even when you’re surrounded by other tents of people whom you can actually trust.
Unless you swap Leslie for Jacob, that’s not really equivalent. It’s definitely creepy and not okay, but it’s more complicated from Robin’s perspective than “perv doesn’t respect boundaries”.
Joe pulling this same shit on a woman (straight or not) would be significantly more fucked up
Uh, not really. It just looks different because of the genders. It’s still Leslie being reduced to an object by a powerful and dangerous figure who can intimidate her any number of ways.
I genuinely believe this is even worse than Joe’s bullshit and I’m pretty down on Joe’s bullshit.
I don’t want this to continue going meet-cute. I want Leslie to be somewhere safe for a while to process what the ever loving fuck and to get her home back so she doesn’t need to crash on the couches of friends giving one hell of a “seriously, girl” eyebrow to her for what’s in the news.
You have been and I’ve disagreed with you a number of times on Joe however seeing this arc play out has made me…i don’t know…more aware of power imbalances in social situations (for lack of a better descriptive term) and seeing this (which I think is a really horrible situation) and then swopping the characters around (specifically Joe for Robyn) I could see Joe doing something similar (not breaking and entering) but the wearing down part
Long story short this storyline (and your comments) has made me question and reassess what I think I know
The whole tone of this incident has been wildly dissonant with the reality of it. Like, it feels like it wants me to interpret it as “wacky sitcom” when all I’m getting is “psychological thriller.”
Very true. Joe could be verbally obnoxious about it much later, and he might be self-congratulatory about respecting a yelled no (after ignoring soft nos), but he would definitely not be continuing his unwanted efforts after literally being thrown out the door.
You can practically SEE the moment when Leslie’s soul dies.
In all seriousness, at this point, I consider this Robin to be nothing but another emotional abuser, in the same category of human filth as Blaine. Yes, Blaine is more outright sadistic, but Robin’s constant refusal to treat ANYONE but herself as if they matter is not charming or endearing to me. It’s disgusting.
I’ve decided Robin’s gender flipped self is Jon Hamm. Their characters are superficially endearing but they’re really just knowing how to push the right buttons and don’t actually care save how to manipulate you into doing what they want.
Which is pretty much the point. Robin thinks her behaviour is endearing, she’s wrong. Much like Walky she’s been disconnected for sop long she’s stuck as an immature idiot who doesn’t know how to function properly. The scary part is that Robin actually holds power.
You really don’t want me to express just how sad it makes me feel that there is a legit need to include such a Poe’s Law disclaimer on your preceding comment.
Okay, I’m still waffling between my initial interpretation and the general consensus about last strip’s argument, but… Does… Does Robin just… not comprehend social code? Is she even aware that it exists? She just looks so blissfully incognizant of all the unspoken rules that Leslie’s face says she DEFINITELY broke.
My impression is that Robin just generally doesn’t think anything that gets in the way of her getting whatever she wants ever actually matters. Since, you know, she’ll get what she wants anyway by charging over everyone’s objections.
Yeah… Honestly, I’m hoping (eight fingers crossed) that this ends up being like a “Rose+Greg” thing in the sense that Rose didn’t really understand what it means to respect a person as a person until Greg refused to put her on the pedestal she’d been looking down from for millennia. Complete with the sad, scared, and confused sentiment of “Is this not how it works?” and the unspoken question it raises, “How WILL we work?”
You could argue that. Heck, I would argue that. But every time she’s actually on screen pre-Greg, I get a stronger and stronger sense that more than ANYTHING she values what is “interesting”. It’s why she adores humans so much, and why that adoration is so singularly focused on the human ability to grow, and to change. Because CHANGE is NEW, and INTERESTING. You can see it in the way she first interacts with Garnet, and in the way she idolizes the concept of humanity while simultaneously treating individual humans as fleeting distractions, and completely replaceable. (Which, I know isn’t entirely incorrect. She’s immortal. But she could still treat them as more than a way to pass the time.) She wants to learn, and experience, and live, and… I think up until “We Need To Talk” she prioritized that over everything else. Which leads to some pretty messed up behavior.
With the difference that Rose is literally an alien
Robin is human and have been living with people her entire life, and she isn’t oblivious to boundaries, she just supresses the mere thought that they exist, specially if they’re on her way
Sadly, human society has — openly or by default — awarded and even lauded people who “don’t take no for an answer” for as long as there have been humans in societies. People who just keep coming at things from every angle they can find until they get what they want… get what they want. People who say whatever it takes to get their way, often get their way. See, recent election.
It’s easier for some people to ignore here because Robin is a woman, but this message gets hammered into young men until it becomes toxic — “Never give up!” “Quitting is for losers!” “Don’t take no for an answer!” “If at first you don’t succeed, try try again!”
I’m not making excuses, at all, but this does add another level of tragedy to some sexual assault cases by young men — they’re acting out what’s been hammered into them as part of their “male identity” until it got all twisted into something dark and terrible, so that “taking no for an answer” became a threat to their very self-concept of “being a man”.
Rose did sort of treat Greg like a puppy until We Need to Talk. However, Rose appears to have respected Greg’s boundaries. Robin is refusing both to put in the effort of a real relationship and to leave Leslie alone. Rose would have at least taken no for an answer.
Yea. Rose did not respect Greg as a person. Her first reaction to his crush is basically to treat him like a forest creature that took a liking to her but belongs in the forest. When he pursues her she treats him like a puppy that followed her home. When he hints that he’s not satisfied with where things are she hints that he’s just a distraction to her. Leslie told Robin that she wasn’t willing to go out with her even if part of her wanted to. As flawed as Rose was she essentially told both Greg and Pearl not to throw away their lives for her unless they were sure that was what they wanted. Leslie already explained her issue and basically said if you refuse to respect me leave. Unless Robin starts respecting Leslie in three comics or at least leaves…
Robin doesn’t even have any regard for literal laws let alone unspoken social conventions. Like this is hella illegal and she just does not give a damn because what’s important is that she gets what she wants as always.
Panels 3-4: Let’s be frank. Robin is terrifying. The shit she is pulling here is dangerous stalker level shit and while she may put on a nice mask of “wacky Robin”, that doesn’t make her actions any less a bevy of red flags and air raid sirens.
Like, look at Leslie’s face in Panel 3 and especially in Panel 4. This constant assault on her boundaries, on her attempts to regain agency, the utter disregard of any action she does is fucking breaking her.
And worse it is telling her that she doesn’t have any agency, that what she wants, what she does, what boundaries she tries to set don’t matter against what Robin has gotten in her head that she wants. That it doesn’t even help to try.
And for someone who has tried so hard on so many different levels. To retain self-respect, to remain true to her own moral code, to try and reach out and affect real change, to abandon ship, to try and have some semblance of privacy. And it’s all for naught. Heck, it hasn’t even been recognized. And that isn’t humorous, it’s terrifyingly abusive and is a level of bad at boundaries that makes Joe’s horror-show look practically benign.
I mean, Leslie cannon-tossed Robin out of her house and she broke in through a window to still force her way back in, in what had to be at most a minute. Leslie hasn’t had a second to breathe. And that’s terrifyingly familiar for anyone who has had a person obsessed about getting and remaining in contact with you even when you make every effort to escape them.
And it’s even more terrifying when you take it in context. Robin is an anti-gay politician who has just delivered a hell of a blow to Leslie’s standing in the general community, her level of trustworthiness with her students, her sense of self, and now even her right to assert herself in any way that matters.
What Robin is doing now is basically training her that it is worthless to have respect, to set boundaries, to reach out to me, to do anything other than what I want. And since the ending is set, you might as well give in and give me what I want on my terms and save yourself the frustration of the struggle.
Honestly, Cerberus, I’m with you to the point this is reminding me less of Love Actually and more like Zoller with Shosanna in Inglorious Basterds. “She keeps rejecting me despite how nice I am!” Eventually, Robin is going to get angry.
Even if she doesn’t, it’s still bad. Cause it’s the same treatment of the target as a prize or a game. And even if she’s smiling all the while and thinking she’s having fun, it’s destroying Leslie all the same.
This right here is exactly why I gravitate to Cerberus’ comments on these comics and rather miss her when she’s not able to post. She eloquently and concisely points out all the very nasty problems I see and just generally can’t put into words nearly so easily.
As someone who has long (near 20 years now) been part of the BDSM community Robin’s behavior here exemplifies a problem I have both witnessed and experienced in the community numerous times and have more than my fair share of experience with, both direct and indirect, outside the community as well. When all parties involved have expressly made clear that such behavior is expected and something they are interested in it’s one thing, but it is disgustingly common for people to act like this without discussion and treat the lack of another person’s ability to extract themself from such a situation, regardless of the reason, as tacit consent. I have railed against such behavior within the BDSM community. I have fought against such behavior (sometimes, when forced, physically) both in and out of the community. I have helped people deal with people who display such behavior towards them and consoled people who had to excise people who were otherwise important to them from their lives because they treated them as Robin is Leslie here.
I found the similar episodes to this in Shortpacked bad enough, but here it’s turned up to eleven and just makes me feel ill with rage. What Robin is doing here isn’t good. It isn’t right. It isn’t dogged determination. it isn’t some kind of game. It isn’t forcing someone to accept a potentially unpleasant truth. What we see here is full on abuse in several forms (mental and emotional certainly, though almost certainly abuse of the power of Robin’s position in society as well).
Robin stopped dancing along the line, and just outright crossed the moral event horizon here, and it takes an outright denial of the facts at hand to see this as “the start of something beautiful”.
UGH.
Leslie literally threw Robin out. There’s no room left for “Robin is just dense” or “Leslie wasn’t clear” excuse-making. Robin has gone from “oblivious to boundaries” to “doesn’t give a single fuck about anyone’s boundaries”.
Robin needs to just GTFO out of comic for a while.
I don’t think it needs to. A ship doesn’t have to be healthy or mutual to be shipped. Just as long as there’s awareness that a dynamic is Not Great. (Understatement for the purposes of humor.)
Ultimately I also don’t think it’s completely fair to get down on people for shipping an unhealthy relationship if the canon romanticizes it. See: Twilight, etc. The responsibility has to be with the author, and with the society that nurtures this view, especially when the fans in question are very young.
In DOA, there’s also the complication of context contamination, e.g. people who ship two characters who dated in the Walkyverse. It’s easy to mentally superimpose the previous dynamic, especially when — as has been addressed a few times — we keep seeing familiar Robin Wackiness, which doesn’t work in the more realistic setting but absolutely serves to keep that other dynamic firmly in the forefront of readers’ minds.
So yeah, I don’t think Leslie/Robin fans necessarily need to stop shipping them.
But I do think they should be more sensitive to the feelings of other readers. I would like to see fewer people going “God why are you all taking this SO SERIOUSLY? Robin is awesome/hilarious!” (I also don’t think there’s a perfect circle on the Venn diagram between fans of the ship and fans of Robin.)
To clarify: I don’t ship it here. Retroactively I’m not sure I ship it in the Walkyverse either. At the time, though, I was younger, and way more desperate for f/f pairings in canons. (And Willis was a younger writer; he’s grown a LOT in a lot of ways, and the writing has reflected this, even just since DoA started.)
I don’t need Robin/Leslie anymore because even just in this strip I have many far healthier relationships to root for, but it was an important pairing to me once and I don’t think I would be a terrible person if I didn’t want to let go of it.
Shipping it and BEING AN ASSHOLE ABOUT IT are two separate things. The people who keep snidely insisting that Robin Has Done Nothing Wrong, directly in response to literal stories of abuse, just need to stop.
I mean, I already very explicitly said that I don’t think ships need to be healthy in order for them to be shipped. So, you can say “no because it’s gross”, and I’m certainly going to stop trying to talk to you about it, but I already dismissed that line of reasoning, so you might as well have just said “no.”
…well, sure, if you use real world logic, it goes from amusing to kinda terrifying… >_>
But yeah. This is… way over the line. This would make for a good looney tunes gag, not so much for a strip that’s dealt with subjects like date rape, conversion therapy and such.
It definitely feels like Robin’s not thinking at all, though. Panels 3 and 4, she’s not even looking at Leslie like she’s only suddenly aware of where she is. She’s very much a look before you leap type person (perfect for politics!), I wonder if she just ran back inside because she didn’t want to deal with things.
But, ugh. This……… is definitely in the “not going to end well” territory :(.
Panels 5-6: No really, I feel like I’m watching a horror movie. Especially now living in a country where abuse tactics are being modeled from the top down and filtering through every piece of shit who thinks that the Pumpkin Fascist’s stolen presidency means open season to use all his tactics to retain and abuse whatever tiny seat of power they do.
Robin is smug about this. She thinks its romantic. She’s stalking to the level that she’s repeatedly breaking into Leslie’s home and she thinks this is some fun romantic comedy and that just because Leslie has feelings for her, it’s all fun and games and she can bring flowers to her little lady on the side that she’ll never acknowledge the humanity of.
And that’s not romantic. Not even a little bit.
It’s hellish to have feelings for someone toxic, to set your boundaries and make it clear that though you may care for them, you can’t date them or let them in your life anymore. And I’ve seen folks who take advantage of those positive feelings to eel their way in or demand a coerced sex or mask their abuse or minimize their assaults.
And to fuck with people in that vulnerable state is downright vile. And that’s even more apparent given yesterday’s comic. She said “you coulda kicked me out at any time”, but Leslie has tried. Leslie tried to throw her out when she first woke up, tried to say goodbye for the last time at the bar, tried to kick her out of her classroom when it became a disaster, and has now physically thrown her out of her house, like literally thrown.
But to Robin, if she has any pathway by which to continue to escalate these violations of boundaries and force her way back into your life, then you haven’t “really kicked her out” in her mind and therefore she feels even more justified in acting like these repeated violations of boundaries are part of an extended meet-cute and pressing even harder, because, well, why would she be here if she wasn’t so wanted and she in that last panel is selling all the harder that this terrifying action on her part was actually some kind romantic favor.
That is the worst Beatles song, and I say this as someone who likely will always love the Beatles due to my upbringing even though I know most of their stuff isn’t that good on any level other than technical craft.
Panels 1-2: But I don’t want that to be the last word, so instead I send a soft lament to Leslie in these panels. Setting what she feels is her last boundary, not yet having breathed and processed the level of fucked her life just became because she unwittingly gave Robin a crack in her life for her to wiggle into and destroy.*
*And that’s not to denigrate her, Leslie had no idea that being reasonable and fair and deciding to try out a scheme to see if this crazy thing could work would end this way, nor should she have. Folks should not be terrified to go on dates or try and connect with a powerful person and help them see their humanity for fear that their life will be destroyed by a stalker for it.
And that’s tragic, because Leslie in this moment needs that time to process. She just had the night from hell that’s turning into a morning from hell, has a lot of confused feelings of betrayal, fear, and still lingering attraction and hope and needs time to fully let it sink in what has happened, how many different layers of betrayal and literal crimes have occurred here, and what her next motions are going to be.
And she’s denied even that.
She’s denied even the ability to break down each piece. Like, any piece on its own would be a day to process at least. Like, being pressed to share a deeply vulnerable part of her life story* full of her most painful life moments only to have it treated like a vomit bucket and an in to get her to essentially end up on a date against her will.
*It’s worth noting that Leslie has made no first moves in any of this outside the initial invitation to speak. It wasn’t even her idea to tell Robin the story of her own bad past. That was something Robin demanded of her and pushed and pushed until Leslie felt like she really had no choice but to share it. And even after all that, Robin had the audacity to not even pay attention or retain a single memory of it or a recognition on how that might make her somewhat conflicted to be with a person who tried to pass a bill that would make that the life experiences of so many kids like she was.
I really hope that Leslie can find a space to escape to, to think and won’t continue to be bulldozed, but I doubt it.
Oh heck, it gets worse. Robin is a Congresswoman and in a ridiculously slanted power dynamic situation since Leslie works for the state. There’s literally NOTHING Leslie can do about it.
Leslie can call the cops but Robin can say anything and people will believe her because she’s charming.
If Robin was anyone else, according to most state’s laws, Leslie could KILL her as a home invader.
Cerberus, I hope you never stop doing these panel reactions. They make me take a second, third, and fourth look at what I may have thought was harmless or funny and see the underlying issues.
Thank you for being such a treasure to the comments section.
Yeah. This comic bounces between the comedy and drama genres, and those have different rules. I think people get those wires crossed sometimes. This is really funny. I don’t think it’s meant to be a portrayal of emotional abuse or something.
A lot of the people taking it “so seriously” have real experience with stalkers which this reflects. They aren’t just getting confused how stories work. The fact that something is played as humorous doesn’t negate that parallel with real life nastiness.
You don’t have to see it that way, or let it ruin your amusement, but have some empathy before you start getting it in your head that the people reacting differently are silly or wrong.
Just because someone portrays abuse as funny doesn’t mean anyone has to find it funny or even remotely appropriate to try and make it funny. This is horrible, and manipulative, and abusive and if Willis expects me to write it off as wacky hijinks he’s out of his head.
In a comic that has dealt over and over with very real consequences of mental illness/abuse, (and is at its best when tackling those issues) it’s just wacky when Robin’s on screen! What should happen in the next comic is that Leslie should attempt to call the police, at which point Robin would probably use her emotional leverage to manipulate Leslie into not calling the cops on her. The strip after that should be Leslie growing a spine and calling the cops anyway, pressing charges against Robin, and then ruining Robin’s career, because this is maximumly unhealthy.
What will actually happen is that Robin and Leslie will turn into this sitcommy Odd Couple playing out a sort of inverted “Baby it’s Cold Outside”, complete with uncomfortable undertones that we’re all just supposed to laugh off because waaaaackiness! I assume at some point during this storyline Robin will drop an anvil on her foot and reinflate it blowing into her thumb, right after insinuating maybe Leslie got what was coming to her, just to really drive it home that she’s an irredeemable piece of shit.
Willis has long wanted Robin to be his very own Bugs Bunny, a magical imp of a creature to whom the normal rules don’t apply, his own mix of manic pixie dream girl and Looney Tune. Thing is, Robin’s not in a hijinks world now, she’s in the “real world”. In the real world, manic pixies are annoying pieces of shit, Bugs Bunny is an asshole, and people like Robin aren’t fucking funny.
Willis. Buddy. I love you, but it’s time for an intervention. You cannot have a comic where most of the charm comes from extremely relatable human elements in a slice of life setting, then have a character fucking Droopy Dog herself behind another character. Quite honestly, Tiny Toons, Warner Bros. style cartoon comedy has never been your forte and even if it was, there is zero place for it here. This woman is a gibbering monkey-child, which would be enough to make her the worst character in the strip hands down, but now you’d have us believe she holds office (hur hur, Trump president jokes). In a strip that’s set in the real world but still has a superhero, this still sticks out as the most unbelievable thing.
Robin is terrible. This storyline is terrible. You have burned to the ground any possibility of this having an actual, realistic, emotional conclusion because one half of the cast of this particular story is like if Phillipe from Achewood was a selfish asshole. After this storyline is over, cut your losses, write Robin out of the strip, and get back to doing what you do best.
I think you might be a bit premature here with the judgement, after all the storyline is not over yet and tomorrow we could very well see Leslie (quite rightly) blowing her top off at Robin for this gross disrespect of her boundaries.
I mean, early Becky also had a lot of “lol-wacky” to her character, but I think Willis handled her emotion depth well. I would wait and see, though I’m agreement with you that Robin is super terrible and her attitude is the opposite of funny
This is what Willis does best: like every poet he employs genre conventions in order to subvert the inauthentic presuppositions which underlie the conventions.
Yeah, I trust that Willis isn’t unaware of the context he has created here given that he seems to be aware of it in other situations (like letting the fucked up origins of Billie and Ruth be a dark spot that affects Billie’s ability to be nostalgic about the relationship even though they created something real despite that).
But doesn’t mean that this is any less horrifying for all it’s being played light for now.
The semi-realistic, semi-serious tone of the comic doesn’t leave a lot of room for “hilarious” when you look at what Robin’s actually doing as if it were going on in real life.
that’s why i didn’t. i’m sure they’ll use it as a serious scene in the next strip, but eh. mostly, i’m just wondering about these people that are writing like 20 paragraph essays about being abused in their lives, and thinking “christ that’s overly heavy for a comic relief strip.”
sure, you can go “OH MY GOD THIS IS THE WORST EVER”, but it all reeks a little of good ol’ internet overreaction.
i can still laugh at ‘serious’ fictional moments, it’s not the end of the world.
it kind of stops being funny when it resonates with real-life experiences with stalkers.
We’re not saying that it has to resonate with you or that you have to find equally serious, but perhaps you could have some empathy for the people who dealt with real-life Robins in their lives and it was so not funny
i simply can’t take a webcomic that seriously. it can emotionally affect me, but when people start sounding traumatised by it, that’s where my emotional involvement cuts off; it’s just a webcomic.
You don’t have to take the *comic* seriously. What people are asking you to do is to take other people’s *feeling* seriously. People are feeling hurt. Regardless of whether you understand or agree with the source of that pain, the decent thing to do is to at the the very least, not throw extra pain their way by actively dismissing your feelings.
This is being said by someone who has never had a stalker, but I have enough imagination and empathy to see how this subject matter might be more upsetting to people who have experienced that misfortune.
It’s almost as if different people choose different levels of engagement and have different responses to art (often based on their own experiences)! Fancy that.
Everyone in the GOP is either a sociopath or an idiot without exception. Either they don’t care about how the party’s platforms hurt people or they don’t know even though it’s blisteringly obvious if you’re paying any attention at all.
A case could be made for the Democrats along the same line. Plenty of disregard or ignorance for how their platform hurts people and Balkanizes the nation, too.
(And no, before someone drags the canard out, this has nothing to do with me thinking “it’s all just a game” or some other shit accusation. It’s deadly fucking serious, and part of the problem that BOTH parties share is that they DO treat it like a petty contest, and fuck everyone as long as their tribe wins and someone else gets kicked off the island.)
This is really not the case. The Democrats have not always been governing well, but they’re generally acting in good faith and losing gracefully (too gracefully, if you ask me).
The Republicans are vicious winners, graceless losers, and care about nothing other than implementing their terrible platform and obstructing anything the Democrats might try to do. They spent Obama’s entire presidency using procedural bullshit to stop him from accomplishing anything simply because it was him trying to do it, including preventing him from exercising his Constitutional right and obligation to appoint a new Supreme Court justice, playing chicken with the total collapse of the global economy in order to score political points, and repeatedly attempting to repeal Romneycare simply because Obama got it passed.
That Congress is even holding hearings on the Fascist-in-Chief’s rogues gallery appointments is proof enough that the Democrats aren’t anything like the Republicans.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all-in with the Democrats in the upcoming elections, because Team Orange represents a potentially existential threat to this nation and its principles in the immediate present — and the GOP is too shortsighted to fully grasp what they’re enabling.
However, that doesn’t mean I have forgotten or forgiven the onerous goals, toxic ideology, and blatant hypocrisy that exist on the other side.
They probably don’t have personality disorders, the vaaaaaaast majority of violence is committed by neuro-typical people, and APD’s lack of empathy is in the clinical sense (the tendency to intuit and “feel” someone else’s emotions in echo), not the casual sense (the ability to give a crap about other people). People with APD can be both sympathetic and compassionate, and the choice to not care about someone else’s suffering is irrelevant to empathy.
…what’s that? My opinion doesn’t matter ’cause I don’t have credibility? Oh, alright then. Robin, B&E is bad, as is stalking (?) and harassment. Not only are you emotionally harming someone, the media have this place staked out.
“Now, Professor Bean had troubles of her own.
She had a yellow-shirted creep that wouldn’t leave her home!
A special plan with deception as the key.
Just Robin D: How hard could it be?“
I can’t decide if it would be more entertaining to have this problem solved by giving cookies to Carla or Ruby.
…Yeah, you’re right. Carla all the way. With Ruby it would be much bloodier and over way too quickly.
I thought I was helping shepherd the courtship of two adorable queer ladies but instead i’m managing a lesbian suicide pactwitnessing some Fatal Attraction type shit.
Graaah, Robin pisses me off sooo much! Because I know what it’s like to not being treated with some minimum sort of respect. If I were in Leslie’s place, I would have probably gone apeshit by now.
…you guys do know Robin’s entire life is very publicly falling apart and she doesn’t know how to face it, so she’s running in abject terror from it, right? It doesn’t make what she’s doing right, but I also don’t think it makes her a villain. I understand Leslie’s in a terrible position, and Robin shouldn’t be doing this, but Robin is ALSO IN A TERRIBLE POSITION, and people aren’t perfect and if they were honestly this comic would be really, really boring.
Robin should go have a breakdown with her mom, then! Or even Roz (which also means Mary), that could be wacky and annoying. But, yes, it is not Good Decisions Of Age, so whatchagonnado.
I suppose Robin’s nearly vacant smile could be an expression of denial rather than her being unfalteringly unaware of the lines she’s crossing… I guess we’ll have to see.
“It doesn’t make what she’s doing right, but I also don’t think it makes her a villain.”
Hell, tempo, Robin’s entire life makes her a villain. She supports political choices she knows are evil for no other reason than to stay in power, blatantly uses and abuses every single person around her… she won’t even bother addressing her own aide by name. Robin is a human-shaped pile of walking, talking negative traits.
She didn’t really seem to understand they were evil, but I will admit that naivete to that degree is not particularly excusable in an adult and at some point ignorance may be indistinguishable in a practical sense from malice (though I don’t mind my fictional clueless politicians receiving a redemption storyline, particularly if I know them from Shortpacked!).
I was, in my comment, trying to talk specifically about the more immediate events of this comic, namely: Robin, when forcibly removed, still not leaving Leslie’s reporter-surrounded house to deal with being outed. That specific thing is being widely criticized as abuse and obsession and reads much more to me like fear. Maybe I’m wrong, though, and she really is just stalking Leslie. I suppose darker shit has happened in Willis’s comics.
Well…the reason things have gotten this bad, reporter-wise, is that when Robin found out there were photos of her and Leslie in a bar her response was to break into Leslie’s home and fall asleep in Leslie’s bed. She could have holed up in any random hotel room, but instead she committed home invasion on Leslie. So, yeah, I’m inclined to say stalking.
Well, I mean, you can stalk someone out of fear. I’ve known folks whose stalkers believed and acted very strongly like the love they were fighting for was eternal because they were pants-shittingly terrified of ending up alone.
I think Robin is doing this partially out of fear. But that doesn’t lessen the fact that she’s still repeatedly violating boundaries and acting like this is all some extended meet-cute instead of a dangerous and scary situation for the person she is (possibly inadvertently) stalking.
Hell, most folks who do monstrous things usually have some form of internal narrative that they use to justify it and make themselves feel like the hero. Like, some are just villains for villainy sakes because they feel that role makes them feel powerful and cool (cough cough, hate movement that ruined gaming).
CONTENT WARNING: worldviews of people who do terrible things
But most have a reason they think trumps. They were driven out of control by their partner’s prattling and disrespect and needed to avoid being cuckold by them through a show of force. They have been taken over by evil homosexual demons and need to be saved so they don’t spend eternity in hell. They were in love and was just doing what always works in the romantic comedies.
And one of the things I like about Dumbing of Age is you see that in the villains. Toedad is motivated by his twisted notion of familial “love”. Carol by her religion and the feeling that saving her family from Hell trumps literally everything else. Mary by her feelings of being the lone last moral arbiter of what is right and wrong.
Even Ryan believed he was justified in his own twisted way. After all, he worked so hard to win the game (of incapacitating his target so he could “have a little fun”) and she kept cock-blocking and cock-teasing him and so he was more than justified in using a little more than average force in revenge for such disrespect.
In our real world, we have literal nazis out there actively harming others while still acting like the victims of an international Jewish conspiracy.
It’s why what often matters most is the impact on the victim of their awfulness rather than the justifications they use to sleep at night.
I guess what i’m saying is that if Robin keeps it up, then I’ll agree with you. Also, I think the whole “breaking-into-your-home-to-sleep-beside-you” thing would normally be totally creepy and immediately disqualifying, but am suspending disbelief on that count because it seemed less like a thing Robin was doing and more like a thing that happened in a comic because it was funny, in no small part due to the implausibility of the situation and Leslie’s unrealistic reaction. In no real-world situation would I ever have thought that was acceptable.
I know this is supposed to be funny, but I can’t help but awful for Leslie. Robin is being the worst kind of a$$hole right here. She was literally thrown out of Leslie’s house, a pretty obvious sign that your presence is not wanted. Instead of respecting Leslie’s wishes, she BROKE. INTO. HER. HOUSE! She did this and doesn’t see any problem with that, especially since we have to assume there are numerous cameras outside which probably also caught her doing this.
The sheer amount of disrespect that Robin is showing Leslie is appalling, and the fact she doesn’t even seem to notice the discomfort Leslie is showing is atrocious. I mean, I’m giving Robin the benefit of the doubt that she’s so out of touch with reality she legitimately doesn’t notice. Otherwise, Robin DOES notice and just doesn’t care, which makes her a new level of awful.
A lot of hate for Robin going on here. More hyperbole about her actions. Lots of talk about how Leslie should be feeling and how horrible it all is for her.
Nowhere near enough consideration for what Leslie is actually dealing with. Leslie wants Robin to stay. She wants Robin to want to be with her. She needs Robin to acknowledge that, both privately and publicly.
Just to be clear. ROBIN IS NOT THE IMPORTANT ONE IN THIS STRIP.
Even if, deep down in the spirit of romance, Leslie wants Robin to stay, Robin doesn’t get to decide that for her by saying “HA HA, you won’t throw me out!!!” as a form of one-upping Leslie’s advice, and then decide that Leslie won’t mind her RE-breaking in through the window. That’s not cute, and makes this situation “all about Robin” in Robin’s approach.
CONTENT WARNING: Sexual Assault, gaslighting, thought process of a serial rapist
She is vulnerable to abuse though.
Like, we all like to pretend abuse situations are going to be easy to recognize, but what makes intimate partner violence and other forms of abuse from a partner so heartbreaking is that often times the person being abused does genuinely love and care for the person who has hurt them.
And that makes it really hard for them to act, because part of them is always going to think positively to the positive moments shared or wish it had turned out differently or want to cling to an alternative timeline of events.
Leslie undeniably has attractions to Robin. Part of her wants nothing more than watch Steven Universe and snog and drift into a lesbian fairytale where she just forgets who Robin is and what she’s done.
But the other part of her matters too. And that part has tried repeatedly to extricate herself, set boundaries, disconnect herself from the situation, because she recognizes that attraction as toxic and Robin’s actions and behaviors are frequently toxic.
And honestly, setting those kinds of boundaries when you have so much love for a person is hard as fuck. Even one of these actions likely took a lot from Leslie and it’s hard to stick to that. I know from personal experience on that one.
So for Robin to just steamroll over those not once but multiple times because “there’s attraction here” because “some part of you wants me to stay” is monstrous and the actions of literal rapists.
And I’m not being hyperbolic here. My ex, shortly before I got together with her, had a guy she was in probably the deepest lust with she had ever been in her life. And they had dated but it had ended because this guy got off on finding where a person’s boundaries were and deliberately going over them.
So one day, she’s at a party with him. He was dating a friend of hers and he decided that he was going to pursue my ex. Now, my ex had no interest in doing this, because of the aforementioned disastrous end to their relationship and the fact that she had a strong moral code about doing anything with a person in a monogamous relationship (which for me feels paralleled with Leslie’s strong moral code with regards to Robin’s actions as an anti-gay politician and what that means with regards to her attraction).
To make a long story short, he didn’t care about that, instead he pursued her relentlessly over the course of the evening as she kept trying to say no and move away. And he did so claiming that her residual attraction to him made it ok. Eventually he cornered her in the kitchen and started assaulting her.
He felt justified in that because he was a serial rapist who liked to target folks who had attraction to him but things they didn’t want to do. And he got off on pushing past that because “you want me”, because he knew that would confuse the emotions after the fact and make it easier to gaslight them about the event (if this was so one-sided as you claim, why does part of you want a consensual form of what I did to you).
So yeah, I’m going to focus on that unique hell. Cause the aftermath to that hellish evening lasted years. Made my ex terrified of her own sexuality, because it had been weaponized against her consent. And cause it didn’t matter that part of her wanted him. Another part of her made it clear that though she did, she had no interest in pursuing that in those circumstances.
Leslie craves a fairytale with Robin. But she recognizes the reality, that Robin is a selfish politician who supports bigoted legislation and who will never even do her the courtesy of listening to her to the point that Robin believes she has “discovered” that Leslie is in love with her when Leslie has stated that is the case several times. And she is in deep conflict between her loins and her head.
For Robin to take advantage of that? To try and press one ending over the other by bowling over whatever means Leslie takes to try and extricate herself instead of introspecting on the words Leslie is saying?
That is monstrous and the fact that Leslie may just give in to the blitzkrieg would not make this story have a happy end. When my ex was being assaulted, she felt stuck in a surreal hell, so she tried to rewrite her story, grab some semblance of agency by kissing him. Because when you’re being assaulted, anything you can do to lessen the horror of what is happening can seem like a good idea.
The rapist used that against her, used it to rewrite the whole story of the evening and make it out like she seduced him and tried to get him to cheat on her friend. He told others that’s what happened that evening. And for months, my ex believed him, because he was very good at gaslighting. Luckily she had relayed what actually had happened that evening to a friend immediately after and other party goers were able to confirm a lot of it.
If Leslie reacts to this onslaught against her right to say no, I like you, but we can’t by eventually giving in and going “fuck it”. That “fuck it” becomes no less coerced and what develops is going to be poisoned by that.
And the sick part of it all is that Leslie knows that. That’s why she’s trying to end it now.
I am glad you agree with me about Leslie and her emotional conflict. I don’t think she is the one that has received an “onslaught” in this context though. Nor is she the one that has been gaslit.
The conflict here, for Leslie, Leslie is more than resisting being a victim of abuse or choosing to abhor a character you, personally don’t like, simply because you, personally, do not like them.
And there is humour here, created by a Shortpacked character being placed, with little change, into the Dumbiverse. Yesterday’s slapstick that would have been a serious assault, today’s reappearance. There is more going on here than any case study.
Please don’t put words in my mouth again, it is offensive. If you can’t find something in what I have said to respond to, just move along.
“Lots of talk about how Leslie should be feeling and how horrible it all is.” Well, going by how her facial features in yesterday’s comic were contorted in a manner most people associate with frustration and rage and how in today’s comic her facial features are much more relaxed in an expression most people associate with apathy, I think it’s fair to interpret her feelings as sad.
You seem to be frustrated with how people interpret Leslie’s bodylanguage, but unless you mean people are saying she should be bouncing with joy, I’m not sure I understand what it is you’re frustrated with.
“Just to be clear. ROBIN IS NOT THE IMPORTANT ONE HERE IN THIS STRIP.” Then please clarify why you began your post with “A lot of hate for Robin going on here.” Or why half of it is about how Leslie feels about Robin. Not how she’s feeling in general. How she’s feeling specifically in direct relation to the person you say is not the important one here.
Yeah, it feels weird to have someone be like “you guys should focus on Leslie and not Robin” and then only focus on the superficial fact that Leslie has the hots for Robin. Especially when the rest of her experiences is why she keeps trying to set boundaries and say no to this developing chemistry.
Like, her story to Robin in the bar was important. That life experience of having to survive the streets as a youth because of religious based disownment? Makes her unable to separate the hot person she has the hots for from the monstrousness of her actions and lack of respect for the experiences and wants of anyone besides herself. Makes it impossible for Leslie to fully feel comfortable pursuing this attraction without starting to hate herself not long after.
Yeah, part of her wants to bang Robin. Hell, part of her will likely always want to bang Robin. But Leslie herself has tried to extricate herself multiple times from that given the full context of who Robin is and how shitty her utter dismissal of folks like her was in the class. And that matters. Hell, that matters a shit ton more than “I happen to have the hots for this person”.*
And contexts where a character is like “pft, fuck your reasons, part of you wants to bone so clearly you want me” put me hella on edge from a consent perspective.
*And the sick part of that context is that Robin could very easily satisfy Leslie’s conditions for feeling comfortable with this developing. Leslie wants to believe that Robin is hearing her and seeing the error of her bigoted beliefs and actions. If Robin gave her that, she’d feel a lot less conflicted and be more amenable to possibly pursuing something.
But Robin can’t even do her that simple dignity and besides, to her, she’s getting what she wants just fine bulldozing over Leslie’s attempts to set boundaries. Regardless of how much pain and confusion that’s causing Leslie.
Maybe it’s because I have no nostalgia for Robin’s appearances in other comics, but I do not like her. I feel for Leslie wanting to be with her, but Robin is acting like a self-centered child, and just because she was nice to Leslie for a couple “days” doesn’t make her charming. It’d be sweet if Leslie got a fairytale ending with someone who would love her openly and actually consider what she needs, and it’d be even more feel good all around if Robin could gain the confidence to do that, but as of right now, Robin is not that. And as tragically sweet as Leslie’s wishful affection for her is, I hope Leslie realizes that she’s worth more than Robin’s current BS.
There’s probably not a TON of them out there, and they’ve been staking the place out all day. Hell, it’s possible they left to cover something else, unless it’s a really slow news day.
Wow! She did it in front of the press too! Someone is going to end up in jail for stalking but, on a certain level, you can’t help but admire her sheer thick-headed determination!
Okay. I think the relationship status has officially gone from “This could have worked in another place and time” to “And now I need to call the police”.
you know there’s the deep stuff that Cerberus unpacks every time, with boundary violations and this being very hurtful and harmful and horrible and an abusive pattern
and then there’s the plain surface fact that it’s been approximately a day since they met so the pattern isn’t exactly super established, and that on its face, this is hilarious and Robin is super clueless
Imagine Leslie filing a police report: “Senator DeSanto keeps breaking into my house and demanding I give her snacks and watch cartoons with her. Please help”
I think the thing that still makes me think it’s funny? Is that while OBJECTIVELY, we all know the institutional power imbalance at play, what we see in the comic itself has so far been ignoring that. Leslie hasn’t expressed any kind of fear or anxiety, just annoyance. Robin hasn’t invoked any kind of institutional power, only the immediacy of her words and physical actions – which is, to be fair, unnerving enough, but again, do we see Leslie scared? No, we don’t, and neither does Robin.
So far, there’s still room for the interpretation that when/if Leslie expresses actual fear of Robin, Robin will pick up on that and back away, because while pushing through annoyance is ‘zany fun’, pushing through actual fear is where she’ll draw the line. And I do think she will.
…well, I hope she will.
I also hope it doesn’t come to that, that Leslie will retain the feeling of safety and basic control over the situation and that Robin will keep leaving the factual power imbalance out of it because that’s a very basic line to draw.
Though, at least, for how I’m seeing it, the fact that it’s only been a day makes this level of boundary violation terrifying, because it feels like an all-out onslaught to put Leslie off balance and not give her the time to set in and really process things.
Probably doesn’t help that this is resonating with a Trump presidency where he’s keeping all of America off balance doing some new thing that would get them immediately impeached if literally any other president did it. All to get us used to his sick worldview and dictator aims and give in to not resisting it anymore.
There are similarities between selling and seduction, in both your aim is to make your target agree to what you want
You don’t listen to their objections, you don’t take no for an answer and, most importantly, you keep them off balance with no time to think until you get the answer you want
In this instance Robin is doing an excellent job of wearing Leslie down, to the point that Leslie will probably just agree to anything Robin suggests
It will of course be a suggestion and not a request because you want your target to “agree” to what happens next
Is there anyway someone can delete several of my comments? I feel like maybe this is the wrong place to have a conversation about the use of the plot point and making light of this. I didn’t realise how big of a deal this would be, because I was using the fact that she had entered her house once already uninvited as context and not that this had become a harmful situation
Alas, I don’t think this comment section has this function. Everything you regret saying stays displayed forever. You can, however, reply to your own comments and denounce them after the fact.
I have been in a similar situation once. Long story short, it was early in the morning and I made some asinine assumptions that 5 minutes later even I could see would only provoke unnecessary arguing. I made a request in a reply to one of those posts to have them deleted, along with an explanation for why I felt they were inappropriate and a few hours later they were gone
OK Malaya has someone’s underwear in her teeth and her face in a phone. Is she watching an instructional video while she’s doing whatever she’s doing to make sure she’s doing him/her right?
That’s her own t-shirt in her teeth, presumably so she can keep it out the way and still use her phone. I think the point of the scene is that even though Ken (I’m assuming Ken from the shape of his pubic hair) has got her into bed in this universe she’s still pretty much indifferent to him as a person.
I’m assuming she’s watching Ultra Car cartoons on her phone because that’s the only way she can get into whatever’s going on with some other meatbag here.
I kind of want Leslie to contact Roz and try and get her to drag Robin out the house. It’s pretty clear that Robin wont listen to anything Leslie has to say. Reading this is pretty painful, especially as I was such a Robin/Leslie shipper
That’s one of the saddest aspects of this for me. Leslie desperately wants a sign that she’s being heard and listened to and respected as a human being and Robin can’t even do her that courtesy.
I’m still thinking of Robin’s closing lines from two strips back. She has a very weak or even non-existent brain-to-mouth filter so I think that what she says tend to be free of calculation. She basically said that she wanted to be on Leslie’s couch watching cartoons. There was no mention of romance or attraction to Leslie, she just wanted to be in that place.
Why? Well, we can only guess but I’m thinking that she felt safe and happy there, something that she rarely has in her everyday life. So, the suggestion made up-thread may be right and maybe Robin isn’t so much as stalking Leslie as she is desperately trying to get her to help her escape her life which, despite its advantages, simply doesn’t make her happy.
Yes, she’s going entirely the wrong way about it. Robin being Robin, she’s likely going to stumble backwards into getting what she wants by being forced to stand aside due to the scandal of her behaviour in this arc.
There’s an old quote about one of the most important considerations about choosing one’s house ornaments being how effective an improvised weapon it would be in a pinch; I wish it would come to mind, because this is why.
It had been months since she’d touched it, but as she strode back to the bedroom Leslie knew it was time. She’d bought it over a year ago out of fear that some ghost from her old on-the-street life might return to haunt her. She never thought that fear would become reality in the person of a Congresswoman.
She held it firmly in both hands as she returned to the front door. Robin still stood there, her silly grin fading and her face going pale as she saw what Leslie was carrying.
“Wait… what… are you serious?”
“Get. Out. Of. My. House.”
Robin stood frozen, unable to understand what had gone wrong. Her eyes were glued to the tiny black circle at the muzzle of the revolver as Leslie’s finger tightened on the trigger…
No special occasion, just a routine check to make sure it was safe.
My thinking here was that Leslie lives in a part of the country where gun ownership is pretty common, and she might well have reason to think she might need one. She’s almost certainly not a gun fondler type but may well have considered it an unwelcome necessity for self defense.
No one could ever say that Robin is not persistent! Lazy, yes. Willing to go to any length to avoid an uncomfortable (for her) situation? Absolutely. But She will never give up on something she wants, no matter how obnoxious.
Yeah, that’s the scary part. Persistence can be hella romantic when it’s in a consistent relationship or for a cause you and the person both share.
When it’s there no matter what you want or your attempts to separate or whether or not you want to be pursued? It becomes monstrous and terrifying, because you know that nothing you do will ever make this person stop pursuing you.
Humans were/are persistence predators.
We walk other creatures to death, or catch up to them when they’re exhausted and kill them ourselves.
Semi-conscious awareness of that is probably why so many of our fictional (which, today, usually means cinematic) monsters are that turned up to 11 – tireless, implacable, indestructible pursuers that are even better at what’s supposed to be one of our strengths.
This is so…totally wrong! You could look at this in a comic hijinks sort of way but this tacked in with Cerberus’ and others comments show Robin in a bad, creepy as fuck way.
In the context of, like, a newspaper comic: funny as hell. Perfect use of surprise and comedic timing.
In the context of comic imitating life but with satirical overtones: Kinda funny, kinda really bad, and secretly wondering if this a trap to prove that I’m a horrible person.
Or maybe Willis just wants to do a bit of cartoonish humor? Or maybe its a statement about context. Or about throw away jokes that might imply something bad in a laughing manner. Or maybe its actually dark humor???
Uh, Roz, were you really going to take flowers from her yard that she spent all that time planting? You may have weeded it, but it’s quite rude of you to attempt to DEFLOWER her lawn…
…Wait that word usually means “to take away virginity”
… OK Roz, get your girl-on-girl virginity deflowered
I would absolutely agree with you guys about the creepy factor of Robin’s actions, if it wasn’t for the fact that they just spent who knows how long watching Steven Universe while holding hands and kissing. That seems pretty consensual. Steven Universe was even Leslie’s idea, and was her vision of a perfect date. All evidence points to them both putting the moves on each other. Robin clearly picked up on the fact that Leslie was making moves on her, especially through the episodes chosen of Steven Universe, and when she confronted Leslie on it, Leslie through her out. Robin thought things were going well, and was confused why she was thrown out, so she responded in the only way she knows how, with dogged and wacky determination.
I suppose we’re to ignore they only did those things after she broke into Leslie’s apartment in the first place? And that she wasn’t thrown out for saying Leslie liked her, but for using that as a reason why she can trample Leslie’s self worth and boundaries?
Consent to one thing does not imply consent to things to follow.
Yes, Leslie voluntarily spent the afternoon watching cartoons on the couch, but after talking to Robin and finding out none of what she said got through her thick skull, she literally physically threw her out of house.
Leslie has rescinded her consent to be with Robin, to have Robin inside her home very clearly. I mean, I don’t know how one could make it more obvious while bodily throwing someone outside.
But Robin chooses to ignore this “no, get out” and that’s not okay.
Consent is an ongoing process that any one party can say “no, we’re done here” to at any time for any reason and it is on the other parties to respect that and not push beyond that.
It’s not just a blanket giving with additional clauses being assumed by virtue of the first consent.
You know what is bad about this?
It doesn’t matter if Leslie is mature thinking lady or it doesn’t matter what Robin will say or not or, if she will hurt Leslie with her words or actions, since it’s Robin it will alll be forgiven and Leslie always will end with her cause the author just likes them as a couple, logic or not, not required, similiar things happened in Shortpacked, Robin fucked up but she was forgiven cause she’s so lovable…
I suppose I should call it lazy writing where author uses the same couple from another work and pair them together for fandoming purpose.
So where was she keeping the flowers…err…umm…weeds that she has in the last panel? All the other panels, no flower weeds…suddenly FLOWER WEEDS! Robin is a Goddang magician!
This is starting to come off like a Pepe LePew cartoon. I’m meant to laugh, but it just makes me cringe for Leslie. (Seriously, even as a kid it was extremely clear that those cartoons were that cat’s own personal horror story.)
Why not? If you named them, you’d be able to address what you feel as problematic. If you stayed quiet entirely, you’d let the comment move about without adding in your opinion, neither good nor bad.
But saying you see a problem, knowing the source, and refusing to identify it? (In that all known entities are both present and known with their online handles)
You’re kinda forfeiting responsibility.
Eh, sometimes it’s not worth dealing with the backlash of defensiveness when calling this stuff out. Picking your battles, deciding you don’t have the spoons for this particular fight isn’t really the same as forfeiting responsibility.
I’m still not used to seeing DoA!Robin as a separate entity from Shortpacked!Robin. As many have pointed out, this is creepy as fuck, and yet my brain tries to file it away under “That annoying friend playing a prank”.
I actually really like this, because that actually makes this really interesting. Cause it’s like a real-time version of that tension when you realize a friend who’s always been kind of annoying has really fucked up and that makes you look at the annoying stuff they were doing in a new light.
Honestly, I really love the shift in the tone of the same actions done by the same archetype character, but now with a more realistic context coloring it. It’s meta as fuck.
You say that, but… honestly? I thought Robin was an obnoxious (if entertaining) piece of shit in Shortpacked, too. I LOATHED the way she treated everyone around her and glorified willful stupidity.
Leslie would, at this point, be justified in killing Robin under Indiana law. Of course, killing a sitting Representative is a good way to ruin your life, but it’d be legally justified.
The resulting scandal will, at the very least, dent her career, her students will probably have trust issues with her (can you imagine Joyce trusting Leslie now in regards to Becky?) and chances are Robing will throw Leslie under a bus over this
Yeah, I’m really looking forward to the likely future strips where some of her students confront her over the news and she has to awkwardly explain it but in a way that still maintains solid teacher/student boundaries.
Yeah, Robin has made one hell of an interesting day for Leslie and even more interesting now that her whole morning routine and ability to settle in is also disturbed.
And she’s going to have major issues having Robin go and stay gone; like I’ve said before, : Mace, Taser and Firearm – that’s literally the only things that are going to get her gone and make it stick.
I still think this is partially Roz’s fault for suggesting to Leslie that “hey, maaaybee you can meet up with my sister all the time, I’ll arrange it and you two can cause a scandal to break down her political career!” Roz and Robin really are related.
Jeez… I’d ask how this dumb bongo is a congresswoman, but now that Donald Trump is our president, it’s obvious that stupid people voted her into office.
People keep saying “breaking and entering”, “break into”. I guess the conveniently compliant landlord was a figment of my imagination. It is now my Head Canon that Robin used a crowbar on Leslie’s door. Or dynamite.
As well as destroying her peace of mind.
Her landlord did not legally have the right to let Robin into her apartment. The fact that she did might get Robin off the hook for the first time (though the landlord is definitely in trouble), but this second entry is trespassing at the very least.
The fact that she didn’t actually have to break anything to get back in doesn’t mean she didn’t commit a crime by doing so. For the legal definition of “breaking and entering” even pushing an unlocked door open can be sufficient.
Sure, nothing actually broke, but even if people are using it in a strict, legal sense, Robin is guilty of at least one count of breaking and entering, and could reasonably be charged with two.
“Break in” in the context Leslie’s consent was not asked. Her landlord was, but her landlord’s responsible reaction would have been ‘Fuck no, get out of here and call her yourself at a reasonable hour’.
Okay, finally FINALLY kicking off the long needed catch up to the strip summaries.
Panel One: I like Leslie’s face here – she looks so irritated and yet, still kinda sad. She really wanted things to work out with Robin, but she also knows it likely won’t and so is moving on. And that starts with locking the door after you heave her ass out. Good job, Leslie!
Panel Two: And now she gets to think about what happened and the consequences and just be sad. Which I think is fair – it’s okay to be sad when a relationship you wanted to work isn’t. Even when you know the person is toxic and you can’t fix it, you’re still sad it won’t be the magic you wanted.
Panel Three: Aaaaaaand the word no means shit to Robin. Sounds about right to be honest. Consequences are heavy and hey, surely Leslie will stop being sad or mad if she just turns up the wacky, right? When has that ever failed? So, sure, wacky break in, yaaaaay.
Panel Four: And of course Robin’s so proud of herself for cracking this code. Wacky break in, nailed it. So now Leslie will start liking her, and if not, she’ll turn the wacky up louder.
And of course that just makes it worse for Leslie because dammit, she TRIED to get rid of this woman. She won’t go away.
Panel Five: So now she needs to walk away in her own house because god knows Robin won’t leave until she wants to. Poor Leslie. And yeah, I think Robin noticed that but she’s not going to connect the dots on it because that would make it heavy and harsh her up up up.
Panel Six: And damaging property by taking stuff out of Leslie’s garden without permission. May as well. Robin probably meant well, but at this stage of the game, ‘meant well’ means jack. And yeah, ‘wacky hijinks’. The thing Robin is good at and tries to use to win friends and voters. And then you realize she’s like that 24/7 and never turns it off and you want to cry. Robin sucks and she is not doing Leslie’s health any favours.
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twist: it wasn’t Leslie’s window
when leslie closes a door…
She forgot to also close her windiw? Also, did the press watch her shimmy back in? Does she live in a house or a ground level flat?
This and more, tonight at 8
Press dodging level: Professional.
Sorry to dissapoint but it’s tonight at midnight.
Jesus fucking Christ. What is your avatar?!
It’s “The Smile“
You’d think they would have closed them all, with all the medias buzzing outside
All I can see is Leslie’s house surrounded by a fuck-ton of bees.
Yes.
Bees make the best honey.
Actually, bees make the only honey.
Congratulations. Your comment is my favorite thing that I’ve seen on the internet today.
Nest strip: It’s Leslie outside, banging on the door and screaming “WIIIILLLLMA!”
Someday, Leslie will win the fight
Then that Robin will stay out all the night
DUDE! I just made this exact (almost) comment on the previous comic! XD
Glad somebody else got the Flinstones vibe from thi!
Robin is the stalker that Leslie needs but not the one she wants.
I think Leslie neither wants nor needs a stalker.
Pay attention, Leslie. This moment? This moment right here? This is the moment you call the cops.
Yeah this is getting really fucked up
It was getting there when she broke in and slept beside her. Were it not for alternate universe expectations, we’d be in full on Criminal Minds territory. A male character doing this would be a serial killer villain in a movie.
“Congressman stalking me. Sleeps in my bed. Lords power over me.”
well if the current administration is any indication, she could just pay Robin almost literally anything to do her bidding (in this case, go away)
I mean, apparently congressional votes are a lot cheaper to buy than anyone expected =p
Dammit, now I have Robin doing the “Cat” conversation of Trump and wondering why Leslie isn’t throwing herself at her since Robin is famous and thus is entitled to her.
Yeah, this is… legitimately scary.
And the sheer disproportionate level of power just wiggling beneath the surface makes it more terrifying. Like, Robin has made it so Leslie has few options besides calling the cops. What the fuck are the cops going to do against a sitting congressperson? That will matter? You think any are going to be willing to enforce a restraining order? That any judge will take the risk to grant one in the first place?
Especially when Leslie is just a soft-butch lesbian college teacher with little in the way of funds or any real institutional power.
I’m not sure it is all that bad. While there is a definite power imbalance between a queer Uni junior lecturer and a US Senator, she also has the power of this exchange going down in her house, which Robin essentially broke into, with both of them acknowledging that Leslie has the power to kick Robin out. Which she promptly uses.
They both know that Robin’s position is too precarious for her to really be throwing her power around, even if either of them believed that was the sort of thing that she would actually do. To me, Robin’s actions are not that of a predatory stalker (even if they do look similar), but instead those of a petulant teenager who’s being denied a lolly.
Or in this case, a Bean.
Robin broke into Leslies house and then slept beside her, Leslie physically removed Robin from her house and Robin promptly let herself back in
Robin has shown that she will not take no for an answer, she will not respect boundries and she’ll break the law to get what she wants
Shes all but saying to Leslie that no matter what happens Robin will get what she wants so Leslie may as well give up as its going to happen anyway
Not forgetting that Robing has political power and can probably command greater media resources to spin the story her way
Even if it takes down Robin it’d still do irreparable damage to Leslies reputation, amongst her peers and her students
So yeah it is that bad, in fact its probably even worse
@Librain Aren’t a lot of young stalkers/sexual assaulters/etc effectively young males who never grew out of the “denied a lolly” phase? Just because the motives are childish doesn’t make the actions any better.
Also, slight nitpick – Robin’s in Congress, not the Senate.
Also, ignore my Gravatar for that comment, did not realise it would look that bad in that context :/
Our current president is a petulant, orange turd who has clearly never been told “no” until very recently.
Anyone who doesn’t think childish thinking/behavior can be extremely dangerous desperately lacks imagination.
yeah each strip of this arc is just another WT actual F Robin moment
The comedic tone of this whole debacle really bugs me because it’s really not funny in any capacity, it’s intensely inappropriate and invasive.
Same here. Major tone fuckup.
And the neckbeard LesBin shippers need to go back to their creepy romance comedy animes.
Are you aware you are complaining about a lack of sensitivity and heaping abuse on a socially isolated and powerless segment of the population in the same breath?
I wasn’t aware that neckbeards were a powerless minority. I would not call the creeps behind Gamergate powerless.
The second that Leslie woke up in bed with Robin, this whole arc swerved into territory that I am seriously uncomfortable with. There’s no comedy in breaking and entering into someone’s house—especially someone who has reason to both hate and fear you—and then invading their most personal space. Not to mention the “hand holding” and “make out”(!?!?) session, which are so forced as to be horrifying.
This is literally rape culture. Leslie is not some prize to be won by Robin’s persistance, and the fact that Robin was physically tossed from the house means that consent is over.
This is no longer a joke (if it ever was) and someone’d better find themselves in a cop car soon, headed to jail and impeachment.
This… actually makes a good example of how insidious rape culture can be. :/ What was hilariously dysfunctional in Shortpacked is cringingly disturbing here. My brain keeps flipping between the two perspectives, trying to resolve the cognitive dissonance, and there’s a strong desire to rationalise away the problem so I can keep liking Robin.
It’s very… educational. I’ve seen the same cognitive dissonance play out in the real world, where someone does a Very Bad Thing and even the people witnessing it reflexively rationalise it into having not really happened (at least for a while). It’s fucking scary to discover your own brain edited out memories behind your back. But having experienced it does seem to make for quicker recognition the next time. :/
We see this a lot when people from “our side” do things that are horrible, but we rationalize it away as “crazy uncle behavior” or “they didn’t mean it”.
But when someone from the “other side” does it, they are rightly thrashed.
This goes for all sides.
Cognitive dissonance is a serious problem. One can’t stand for social justice and excuse horrible behavior because we happen to agree with someone’s politics.
I wonder if it’s deliberate – a way to say “look how bad Robin is, she’s not only doing terrible thing after terrible thing, she thinks people should like her for it!”
I think that’s the point: Robin is treating someone else’s boundaries as a joke.
I get that, but the comic is not playing on that angle; Robin’s complete lack of self-awareness and her abuse of Leslie is being played out -as- the joke.
‘Abuse’ is a bit of a strong word for what is happening here. Robin isn’t harming Leslie in any way. Criticize Robin for breaking and entering, invasion of privacy, whatever, and you’re not going to hear me object. But this isn’t in any way analogous to the abusive partner who is forgiven time and time again after beating up their supposed love interest. It’s not even verging on being close to that, at all.
Leslie is the only one to get physical here, and even that was clearly done for comedic effect.
I think everyone needs to take a deep breath and realize that this is a comic strip.
You might want to read some of the comments from people saying how this is analogous to their real life experience with abusive partners, and reconsider what you are saying here.
and that kids is how i met your mother
BUT THAT WORKS SO WELL
“Our eyes met as she led the congresswoman away in handcuffs…”
YESSSSS! Perfect turnaround for that setup.
Are we supposed to be laughing at this? Seriously? I just… /wow/.
In the normal universe, this would probably be a sign Robin is either dangerous or unwell or both.
I have done the opposite before. leaving when people said i should stay.
It’s distressingly not funny.
Back when my mom was a kid (teenager, I think) she saw someone hit by a car.
She laughed.
Not because it was funny, but because that was her “what the hell?” reaction to the totally unexpected.
I saw a schoolmate hit by a car when I was in high school. (Broken arm in a cast for a couple of months, otherwise okay, complete recovery.) I almost laughed too, for the same reason. The… fact that I focused on how one of her shoes went flying at least 20 feet in the air in the subjective slow-motion didn’t help. (She had an arm in a cast for the next month or two, but complete recovery.)
So, yeah, I’m laughing at this train wreck. Because… seriously, what the hell?
Thank you for this.
Awful confession time: I laughed when I saw my friend have a stroke.
I didn’t know it was a stroke at that very second but it did look fucked and I laughed because of her weird facial expression.
(She, um, did not recover).
I do know that it’s how our brains react to things it can’t process sometimes, but that comment did help make me feel a little better.
I read somewhere that laughter evolved as a form of social enforcement – we laugh to gently ostracize someone or something, as a way of saying, ‘This is not Us, it is Other’. Perhaps, on some level, you knew her behavior looked WRONG, and you were encouraging her to stop.
That’s a nice idea. I’ll try and tell myself that. Though I feel it might be giving me a little too much credit.
I think that’s a bit of a narrow view for the cause of laughter. It doesn’t explain, say, laughing in delight or relief.
I think it’s more likely that laughter is an expression of emotion, usually playfulness, a sense of ease or wonder, or surprise at the unexpected or bizarre.
The theory behind that boiled down to laughter being prompted by something outside of the ordinary – in that view, laughing at a stroke or car crash makes sense, because neither are things that are common for any given individual to see, and you might laugh at first before realising the gravity of the situation.
It kind of feels like watching an old Tom and Jerry cartoon. Back before blackface became unpopular in mainstream media.
That’s an excellent point, though.
I keep thinking about this one T&J episode where Tom (I believe) winds up at heaven’s gates, and a bag of mewling kittens comes up the escalator behind him.
It’s not immediately obvious to the viewers, if they’re not perceptive, but those kittens were drowned, and that’s how they wound up there.
I’m pretty sure the creators were going for morbid humor, but in retrospect the episode is pretty revealing about the way society has been. And that’s what this feels like.
It is a comedic comic strip with a setup, a pause and a punchline (or punch-image). It is meant to be funny as a way to examining a real-life issue from a safe, vantage point, using humour as a lens.
It is clear that as inappropriate as this all is, Robin is just ludicrously dense, not intently evil, so by allowing her a ridiculous comeback, the conversation can continue until either a) Robin finally understands how and why what she’s doing is wrong or b) humorous comeuppance is visited upon her.
“Are we supposed to be laughing a this?” Yeah. I really don’t think so. But then, much of this comic is not expected to be laughed at. (Ask Joyce if every strip is supposed to be amusing)
A lot of people in Leslie’s position would have trouble seeing that danger line. It is as easy for Leslie to see the cute side of a stalker level “crush” as it is for someone newly discovering they are actually attracted to someone they never thought they’d be attracted to to believe that “this is the one.”
Basically, I think they’re both in for some painful awakenings in the next few strips. Leslie first since she’s already partway there.
Except he keeps throwing punch lines and cranking up the wacky aspects. It would be easy to turn the tension up on this story arc and make it wholly serious. He’s done it before.
Instead the creepy stalker overtones stay on that level and the narrative treats it as wacky hijinks – she breaks back in (with flowers! (well, weeds)) and Leslie just sighs
Different folks cope in different ways. Humour is one of them. If you are someone who copes with humour, you look out for comedic outlets that deal with the issues that are important to you. This is one of them: a more often than not goofy comic strip, as opposed to a militant blog or a cut and dry educational or analytic tool. To constantly give you the super sober treatment that you expect to see these issues dealt with, would diminish the experience for its /intended/ public.
Yea, you have her on a crime she can leave or given a police “escort”
Yeah, but enforcing crimes against sitting congresspeople is… spotty at best and extra hard when you’re an easily dismissed lesbian with a history of living on the streets.
Wait, THIS is the moment?
Not when you woke up in bed with her and she admitted to enterring without permission?
… though I suppose the media’s now got video footage of her being forcibly expelled and then breaking in, so there’s a better chance of enforcement now.
+1
I mean, she already missed the moment of “woke up to an intruder in my bed,” but this is definitely another one.
Robin, what the fuck?
Robin responds to rejection by acting wackier in the hopes people will like her.
reminded me of luffy in one piece when he refused to let sanji say no to being in his crew.
He just refused the refusal.
I don’t think she’s responding to rejection, I think she’s retreating from consequences. She’s afraid to face the press.
I’m reading it more in the way of denial of rejection than hoping to overcome it.
Sometimes, Robin feels like a mischievous little girl who thinks that acting cute and wacky will let her get away with stuff.
Frankly, a psychiatrist could make a career out of diagnosing her.
She’s been observing Dina and Becky.
And doing exactly the opposite?
I din’t say she was succeeding. I just said she gave it her best shot.
Oh, that Robin of ours! ^_^
Leslie will never stop loving her, no matter how wacky it gets…
Stupid real-world considerations, spoiling our wacky shenanigans and comic book hijinks! Robin is ill-suited to a world with dangers or consequences.
Truly, her lithe-spirit-ness seems to be divisive in this version of the story…
…but she’ll still throw her out on her ass again because sometimes love is tough
There is no escape. It’s like pumpkin spice.
Or My Little Pony.
or death
Wait, which one was Pumpkin Spice?
trumps mom?
Probably the redhead.
Not a redhead more of an earthy auburn.
One of Applejack’s cousins? Sounds like an earthpony name.
The brunette in the poofy winter vest and Ugg boots.
Fruity Spice’s sister.
Nono, Starbucks pumpkin spice. There’s too any any corner.
For a more obvious comparison, Robin is like glitter.
*two on any
quick save, gotta give her that
Does she have superspeed like in Shortpacked? She’s doing a great imitation of it.
Everyone has super speed when they want to evade the media.
Romantic comedy or obsessive stalking incident?
You decide!
The two have considerable overlap…
Basically, yeah. There’s a lot of stuff that characters get away with in movies that would lead them to end up in jail, hospital or a lunatic asylum.
Not to mention the fact that often the difference between romantic comedy and stalking comes down to how the other person reacts.
Coming home to rose surprise petals and champagne – the perfect gesture of apology to make up for past transgressions, or someone refusing to accept that it’s over? Making a crazy-stupid public declaration of love over the school PA system – a cutey putting himself out there for you in the most romantic fashion, or a creep who doesn’t know when to stop?
You decide!
Well considering that most romantic comedies model aggressive stalking as “romantic”…
The Onion, 1999
That word “or”… I don’t think it belongs there.
It’s an INCLUSIVE or!
Ugggggh die in a fire please
Thiiiiiiiiis
Nonono. Something faster. The time it takes to succumb to flames leaves her too much opportunity to do further horrifying things.
…. oh, wait, it stops being a funny expression of exasperation when I analyze it in even moderate detail? … huh.
Turns out she still has a teleporting superpower.
She DID fuel up on Fruit Loops this morning…
There’s something endearing about a handpicked bouquet of weeds, but seriously Robin, quit with the zany and try sincere for once.
To Robin, zany is sincere.
Round n round the Congress spin go, where it stop don’t no-body know
“…Thanks?”
I am starting to think she is just tired of being a politician but doesn’t know how to properly escape……
I don’t think anyone truly wants to be a politician. They just get trapped that way without realizing it until it’s much too late.
I was told i should be one once. Of course i was told by my dad i should be a mortician/funeral home director. my little personality test said actor and nothing else and i have been set up on a blind date with a guy despite being straight because “they could just tell i was gay” which with this icon is ironic i know.
I think i got off subject but i wonder why some people think i would be good at certain jobs.
Why does anyone judge what other people would be good at doing? I think it just gives people a weird illusion of control, like if everything plays out exactly the way they want it to, they’ll be happy. Which is why so many people walk around pissy, probably.
‘Cuz shit just don’t work that way.
the personality test was done by a computer and it said actor. i doubt it had a reason to say so, but unlike everyone else in that class i was the only one to get just one job suggestion.
You probably scored very high on creativity and expressiveness, plus something social, with a tolerance for the unknown. (I got that too, when I’m in an extroverted mood; when I’m in an introverted mood it says Artist. I’m in school for social work.)
Also I’ve only met morticians who are hilarious. They think of jokes all day long but can’t tell ’em when they’re on the job; give one enough permission to show off that gallows humour.
I mean, someone WROTE that test, and that someone had an agenda, not the computer itself
The agenda was probably “following their own preconceptions about career suitability, based on the implications of statistical survey of many industries as they existed at a certain point in time, provided and framed by an oft-published third party”.
Which basically just means they were following a philosophy ingrained in them by their own education, so the author of the test is only as good as their intuition for reality and as their understanding of dubiously-reliable, if peer-reviewed, material.
No one can really do better than that, in the department of assessing someone’s potential usefulness in various industries.
I think Robin is just going to use Leslie as stress relief until the election is over and has all manner of sleazy ways to get elected anyway. I totally believe she’s going to win since a lesbian “scandal” hurting Robin still requires them to vote Democrat.
I can also see her turning it around.
Except people are allowed not to vote at all. Not voting decides elections more often than not.
How exactly does Robin function? She’s not this…flighty…all the time, is she?
Robin would not function. People like Robin do not function. They wake up one day without any friends or a job because everyone’s tired of being their parent and getting back a relationship that’s about as deep as a puddle.
Based on my experience with former coworkers who act this way? They drift from one job to the next, charming their way into each one, and constantly reinvent themselves socially. I feel sorry for them, mostly.
Except Robin isn’t even charming. She can’t actually fake it long enough for a talk to a class of college kids or a not-a-date with the professor.
She’s a toon.
Which is why I can’t actually get upset at her behavior – even though it would be horrible in real life. She’s not realistic enough.
That worked in SP. It fit the cartoonish, outlandish tone of that strip. Robin, transplanted to DoA without any adjustment, is a terrible person.
DoA has this sort of dissonance off and on… another example, the “comedy gag” of Ruth’s early kidnapping and assault of students who didn’t show up for her floor meeting.
Or, in a slightly different direction, all the superhero physics in the car chase sequence.
This IS still a comic, guys. It’s a bit MORE realistic than SP and the Walkyverse, but it still clings to some vestiges of a cartoon reality. Slapstick violence, discomfort humor – the goofy defiance of reality allows us to separate it from the real world, making it easier to look at things we otherwise wouldn’t want to look at.
Or, at least, it’s supposed to.
It does some weird things with that though, which is why this is striking such a chord, I think.
Like the early apparently slapstick violence of the Joe/Joyce date, which has been called back to more seriously a few times.
I think this is being played as a joke FOR NOW and it’ll get ugly sooner rather than later. Kinda like Ruth being an asshole has been played for a joke before being called back to as very valid reasons to lose her job.
HAHAHA! I love Robin so much.
She’s verging on full Woody Woodpecker, here! ^_^
Ha ha ha HA ha!
Judging by the comments, you’re in the minority.
She’s endearing, but the endless wackiness wears a bit thin.
People are entitled. I have faith that Robin will redeem herself.
“Entitled to their opinions” I mean. Not smack-talking anyone, here. 🙂
I love her too, but what’s appropriate in the Walkyverse is stretching it in the Dumbingverse, and just plain illegal in the this-verse.
It’s not wackiness in a realistic setting though, it’s just being a borderline sociopath with no regard for the boundaries of others. Like this is super fucking creepy.
Certainly something in the DSM.
Maybe the setting isn’t as realistic as you think? The level of “realism” or seriousness does vary from scene to scene and plot arc to plot arc. Maybe this is just intended to be wackier?
Arguably, it’s not working here. Thus the “tone” problems some have been complaining about.
I’m sorry, but stalkers ain’t funny, and folks who think that can fuck themselves.
Damn those horrifying Bugs Bunny cartoons.
Oh, does that mean I can go dropping anvils on people?
No, you fucking idiot.
If you’re in a cartoon, sure. That’s not real life. Neither is this comic strip.
We find plenty of things funny in fiction, especially in less realistic fiction, that we wouldn’t find funny in real life. Even find horrifying in real life.
Actual stalkers aren’t funny in real life. Things kind of resembling stalkers can be funny in fiction.
Again, it surprises me people think Robin’s so unrealistic. I’ve known (and known of) lots of people like her.
I’m RELATED to people like her.
Really? To this extreme? This completely unaware and this completely open about it? But somehow also magically functional enough to hold a job, much less a Congressional seat.
Maybe we’re just interpreting Robin differently? You may be reading her as much more aware and duplicitous than I am. I’m taking her pretty much at face value – she’s doing horribly creepy, boundary violating things, but with no awareness that she’s doing something that would bother anyone.
I’ve met some damn creepy people. Some who would do this kind of thing, but they would always be doing it intentionally. Deliberately pushing past boundaries to get what they wanted. Robin doesn’t even seem aware the boundaries exist.
Stop demonstrating your shelteredness.
I’ve known and known of plenty of people like Robin. This is going to require me to go into my reading of Robin.
Robin wants to be liked, fundamentally. It’s something she’s always going to crave. Hence why she goes so hard on the slang and all of that. It’s also why politics is pretty much her career, because she can point to vote totals and use that as proof she is ‘liked’. It’s also why she’ll so happily acquiesce to others in congress, particularly men, ask her to help. She’s eager to be liked and approved of.
She’s incredibly oblivious to boundaries and no matter what will not bother with them, even if someone screams in her face to stop doing things. It’s in one ear and out the other.
She HAS to be ‘wacky’. Serious things are Bad Things. Someone’s mad, hurt, leaving, whatever. It brings her down, she doesn’t want to be brought down, and she doesn’t want things to be serious, so she’ll keep things up up up. If YOU try to be serious, she’ll bring things further up to compensate. Up to and including crapping on whatever you try to say because it’s too serious for her.
She’s impulsive, selfish, and obnoxious and has no intent of changing because her ‘science’ box is marked ‘seriousness’.
I know a lot of people like that. If I had to guess, I’d say this is probably because Robin has a million sisters and parents who had a nasty divorce, so Serious is marked bad forever , so if it makes her happy and liked (or ‘liked’) and is sufficiently shallow, she will just do whatever she wants.
BBCC — that’s a very constructive way of looking at Robin’s behavior here.
I think it’s still having a harmful effect, however. Before someone says “see, Robin’s OK!”… just because it’s born out of understandable pain, fear, etc, on her part, doesn’t mean that her coping mechanisms are excusable or that they aren’t toxic to everyone around her.
And someday it will end up hurting Robin too.
I think we’re still talking past each other. I’ve known some wacky people. I’ve known people desperately wanting to be liked, playing class clown and the like.
Your description of Robin, while I suspect you’re hitting most of right psychological motivation, seems much tamer than how I read Robin. Much more like real people I’ve known. Robin’s all that but cranked up to 11. So far that all those defense mechanisms backfire with everybody. Far from making her liked or even ‘liked’, she’s pissed off nearly everybody she’s interacted with – From the Dean to her aides to Leslie to the whole class. No just with her political stances, but the whole blatantly fake persona “Which ‘myself’ d’ja want? I got plenty.”
I’ve known people who could and did present differently like that, but none who’d announce it so casually to a bunch of strangers (and potential voters.)
And I don’t think it’s me being sheltered. I’ve dealt with people easily as creepy – mostly friend’s exes and the like. People who, as I said, would walk over boundaries and gaslight and all the nastiness. Some I could see breaking into their ex’s house, but not to hold hands and watch cartoons. That’s the part where it breaks for me.
Where she goes from creepy stalker to annoying 8 year old. And where I can’t take her seriously any more.
*Are her parents divorced? I don’t recall that.
@ Killjoy – Oh, no, none of this is meant to excuse, only to explain! Robin’s actions are inexcusable. She is a grown ass adult woman. She should know better on EVERY level. Robin is messed up – it’s on her to get help or back off. And that’s gonna be hard because it’s going to be hard to crack past the shell of ‘love me dammit, I’m wacky’ to make her realize how awful she’s being. In SP! it took her alienating everyone she knew and Leslie dumping her flat on her ass for being an impulsive, two timing jerk to crack that shell. And, iirc, she was older at the time than she is now and had more time to mature a little (nigh imperceptibly to the casual viewer!). This is going to take something somehow worse than that to crack through – or she won’t realize it and the lesson will be on how to avoid horrible, destructive people like this.
@ thejeff – I think that the ‘up to 11’ is the point. Becky is ‘wacky’. Sometimes Walky is ‘wacky’ when he doesn’t want to talk. Robin’s going a mile a minute keeping everything everything EVERYTHING as up up up as she can. Anything remotely serious is dumped into the bad box. At best, she’ll consider it for a moment and then dump it. And if people don’t like it, well, clearly she’s being TOO serious and needs to amp it up more until she’s shown herself to be fun and likeable. People like fun and wacky and over the top. So that’s how she’ll be.
The problem is she’s not a 20 year old kid party hopping. She’s a grown ass woman in congress. She’s got responsibilities waaaaaaayyyyyy over her pay grade (which she only earned by playing all the right platforms and avoiding consequences like a plague) that she’s not taking seriously because she’s floating by by using the right keywords and the right dogwhistles and going along with what people who ARE taking it seriously are telling her (hence why she’s so willing to let Freida – a woman she’s barely met – boss her around and tell her what to do). There’s also plenty of people who, on only meeting her once or twice in non-serious circumstances, would think Robin’s charmingly silly or even the life of an event, because they’ve never seen ‘boundary stomping, consequence dodging, dear lord make her STOP’ Robin.
I don’t think other people’s boundaries really register with her anymore. Because she’s spent so long focusing on being the ‘fun’ one or the ‘silly’ one to be ‘likeable’ (even if only in her mind) that anything serious is automatically filed away into the bad box and other people are either buzzkills coming at her to make her feel bad or talk about boring or sad shit she doesn’t want to talk about or they’re easily tuned out so she can keep believing that it’s working and they like her. And if people ‘like’ her, then anything she did to make them ‘like’ her is okay. It’s fair game. And nooooo, whaddya mean, the dean TOTES likes her, after all she likes him so he MUST like her back (in her mind). And well, if he doesn’t, she’ll crank it up louder and make him. I doubt she’s even conscious of it anymore – it’s just how she operates now. Think if, instead of Becky only turning ‘wacky’ when she’s scared out of her mind, she got so wrapped in doing that ALL THE TIME that she didn’t register that it’s happening and it keeps going on and on ad nauseum forever. Like she’s on autopilot.
As for the break in – she came to yell at her about the photos, got distracted by how comfortable her bed was (probably not helped by the booze, it being late, and her attention span of a gnat – useful for changing courses and distracting from anything serious, I’ll grant) and then woke up to Leslie yelling at her. Holding hands and cartoons came later. It was also a thing Leslie came up with. So now it’s in her head ‘Huh, this girl who I like FOR SOME REASON wants to do this with me. If I do this, she’ll like me – more than she does already. Okay, let’s do it, I’m so likeable now, she’s gotta like me!’ And so by god, Leslie will LIKE HER DAMMIT.
Even if, no, Robin, she doesn’t. She’s attracted to you. There’s a bit of a difference.
And yeah, Mary mentioned the divorce as one reason she didn’t consider Robin a real family values candidate (and fuck you, Mary).
Roz also mentioned she has a zillion sisters, and Willis said that, while their origins is nothing tragic or overly dramatic, it was bad enough that Roz, at least, has no relationship with her father.
How much clearer does Leslie have to make it that she wants Robin gone before she gets the hint.
I think that would imply Robin would need to see Leslie as a human being. She doesn’t since clearly everything Leslie says is something she ignores and her wishes are similar. It may be a Republican/gay thing or a Robin/Everyone else thing or this Robin is a high functioning psychopath. You know, who doesn’t kill but just doesn’t CARE what anyone else thinks.
I think it is more just Robin is very self-centered and selfish, which she also was in Shortpacked, but because Shortpacked was more slapstick, it didn’t feel like it mattered as much until she did something that was over the top wrong in a way everyone could see and recognise as wrong.
I think a rolled up newspaper might be in order
Given the sort of story Robin is evidently envisioning herself in, I’m voting for a large mallet.
Yes, or a cartoon anvil, it makes a missile sound as it falls, and she’s squished into a human accordion. Classic.
Just kick her in the crotch and toss her back out again.
Jack. Ass. JACKASS.
This is actually terrifying rather than endearing. Mostly because I’m terrified Willis will have this wear down Leslie’s defenses versus her reacting like she has a dangerous stalker in her home.
Yeah, I’m getting ready to revolt over here over this.
I wouldn’t consider her a dangerous stalker… Leslie can physically overpower her (as just seen). She’s just a stalker.
She’s putting Leslie in a position of needing to employ force to get her out of her house. She’s dangerous.
I dunno, Robin hasn’t been resisting and we don’t know if this version of Robin is a veteran or not.
She got into bed with Leslie while Leslie was asleep (and thus unable to defend herself), that rates pretty highly on my dangerous stalker o meter
She’s a stalker who has all the institutional power and immunity of a sitting congressperson.
Given the amount of terror and damage a mere Assistant Attorney General of a state did when stalking a gay student they had a weird obsession/crush on…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77MVMLWsuwU
Yeah. Dangerous as fuck.
MST3K Rule.
I don’t buy that as an excuse here. That’d be fine if this were a matter of ‘but lasers don’t work that way!’ or something, but this is about human behavior that is ENTIRELY too easy to model to actual unbelievably creepy and abusive things in real life.
If Willis is going to establish an overall tone of relative realism for his characters and the consequences and implications of their actions he doesn’t get to just exempt one of them from the established rules of the setting and expect people to accept it. If Amber can’t be a costumed vigilante without it being a symptom of serious personal issues than Robin doesn’t get to be home invader and have us wave it off as some endearing quirk.
Dissonance. The “wacky hijinks” excuse doesn’t hold up as well in DoA.
This thing with Robin in Leslie’s apartment has been a jarring divergence from the overall tone of DoA.
Now, at this moment, IMO, Robin left “aggravating and disrespectful”, and has crossed the moral event horizon.
I think (hope?) Willis will not take that approach — Robin not respecting Leslie’s boundaries was a theme throughout Shortpacked!, and taking a serious look at that would be in keeping with his tendency to retread old ground with a more critical (and less “wacky hijinks!” oriented) eye.
Like the Becky trying to get Dina’s hat off thing — Becky’s attempts were treated as a silly sitcom scenario, until suddenly they weren’t, and Becky just TOLD Dina what she wanted, and it was suddenly like a real relationship and not a joke about a very questionable act.
I think this may go a similar route, perhaps in tomorrow’s strip. Even in this arc, the plan to out Robin was so silly until suddenly Leslie had the opportunity to actually do it. Then it got grounded.
Yeah, this is more or less what I’m hoping for–and I’m hoping for it soon, because this installment creeped me the hell out and I am ready for this to be done now.
BREAKING NEWS: Your local representative has been caught breaking and entering on camera!
Dammit Robin, your behavior has stopped being funny and is getting increasingly creepy.
Nope. Nope nope nope.
Things that would make this okay: If Robin were an actual, literal dog who would then have an excuse for not understanding boundaries.
Hmmm… In general, it takes about 6 weeks to fully train a dog into reliably not doing something it’s not supposed to do, such as f.ex. lying in a bed it likes lying in.
Think it’ll take more or less than 6 weeks to teach Robin to reliably understand boundaries?
I think it’ll take one restraining order.
Another thing that would make this okay: this story having a payoff in which Robin goes away forever. Like, I don’t care if she redeems herself or not, Leslie ending up with her under any circumstances would be a tacit endorsement of this shit.
I get what you’re saying, but people can fall for creepy manipulation, and it’s not necessarily endorsement to portray that in a story. Like it could be really interesting if Robin “redeems” herself continues to be mistreated and disrespected
Seriously I’m gonna fucking revolt if they end up together at this point because what the everloving fuck Willis.
Leslie could wack Robin in the nose with a rolled-up newspaper and see if that gets her point across…
Robin is testing the hypothesis that if you get creepy enough, it loops back around to endearing.
(Hint: It’s not working out for Bob Guy.)
Question to US people: is it common for young adults like Leslie to be able to afford a house on landed property and not some flat? Especially on a lecturer’s salary.
I mean, maybe they’re cheaper in Indiana or she’s taken on a huge loan to handle the mortgage or something.
Huge loans are typically the norm in the US.
She’s got an apartment or a townhouse, or a dinky rental house. She doesn’t even have a bed frame, so she’s definitely not living in luxury
America is a huge place, Nono. I mean that in the literal sense. Hence houses and landed property are much more common–even as rentals or leases.
She could be renting the house, and my very limited experience with the house-renting market in Indiana is that it’s dirt cheap.
I’m going with renting, too. Decent sized houses with land around it are a dime a dozen here (outside of the major cities, at least), and like A Scientist said, it’s really cheap in some areas (including the area where this is set). Plus, unless she has tenure (and only maybe, even then), she probably wouldn’t want to commit to owning a house unless she knew she would have a position at the school for a while. Adjunct (and to a lesser degree, non-tenured but non-adjunct) professors don’t always have the job security that would warrant that kind of land investment in one place.
Landlord was mentioned earlier – when Robin first got in. Possibly she’s renting half a duplex or something. Or we just skipped the scene where they went down the hall from the apartment door to the front door.
It is interesting to see Robin with the unhealthy obsessive interest that’s mostly one-sided, as opposed to Leslie.
Not sure if this iteration is more or less creepy. Probably more, as of now, but hindsight is 20/20
Leslie in Shortpacked was kind of sad and devoted. This is actually disturbing and dismissive. The power dynamics are completely different. I’d say this was Sexual Harassment but Leslie doesn’t work for Robin. So it’s just stalking.
Wait, to claim sexual harassment the victim must be the employee of it’s stalker?
…A person doesn’t need to be employed by another to be sexually harassed by them. A person doesn’t need to be in a position of power at all in order to sexually harass- just look at how many men yell at random women in the street. (Although one could argue that a random man has social power over a random woman.)
Regardless, Robin IS in a position of power here, as Cerberus is good at pointing out. Her role as a politician and the fact that- BECAUSE of her- there are now press invading Leslie’s space and affecting her ability to live her life are both very real aspects of power that Robin has over Leslie.
Idk about other peple but i found this hilarious. Being a guy might factor into it, but for me on a comedy level it works
Yup, being raised as a dude means WAY fewer messages that you must constantly protect yourself from stalkers, and people inviting themselves into your bed, and unhinged people who won’t take No for an answer (particularly if they want to kiss you). It gets really ingrained.
Yeah, this stuff gets a lot less funny when you’ve dealt with stalkers in real life.
Like, shit like this, right down to the ex climbing through the windows to “show their love” is why some of my friends have had to very quickly change residences and make sure no one ever mentions their home address in any semi-public forum ever again.
This is going to sound really strange, but I was going to say “I have to admit there are twisted people out there” but to separate ourselves into us and them (As a community, not just as commenters) doesn’t really help it. People have extremely different narratives based upon their surroundings, so we have to work to open people up to the fact that their point of view is making others uncomfortable or causing distress/hurt, rather than calling them names which just closes them off to the idea.
When I was 14, I sat by my girlfriends wall until she came out and gave me a kiss goodnight (I’d just walked her home). She didn’t, instead her dad came out and drove me home and to this day it’s still one of my most shameful and cringeworthy moments. Since then I have come to respect personal space and comfortability, being 6″4 works into that as you are perceived as threatening at any first meeting, but at the time romantic pop songs (FOBs a little less sixteen candles for instance) Led me to believe it was a normal thing to do. I didn’t know any better, and noone was actively trying to teach me. Even the act of dealing with stalkers (Only happened once) is completely different because as a man, I have no real threats.
the conversation that I see happening in the comments need to happen on a bigger scale, man to man, the same way a whole bunch of conversations need to happen. But I agree, the cliffhanger of her walking away with no sense of resolvement doesn’t help, but I do also want to point out that in dirk gently we see the quirky detective climb through a window and its not shocking, and I think that was what david was trying to go for, rather than a serious event (We did just see a character comically picked up and thrown out, rather than, say, pushed out the door in a normal fashion)
I’m sorry, but somehow I find the remark “being a guy might factor into it” extremely offensive. As in, even I’m surprised by how angry I become at reading it. The implication that a person’s sex or gender determines our sense of humour seems to me to follow the same train of thought as “boys will be boys”. Or the implication that being a woman makes a person more probable to be offended because of their gender and/or sex.
I personally enjoy gallows humour. Everyone in my family does. Everyone in the area I grew up did. Men and women alike. Neither sex nor gender was a factor. It’s a part of the local culture. It was a place where every adult could remember close friends or family being lost at sea. Being able to laugh at injury or the prospect of death became natural.
I have been in situations where I think I’m saying one thing while by my choice of words I’ve actually said something completely different and I sincerely hope that’s the case here.
Given everyone else’s remarks, I took him to mean
“being a guy I haven’t had to deal with creepy stalkers as a potential threat and am therefore able to laugh at this situation because it is abstract to me”
Yeah, my take too. Also, internet opacity means sometimes one doesn’t know a person’s gender, and here the nym and avatar (which might be random) are like that.
Yup, exactly. The commenter has the luxury of laughing at it from a distance, without feeling affected by it. What’s important is if that is your first reaction, that your second is to acknowledge the problems and ways that this mirrors problematic behaviour in real life.
Thanks. It doesn’t seem as offensive from that perspective. I appreciate the reminder
I’m a male person.
I don’t find it funny.
But this may have to do with being relentlessly bullied throughout elementary and middle school. I still don’t like people walking too close behind me, and I always get a little “watch out” instinct going off when there are blind spots I have to walk by, and have to resist the urge to flinch when people make sudden movements nearby or get into my personal space. When I walk to my car, I avoid walking too close to other parked cars and approach from an angle that allows me to see around my car without getting close — I do this by instinct.
So I’m not really coming at this from the same place as most “dudes”.
Good point; gendered violence is definitely not the only kind of threat that people can fear and/or experience over time.
This is probably how a cat feels after leaving a mostly dead bird on your shoes
Nah, it’s more something like “Well, I caught this. I don’t need it anymore so you can have it.”
Or, “You have no claws, and nigh-useless teeth, so I am teaching you to hunt. If I don’t help you you will starve. Thank me with treetz.”
That’s my theory. “Doing my part to feed the family. No dead, so it’ll stay good longer.”
Guys I’m really sorry but this week has been weird and I didn’t get anymore Noir of Age done for today, please forgive me.
It’s okay. I think those of us here would relate and sympathize with that the most.
It’s nothing emotional, I just didn’t have time
With the level of noir in this update, you would have been superfluous. Comic noir, mind you, but still noir.
Just saying, we might not get a comment from Cerberus on account of her brain exploding (understandably so) from this hyperblatant example of Robin just disregarding Leslie’s wish that Robin would just damn well leave her alone!
Oh yeah. Cerberus believes in consent, boundaries, and respect. You can justify her boundary stomping if you try up until this comic. This is just wrong no matter how you slice it.
… I still laughed my butt off at the last panel though.
Yeah…
This is… bad. Really really bad.
Relieved to see your brain didn’t explode, though.
Stay safe!
*appropriate gesture of support*
Yeah, I can laugh at the last panel separated from the rest, but the whole thing is messed up. It reminds me of college.
I had a guy I talked to on the phone for a couple weeks when I was home sick. He was a church friend of a neighbor. I just wanted a friend. I even told him that. Then I got better and he’s still calling, texting, and emailing a lot. I tried to tell him I had to cut back to catch up, but he didn’t listen. He wanted to be more, but I turned him down gently saying I didn’t want that with anyone at the time and that I didn’t see him that way.
He started walking with me around campus which I didn’t ask him to do. He went in the library where I worked and talked to all my coworkers and boss (they said it was about me and “strange random things”). When he came to the library and I was working, he would sit at one of the computers out front near the main desk with the uncomfortable chairs (instead of the computer lab) which students normally only used when the computer lab was booked for something. He would sit there and stare at me sometimes broken up with moments of doing something on the computer. It got really creepy. I told some people including the lady that knew him from church. It lightened up after that.
When he found out I was seeing someone, he was suddenly seeing someone too. He called and told me about her and I (in my relief) told him about the guy I was dating. Sometimes I’m too nice for my own good and I was pretty gullible back then. I even introduced him to the person I was with when he happened to be at the same place as we were on a date. He had a very pissed off expression on his face when he looked at the guy I was with. I brushed it off because he was seeing someone.
I sometimes got a call or text from him, but it was rare. I didn’t mind bumping into him or the occasional touching base because neither of us was single and he was engaged to the girl he told me about though. I had been with my guy about a year when I happen to talk to my neighbor. She was kind of shocked to hear that creepy guy was dating someone much less engaged. I showed her the picture of them and she got instantly pissed. Creepy guy called me soon after to say his fiancée had left him for another guy from another country. I later learned that the woman in the picture was his cousin. He still tried to ask me out when he found out I was single though. I blocked him on everything after the cousin thing so he asked in person at my graduation.
The last creepy thing he did was by far the worst in my book. I had to drop my dog off at the vet who is located in a pretty off the beaten path place far from any other businesses. There was a lot of people parked in his lot that day for various reasons. I walked out the door and there he was waiting on me. The vehicle he had been driving hadn’t been there when I went in. He wasn’t picking up a pet or dropping off a pet or anything; he was just there. He still played it off as oh my god how funny to run into you here. I was outside alone with him and was freaked the fuck out. I tried to find an excuse to leave. He tried to find an excuse to talk. I left and he did too. I didn’t feel safe until it was no longer behind me. The more I thought about it, the more I freaked out. My car at the time wasn’t especially distinctive. There were even several people at the time with the exact same car. He was in a company vehicle (how I knew for sure I hadn’t seen it before going inside), but not a company that would have any reason to stop at a vet. I was scared for weeks worried he had made the leap from creepy person to all out stalker. I hope I never see him again.
*appropriate gesture of support*
Ick. That’s awful. I hope you never see him again too.
It’s been about 3 years, so I think he’s moved on. Fingers crossed!
I hope he runs into something large and unbending soon.
Be safe.
I just want him to get some help. He obviously has something wrong that needs to be treated with therapy and/or medication. Even if he’s not stalking me, he could be hyper focused on another person or in a downward spiral destroying his life and burdening others. I wish bad on my super abusive mother (haven’t seen her in over a decade), the physically abusive father of my nephews (no longer in their lives thank goodness), and Trump/Pence (duh), but not him.
I think you should seriously consider reporting him to the police. IANALawyer but it seems like you don’t have enough to get a restraining order. But if things should escalate it would be good to have a report on record.
I don’t think I could because it’s been 3 years since the last incident. It went on far too long, but it’s over as far as I know. God… I just now realized how long it went on.
The Double Standard is very often misused by the misogynists of society but oh god is it the case here. If Robin was a dude, this would be so terrifying and serial killer like.
Ashley Judd would make a movie about it.
While not condoning what just happened, a dude climbing into another dudes window is a plot point in Dirk gently, while a guy climbing into a girls is a thriller movie, and a girl climbing into a guys is a comedy. There needs to be a larger talk on the true weight of gender and this is like my 5th comment so I’m gonna stop-
Maybe also if Leslie were a dude. It’d be a fatal attraction thing. Lesbians are a-okay to victimize though, apparently.
If there’s one thing we can all learn from Hollywood, it’s that all acts of violence towards women are perfectly fine as long as it’s another woman doing the beating.
Jesus Christ that is creepy. Restraining order Leslie, get a restraining order now!!
If it’s more than ten miles, Robin will have to find another way to get to work.
Call the fucking police Leslie, this is NOT OKAY on ten different levels, at this point you could deck Robin in the face and it would be justifiable defense against a home invader
Now lets imagine if it was Joe doing this instead
Eugh, I imagined it, it is even worse ’cause he’s a plausible threat physically, so much creepitude.
While I don’t disagree with you on him being physically more able but it doesn’t really how big or strong you are when someone breaks into your room when you’re asleep
True. I knew somebody who had a dude sneak into her tent and sleep beside her, which was/is very very scary even when you’re surrounded by other tents of people whom you can actually trust.
Unless you swap Leslie for Jacob, that’s not really equivalent. It’s definitely creepy and not okay, but it’s more complicated from Robin’s perspective than “perv doesn’t respect boundaries”.
Joe pulling this same shit on a woman (straight or not) would be significantly more fucked up
Uh, not really. It just looks different because of the genders. It’s still Leslie being reduced to an object by a powerful and dangerous figure who can intimidate her any number of ways.
Joe only has the physical power (I don’t mean only as if its lesser) but Robyn has more power due to her position in the government
Oh, right. That’s a less immediate threat, but potentially much worse.
I genuinely believe this is even worse than Joe’s bullshit and I’m pretty down on Joe’s bullshit.
I don’t want this to continue going meet-cute. I want Leslie to be somewhere safe for a while to process what the ever loving fuck and to get her home back so she doesn’t need to crash on the couches of friends giving one hell of a “seriously, girl” eyebrow to her for what’s in the news.
This is genuinely terrifying.
You have been and I’ve disagreed with you a number of times on Joe however seeing this arc play out has made me…i don’t know…more aware of power imbalances in social situations (for lack of a better descriptive term) and seeing this (which I think is a really horrible situation) and then swopping the characters around (specifically Joe for Robyn) I could see Joe doing something similar (not breaking and entering) but the wearing down part
Long story short this storyline (and your comments) has made me question and reassess what I think I know
The whole tone of this incident has been wildly dissonant with the reality of it. Like, it feels like it wants me to interpret it as “wacky sitcom” when all I’m getting is “psychological thriller.”
Yeah, I’m not sure what to make of the tone disconnect.
What is The Passengers? (Feels like an appropriate reference here.)
There’s nothing “cute” about this “meet” any more. Ugh.
At least Joe can actually take “no” for an answer, even if it he has to be juvenile about it to protect his self-imposed “manly concept”.
Joe is sleezy… Robin is scary now.
Very true. Joe could be verbally obnoxious about it much later, and he might be self-congratulatory about respecting a yelled no (after ignoring soft nos), but he would definitely not be continuing his unwanted efforts after literally being thrown out the door.
You can practically SEE the moment when Leslie’s soul dies.
In all seriousness, at this point, I consider this Robin to be nothing but another emotional abuser, in the same category of human filth as Blaine. Yes, Blaine is more outright sadistic, but Robin’s constant refusal to treat ANYONE but herself as if they matter is not charming or endearing to me. It’s disgusting.
I’ve decided Robin’s gender flipped self is Jon Hamm. Their characters are superficially endearing but they’re really just knowing how to push the right buttons and don’t actually care save how to manipulate you into doing what they want.
Which is pretty much the point. Robin thinks her behaviour is endearing, she’s wrong. Much like Walky she’s been disconnected for sop long she’s stuck as an immature idiot who doesn’t know how to function properly. The scary part is that Robin actually holds power.
Yeah, that defeated sigh in Panel 4 is a genuine tragedy.
And it means that if anything continues beyond this point at least until Robin figures her shit out, it is coerced as fuck.
And who can blame her? Oh yeah, Robin for starters. Leslie and her lesbian wiles.
To be clear, I don’t mean Robin can justifiably blame her. I’m being sadly sarcastic.
You really don’t want me to express just how sad it makes me feel that there is a legit need to include such a Poe’s Law disclaimer on your preceding comment.
*plays overused Simpsons gif*
Okay, I’m still waffling between my initial interpretation and the general consensus about last strip’s argument, but… Does… Does Robin just… not comprehend social code? Is she even aware that it exists? She just looks so blissfully incognizant of all the unspoken rules that Leslie’s face says she DEFINITELY broke.
My impression is that Robin just generally doesn’t think anything that gets in the way of her getting whatever she wants ever actually matters. Since, you know, she’ll get what she wants anyway by charging over everyone’s objections.
Yeah… Honestly, I’m hoping (eight fingers crossed) that this ends up being like a “Rose+Greg” thing in the sense that Rose didn’t really understand what it means to respect a person as a person until Greg refused to put her on the pedestal she’d been looking down from for millennia. Complete with the sad, scared, and confused sentiment of “Is this not how it works?” and the unspoken question it raises, “How WILL we work?”
Robin is NOT Rose. Rose, despite some flaws, was very, very much a good person. Robin is a petulant sociopath.
You could argue that. Heck, I would argue that. But every time she’s actually on screen pre-Greg, I get a stronger and stronger sense that more than ANYTHING she values what is “interesting”. It’s why she adores humans so much, and why that adoration is so singularly focused on the human ability to grow, and to change. Because CHANGE is NEW, and INTERESTING. You can see it in the way she first interacts with Garnet, and in the way she idolizes the concept of humanity while simultaneously treating individual humans as fleeting distractions, and completely replaceable. (Which, I know isn’t entirely incorrect. She’s immortal. But she could still treat them as more than a way to pass the time.) She wants to learn, and experience, and live, and… I think up until “We Need To Talk” she prioritized that over everything else. Which leads to some pretty messed up behavior.
With the difference that Rose is literally an alien
Robin is human and have been living with people her entire life, and she isn’t oblivious to boundaries, she just supresses the mere thought that they exist, specially if they’re on her way
Sadly, human society has — openly or by default — awarded and even lauded people who “don’t take no for an answer” for as long as there have been humans in societies. People who just keep coming at things from every angle they can find until they get what they want… get what they want. People who say whatever it takes to get their way, often get their way. See, recent election.
It’s easier for some people to ignore here because Robin is a woman, but this message gets hammered into young men until it becomes toxic — “Never give up!” “Quitting is for losers!” “Don’t take no for an answer!” “If at first you don’t succeed, try try again!”
I’m not making excuses, at all, but this does add another level of tragedy to some sexual assault cases by young men — they’re acting out what’s been hammered into them as part of their “male identity” until it got all twisted into something dark and terrible, so that “taking no for an answer” became a threat to their very self-concept of “being a man”.
Rose did sort of treat Greg like a puppy until We Need to Talk. However, Rose appears to have respected Greg’s boundaries. Robin is refusing both to put in the effort of a real relationship and to leave Leslie alone. Rose would have at least taken no for an answer.
I suppose, but on the other hand…
“I’m starting to wonder if you.. respect me?”
And Rose starts laughing HARDER.
Yea. Rose did not respect Greg as a person. Her first reaction to his crush is basically to treat him like a forest creature that took a liking to her but belongs in the forest. When he pursues her she treats him like a puppy that followed her home. When he hints that he’s not satisfied with where things are she hints that he’s just a distraction to her. Leslie told Robin that she wasn’t willing to go out with her even if part of her wanted to. As flawed as Rose was she essentially told both Greg and Pearl not to throw away their lives for her unless they were sure that was what they wanted. Leslie already explained her issue and basically said if you refuse to respect me leave. Unless Robin starts respecting Leslie in three comics or at least leaves…
Robin doesn’t even have any regard for literal laws let alone unspoken social conventions. Like this is hella illegal and she just does not give a damn because what’s important is that she gets what she wants as always.
Comic Reactions:
8o
Ok, I’m going a little out of order cause…
Panels 3-4: Let’s be frank. Robin is terrifying. The shit she is pulling here is dangerous stalker level shit and while she may put on a nice mask of “wacky Robin”, that doesn’t make her actions any less a bevy of red flags and air raid sirens.
Like, look at Leslie’s face in Panel 3 and especially in Panel 4. This constant assault on her boundaries, on her attempts to regain agency, the utter disregard of any action she does is fucking breaking her.
And worse it is telling her that she doesn’t have any agency, that what she wants, what she does, what boundaries she tries to set don’t matter against what Robin has gotten in her head that she wants. That it doesn’t even help to try.
And for someone who has tried so hard on so many different levels. To retain self-respect, to remain true to her own moral code, to try and reach out and affect real change, to abandon ship, to try and have some semblance of privacy. And it’s all for naught. Heck, it hasn’t even been recognized. And that isn’t humorous, it’s terrifyingly abusive and is a level of bad at boundaries that makes Joe’s horror-show look practically benign.
I mean, Leslie cannon-tossed Robin out of her house and she broke in through a window to still force her way back in, in what had to be at most a minute. Leslie hasn’t had a second to breathe. And that’s terrifyingly familiar for anyone who has had a person obsessed about getting and remaining in contact with you even when you make every effort to escape them.
And it’s even more terrifying when you take it in context. Robin is an anti-gay politician who has just delivered a hell of a blow to Leslie’s standing in the general community, her level of trustworthiness with her students, her sense of self, and now even her right to assert herself in any way that matters.
What Robin is doing now is basically training her that it is worthless to have respect, to set boundaries, to reach out to me, to do anything other than what I want. And since the ending is set, you might as well give in and give me what I want on my terms and save yourself the frustration of the struggle.
And that’s abusive as fuck.
Honestly, Cerberus, I’m with you to the point this is reminding me less of Love Actually and more like Zoller with Shosanna in Inglorious Basterds. “She keeps rejecting me despite how nice I am!” Eventually, Robin is going to get angry.
Even if she doesn’t, it’s still bad. Cause it’s the same treatment of the target as a prize or a game. And even if she’s smiling all the while and thinking she’s having fun, it’s destroying Leslie all the same.
This right here is exactly why I gravitate to Cerberus’ comments on these comics and rather miss her when she’s not able to post. She eloquently and concisely points out all the very nasty problems I see and just generally can’t put into words nearly so easily.
As someone who has long (near 20 years now) been part of the BDSM community Robin’s behavior here exemplifies a problem I have both witnessed and experienced in the community numerous times and have more than my fair share of experience with, both direct and indirect, outside the community as well. When all parties involved have expressly made clear that such behavior is expected and something they are interested in it’s one thing, but it is disgustingly common for people to act like this without discussion and treat the lack of another person’s ability to extract themself from such a situation, regardless of the reason, as tacit consent. I have railed against such behavior within the BDSM community. I have fought against such behavior (sometimes, when forced, physically) both in and out of the community. I have helped people deal with people who display such behavior towards them and consoled people who had to excise people who were otherwise important to them from their lives because they treated them as Robin is Leslie here.
I found the similar episodes to this in Shortpacked bad enough, but here it’s turned up to eleven and just makes me feel ill with rage. What Robin is doing here isn’t good. It isn’t right. It isn’t dogged determination. it isn’t some kind of game. It isn’t forcing someone to accept a potentially unpleasant truth. What we see here is full on abuse in several forms (mental and emotional certainly, though almost certainly abuse of the power of Robin’s position in society as well).
And you know this isn’t gonna get rid of the LesBin shippers. Ugh.
Yeah, agreed.
Robin stopped dancing along the line, and just outright crossed the moral event horizon here, and it takes an outright denial of the facts at hand to see this as “the start of something beautiful”.
UGH.
Leslie literally threw Robin out. There’s no room left for “Robin is just dense” or “Leslie wasn’t clear” excuse-making. Robin has gone from “oblivious to boundaries” to “doesn’t give a single fuck about anyone’s boundaries”.
Robin needs to just GTFO out of comic for a while.
I don’t think it needs to. A ship doesn’t have to be healthy or mutual to be shipped. Just as long as there’s awareness that a dynamic is Not Great. (Understatement for the purposes of humor.)
Ultimately I also don’t think it’s completely fair to get down on people for shipping an unhealthy relationship if the canon romanticizes it. See: Twilight, etc. The responsibility has to be with the author, and with the society that nurtures this view, especially when the fans in question are very young.
In DOA, there’s also the complication of context contamination, e.g. people who ship two characters who dated in the Walkyverse. It’s easy to mentally superimpose the previous dynamic, especially when — as has been addressed a few times — we keep seeing familiar Robin Wackiness, which doesn’t work in the more realistic setting but absolutely serves to keep that other dynamic firmly in the forefront of readers’ minds.
So yeah, I don’t think Leslie/Robin fans necessarily need to stop shipping them.
But I do think they should be more sensitive to the feelings of other readers. I would like to see fewer people going “God why are you all taking this SO SERIOUSLY? Robin is awesome/hilarious!” (I also don’t think there’s a perfect circle on the Venn diagram between fans of the ship and fans of Robin.)
To clarify: I don’t ship it here. Retroactively I’m not sure I ship it in the Walkyverse either. At the time, though, I was younger, and way more desperate for f/f pairings in canons. (And Willis was a younger writer; he’s grown a LOT in a lot of ways, and the writing has reflected this, even just since DoA started.)
I don’t need Robin/Leslie anymore because even just in this strip I have many far healthier relationships to root for, but it was an important pairing to me once and I don’t think I would be a terrible person if I didn’t want to let go of it.
Also just to be very very clear:
Shipping it and BEING AN ASSHOLE ABOUT IT are two separate things. The people who keep snidely insisting that Robin Has Done Nothing Wrong, directly in response to literal stories of abuse, just need to stop.
No. This ship needs to be killed with fire, because it is beyond gross, and we already have one majorly borderline one as it is.
I mean, I already very explicitly said that I don’t think ships need to be healthy in order for them to be shipped. So, you can say “no because it’s gross”, and I’m certainly going to stop trying to talk to you about it, but I already dismissed that line of reasoning, so you might as well have just said “no.”
…well, sure, if you use real world logic, it goes from amusing to kinda terrifying… >_>
But yeah. This is… way over the line. This would make for a good looney tunes gag, not so much for a strip that’s dealt with subjects like date rape, conversion therapy and such.
It definitely feels like Robin’s not thinking at all, though. Panels 3 and 4, she’s not even looking at Leslie like she’s only suddenly aware of where she is. She’s very much a look before you leap type person (perfect for politics!), I wonder if she just ran back inside because she didn’t want to deal with things.
But, ugh. This……… is definitely in the “not going to end well” territory :(.
Panels 5-6: No really, I feel like I’m watching a horror movie. Especially now living in a country where abuse tactics are being modeled from the top down and filtering through every piece of shit who thinks that the Pumpkin Fascist’s stolen presidency means open season to use all his tactics to retain and abuse whatever tiny seat of power they do.
Robin is smug about this. She thinks its romantic. She’s stalking to the level that she’s repeatedly breaking into Leslie’s home and she thinks this is some fun romantic comedy and that just because Leslie has feelings for her, it’s all fun and games and she can bring flowers to her little lady on the side that she’ll never acknowledge the humanity of.
And that’s not romantic. Not even a little bit.
It’s hellish to have feelings for someone toxic, to set your boundaries and make it clear that though you may care for them, you can’t date them or let them in your life anymore. And I’ve seen folks who take advantage of those positive feelings to eel their way in or demand a coerced sex or mask their abuse or minimize their assaults.
And to fuck with people in that vulnerable state is downright vile. And that’s even more apparent given yesterday’s comic. She said “you coulda kicked me out at any time”, but Leslie has tried. Leslie tried to throw her out when she first woke up, tried to say goodbye for the last time at the bar, tried to kick her out of her classroom when it became a disaster, and has now physically thrown her out of her house, like literally thrown.
But to Robin, if she has any pathway by which to continue to escalate these violations of boundaries and force her way back into your life, then you haven’t “really kicked her out” in her mind and therefore she feels even more justified in acting like these repeated violations of boundaries are part of an extended meet-cute and pressing even harder, because, well, why would she be here if she wasn’t so wanted and she in that last panel is selling all the harder that this terrifying action on her part was actually some kind romantic favor.
Again, this is abuse.
“She came in through the bathroom window.”
That is the worst Beatles song, and I say this as someone who likely will always love the Beatles due to my upbringing even though I know most of their stuff isn’t that good on any level other than technical craft.
Panels 1-2: But I don’t want that to be the last word, so instead I send a soft lament to Leslie in these panels. Setting what she feels is her last boundary, not yet having breathed and processed the level of fucked her life just became because she unwittingly gave Robin a crack in her life for her to wiggle into and destroy.*
*And that’s not to denigrate her, Leslie had no idea that being reasonable and fair and deciding to try out a scheme to see if this crazy thing could work would end this way, nor should she have. Folks should not be terrified to go on dates or try and connect with a powerful person and help them see their humanity for fear that their life will be destroyed by a stalker for it.
And that’s tragic, because Leslie in this moment needs that time to process. She just had the night from hell that’s turning into a morning from hell, has a lot of confused feelings of betrayal, fear, and still lingering attraction and hope and needs time to fully let it sink in what has happened, how many different layers of betrayal and literal crimes have occurred here, and what her next motions are going to be.
And she’s denied even that.
She’s denied even the ability to break down each piece. Like, any piece on its own would be a day to process at least. Like, being pressed to share a deeply vulnerable part of her life story* full of her most painful life moments only to have it treated like a vomit bucket and an in to get her to essentially end up on a date against her will.
*It’s worth noting that Leslie has made no first moves in any of this outside the initial invitation to speak. It wasn’t even her idea to tell Robin the story of her own bad past. That was something Robin demanded of her and pushed and pushed until Leslie felt like she really had no choice but to share it. And even after all that, Robin had the audacity to not even pay attention or retain a single memory of it or a recognition on how that might make her somewhat conflicted to be with a person who tried to pass a bill that would make that the life experiences of so many kids like she was.
I really hope that Leslie can find a space to escape to, to think and won’t continue to be bulldozed, but I doubt it.
And that breaks my goddamn heart.
Oh heck, it gets worse. Robin is a Congresswoman and in a ridiculously slanted power dynamic situation since Leslie works for the state. There’s literally NOTHING Leslie can do about it.
Leslie can call the cops but Robin can say anything and people will believe her because she’s charming.
If Robin was anyone else, according to most state’s laws, Leslie could KILL her as a home invader.
But instead she just has to take it.
Cerberus, I hope you never stop doing these panel reactions. They make me take a second, third, and fourth look at what I may have thought was harmless or funny and see the underlying issues.
Thank you for being such a treasure to the comments section.
Robin.
Robin, no.
Just stop. This is embarrassing. Please. Stop it.
Robin, that’s not how you anything.
Robin.
Ro—
“that’s not how you anything.” OhmygodIcan’tstoplaughing.
Robin, that’s how you emotionally abuse people.
“Roooooooooobiiiiiiiiin, that hurts people!”
Isn’t “weeded your garden” a euphemism for something? It’s gotta be.
Usually shaving or waxing the hair above and around the mons pubis.
okay that’s pretty hilarious.
everyone else takingit so seriously, hehe.
Yeah. This comic bounces between the comedy and drama genres, and those have different rules. I think people get those wires crossed sometimes. This is really funny. I don’t think it’s meant to be a portrayal of emotional abuse or something.
A lot of the people taking it “so seriously” have real experience with stalkers which this reflects. They aren’t just getting confused how stories work. The fact that something is played as humorous doesn’t negate that parallel with real life nastiness.
You don’t have to see it that way, or let it ruin your amusement, but have some empathy before you start getting it in your head that the people reacting differently are silly or wrong.
Just because someone portrays abuse as funny doesn’t mean anyone has to find it funny or even remotely appropriate to try and make it funny. This is horrible, and manipulative, and abusive and if Willis expects me to write it off as wacky hijinks he’s out of his head.
This.
In a comic that has dealt over and over with very real consequences of mental illness/abuse, (and is at its best when tackling those issues) it’s just wacky when Robin’s on screen! What should happen in the next comic is that Leslie should attempt to call the police, at which point Robin would probably use her emotional leverage to manipulate Leslie into not calling the cops on her. The strip after that should be Leslie growing a spine and calling the cops anyway, pressing charges against Robin, and then ruining Robin’s career, because this is maximumly unhealthy.
What will actually happen is that Robin and Leslie will turn into this sitcommy Odd Couple playing out a sort of inverted “Baby it’s Cold Outside”, complete with uncomfortable undertones that we’re all just supposed to laugh off because waaaaackiness! I assume at some point during this storyline Robin will drop an anvil on her foot and reinflate it blowing into her thumb, right after insinuating maybe Leslie got what was coming to her, just to really drive it home that she’s an irredeemable piece of shit.
Willis has long wanted Robin to be his very own Bugs Bunny, a magical imp of a creature to whom the normal rules don’t apply, his own mix of manic pixie dream girl and Looney Tune. Thing is, Robin’s not in a hijinks world now, she’s in the “real world”. In the real world, manic pixies are annoying pieces of shit, Bugs Bunny is an asshole, and people like Robin aren’t fucking funny.
Willis. Buddy. I love you, but it’s time for an intervention. You cannot have a comic where most of the charm comes from extremely relatable human elements in a slice of life setting, then have a character fucking Droopy Dog herself behind another character. Quite honestly, Tiny Toons, Warner Bros. style cartoon comedy has never been your forte and even if it was, there is zero place for it here. This woman is a gibbering monkey-child, which would be enough to make her the worst character in the strip hands down, but now you’d have us believe she holds office (hur hur, Trump president jokes). In a strip that’s set in the real world but still has a superhero, this still sticks out as the most unbelievable thing.
Robin is terrible. This storyline is terrible. You have burned to the ground any possibility of this having an actual, realistic, emotional conclusion because one half of the cast of this particular story is like if Phillipe from Achewood was a selfish asshole. After this storyline is over, cut your losses, write Robin out of the strip, and get back to doing what you do best.
I think you might be a bit premature here with the judgement, after all the storyline is not over yet and tomorrow we could very well see Leslie (quite rightly) blowing her top off at Robin for this gross disrespect of her boundaries.
I mean, early Becky also had a lot of “lol-wacky” to her character, but I think Willis handled her emotion depth well. I would wait and see, though I’m agreement with you that Robin is super terrible and her attitude is the opposite of funny
This is what Willis does best: like every poet he employs genre conventions in order to subvert the inauthentic presuppositions which underlie the conventions.
Yeah, I trust that Willis isn’t unaware of the context he has created here given that he seems to be aware of it in other situations (like letting the fucked up origins of Billie and Ruth be a dark spot that affects Billie’s ability to be nostalgic about the relationship even though they created something real despite that).
But doesn’t mean that this is any less horrifying for all it’s being played light for now.
This arc is suffering from severe dissonance.
The semi-realistic, semi-serious tone of the comic doesn’t leave a lot of room for “hilarious” when you look at what Robin’s actually doing as if it were going on in real life.
that’s why i didn’t. i’m sure they’ll use it as a serious scene in the next strip, but eh. mostly, i’m just wondering about these people that are writing like 20 paragraph essays about being abused in their lives, and thinking “christ that’s overly heavy for a comic relief strip.”
sure, you can go “OH MY GOD THIS IS THE WORST EVER”, but it all reeks a little of good ol’ internet overreaction.
i can still laugh at ‘serious’ fictional moments, it’s not the end of the world.
it kind of stops being funny when it resonates with real-life experiences with stalkers.
We’re not saying that it has to resonate with you or that you have to find equally serious, but perhaps you could have some empathy for the people who dealt with real-life Robins in their lives and it was so not funny
i simply can’t take a webcomic that seriously. it can emotionally affect me, but when people start sounding traumatised by it, that’s where my emotional involvement cuts off; it’s just a webcomic.
You don’t have to take the *comic* seriously. What people are asking you to do is to take other people’s *feeling* seriously. People are feeling hurt. Regardless of whether you understand or agree with the source of that pain, the decent thing to do is to at the the very least, not throw extra pain their way by actively dismissing your feelings.
This is being said by someone who has never had a stalker, but I have enough imagination and empathy to see how this subject matter might be more upsetting to people who have experienced that misfortune.
+1 to Gwen.
It’s almost as if different people choose different levels of engagement and have different responses to art (often based on their own experiences)! Fancy that.
This.
Feel whatever you want. Just don’t be a jerk about other people reacting differently than you do.
When you think about it, Robin and Leslie’s exchange in the last panel is a good metaphor for this entire arc. Especially Leslie’s reply.
I’m starting to wonder if Robin isn’t some kind of high functioning sociopath.
She’s superficially charismatic, narcissistic, has no boundaries, or shame about anything. She also only cares about her own needs.
So…yeah, Sociopath. No wonder she joined the GOP.
Everyone in the GOP is either a sociopath or an idiot without exception. Either they don’t care about how the party’s platforms hurt people or they don’t know even though it’s blisteringly obvious if you’re paying any attention at all.
A case could be made for the Democrats along the same line. Plenty of disregard or ignorance for how their platform hurts people and Balkanizes the nation, too.
(And no, before someone drags the canard out, this has nothing to do with me thinking “it’s all just a game” or some other shit accusation. It’s deadly fucking serious, and part of the problem that BOTH parties share is that they DO treat it like a petty contest, and fuck everyone as long as their tribe wins and someone else gets kicked off the island.)
This is really not the case. The Democrats have not always been governing well, but they’re generally acting in good faith and losing gracefully (too gracefully, if you ask me).
The Republicans are vicious winners, graceless losers, and care about nothing other than implementing their terrible platform and obstructing anything the Democrats might try to do. They spent Obama’s entire presidency using procedural bullshit to stop him from accomplishing anything simply because it was him trying to do it, including preventing him from exercising his Constitutional right and obligation to appoint a new Supreme Court justice, playing chicken with the total collapse of the global economy in order to score political points, and repeatedly attempting to repeal Romneycare simply because Obama got it passed.
That Congress is even holding hearings on the Fascist-in-Chief’s rogues gallery appointments is proof enough that the Democrats aren’t anything like the Republicans.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all-in with the Democrats in the upcoming elections, because Team Orange represents a potentially existential threat to this nation and its principles in the immediate present — and the GOP is too shortsighted to fully grasp what they’re enabling.
However, that doesn’t mean I have forgotten or forgiven the onerous goals, toxic ideology, and blatant hypocrisy that exist on the other side.
Can we please stop treating a highly stigmatized mental illness like sociopathy as code for Bad Evil McJerkface.
^^^
They probably don’t have personality disorders, the vaaaaaaast majority of violence is committed by neuro-typical people, and APD’s lack of empathy is in the clinical sense (the tendency to intuit and “feel” someone else’s emotions in echo), not the casual sense (the ability to give a crap about other people). People with APD can be both sympathetic and compassionate, and the choice to not care about someone else’s suffering is irrelevant to empathy.
That’d be nice.
Wow, people take this comic extremely seriously.
…what’s that? My opinion doesn’t matter ’cause I don’t have credibility? Oh, alright then. Robin, B&E is bad, as is stalking (?) and harassment. Not only are you emotionally harming someone, the media have this place staked out.
But the cat came back
The very next day
seriously, though, what the fuck
I was still singing the song in my head for your second comment, which should be the new lyrics of that song.
The cat came back, the very next day, seriously though what the fuck, why are you still alive, go to Hell you cat, he just wouldn’t stay awayyyy
We worry only if Leslie’s next tactic is to tie up Robin, drive her out into the bear-infested woods and leave her there.
I hear the Amazon is very nice this time of year.
“Now, Professor Bean had troubles of her own.
She had a yellow-shirted creep that wouldn’t leave her home!
A special plan with deception as the key.
Just Robin D: How hard could it be?“
Just give Carla some cookies and she can fix this!
I can’t decide if it would be more entertaining to have this problem solved by giving cookies to Carla or Ruby.
…Yeah, you’re right. Carla all the way. With Ruby it would be much bloodier and over way too quickly.
I thought I was helping shepherd the courtship of two adorable queer ladies but instead i’m
managing a lesbian suicide pactwitnessing some Fatal Attraction type shit.Wait, which Ruby?
This Ruby.
D:
ohman this is quickly falling into insane levels of toxicity
robin desanto, the gal who would not leave :/
But the cat came back, she just couldn’t staaaay awaaaay….
This is getting a little Shortpacked!-y
Graaah, Robin pisses me off sooo much! Because I know what it’s like to not being treated with some minimum sort of respect. If I were in Leslie’s place, I would have probably gone apeshit by now.
Seriously, at this point I just want to punch her smug face.
Only now?
…you guys do know Robin’s entire life is very publicly falling apart and she doesn’t know how to face it, so she’s running in abject terror from it, right? It doesn’t make what she’s doing right, but I also don’t think it makes her a villain. I understand Leslie’s in a terrible position, and Robin shouldn’t be doing this, but Robin is ALSO IN A TERRIBLE POSITION, and people aren’t perfect and if they were honestly this comic would be really, really boring.
Robin should go have a breakdown with her mom, then! Or even Roz (which also means Mary), that could be wacky and annoying. But, yes, it is not Good Decisions Of Age, so whatchagonnado.
I suppose Robin’s nearly vacant smile could be an expression of denial rather than her being unfalteringly unaware of the lines she’s crossing… I guess we’ll have to see.
“It doesn’t make what she’s doing right, but I also don’t think it makes her a villain.”
Hell, tempo, Robin’s entire life makes her a villain. She supports political choices she knows are evil for no other reason than to stay in power, blatantly uses and abuses every single person around her… she won’t even bother addressing her own aide by name. Robin is a human-shaped pile of walking, talking negative traits.
She didn’t really seem to understand they were evil, but I will admit that naivete to that degree is not particularly excusable in an adult and at some point ignorance may be indistinguishable in a practical sense from malice (though I don’t mind my fictional clueless politicians receiving a redemption storyline, particularly if I know them from Shortpacked!).
I was, in my comment, trying to talk specifically about the more immediate events of this comic, namely: Robin, when forcibly removed, still not leaving Leslie’s reporter-surrounded house to deal with being outed. That specific thing is being widely criticized as abuse and obsession and reads much more to me like fear. Maybe I’m wrong, though, and she really is just stalking Leslie. I suppose darker shit has happened in Willis’s comics.
Well…the reason things have gotten this bad, reporter-wise, is that when Robin found out there were photos of her and Leslie in a bar her response was to break into Leslie’s home and fall asleep in Leslie’s bed. She could have holed up in any random hotel room, but instead she committed home invasion on Leslie. So, yeah, I’m inclined to say stalking.
Well, I mean, you can stalk someone out of fear. I’ve known folks whose stalkers believed and acted very strongly like the love they were fighting for was eternal because they were pants-shittingly terrified of ending up alone.
I think Robin is doing this partially out of fear. But that doesn’t lessen the fact that she’s still repeatedly violating boundaries and acting like this is all some extended meet-cute instead of a dangerous and scary situation for the person she is (possibly inadvertently) stalking.
Hell, most folks who do monstrous things usually have some form of internal narrative that they use to justify it and make themselves feel like the hero. Like, some are just villains for villainy sakes because they feel that role makes them feel powerful and cool (cough cough, hate movement that ruined gaming).
CONTENT WARNING: worldviews of people who do terrible things
But most have a reason they think trumps. They were driven out of control by their partner’s prattling and disrespect and needed to avoid being cuckold by them through a show of force. They have been taken over by evil homosexual demons and need to be saved so they don’t spend eternity in hell. They were in love and was just doing what always works in the romantic comedies.
And one of the things I like about Dumbing of Age is you see that in the villains. Toedad is motivated by his twisted notion of familial “love”. Carol by her religion and the feeling that saving her family from Hell trumps literally everything else. Mary by her feelings of being the lone last moral arbiter of what is right and wrong.
Even Ryan believed he was justified in his own twisted way. After all, he worked so hard to win the game (of incapacitating his target so he could “have a little fun”) and she kept cock-blocking and cock-teasing him and so he was more than justified in using a little more than average force in revenge for such disrespect.
In our real world, we have literal nazis out there actively harming others while still acting like the victims of an international Jewish conspiracy.
It’s why what often matters most is the impact on the victim of their awfulness rather than the justifications they use to sleep at night.
I guess what i’m saying is that if Robin keeps it up, then I’ll agree with you. Also, I think the whole “breaking-into-your-home-to-sleep-beside-you” thing would normally be totally creepy and immediately disqualifying, but am suspending disbelief on that count because it seemed less like a thing Robin was doing and more like a thing that happened in a comic because it was funny, in no small part due to the implausibility of the situation and Leslie’s unrealistic reaction. In no real-world situation would I ever have thought that was acceptable.
There’s a limit to how much tonal whiplash an audience can withstand.
go away robin you are not needed in this strip
I know this is supposed to be funny, but I can’t help but awful for Leslie. Robin is being the worst kind of a$$hole right here. She was literally thrown out of Leslie’s house, a pretty obvious sign that your presence is not wanted. Instead of respecting Leslie’s wishes, she BROKE. INTO. HER. HOUSE! She did this and doesn’t see any problem with that, especially since we have to assume there are numerous cameras outside which probably also caught her doing this.
The sheer amount of disrespect that Robin is showing Leslie is appalling, and the fact she doesn’t even seem to notice the discomfort Leslie is showing is atrocious. I mean, I’m giving Robin the benefit of the doubt that she’s so out of touch with reality she legitimately doesn’t notice. Otherwise, Robin DOES notice and just doesn’t care, which makes her a new level of awful.
A lot of hate for Robin going on here. More hyperbole about her actions. Lots of talk about how Leslie should be feeling and how horrible it all is for her.
Nowhere near enough consideration for what Leslie is actually dealing with. Leslie wants Robin to stay. She wants Robin to want to be with her. She needs Robin to acknowledge that, both privately and publicly.
Just to be clear. ROBIN IS NOT THE IMPORTANT ONE IN THIS STRIP.
Leslie does NOT want her to stay. She literally threw her out. That’s why she had to break in for the second time.
Even if, deep down in the spirit of romance, Leslie wants Robin to stay, Robin doesn’t get to decide that for her by saying “HA HA, you won’t throw me out!!!” as a form of one-upping Leslie’s advice, and then decide that Leslie won’t mind her RE-breaking in through the window. That’s not cute, and makes this situation “all about Robin” in Robin’s approach.
And once again. Talking about Robin. There is a lot more context here than, “OMG! Robin!”
Yeah, there’s also “OMG Leslie is vulnerable to abuse”.
“Sigh”
“Deeper Sigh”
“eye roll”
CONTENT WARNING: Sexual Assault, gaslighting, thought process of a serial rapist
She is vulnerable to abuse though.
Like, we all like to pretend abuse situations are going to be easy to recognize, but what makes intimate partner violence and other forms of abuse from a partner so heartbreaking is that often times the person being abused does genuinely love and care for the person who has hurt them.
And that makes it really hard for them to act, because part of them is always going to think positively to the positive moments shared or wish it had turned out differently or want to cling to an alternative timeline of events.
Leslie undeniably has attractions to Robin. Part of her wants nothing more than watch Steven Universe and snog and drift into a lesbian fairytale where she just forgets who Robin is and what she’s done.
But the other part of her matters too. And that part has tried repeatedly to extricate herself, set boundaries, disconnect herself from the situation, because she recognizes that attraction as toxic and Robin’s actions and behaviors are frequently toxic.
And honestly, setting those kinds of boundaries when you have so much love for a person is hard as fuck. Even one of these actions likely took a lot from Leslie and it’s hard to stick to that. I know from personal experience on that one.
So for Robin to just steamroll over those not once but multiple times because “there’s attraction here” because “some part of you wants me to stay” is monstrous and the actions of literal rapists.
And I’m not being hyperbolic here. My ex, shortly before I got together with her, had a guy she was in probably the deepest lust with she had ever been in her life. And they had dated but it had ended because this guy got off on finding where a person’s boundaries were and deliberately going over them.
So one day, she’s at a party with him. He was dating a friend of hers and he decided that he was going to pursue my ex. Now, my ex had no interest in doing this, because of the aforementioned disastrous end to their relationship and the fact that she had a strong moral code about doing anything with a person in a monogamous relationship (which for me feels paralleled with Leslie’s strong moral code with regards to Robin’s actions as an anti-gay politician and what that means with regards to her attraction).
To make a long story short, he didn’t care about that, instead he pursued her relentlessly over the course of the evening as she kept trying to say no and move away. And he did so claiming that her residual attraction to him made it ok. Eventually he cornered her in the kitchen and started assaulting her.
He felt justified in that because he was a serial rapist who liked to target folks who had attraction to him but things they didn’t want to do. And he got off on pushing past that because “you want me”, because he knew that would confuse the emotions after the fact and make it easier to gaslight them about the event (if this was so one-sided as you claim, why does part of you want a consensual form of what I did to you).
So yeah, I’m going to focus on that unique hell. Cause the aftermath to that hellish evening lasted years. Made my ex terrified of her own sexuality, because it had been weaponized against her consent. And cause it didn’t matter that part of her wanted him. Another part of her made it clear that though she did, she had no interest in pursuing that in those circumstances.
Leslie craves a fairytale with Robin. But she recognizes the reality, that Robin is a selfish politician who supports bigoted legislation and who will never even do her the courtesy of listening to her to the point that Robin believes she has “discovered” that Leslie is in love with her when Leslie has stated that is the case several times. And she is in deep conflict between her loins and her head.
For Robin to take advantage of that? To try and press one ending over the other by bowling over whatever means Leslie takes to try and extricate herself instead of introspecting on the words Leslie is saying?
That is monstrous and the fact that Leslie may just give in to the blitzkrieg would not make this story have a happy end. When my ex was being assaulted, she felt stuck in a surreal hell, so she tried to rewrite her story, grab some semblance of agency by kissing him. Because when you’re being assaulted, anything you can do to lessen the horror of what is happening can seem like a good idea.
The rapist used that against her, used it to rewrite the whole story of the evening and make it out like she seduced him and tried to get him to cheat on her friend. He told others that’s what happened that evening. And for months, my ex believed him, because he was very good at gaslighting. Luckily she had relayed what actually had happened that evening to a friend immediately after and other party goers were able to confirm a lot of it.
If Leslie reacts to this onslaught against her right to say no, I like you, but we can’t by eventually giving in and going “fuck it”. That “fuck it” becomes no less coerced and what develops is going to be poisoned by that.
And the sick part of it all is that Leslie knows that. That’s why she’s trying to end it now.
I am glad you agree with me about Leslie and her emotional conflict. I don’t think she is the one that has received an “onslaught” in this context though. Nor is she the one that has been gaslit.
The conflict here, for Leslie, Leslie is more than resisting being a victim of abuse or choosing to abhor a character you, personally don’t like, simply because you, personally, do not like them.
And there is humour here, created by a Shortpacked character being placed, with little change, into the Dumbiverse. Yesterday’s slapstick that would have been a serious assault, today’s reappearance. There is more going on here than any case study.
Please don’t put words in my mouth again, it is offensive. If you can’t find something in what I have said to respond to, just move along.
Lol@Hellespont defending an abusive stalker. Fucking LesBin shippers.
You sound like Robin. She literally just threw her out of her house bodily and you too are still convinced she wants her there.
Literal stalker, numbnads
“Lots of talk about how Leslie should be feeling and how horrible it all is.” Well, going by how her facial features in yesterday’s comic were contorted in a manner most people associate with frustration and rage and how in today’s comic her facial features are much more relaxed in an expression most people associate with apathy, I think it’s fair to interpret her feelings as sad.
You seem to be frustrated with how people interpret Leslie’s bodylanguage, but unless you mean people are saying she should be bouncing with joy, I’m not sure I understand what it is you’re frustrated with.
“Just to be clear. ROBIN IS NOT THE IMPORTANT ONE HERE IN THIS STRIP.” Then please clarify why you began your post with “A lot of hate for Robin going on here.” Or why half of it is about how Leslie feels about Robin. Not how she’s feeling in general. How she’s feeling specifically in direct relation to the person you say is not the important one here.
Yeah, it feels weird to have someone be like “you guys should focus on Leslie and not Robin” and then only focus on the superficial fact that Leslie has the hots for Robin. Especially when the rest of her experiences is why she keeps trying to set boundaries and say no to this developing chemistry.
Like, her story to Robin in the bar was important. That life experience of having to survive the streets as a youth because of religious based disownment? Makes her unable to separate the hot person she has the hots for from the monstrousness of her actions and lack of respect for the experiences and wants of anyone besides herself. Makes it impossible for Leslie to fully feel comfortable pursuing this attraction without starting to hate herself not long after.
Yeah, part of her wants to bang Robin. Hell, part of her will likely always want to bang Robin. But Leslie herself has tried to extricate herself multiple times from that given the full context of who Robin is and how shitty her utter dismissal of folks like her was in the class. And that matters. Hell, that matters a shit ton more than “I happen to have the hots for this person”.*
And contexts where a character is like “pft, fuck your reasons, part of you wants to bone so clearly you want me” put me hella on edge from a consent perspective.
*And the sick part of that context is that Robin could very easily satisfy Leslie’s conditions for feeling comfortable with this developing. Leslie wants to believe that Robin is hearing her and seeing the error of her bigoted beliefs and actions. If Robin gave her that, she’d feel a lot less conflicted and be more amenable to possibly pursuing something.
But Robin can’t even do her that simple dignity and besides, to her, she’s getting what she wants just fine bulldozing over Leslie’s attempts to set boundaries. Regardless of how much pain and confusion that’s causing Leslie.
Exactly the same logic as “She said no but I know she meant yes”
In response to Hellsespont many comments above. Wish the comments had an edit function.
Yeah, there should be a five minute comment edit window. That seems to work well elsewhere.
Leslie just threw her out.
Literally, physically, tossed her out on her ass.
There is no “wants her to stay”. Leslie does not want her to stay.
“You want me, you just don’t know it” is code-red, five-alarm, rapist-self-justification territory.
This, very much so.
Maybe it’s because I have no nostalgia for Robin’s appearances in other comics, but I do not like her. I feel for Leslie wanting to be with her, but Robin is acting like a self-centered child, and just because she was nice to Leslie for a couple “days” doesn’t make her charming. It’d be sweet if Leslie got a fairytale ending with someone who would love her openly and actually consider what she needs, and it’d be even more feel good all around if Robin could gain the confidence to do that, but as of right now, Robin is not that. And as tragically sweet as Leslie’s wishful affection for her is, I hope Leslie realizes that she’s worth more than Robin’s current BS.
How come she didn’t get eaten up by the reporters?
There’s probably not a TON of them out there, and they’ve been staking the place out all day. Hell, it’s possible they left to cover something else, unless it’s a really slow news day.
Wow! She did it in front of the press too! Someone is going to end up in jail for stalking but, on a certain level, you can’t help but admire her sheer thick-headed determination!
It helps to not actually see most people as, you know, people.
Or so I’m told.
BOUNDARIES, Robin
Okay. I think the relationship status has officially gone from “This could have worked in another place and time” to “And now I need to call the police”.
I think Robin just broke into the lobby, not Leslie’s apartment. (this time)
Is Robin obtuse, stupid, or oblivious?
¿Porqué no las tres?
Yes.
jfc
you know there’s the deep stuff that Cerberus unpacks every time, with boundary violations and this being very hurtful and harmful and horrible and an abusive pattern
and then there’s the plain surface fact that it’s been approximately a day since they met so the pattern isn’t exactly super established, and that on its face, this is hilarious and Robin is super clueless
Imagine Leslie filing a police report: “Senator DeSanto keeps breaking into my house and demanding I give her snacks and watch cartoons with her. Please help”
That’s the sort of report that prefaces a segment in a cheap “America’s Funniest Celebrity Arrests” reality TV show.
I think the thing that still makes me think it’s funny? Is that while OBJECTIVELY, we all know the institutional power imbalance at play, what we see in the comic itself has so far been ignoring that. Leslie hasn’t expressed any kind of fear or anxiety, just annoyance. Robin hasn’t invoked any kind of institutional power, only the immediacy of her words and physical actions – which is, to be fair, unnerving enough, but again, do we see Leslie scared? No, we don’t, and neither does Robin.
So far, there’s still room for the interpretation that when/if Leslie expresses actual fear of Robin, Robin will pick up on that and back away, because while pushing through annoyance is ‘zany fun’, pushing through actual fear is where she’ll draw the line. And I do think she will.
…well, I hope she will.
I also hope it doesn’t come to that, that Leslie will retain the feeling of safety and basic control over the situation and that Robin will keep leaving the factual power imbalance out of it because that’s a very basic line to draw.
That’s totally fair as well.
Though, at least, for how I’m seeing it, the fact that it’s only been a day makes this level of boundary violation terrifying, because it feels like an all-out onslaught to put Leslie off balance and not give her the time to set in and really process things.
Probably doesn’t help that this is resonating with a Trump presidency where he’s keeping all of America off balance doing some new thing that would get them immediately impeached if literally any other president did it. All to get us used to his sick worldview and dictator aims and give in to not resisting it anymore.
There are similarities between selling and seduction, in both your aim is to make your target agree to what you want
You don’t listen to their objections, you don’t take no for an answer and, most importantly, you keep them off balance with no time to think until you get the answer you want
In this instance Robin is doing an excellent job of wearing Leslie down, to the point that Leslie will probably just agree to anything Robin suggests
It will of course be a suggestion and not a request because you want your target to “agree” to what happens next
Is there anyway someone can delete several of my comments? I feel like maybe this is the wrong place to have a conversation about the use of the plot point and making light of this. I didn’t realise how big of a deal this would be, because I was using the fact that she had entered her house once already uninvited as context and not that this had become a harmful situation
Alas, I don’t think this comment section has this function. Everything you regret saying stays displayed forever. You can, however, reply to your own comments and denounce them after the fact.
I have been in a similar situation once. Long story short, it was early in the morning and I made some asinine assumptions that 5 minutes later even I could see would only provoke unnecessary arguing. I made a request in a reply to one of those posts to have them deleted, along with an explanation for why I felt they were inappropriate and a few hours later they were gone
OK Malaya has someone’s underwear in her teeth and her face in a phone. Is she watching an instructional video while she’s doing whatever she’s doing to make sure she’s doing him/her right?
That sort of picture is not meant to make any kind of objective sense.
That’s her own t-shirt in her teeth, presumably so she can keep it out the way and still use her phone. I think the point of the scene is that even though Ken (I’m assuming Ken from the shape of his pubic hair) has got her into bed in this universe she’s still pretty much indifferent to him as a person.
I’m assuming she’s watching Ultra Car cartoons on her phone because that’s the only way she can get into whatever’s going on with some other meatbag here.
She makes her partner dress up as Optimus Prime in this universe.
So that’s what they meant when they talked about politicians climbing through your window and checking what you are doing in your bed…
I kind of want Leslie to contact Roz and try and get her to drag Robin out the house. It’s pretty clear that Robin wont listen to anything Leslie has to say. Reading this is pretty painful, especially as I was such a Robin/Leslie shipper
That’s one of the saddest aspects of this for me. Leslie desperately wants a sign that she’s being heard and listened to and respected as a human being and Robin can’t even do her that courtesy.
I’m still thinking of Robin’s closing lines from two strips back. She has a very weak or even non-existent brain-to-mouth filter so I think that what she says tend to be free of calculation. She basically said that she wanted to be on Leslie’s couch watching cartoons. There was no mention of romance or attraction to Leslie, she just wanted to be in that place.
Why? Well, we can only guess but I’m thinking that she felt safe and happy there, something that she rarely has in her everyday life. So, the suggestion made up-thread may be right and maybe Robin isn’t so much as stalking Leslie as she is desperately trying to get her to help her escape her life which, despite its advantages, simply doesn’t make her happy.
Yes, she’s going entirely the wrong way about it. Robin being Robin, she’s likely going to stumble backwards into getting what she wants by being forced to stand aside due to the scandal of her behaviour in this arc.
There’s an old quote about one of the most important considerations about choosing one’s house ornaments being how effective an improvised weapon it would be in a pinch; I wish it would come to mind, because this is why.
SRSLY, buy some mace, a taser and a firearm, Les.
For the record, I did not see your post before writing the Noir below. Guess we both had the same idea.
Lesbin Noir…
It had been months since she’d touched it, but as she strode back to the bedroom Leslie knew it was time. She’d bought it over a year ago out of fear that some ghost from her old on-the-street life might return to haunt her. She never thought that fear would become reality in the person of a Congresswoman.
She held it firmly in both hands as she returned to the front door. Robin still stood there, her silly grin fading and her face going pale as she saw what Leslie was carrying.
“Wait… what… are you serious?”
“Get. Out. Of. My. House.”
Robin stood frozen, unable to understand what had gone wrong. Her eyes were glued to the tiny black circle at the muzzle of the revolver as Leslie’s finger tightened on the trigger…
Whoa!
…Wait, when was the first time?
No special occasion, just a routine check to make sure it was safe.
My thinking here was that Leslie lives in a part of the country where gun ownership is pretty common, and she might well have reason to think she might need one. She’s almost certainly not a gun fondler type but may well have considered it an unwelcome necessity for self defense.
“She came in through the bathroom window, Protected by a silver spoon”
This is one time those Beatles lyrics actually fit the situation.
There’s the Robin I know and love!
No one could ever say that Robin is not persistent! Lazy, yes. Willing to go to any length to avoid an uncomfortable (for her) situation? Absolutely. But She will never give up on something she wants, no matter how obnoxious.
Yeah, that’s the scary part. Persistence can be hella romantic when it’s in a consistent relationship or for a cause you and the person both share.
When it’s there no matter what you want or your attempts to separate or whether or not you want to be pursued? It becomes monstrous and terrifying, because you know that nothing you do will ever make this person stop pursuing you.
Humans were/are persistence predators.
We walk other creatures to death, or catch up to them when they’re exhausted and kill them ourselves.
Semi-conscious awareness of that is probably why so many of our fictional (which, today, usually means cinematic) monsters are that turned up to 11 – tireless, implacable, indestructible pursuers that are even better at what’s supposed to be one of our strengths.
Oooh. Nice thought. I’d never heard that theory before.
OMFG the shitfuckery never ends with this woman!
Lock her in and have the place fumigated, Leslie. Plaguing vermin shall be handled as such.
You. Are. Not. Listening. GTFO.
This is so…totally wrong! You could look at this in a comic hijinks sort of way but this tacked in with Cerberus’ and others comments show Robin in a bad, creepy as fuck way.
In the context of real life, very very bad.
In the context of, like, a newspaper comic: funny as hell. Perfect use of surprise and comedic timing.
In the context of comic imitating life but with satirical overtones: Kinda funny, kinda really bad, and secretly wondering if this a trap to prove that I’m a horrible person.
Or maybe Willis just wants to do a bit of cartoonish humor? Or maybe its a statement about context. Or about throw away jokes that might imply something bad in a laughing manner. Or maybe its actually dark humor???
Dammit Willis.
I was waiting for someone to say it! Now I won’t be stealing thunder!
Damn you, Willis!
Technically he said “Dammit”, so he’s damning “it” not Willis… But I guess that’s close enough.
It was based off of the “Damn you, Willis!”.
Intentional reference. Part of the brand.
He’s earned it.
He’s always earned it.
Uh, Roz, were you really going to take flowers from her yard that she spent all that time planting? You may have weeded it, but it’s quite rude of you to attempt to DEFLOWER her lawn…
…Wait that word usually means “to take away virginity”
… OK Roz, get your girl-on-girl virginity deflowered
Pssst. This is Robin, not Roz.
I would absolutely agree with you guys about the creepy factor of Robin’s actions, if it wasn’t for the fact that they just spent who knows how long watching Steven Universe while holding hands and kissing. That seems pretty consensual. Steven Universe was even Leslie’s idea, and was her vision of a perfect date. All evidence points to them both putting the moves on each other. Robin clearly picked up on the fact that Leslie was making moves on her, especially through the episodes chosen of Steven Universe, and when she confronted Leslie on it, Leslie through her out. Robin thought things were going well, and was confused why she was thrown out, so she responded in the only way she knows how, with dogged and wacky determination.
I suppose we’re to ignore they only did those things after she broke into Leslie’s apartment in the first place? And that she wasn’t thrown out for saying Leslie liked her, but for using that as a reason why she can trample Leslie’s self worth and boundaries?
Consent to one thing does not imply consent to things to follow.
Yes, Leslie voluntarily spent the afternoon watching cartoons on the couch, but after talking to Robin and finding out none of what she said got through her thick skull, she literally physically threw her out of house.
Leslie has rescinded her consent to be with Robin, to have Robin inside her home very clearly. I mean, I don’t know how one could make it more obvious while bodily throwing someone outside.
But Robin chooses to ignore this “no, get out” and that’s not okay.
This.
Consent is an ongoing process that any one party can say “no, we’re done here” to at any time for any reason and it is on the other parties to respect that and not push beyond that.
It’s not just a blanket giving with additional clauses being assumed by virtue of the first consent.
You know what is bad about this?
It doesn’t matter if Leslie is mature thinking lady or it doesn’t matter what Robin will say or not or, if she will hurt Leslie with her words or actions, since it’s Robin it will alll be forgiven and Leslie always will end with her cause the author just likes them as a couple, logic or not, not required, similiar things happened in Shortpacked, Robin fucked up but she was forgiven cause she’s so lovable…
I suppose I should call it lazy writing where author uses the same couple from another work and pair them together for fandoming purpose.
I’m 99% sure that this is not going to end as well for Robin here as it did in SP!
Same here.
I’m not sure why I consider that outfit the best Robin’s ever worn, but I do.
So where was she keeping the flowers…err…umm…weeds that she has in the last panel? All the other panels, no flower weeds…suddenly FLOWER WEEDS! Robin is a Goddang magician!
This is starting to come off like a Pepe LePew cartoon. I’m meant to laugh, but it just makes me cringe for Leslie. (Seriously, even as a kid it was extremely clear that those cartoons were that cat’s own personal horror story.)
So, who thinks Amazi-Girl will come beat the hell out of her?
No garden? So Leslie shaves and/or waxes?
I mean, “weeded your garden” is how the cool kids talk about it these days, right?
Everyone is reading deep into serious issues. I’m just here laughing at the Flintstones throwback
Real rape culture going on up in this bongo of a comment section. Ain’t naming names.
Why not? If you named them, you’d be able to address what you feel as problematic. If you stayed quiet entirely, you’d let the comment move about without adding in your opinion, neither good nor bad.
But saying you see a problem, knowing the source, and refusing to identify it? (In that all known entities are both present and known with their online handles)
You’re kinda forfeiting responsibility.
Eh, sometimes it’s not worth dealing with the backlash of defensiveness when calling this stuff out. Picking your battles, deciding you don’t have the spoons for this particular fight isn’t really the same as forfeiting responsibility.
But the half-measure chosen is pure cowardice. Claiming to recognize “rape culture” but then standing down is lame.
Or, they wanted to point out the presence of shitty behavior without getting personal or starting arguments that could turn nasty.
While your comment only seems to be trying to start shit.
I’m still not used to seeing DoA!Robin as a separate entity from Shortpacked!Robin. As many have pointed out, this is creepy as fuck, and yet my brain tries to file it away under “That annoying friend playing a prank”.
I think that’s partly because it’s very much written that way. The wackiness is there in the text. The creepiness is all subtext – intended or not.
I actually really like this, because that actually makes this really interesting. Cause it’s like a real-time version of that tension when you realize a friend who’s always been kind of annoying has really fucked up and that makes you look at the annoying stuff they were doing in a new light.
Honestly, I really love the shift in the tone of the same actions done by the same archetype character, but now with a more realistic context coloring it. It’s meta as fuck.
This is, of course assuming that this story ends the proper way, i.e. with Robin in jail.
You say that, but… honestly? I thought Robin was an obnoxious (if entertaining) piece of shit in Shortpacked, too. I LOATHED the way she treated everyone around her and glorified willful stupidity.
Holy shit.
Leslie would, at this point, be justified in killing Robin under Indiana law. Of course, killing a sitting Representative is a good way to ruin your life, but it’d be legally justified.
The resulting scandal will, at the very least, dent her career, her students will probably have trust issues with her (can you imagine Joyce trusting Leslie now in regards to Becky?) and chances are Robing will throw Leslie under a bus over this
So her life is not looking at the moment
Yeah, I’m really looking forward to the likely future strips where some of her students confront her over the news and she has to awkwardly explain it but in a way that still maintains solid teacher/student boundaries.
Yeah, Robin has made one hell of an interesting day for Leslie and even more interesting now that her whole morning routine and ability to settle in is also disturbed.
And she’s going to have major issues having Robin go and stay gone; like I’ve said before, : Mace, Taser and Firearm – that’s literally the only things that are going to get her gone and make it stick.
I still think this is partially Roz’s fault for suggesting to Leslie that “hey, maaaybee you can meet up with my sister all the time, I’ll arrange it and you two can cause a scandal to break down her political career!” Roz and Robin really are related.
I hope the next time we return to Robin, she’s won the election and signs an executive order which makes Leslie her girlfriend.
Jeez… I’d ask how this dumb bongo is a congresswoman, but now that Donald Trump is our president, it’s obvious that stupid people voted her into office.
People keep saying “breaking and entering”, “break into”. I guess the conveniently compliant landlord was a figment of my imagination. It is now my Head Canon that Robin used a crowbar on Leslie’s door. Or dynamite.
As well as destroying her peace of mind.
Her landlord did not legally have the right to let Robin into her apartment. The fact that she did might get Robin off the hook for the first time (though the landlord is definitely in trouble), but this second entry is trespassing at the very least.
The fact that she didn’t actually have to break anything to get back in doesn’t mean she didn’t commit a crime by doing so. For the legal definition of “breaking and entering” even pushing an unlocked door open can be sufficient.
Sure, nothing actually broke, but even if people are using it in a strict, legal sense, Robin is guilty of at least one count of breaking and entering, and could reasonably be charged with two.
“Break in” in the context Leslie’s consent was not asked. Her landlord was, but her landlord’s responsible reaction would have been ‘Fuck no, get out of here and call her yourself at a reasonable hour’.
Leslie’s landlord is unable to give Leslie’s consent. Letting Robin in makes the landlord fully responsible for illegal entry and trespass.
It depends on their terms since the landlord is the owner of the building.
Only for the first time. She’s got no reason to believe it was okay to climb in through a window, especially after having been forced to leave.
Me reading the comic: haha finally back to Robin Classic instead of Congressional Robin
Me reading the comments: ohhh yeah this is fucked up :/
Every time it looks like Leslie is out but Robin pulls her back in I hear the song from “Dear Sister” in the back of my head:
Mm whatcha say-ay
Mm well you only meant well
Well of course you did
Mm whatcha say-ay
Mm well it’s all for the best
Of course it is…
Okay, finally FINALLY kicking off the long needed catch up to the strip summaries.
Panel One: I like Leslie’s face here – she looks so irritated and yet, still kinda sad. She really wanted things to work out with Robin, but she also knows it likely won’t and so is moving on. And that starts with locking the door after you heave her ass out. Good job, Leslie!
Panel Two: And now she gets to think about what happened and the consequences and just be sad. Which I think is fair – it’s okay to be sad when a relationship you wanted to work isn’t. Even when you know the person is toxic and you can’t fix it, you’re still sad it won’t be the magic you wanted.
Panel Three: Aaaaaaand the word no means shit to Robin. Sounds about right to be honest. Consequences are heavy and hey, surely Leslie will stop being sad or mad if she just turns up the wacky, right? When has that ever failed? So, sure, wacky break in, yaaaaay.
Panel Four: And of course Robin’s so proud of herself for cracking this code. Wacky break in, nailed it. So now Leslie will start liking her, and if not, she’ll turn the wacky up louder.
And of course that just makes it worse for Leslie because dammit, she TRIED to get rid of this woman. She won’t go away.
Panel Five: So now she needs to walk away in her own house because god knows Robin won’t leave until she wants to. Poor Leslie. And yeah, I think Robin noticed that but she’s not going to connect the dots on it because that would make it heavy and harsh her up up up.
Panel Six: And damaging property by taking stuff out of Leslie’s garden without permission. May as well. Robin probably meant well, but at this stage of the game, ‘meant well’ means jack. And yeah, ‘wacky hijinks’. The thing Robin is good at and tries to use to win friends and voters. And then you realize she’s like that 24/7 and never turns it off and you want to cry. Robin sucks and she is not doing Leslie’s health any favours.