I can’t decide what’s best about it!
It’s just a piece of paper, but Robin thought it was necessary to use four nails to hold it up. Half the nails are bent so she put some effort into hanging it, but not too much because it’s crooked.
Pablo360: For me it’s because he sounds like he’s saying “bigly.” For someone who has “all the best words,” he’s pitiful at pronouncing them. We’re making fun of his lack of language skills. Which would be a dickish thing to do in any other situation, but this dude is convinced that he’s this amazing speaker.
But North Carolina once tried to secede over a tariff thing in his time and he stopped it so it totally counts. Nevermind that a minor economic dispute is not nearly the same thing as slavery and if Jackson were in a position to prevent the south from seceding over that it would have been by being a slave-owning president, not exactly something to be proud of or want to model oneself after.
In all seriousness, I think Trump knows exactly what he’s doing with things like this. It’s just like Bowling Green. There’s some tiny obscure twisted grain of truth that there’s no way people will even understand what he means at first, but it’s something his supporters can point to and say that the lying media is misrepresenting him.
If telling a girl who’s just reminded you about her traumatic kidnapping and homelessness to play some Candy Crush doesn’t confirm Robin is and always has been fucking despicable then I don’t know what it’d take to convince the comments section she’s not actually “connecting” here with Becky at all.
‘She’s being a fucking horrible unconscionable and shitty hurtful person right now but eventually she maybe could concede that Becky is a person who deserves basic fucking decency’
If we wish really hard and are lucky enough she made be alienated enough by her own cognitive dissonace to leave Leslie’s apartment just because Becky’s there and is clearly starting to make her uncomfortable. It would be a move for her own self preservation.
‘If we pretend really hard we can go back three months and make the rest of the week’s strips about Robin being inconvenienced enough by guilt to do the absolute least to maybe not be terrorizing Leslie personally in addition to voting atrocities, because then Robin won’t have to feel guilt for doing bad things’
It may be all we can hope for. Or y’know this is the new reality. Robin lives at Leslie’s house. Becky’s gonna be homeless forever. Tomorrow we’ll cut to what Joe’s doing!
‘It may be Robin gets everything she wants and that’s the only possibility I can imagine for the future of this storyline without Robin slowly and painfully starting to not be a horrible person while others suffer it out’
Like. I get what you’re saying – and hell, I agree that Robin is and has been trash on all counts – but maybe being super condescending and “translating” the comments of those whom you perceive as disagreeing with you is not the best way to make your case? Because that’s all this comes across to me as.
I get that people’s denials and waffling about on her shittiness is incredibly irritating, but every time I see a comment of yours, it seems to escalate in passive-aggression.
I am being condescending on purpose, I do not care if people do not take my interpretations of their comments well, I am not trying to be passive at all so I guess I need to ramp it up
Have you considered standing on a street corner and howling? I’ve found that it’s a much better way of getting people to pay attention to me, though your mileage may vary.
Trump also doesn’t admit when other people bring up points that dent holes in his arguments. Trump isn’t willing to change his mind or consider he could be when someone else makes valid points.
I am not a nice person but I am 100% open to being proven wrong if someone else’s counterpoint is more accurate. That’s how we get better. I have convinced and been convinced more times on this forum than I can count and I haven’t always been nice or even right about it.
What I’m saying is, I am not Trumpian in that I care more about being right than I am willing to face reality, and considering how much I like being right this isn’t a small point of difference.
@Judas Peckerwood *shrug* I mean, I’m fine with what I have. You can go back and read my comments from yesterday or any other day I’ve been here if you want to know how I go about arguing things and how it’s been turning out.
You’re open to counterargument? Really? Okay then:
Robin already recognizes that Becky has been through a lot and ‘deserves basic fucking decency’. She’s recognized that that since Joyce mentioning her back in class made her facade crack. What she’s not doing is *admitting it*, and the reason she’s not doing that is because she believes that Leslie is using Becky as a ‘people prop’ (to make a problem seem more pressing or widespread than it actually is by providing a single possibly non-representative example). And as it happens she’s completely right – that’s exactly what Leslie is doing. Well, that and offering Becky a place to stay – but the reason Leslie introduced Becky to Robin was, in fact, people propping.
@begbert2 Okay, sure. My stance is that it wouldn’t matter to me even if Robin was doing any of this for reasons based on good principles, or if she is as you’re arguing doing this for reasons that have some grounding in her recognition of Becky as a person.
Sure. Whatever. Robin’s not incapable of showing basic fucking decency. Character growth. Cool. That’s not redemption. I may hate Robin past the point where she shows that she’s capable of caring about Becky sincerely or I may not, but I won’t stop thinking she’s a bad person until she disavows and seeks to spend the rest of her life doing whatever she can to mitigate the reality of what career has done to people (as in, hundreds of thousands of people) up to and including killing them because she didn’t want to care when she was voting on it.
I know the condescension is intentional. That’s why I’m asking you to stop. If you were just making an argument and it came off that way, I don’t care.
But rewriting what someone says in order to mock them is just not something I support. I’ve had it done to me so many, many times. And even when it’s an accident, it makes you feel horrible. And it definitely doesn’t make me want to believe the person actually has a decent argument.
To be honest, I agree with you about Robin being horrible and that too many people seem to want to excuse her bad behavior, as they enjoy seeing her character. It’s not unlike the people who liked Trump’s anger and so made excuses for him. It sucks.
But I don’t see how what you’re doing helps. Plus, well, it affects not just the person you are responding to. Seeing this pattern I see used against me all the time makes me kinda angry, too.
I totally get the frustration. I mean, read my posts on the Roz stuff. But please don’t go that far. Make arguments, sure. Express anger. But don’t make up shit people didn’t say in order to mock them or their opinions. Or dog people by doing it over and over to what they say.
@trlkly Okay. This is all true stuff I did not stop and think out earlier when I came in having a chip on my shoulder and it was shitty and I’m sorry. I’m not going to mock people anymore. I’m sorry for mocking them and hurting them and you. Ask me again (or don’t ask, just straight-up say it) if I do it again
Counter-counterargument: While that is what Leslie is doing, Robin’s denying it not because she recognizes the tactic, but because she’s in deep, deep denial. The tactic is just an excuse. The real problem is that if she admits it, she’s going to have to change everything. Lose the election, even more certainly, but she’s also going to have to admit that she’s been backing something that seriously hurts people. That’s a really hard thing to admit to yourself. It’s a major worldview change. Never easy to do.
I do think she’s going to get there, but not yet. Becky may make a few cracks in the facade. Joining those Leslie’s already made.
I am not a fan of the shipping but I don’t see this action as making Robin despicable. She looks really uncomfortable in panel three, then relinquishes her phone with a lighthearted (again, covering up the discomfort) comment. And I’m not saying that’s great or anything, but yeah a lot of people are super uncomfortable interacting with people who are less well-off than them, let alone ones involved in a big family abuse and police involved thing. It just seems kind of average person average reaction to me.
(of course, her various political views are still despicable even/especially if they’re ones she only really has for the sake of holding her position)
‘Sure, she just flat-out told a girl who has no home and was held at gunpoint by her father that there was no chance this story would earn her any sympathy, but some people are uncomfortable around others that don’t have a goddamn huge pile of money and privilege handy like themselves so they make horrible jokes at their expense’
I mean, as a young, trans, gay man, I know I’ve undoubtedly got some internalized stuff going on, but this just seems to boil down to how people act. Robin is despicable as a person, but this particular action just seems normal, if nonetheless lousy.
I feel like outright telling someone you refuse to care about them because they’re operating on some kind of agenda is………beyond lousy, because of who exactly Robin’s talking to and Robin being aware of what Becky’s very very immediate predicament when Robin says these things.
I guess what I mean is that it doesn’t seem malicious or anything, and I get that people can be completely awful without being malicious, but in this case it feels more like badly handling a situation than harming someone.
I don’t think it’s malicious either! But it was horrible. Robin not worrying about the impact of her words is a willful thing that she does even when she could do, not that. Every time.
Robin is almost never malicious because that would require her to take other people’s feelings into consideration in any way whatsoever. She is viciously self-centered and simply does not care how her actions affect the people around her for the worse or for the better. It’s all about Robin all the time.
Honestly, even without the game and cynicism, it’s kind of a requirement. You can’t legislate based on every sad story that someone brings to you. Even on all the true ones.
Nearly anything politicians do can and probably will hurt someone. Even if it’s a good thing over all.
@thejeff Please repeat and confirm / deny my reading and accuracy of your statement being a roundabout but implied way of saying you think all political actions having consequences that’ll “probably hurt someone” means: that there is not one side of the current party system, one party people may join, that’s primary objective has made itself to maintain the most horrible status quos for the least-worthy reasons that affecting the ability of millions and millions of people to fucking live.
If your meaning of “over all” is dismissive like I think it is and used so very casually, then I am upset you believe that is okay. “Over all” is the difference between someone getting slighted, someone getting hurt, entire sections of the global population getting hurt, or how long that has to go on and what or how comparative the cost is.
No. That’s more like: These environmental regulations will improve millions of people’s lives (and save some of them) and even generally improve the economy, but I’ve got this one guy in my office who’s losing his job because of them and that’s going to be really hard on him.
It’s more an “anecdotes aren’t data” argument. Anecdotes can help persuade (because humans work like that), but you need to look at the overall consequences, not just the people with tragic stories that get brought into your office.
The experiences being not uncommon or even rampant doesn’t mitigate in any way whether those experiences are right are wrong or should happen to people.
Becky is sitting on Robin’s couch. I wonder if Robin will have to sit her down and clarify that, no, in fact she can’t have the couch and she should go find somewhere else to be homeless.
Well it’s certainly not Leslie’s couch anymore. That would allow Leslie to determine who slept in it. Robin is operating under Prince John rules where the rich are allowed to steal from the poor to give to themselves. Aka the rules of her party.
I was going to say this elsewhere but it makes more sense over here. Roz has mentioned having quite a few siblings, I think, and either way Robin definitely has Roz and Riley as younger siblings. It’s hella condescending but I can sort of see Robin (consciously or not) giving her the phone because that’s something that quiets down kids who are upset or getting annoying.
TBH people (including me) like DOA Robin mainly because they liked Walkyverse Robin. She could be horrible and selfish in that universe too, but she was a protagonist there and it was all farce – everything could go back to normal after each arc regardless (to some extent) of what anyone did.
Anyways yeah I still like Robin but I probably shouldn’t???????
It’s not so much that she has a long way to go as that she’s not getting there fast enough. Redemption is one thing for characters like Joyce who can do it gradually but also quickly when faced with the personhood of a gay best friend. Redemption is a different animal for a grown Congressperson whose character growth is the difference between federal votes on matters of mass-scale oppression and she’s got a body count already under her belt and hasn’t cared about it.
“got a body count already under her belt”? Who has she killed? Or even been responsible for killing?
Robin’s a one-term junior Congresswoman. She’s a big fish in the small pond of Indiana, but a minnow in Washington. And, if we’re currently talking the 2015-2016 Congress, a pretty do nothing one as well.
I mean, her politics are despicable, but let’s not blow her actual influence out of proportion. We know she supported one awful law that didn’t pass. That’s a reason to oppose her, but it’s not a body count.
U.S. House of Representatives members get to vote on (or not vote on, by failing to act) lots of stuff, including whether or not hypothetical bills even get officially put to a federal vote or just rot and die in the committee referral stage where they can’t make a bit of difference!
It’s a Congress position so Robin “not doing anything” in this context out of laziness and/or pandering = Robin quashing attempted reformations to overhaul terrible stuff at the stage before she gets to vote horribly on it at the floor stage!
So, each and every Republican Congresscritter is a mass murderer? Even the most junior and least effective.
(Probably most of the Democrats too. In different ways.)
I mean, I despise them, but I’m not willing to go that far.
Again, certainly reason to oppose her or anyone similar in the real world, but if we’re going to be talking about “body counts” I’d really want something specific to tie it too.
Every Republican Congressperson is accountable for mass murder.
I am not fucking joking one iota on this. They are accountable. They as a collective have a bodycount that is not contingent on whether anyone in the world thinks they’re bad or not. They. Are. Murderering.
@thejeff If you would scroll down two inches and read what Ceberus already wrote two hours ago about how a junior representative in the House of Representatives is collectively, individually, completely, a maker of the potential difference on whether you or I or anyone in the United States of America gets to live. If something happens dramatically to us, or like quite a few of us, our personal status quo is unable to adjust for changes that will render us unable and continually harder to pay for health care that’d keep us alive.
If you want to be very, very specific, I turn 26 next month. I will no longer be covered by insurance without having to pay an in-not-a-long-time unaffordable amount just to keep any coverage to my name at all.
How long I can make that expense sustainable, and how much it is going cost me further in every capacity, for all additional blows on U.S. healthcare that gets added / is allowed to happen via loopholes. This is the math that is going to start deciding very soon how many more birthdays I get to have after the month of June. I am tied to that vote. You are also tied to that vote, but god knows if I am able to sit still long enough to break down all the ways when my brain keeps shutting down. Because my birthday is in June. People like Robin are doing stuff now with the express intention of transforming health care to make my life worse or to end it completely at some point in time very soon or very soon enough.
I am so scared and upset and furious I am not seeing straight at this second and am not taking the usual pains to double-check everything I type for factual accuracy but right now and yesterday and for the conceivable future I would not feel anything if a Republican member of Congress dropped right now.
I would not feel anything. Tell me that you being able to feel something for them or find them less than reprehensible I damn well have to.
Tell me that you going to argue with me over this. Tell me that your opinion is just an opinion and that opinion is that it’s a talking point to poke fun at the idea these people are trying be responsible for murdering me in the name of money.
Tell me a junior Republican Congressperson is absurd to consider a mass murder. Tell me that every politician being responsible for committing some kind of bad thing means that this is somehow relevant to my opinion of members of the coalition that does it with every ounce of influence they have for reasons that are horrible.
Tell me this and if you’re feeling charitable tell me it plainly and in plain language to spare me the effort of doing this over again just to make sure I understand what your words are by proxy saying or if I’m completely off base in my reasoning and you have a very good explanation of how.
I need citations for the next person I will inevitably get to argue on it.
@thejeff And while you’re at it please tell me that my specific example’s applicability is only anecdotal and isn’t something I’m getting at will be en masse for the reasons Cerb described below. Just so we’re good.
@foamy You know I wrote a bunch of shitty and problematic stuff above when I posted without a proofreading and you have managed to still give me exactly what I wanted before I tell you the argument on Republican politicians like Robin I’m not changing.
I’m wearing three articles of clothing right now manufactured by Nike in Vietnam. One I bought. Two were bought for me. All were made by ruthlessly exploited laborers working in factories for wages below $1/hr.
None of them I can afford not to have based on how many clothes I need to be able to wear clothes clothes. None of them I could have skipped over for clothes manufactured at their actual price made by people being paid nonexploitative wages and suffering the production cost.
This is a system I’m perpetuating when I buy clothes. I need to buy clothes. I can scream at people with every ounce of energy and passion in my body and existence–there is exactly enough in my mental self-inventory to do this about any given cause for perhaps one to three days at a time minus burnout from denialism–I will still not be the one who decides that it changes. I will not be benefiting from in mansions and the powerful support of a hive cult of personality based on those decisions. I’ll be buying fucking clothes. At my absolute worst I am responsible for purchasing clothes that did kill people to make. I didn’t do this because I wanted to. I didn’t decide this is how it has to work. I would not comply with a request to keep deciding that in exchange for two houses on top of being in THE House where members get to decide (or never let be decided) what does or doesn’t happen to every person. Members of both political parties benefit a goddamn heap from what they do to earn and keep the jobs. One side benefits by championing and doing everything possible to support outdated, immoral, stupid, bigoted laws targeting those least able to defend based on appealing to an equally toxic worldview with a voterbase.
They are horrible people and they have done what I accuse them of and far far worse.
Minder: I’m stuck between “whoa you need to chill friend” and “you are completely right and I admire your enthusiasm.” I’m gonna go with the latter.
Like yeah, okay, some of the -way- you’re saying things is a little much, but the actual content and the issues you’re bringing up are completely justified, and that’s more important than the way the information is presented.
And honestly, I don’t know your life. You could be in a group that is personally affected by these homophobic/transphobic/racist/etc. policies that these jerks keep pumping out, and that would completely explain your tone, so I’m trying not to tone-police too much here.
Anyway, I guess the point of this reply was just to say that I pretty much agree with the content of your posts here.
@foamy Sure, my own reasoning means I’ve murdered people, and I do care. I hate every sharp, painful, and completely justified reminder that my existence comes at cost to others. I hate it. I’m desperate for that to stop. I don’t get to pick. I do not have political aspirations or the mental fortitude for the work it takes to go into politics and reap the rewards up to and including the right to fucking decide things that murder, not just people, millions and millions of people.
I am participating in a system that has been created that I cannot escape from and that places me in a position where I get the honored privilege of survival and I get it because of my survival hinging on the denial and dehumanization of people who don’t get as much survival as me or as much privilege in the form of livable conditions as I do. This is because of people, really important people, who did everything required of a politician in the hopes of being part of the machine deciding how many people I have to be responsible against my will for murdering.
They wanted it more than anything. Some hopefully for good reasons such as Dorothy’s.
we’ve come full circle, you’re writing exactly what I was writing when I was busy being a condescending jerkbag to people and mocking them and the best part is I still get to be right because being deflected so obviously is the easiest way to know when I’m talking to someone that is only talking to show it doesn’t matter what I say or what you say or what reality is. that’s when I can rest easy knowing that this is something I can do all day and so can you and we’re not actually arguing because you’ll say anything it takes to make me wrong and I know without much doubt or anything but satisfaction in my mind.
because the reason I know that is the same reason I’m so sick in the head and the same reason why I’m unable to work enough hours in the week to afford clothes sold at actual prices without giving up in despair. on the work. and the clothes. and the ability to move or to want to eat food if it means having to make it or sleep if it means pausing on doing things all day for days in a row to distract myself from how unhappy I am
because a good man using the same silly deflections and avoiding the argument was also a man that was willing to end the charade by blaming a dog for stuff I saw him do because I was mad and then hit me and terrorize me for disagreeing so long and he was bored and felt entitled to being right or not accountable for my anger.
he’s accountable for my anger. he’s probably accountable for the same killing-people-system participation that I am. he’s not as bad as a single Republican in Congress.
“we’ve come full circle, you’re writing exactly what I was writing when I was busy being a condescending jerkbag to people and mocking them ”
Well I’m glad you realized that, maybe we can move forward!
” the best part is I still get to be right because being deflected so obviously is the easiest way to know when I’m talking to someone that is only talking to show it doesn’t matter what I say or what you say or what reality is. ”
@foamy Ok I will break my vow of I WAS RIGHT silence to give you 100% agreement because this comment? This comment is dead-on correct and I was wrong when I said the things above you quotes.
When today’s comic hit at midnight I went in biased by incorrect assumptions. I paraphrased my counterarguments before explaining them, and I put it all in quotes to mock people by putting my arguments in quotes like they were saying the bad stuff I thought Robin did.
You…kinda put a few words in quotes, maybe kinda written in reaction to something I said, and put it in quotes to mock me by implying that the stuff I wrote was a summary of what I said? I guess?
I’m fully prepared to cop to my flowery metaphor of not-so-different being not-so-applicable now that you pointed it out!! Thanks for that. It feels better having pointless conversation when I am actually able to learn and be shown I overlooked something.
Yeah, like right now, there’s a bill inches from the house floor that will decimate health care for millions upon millions of Americans and directly lead to a lot of deaths and the margin is a thin thin line of Republicans who are being held in check by desperate phone calls and town halls that make them very nervous at the potential backlash.
Not to mention that it’s only the Republican numbers superiority that allows them to forestall the impeachment investigation that should have started day one if the whole party wasn’t complicit in this act of theft and treason.
One single junior representative has immense power in the real world context in which she would occupy.
You do know that ‘mass murder’ is part of the job description, don’t you? There isn’t a successful politician in the world who doesn’t have the blood of hundreds on their hands. IT’S PART OF THE JOB.
I am not kidding here. Wielding coercive force is what governments *exist* for.
The reason *why* they exist has to do with the evolutionary history of the human brain and human societies – Pterry knew what he was saying with the ‘tendency to bend at the knee’ thing, deference to Alphas is literally as much a biological imperative as sex and eating for anyone who isn’t themselves an Alpha, as is the Power Drive in those who by happenstance end up Alphas themselves.
You can’t expect leadershit to behave rationally. They aren’t. No sane person *can* run for office of their own volition – psychopathy is a job requirement.
Sorry, *almost* anyone who isn’t an Alpha themselves. Deltas (whose blind drive to oppose authority counteracts the Alphas’ equally blind drive to possess it) do exist, though neither primary Deltas nor primary Alphas are common – alpha primes are about 0.01% of the population, while Deltas are around 0.0001%. Both arise more or less randomly throughout a given society regardless – almost – of genetics, personal history, social standing, etc.
“deference to Alphas is literally as much a biological imperative as sex and eating for anyone who isn’t themselves an Alpha, as is the Power Drive in those who by happenstance end up Alphas themselves. ”
Of course, “alphas” as we generally know it is pretty much a debunked concept anyway, and wolf researchers in particular are groaning on a daily basis on how this has been known for several decades, yet refuses to lose its hold in the general population. Sort of like how people still refer to Freud as if his hypothesises were still valid in today’s world of psychiatry.
It’s true that, in-comic, we’ve not actually seen Robin vote for or otherwise do anything that acutally kills people. But we know her policy positions, and those definitely have killed people. We know that she was okay with the stuff that made Leslie homeless. And the kicking the homeless out.
And, no, part of the job is not murder. Part of the job may be that you have to make tough decisions that result in unfortunate deaths to save more lives. But that’s not murder. That’s doing the best under bad circumstances.
And, no, completely shutting yourself off from these sorts of thing is not good. You need that compassion to make sure you make the right decision. Sure, it may be hard to be compassionate while also voting to do something that hurts people, but you need to hold on to that to have a working moral compass, even if you lessen its effect somewhat.
Yes, that thing that saves many but hurts some small group of farmers may be the best option. But feeling bad for the farmers means you can try to do things to make their lives better, too.
And, of course, that sort of thinking would lead to minorities being ignored because they’re too small, which isn’t good, either. Let’s say, for example, you’re a homoromantic asexual transgender woman. That’s a pretty small minority. But her concerns matter just as much as the white heterosexual cismale.
Robin’s behavior hasn’t changed from Walkyverse to DoA, the universe just stopped warping to accommodate her ability to be read as a protagonist.
And it’s fine if you like Robin! Liking Robin is not a problem. She’s written to be likable in Walkyverse especially, even, from an audience standpoint.
My issue is when liking Robin means seeing good or potential future good in her currently godawful behavior because you want it to be there. And arguing that it is there. That she might not be the worst to Becky or that it matters if she slowly, gradually comes around after the stuff Robin already has done.
Mm hmm. Also, every piece of fiction is through its world and its characters trying to say something that resonates with a particular part of the human experience. Like, even the most mindless comedy relies on assumed universal aspects of being human to draw it’s humor and makes statements whether it intends to or not that have the potential to harm or heal.
Like the idea that fiction is this dead thing that we shouldn’t expect or read anything into is so alien to me, because for me, fiction is beautiful in all you can see in it and how much a good piece of fiction can impact whether it’s world is meant to be realistic or not.
OTOH, fiction remains fiction and there are narrative patterns that can be recognized and anticipated. While it may well be saying things about the real world, it isn’t the real world. That’s why the same behaviors in different fictions affect readers in different ways – like Robin (or Mike) in SP! vs DoA.
One thing about this comic that confuses sometimes and I can’t quite decide if it’s a feature or a flaw is how it can change tone (or genre?) so it’s hard to shape expectations consistently?
Is Amber a superhero who saved Becky or a crazy girl who almost got everyone killed? The actual chase sequence treated it very much as the first. The aftermath more as the second.
Is Robin a wacky slapstick parody of a politician played for laughs or a serious creepy stalker? Depends on which strips you’re reading and how you’re approaching the comic.
That’s because (imo) this comic, like reality itself, has enough nuance that it isn’t melodramatic. Nobody is just one thing. (Well, usually.) You’re confused by the difficulty of fitting it into a genre because you’re expecting it to fit into a genre. That’s perfectly okay and natural, but it won’t work for this comic, because not fitting into a genre is its genre.
Also, please don’t call Amber crazy. That’s not okay.
Not my point, I think. For the car chase (and in some other ways – secret id, for example) Amazi-Girl is clearly playing by super-hero genre rules. (And it rubbed off on Sal. Or at least action hero rules did.) Not nuanced, not reality, not anything else. Realistically, she died there, probably along with others – if she even managed to get far enough for that rather than just not catching the car in the first place.
But later on, others treat that as if that was close to what it would be in reality. And the narrative tends to treat that as a real valid concern. Commentators even more so.
Oh and fiction is all genre, not just the melodramatic stuff. “realism” is a literary genre. The “Great American Novel” is a literary genre. Playing with different genres may be part of this comic’s genre, but I’m not sure how well it’s working. I’m mostly okay with it actually, but you often see a lot of whiplash in the comments when he’s switching to a different one for a bit.
Whether that’s heroics or wacky hijinks and then suddenly taking the wacky hijinks as serious drama.
The reason for the surrealism in the car chase is because of Becky, not Amazi-Girl, and there’s nothing surreal about the secret identity imo because frankly, if this were my hall, I doubt many people would suspect Amber. Hell, I could have been a vigilante and only my roommate (and possibly RA) would have known, given how peninsular I was.
And I’m not arguing that it isn’t genre, I’m simply saying it isn’t a standard genre, and anyone who expects something nonstandard to fit within a standard will exhibit the same confusion you appeared to. There is a large enough audience that it seems to be working, just not for you. It’s okay to not like it, but it’s not fair to say that it’s not working.
And none of that justifies calling Amber crazy. I’ve seen you in the comments before so you should have known better than that.
1) As I said both times, I’m not really bothered by it. I do see a lot of comments here that I think are driven by those genre shifts.
2) Meant to add before: I wouldn’t normally use the word to describe her myself, but that’s the tone I’ve seen from many of those who blame her for nearly getting everyone killed in that sequence. Maybe I should have avoided using it anyway.
Personally, I think the changing tone reflects life in that real-life experiences don’t always have one right and clear interpretation. Like, if someone makes a joke targeted at a particular person, the target might not care in the moment, but as time goes on and the jokes become a pattern, the original joke gets cast in a more sinister light. Or like, there are stories from my life that I sometimes spin as funny stories, because I genuinely see the humor in the fact that I was so painfully shy when I was younger, or in the fact that basically everything in my life suddenly imploded in a single mont. I do have negative emotions related to those times, because being painfully shy sucks and having everything implode in one month also sucks, but the humor and pain aren’t mutually exclusive. I kind of like that weird in-between, not-sure-which-way-to-take-this quality of DoA because it captures that nuance in a way few other texts do, although I can see why someone else might find it jarring.
No. Making excuses for why what a shitty character is doing isn’t actually all that shitty is not “just treating it like a comic.”
And not all comics are the same. This is a comic that ostensibly set in reality dealing with real issues. While it’s one thing to dismiss some “wacky shenangans” that are just there to make the comic work, the stuff that resembles reality should not be so easily dismissed.
I don’t doubt for a moment that the people who make excuses for Robin would make excuses for a real life Robin doing the same things. To treat her as a character that needs defending, you’re already pretending she’s a real person.
It’s fine to like a villain or otherwise awful person in a comic. But, when you start making excuses for them, it gets bad. And when those shitty things are based on real life, it’s just too far.
I’m undecided on whether I still like Robin. We haven’t seen enough of her to decide! Oh, you might say, “Look, she is CAMPING OUT IN LESLIE’S APARTMENT, UNINVITED” but she’s also barely had any time to be established as a character. She could be Book 1 Zuko here.
I was gonna add a long hypothesis I devised, but my iPad seems to be shitting itself, so maybe later
Home invasion is pretty beyond the pale, though. Book 1 Zuko’s closest approach to that was smashing his way into the SWT village, and, you know, he held to his word and left them alone after Aang surrendered himself, whereas someone like Zhao would not’ve.
Also: Epic fantasy series v. slice-of-life college drama.
Ooh, if we’re playing Character Compare for Avatar? I’d say Robin is…uh who’s that guy who won’t let the Gaang tell the Earth King about the eclipse? Because if there’s a war outside Ba Sing Se (and if there must be, stop telling me in detail about the casualties) then it’s not in Ba Sing Se itself so no one is allowed to do anything about it inside the city!
I believe you’re thinking of Long Feng, the one who later got rewarded as a traitor deserves by Azula.
I dunno. Robin combines “zaniness” with what is functionally psychopathy. When I think of descriptive terms for Feng, zany is not necessarily the first one that springs to mind, you know?
The closest match for Robin in the Avatarverse is, IMO, Varrick.
And that’s just the first three-four episodes of book 1. By the time book 1 ends, it’s become incredibly apparent that Zuko is a deeply misguided but fundamentally good person. Heck one of his last acts in book 1 is to try to save Zhao from the ocean spirit. Zhao, a man he hates, who has repeatedly thwarted and antagonized him, who has tried to kill him, and who he was just fighting against is in danger, and Zuko’s first reaction is to try and save him because he’s a member of the Fire Nation. That’s just, wow. And this was all apparent before we even got all his backstory and development in book 2.
Erm, she’s not camping out in Leslie’s apartment uninvited, she broke in and broke in again after every attempt of Leslie’s to get her out included doing it physically.
She just said to a girl that spoke about held at gunpoint by her own father, “I’m not gonna be seduced by your pitiful life story.”
Book 1 Zuko was trying to redeem himself. Everything of Zuko’s character was him redeeming himself. To redeem yourself, you have to admit and believe you have done something wrong–and Robin is not believing it even when she knows it to be true. I will grant her sympathy when she acts sympathetically. Likability isn’t really my issue one way or the other.
Plus, in episode…either 8 or 9 I think, whenever that big storm happened, we found out that what he did was protest against the sacrifice of loyal soldiers in a suicide attack and he risks his own life to save a member of his crew. A crew that apparently only started serving with him recently if Lieutenant…Jin I think it was? Well if he’s anything to go off of. Point is, even before he pulls the Blue Spirit move, he’s already established himself as someone who is morally good, but just so happens to be on the opposite side of the conflict. Sorry, I just really love ATLA and sometimes can’t stop from gushing about it.
The point I was trying to make on an inferior device was something I once named “The Gene Catlow Corollary” (which might not be a corollary but I didn’t have a dictionary at the time), where in the infancy of the Gene Catlow webcomic, a bunch of people were upset that the ONE human that had appeared was Obviously Evil and therefore All Humans Are Evil.
This was after Mr. Obviously Evil Human had all of a handful of appearances over a three-times-a-week comic.
Once other humans had the chance to appear over the next YEAR or so, it was clear that, while not THAT diverse of character, there was significant diversity to the human cast, and Mr. Obviously Evil was motivated by some misguided notion or other.
Sadly, Gene Catlow’s creator Albert Temple passed away two months ago, so a LOT of loose ends will never be tied up, but the point is perhaps Robin is going to undergo a severe change of character, including realizing she is a young, female, slightly more eloquent version of 45 and taking actions to change. Who knows? (other than Willis)
Of course, she could also just go straight down the shitter–like my bro once said (making fun of a gaffe), “Man, once you hit rock bottom, you keep on digging.” EVERYONE has the potential to redeem/fuck up as the narrative dictates. I was trying to use “Book 1 Zuko” as a quick “shit, my iPad is fucking up, I don’t have time to deal with this at 2am” shorthand for the above, not a direct comparison.
Well-
Basically: Robin is shitty, is being shitty, is infuriating, and I want her to get the FUCK out of Leslie’s house.
*BUT*, I think she *is* connecting with Becky, *as much as she is desperately trying not to*. Like, that whole facial expression was “Oh no oh no she is making me care”. This is not a *defense* of Robin. She is a shitty, shitty person right now. But I do think she is starting to connect with Becky, which is *why* she’s trying to get becky to play Candy Crush, so Becky will stop talking.
“I just heard of a terrorist plot by cows to DESTROY CHICAGO!!!”
“…That was in 1871. And it was an accident.”
“SAYS THE COWS!!!”
“No, the cows say ‘mooo’. We have been through this.”
She wasn’t liberal. She didn’t really have any kind of opinion on anything important. The closest she got was wanting to see Ethan make out with a dude.
She wants so desperately not to have to change, to acknowledge that she’s been wrong the whole race, to have to deal with all the messy stuff that comes with it. And she’s hoping she can keep the shattered pieces of her hate train running just a little bit longer and get all the things she wants by just holding on to this fantasy moment as long as she can.
And by doing so is dooming everything she has and wants. Which… yeah.
Now this is why I’d kind of like to see her get a “redemption arc”; ironically, because it can be much vengeful fun to watch someone walk themselves into the point where they have to completely restructure their identity and belief system and drag themselves through the emotional broken glass of guilt, all the while realizing they did it to themselves.
I mean, there’s Joyce, but there wasn’t much pathos there. Given a conflict, Joyce has (as far as I remember) always made the right decision, and she’s so young and naive, so there’s not much that needs redeeming. Much more fun to do it to a fictional reactionary.
…. what are these… politics…. you speak of? Robin doesn’t have politics. She just votes the way that her handlers and constituents want her to — their politics, not hers — and tries to stay in office.
Yes, I sympathized with screwing with the noisy neighbor until it became about hatespeech. Which I suppose it always was. Understand I don’t believe everyone has deep layers. In fact, I’m actually hoping Robin doesn’t. That underneath that black vile of selfish hypocrisy and gaslighting is….more selfishness and hypocrisy and gaslighting because it seems a troubling message that all monstrous bigots need is sufficient time and patience to awaken their humanity.
I’d think a better message would be that, even though there’s probably something under most people, that doesn’t mean that sufficient time and patience is the right way to go.
I can think that people are possibly redeemable (I mean, Roz is the poster child for this) while not being “patient” with them. Hell, I try to do that all the time.
Yeah, I think even Trump could in theory be redeemable, even if, in practice, I think it’s too late in his life. Doesn’t mean I don’t hate his guts and will in any way be patient with him. Impeach him.
The thing that most annoys me about Wills writing is that the villains are fucking boring. I want to see what Mary does when she’s not acting villainous. Honestly, I think Faz was Willis’ best villain, because he had a personality outside of being a villain. So yeah Willis should humanize his villains like Shakespeare, Rebecca Sugar, Huxely etc.
In my opinion, the villains are good foils because they are true to folks people who are marginalized regularly encounter in life. And they are as they are in life. Maybe that’s boring to some, but this cuts real. This is who actual villains in real life are. This is how much damage they can do.
Oh, I understand. Back in my fundamentalist despicable asshat days in high school, I never stopped to question why the hell my fellow fundamentalists supported war and rich people getting richer while hammering down on the gays 24/7. It’s when I had my religious experience where God told me to quit being such a scumbag. Many people just LIVE for the opportunity to punch down. Kick too.
Yeah, it helps one feel on top to know there are those lower and it can feel good to believe it is a moral good to enjoy how looking down on a whole swath of “unfortunates” makes one superior without doing a damn thing. And there’s that evil bully edge that just comes out so easily against the designated marginalized target, to enforce the status quo one is so tightly clinging to.
And it is so stark when seen from the outside how awful that all is.
Or you’ve become so desensitized by living in that situation yourself that it doesn’t seem significant or compelling anymore, which, if that’s the case, I am so sorry even while I will maintain it’s by itself terrifying in its impact for many of us.
Different type of boring, I think. The situation isn’t boring. The threat isn’t boring. The villains themselves can be. That’s okay. You can do a good story by focusing on the protagonists and their struggles and character development while having the threats come from stock villains. Doesn’t even mean the villains aren’t realistic – just that we don’t examine them closely to see why they’re like that and how they got where they are.
It can also be interesting to give the villains their own development and more depth – while still keeping them villains.
I do agree in a way. It would be interesting to see Willis humanize one of his villains more – let us get inside and see what makes them tick. Understand and empathize with them, while still leaving them as a villain. That’s hard to do in any work and it may be even harder in a joke a day comic format.
Huh. I don’t find his villains boring at all. Every last one of them has a reason why they are the way they are. They have believable motivations. They may be awful, but they are awful for a reason–a reason that exists in real life, too.
Granted, we don’t know what that reason is for “Clint” yet. And there are other parents who haven’t yet been fleshed out. But, of those who took front and center, all but “Clint” have had their reasons.
I further like that this comic isn’t black and white with “villains” and “good guys.” Amber has done some awful things, but she’s not an awful person. Roz kinda is an awful person, but she’s got the right ideas, and could just be a phase, as she was for many of us. Carla can actually be an asshole, even though it’s actually more of a front for protection, and she seems to have a heart of gold underneath.
So I think the characters are plenty interesting. If they weren’t, I’d treat this comic more like Misfile, where I check in every so often because I’m curious how it will all work out, but not because any of the characters or plot is compelling.
Really? Do we know anything about Blaine besides “He’s an abusive manipulative parent”? Why is he like that? What are his reasons?
Do we know anything about Ryan, beyond him being a “dudebro” rapist? He’s apparently really a pastor’s son, I guess. Does that tie into it somehow?
Ross got a little more – we know about the religion. We know his wife committed suicide, which likely pushed him farther over the edge, but may itself have been related to Ross’s existent behavior, rather than an explanation.
Those people exist in real life. None of them are unrealistic, but they’re also not really examined. We don’t know how they got to the point of being villains.
And that’s fine. It was enough for their role. It made sense. It drove the action. In the parental cases, it helped illuminate the actual important characters.
Giving a lot of screentime to the people you have to live with and are oppressing you is not exactly necessary for tension to exist if you can put yourself for a second in the shoes of someone that already knows them. If people are reading this with a wholly cognizant understanding of abuse you’re aware that Blaine and Ryan are not just conceivably real people.
They are individual instances of a goddamn conga line of Blaines and Ryans and no one really needs to have explained what their reasons are in fiction on top of real life. Because all those reasons are familiar and none of those reasons make them nonhuman caricatures or boring, if you have lived or cared for someone who lived with ones of their own.
They are as capable of human behavior and niceness and nonevil as all the Blaines and Ryans that had reasons for acting while they callously were ruining your life. Any Blaine or Ryan you find boring has dozens of people (innumerable if we go outside the readership) that are ready and waiting to get very invested in these villains’ role in the story because it turns out they already know him.
The reason this does not make the villains boring or unexplored is supposed to be that you’re aware that all the reasons are there, are unimportant, and are reasons that don’t actually stray much from the same foundation even if you spell out every little detail that dressed them up.
As I said, it works for his purposes. I’m generally pretty happy with it. His villains are mostly stock types. That’s okay. They’re realistic stock types. We don’t have to delve into them for them to fill their role.
Let’s say I don’t find them boring, but I do find them unexplored.
You did not process what I was saying or just didn’t read it fully or forgot about it immediately but, I think I have already explained why anything you are looking for can be assumed, filled in, and would in fact be very boring to me (far worse than boring to many others) to spend some time or narrative focus on unexplored villains.
But sure I will say it again. That answering the question of what Ryan does when he isn’t being evil to people is not a question because we know or should know the answer is “the same thing as anyone else.” And that’s boring and pointless and it’s actually a shitty boringly pointless thing to write for the audience this comic’s aiming at who might be reminded in the process of things that are less important than skipping to the part where bad people get beat up by good people and everyone cheers.
If Blaine or Ryan are “boring” enough to you that you keep treating it as a narrative weak spot that’d be better off improved upon even if “it works” is the most charitably you can speak about Blaines and Ryans that are not stock characters, but checklists of people around you that do exist that you haven’t been given a reason to think are not boring themselves.
Yeah, people have been humanizing Mary at every turn, even while she’s been engaged in literal hate speech and demonizing Carla to justify it and many people express regular wishes for her to have a redemption arc and what that would need to entail. So, yeah.
Actually, I just thought of people who’d want Mary redeemed because she’s “just” a bigot still white and straight. Robin being queer and Hispanic might be why they’d want her to go down. So…yeah, ugh.
There’s also the matter of how, while Mary is a hateful asshole bigot, she’s also a college student and not a high ranking government official. She also hasn’t basically microcolonized anybody else’s house, so there’s that. Robin is legitimately the worse of the two in a lot of ways, although she’s still not the worst character by virtue of having not kidnapped anyone at gunpoint.
I will be incredibly bitter if Robin gets redeemed because I just do not dig the message that sends at all at this point. Maybe if it had happened before it became clear just how little she cares about the well being of anyone but herself even people she claims to like but at this point she’s I just want her to go to jail.
I could argue for a Mary redemption simply because there’s no where else to go now. She’s a joke. Everyone in the dorm hates her. Billie punched her in the face and no one did a thing about it. It set a standard that if she ever gets out of line it’s okay to use violence to shut her up. Billie even threatened her later. Sooooo what else can you do with her? She can go away because no really likes her anyway. She can keep repeating her hatespeech and be used for the occasinal punchline. Or she can change and become interesting.
I dunno, she still has potential as a foil and yes, she’s had a major setback, but she’s got a lot of nasty tools she hasn’t begun to break out yet.
And I think she’s going to be kept as a foil, because she works for so many characters and is more direct and personal for the characters. Also because she’s… well, she’s what Willis was told to venerate when he was younger. It’s the type of person he was told to strive to be, to view as the perfect Christian.
She’s the poison he came from and the harm it poses to everyone on that floor.
Robin might have the power. Blaine, “sir”, and Toedad the visceral abusive vileness. Ryan, the implicit threat. But Mary is the only one who lives with them all day in and day out, trying to find anything she can exploit and a built up martyr complex to justify harming anyone on that floor.
Robin being queer and hispanic would grant her FAR more concession to allowance for a charitable reading than most villains. The problem is Robin has done so much horrible shit that there is no room left to give her leeway on benefit of the doubt and she refuses to give us even a hint of ‘not currently and down the road being horrible after chances rain down on you to show anything worth sympathizing for at this time’
If everyone is redeemed, then the narrative is essentially telling us that everyone hurting us right now is possible to redeem as well.
That is not a truth and it’s a lie that people exploit to do even worse hurt. It’s not a good message narratively especially in a comic about oppression, perspective, and character growth, with the protagonists largely being young adults just entering the world outside their family’s routine for the first time.
Seriously, sometimes people are just relentlessly bad people and the only thing you can do is remove them from your life for the sake of your own health and safety.
Redemption usually means shitty person realizes they were shitty and stops being shitty. It is a nice fantasy to want all the problematic people to just stop being problematic on their own since every other solution is rather hard to swallow.
An actual narrative redemption arc is rarely just “shitty person realizes they were shitty and stops being shitty”.
I fully expect a redemption arc for Robin. I do not expect Becky to talk her around in the next couple strips and everything to be sunshine and flowers for ever. Robin’s got some work to do. At the best, we’re sowing seeds now.
Weirdly, I thought that was reversed. Mary is sincere in her bigoted awful monstrous beliefs. Robin just signs the discrimination bills because it gets her fame and wealth.
Honestly I think Robin has a better chance of changing than Mary.
Mary appears to be a lawful sadist troll. (Sadist meaning she likes to see others hurt and troll meaning she likes to hurt others.)
Robin appears to be selfish but so long as it doesn’t inconvenience her appears to want good stuff for others and want to do good stuff for others, and appears not to want to hurt others. With the exception of those she dislikes.
That being said. Unless their also sadistic, a troll, or law full with the wrong laws, a mercenary will usually “change” if they thing they can get a better deal. The thing is unless they are charitable, empathetic, feel guilt when they hurt people, or are law full with good laws, they will just as easily change back.
Mary is the not standardcreligioys royalty hypocrite that preaches Christian moral values while also fully believing that those same standards don’t apply to her, just to everyone else.
Robin is a lesbian, but she doesn’t even realize it, she’s in complete denial about it. She’s not applying a different set of standards to herself than she does to others.
Yeah, Mary has genuinely committed some felonies and almost killed people. So, definitely, Robin isn’t necessarily a monster yet. However, we don’t know what her laws HAVE done to people.
The only specific legislation we know about didn’t pass, though she’s definitely still culpable for the harm that bill would’ve caused.
Mary personally, deliberately twisting the knife just feels more viscerally evil to me, even though intellectually I know Robin’s more abstract motives for crappiness can cause far more harm.
When did Mary akmost kill someone! Not trying to start anything I legitimately want to know. I know she tried to blackmail Ruth but that wasn’t through attempted murder was it?
Yup, she risked a person dying by their own hand just to try and hide their own complicity and try and retain a position of power they had no right to occupy.
And that’s something that resonates very personally after the hell I’ve been through with my very-soon-to-be-ex-head-of-school.
@Cerberus @Felgraf I can all but physically taste the spite in “very-soon-to-be-ex-“, I am so glad to know there’s some form of consequence for the ghastly shit he’s pulled on you that we readers’ve been privy to!
and I’m hopeful that this means betterment and resolution on some of that ghastly shit, and that it coincides with good or not-worse developments on the other and also ghastly shit that that was piling on top of because of other dudes like him
Felgraf- Yup! Finally! And it’s a proper shitcan too. Most folks who leave more voluntarily have a “exciting new opportunity at X” part, but he just got a form letter with “pursuing other opportunities”. So yeah, fired fired. Just have another 2 and a half weeks until he’s gone for good, but the new boss is already taking over major functions and undoing some of his petty stuff against me.
I just hope she also works to make amends with the student who was much more directly hurt.
Minder- No, never. I would never enjoy the petty spite of this. I certainly didn’t have a massive evil grin on my face the entire day after finding out about his shitcanning. No, indeed. I’m a good person who never ever feels joy about the loss of power of folks who use that power to harm marginalized people.
I used to think schadenfreude was horrible. But then I realized just how awful some people can be.
You’re happy a shitty person who was hurting people got some sort of consequence. Nothing wrong with that. Same way I felt when my sister’s narcissistic boss (and a psychiatrist) got hoisted by her own petard.
As Hank Hill would say, she was “putting a lot of strain on a structure that’s already not up to code.” Ruth was standing on the edge and Mary did her best to tilt the ground she was on. If you start jerking an already suicidal person around, you’re trying to kill them.
As of this comic’s writing (hint: it applies at any point in time and especially the next four years) there are several examples of how her last term of voting on bills in the House of Representatives has both created and blocked legislative reform on many decisions that result in a body count!
That specific bill not passing doesn’t mean that other dangerous bills didn’t, and it doesn’t mean that bills that should have passed got shut down as routine and that is killing people.
i mean Mary wore an outfit directly tied to Nazi styles. after making a transphobic comment to Carla and trying to blackmail Ruth for being a lesbian. i’m not sure there’s much redemption possible here. she’s the local self-righteous cockroach who won’t leave
whereas Robin is so blatantly performative at whatever she is trying to be that it’s hard to believe that there isn’t some self-awareness going on there. like, she’s aware that she ought to be feeling sorry for Becky, even as she verbally refuses to. that’s…something I guess. that she’s capable of some level of shame.
Whether you hurt me through callous disregard or intentional malice, the effect is just the same and the hurt is equally real in either way.
Robin has been dancing around not holding hate in her heart, but she still has done terrible things that directly impact all the characters. And we’ve seen the damage her active attempts to craft a “happy narrative” have to folks like Leslie whose consent they steamroll over to hold on to this fantasy of “being a good person”.
It makes for an interesting scenario. And honestly I find both of them very compelling even though Robin is hard to watch sometimes and I absolutely loathe Mary. But they serve as very important foils and represent real problems that folks encounter.
yeee. they both serve important purposes!! it just can be painful to watch.
and like…Robin’s avoidance of these issues has made her more shallow and more incapable of actually engaging with people and their emotions in a forthright way. I’m…pretty sure she got into politics because she wanted to be a superhero. http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-7/01-glower-vacuum/interns/
which, if the case, is…super depressing. because like the political arena seems to be all about what compromises you make when and where to get things done. how do you maintain integrity when everything coasts on public approval? and when the voices that need the most protecting aren’t the ones that can speak the loudest, they lose. hard. but that doesn’t mean they aren’t speaking and don’t need to be listened to
True, the damage is the same. But the potential to change them is different.
I don’t believe sadists really can be changed. Anyone above that can be changed, but it can be so hard as to be impractical, and it’s not your responsibility to change them. Sure, you can and should try if you can do so without harm to yourself or others, but that’s only becuase you may have misjudged them.
I do tend to align with the people who say that Robin has more potential to change that Mary. Robin’s obliviousness is a protection mechanism to keep her from feeling things, so, if you can actually get past that, she could decide to change.
But Mary just hates everyone. There is no “aha” moment possible here, barring some sort of near death experience. The only chance she has at redemption is a long journey after being hurt so many times by the people she’s trying to hurt. It would basically be the “start acting nice (to get people off my back)” version where you actually sorta become nicer.
But I also see nothing immediate that would convince her she needs to even start down that road. While I can see Robin being dethroned in her politics and accepting her queer-ness as a start towards fixing things.
Still doesn’t mean she’s not an awful person right now.
i mean yeah but also people have to be willing to change themselves. you can’t just do all the work for somebody, because if they don’t do the work of changing they won’t learn. and also it’s kind of unfair to love someone for who they might be instead of who they are, which i think is the trap that Leslie fell into. :/
i don’t think Mary is gonna go the Belkar redemption route, tho, because she genuinely doesn’t care about other people unless they fit into her schema. she’s more of a Miko Miyazaki. (if these references don’t make sense to you, they’re from Order of the Stick: Belkar is the resident sociopath who acts good to make things easier for himself and finds himself growing a conscience, and Miko is the Lawful Good who assumes everything she does is good because she’s LG, without considering consequences for her actions.)
why does humanizing a character have to mean sympathizing with and defending their actions or projecting possible decency onto actions that are themselves terrible like it matters that something might be there eventually and the harm just goes on in the meantime
You know, thinking about what Leslie said earlier, about how much Becky reminds her of herself as a baby gay, I wonder how she’d feel about Becky’s usage of tactical frivolity in a pinch. (I’ve read a lot about that recently, especially its significance and historic use in the LGBT community. It’s fascinating and awesome.)
You keep making me proud, you perfect gingersnap. :3
Nah. It would be intentionally acting goofy and fun to disarm people.
It’s also not dissimilar to what Robin is doing with her goofiness, except Robin isn’t doing it to stand up to any sort of authority or bigotry. She’s just doing it to make herself “likeable” and keep herself from feeling bad about the bad things she does.
That Bill O’Riley has been fired for sexual harassment.
…
Oooohhhhhh, you meant the song? I don’t know, never listened to it or an actual fox for that matter.
It’s probably a good thing that no one on earth is force sensitive (that we know of), otherwise there would probably be a million wannabe Sith Lords running around on this planet.
…
Then again, that might be an improvement…
Does anyone want it to be revealed that Robin had a program for getting rid of homelessness back when she was mayor of Billie’s hometown? Because, right now, her reaction makes me think that’s where Representative Desanto’s career began with the help of Billie’s dad.
Yay, becky’s reality-distortion field is beginning to disrupt robin’s! (I hope)
I’m about halfway through season 2 of steven universe now. nearly every episode is another punch to the gut. in a good way. (that made more sense inside my head 😛 ) Is there somewhere I can discuss that without getting spoilers? there’s just… so much everything. and gem fusion as a metaphor for DID/OSDD stuff seems to fit even better now :/ the ironic thing is, I… I’m not sure if I just straight-up forgot half the stuff I read from Cerberus’ links or if an alter is actually hiding things. It’s hard to tell; my memory has always been nonlinear and patchy.
Downside is it’s not real-time, so interactive discussion is not really there, but he goes into things blind without spoilers, so his reviews are all based on just what he’s seen so far and he’s got video episodes of him watching it in real time so you can vicariously live the experience of someone seeing stuff fresh with you.
Plus he’s super aware on a lot of different axes, tags potential triggers with regards to ableism, transphobia, abuse, etc… and the discussion threads under his posts have a ROT13 rule where any spoilers have to be ROT13’d.
It’s not exactly what you are looking for and I don’t think he’s made many connections relating specifically to DID (though he is kinda doing so in his Mark Reads of Carpe Jugulum), but it’s probably the closest I can think of. Plus, he’s just heart-warming to watch, because he’s a giant teddy bear.
darn, interactive discussion is the part I’m looking for. there are plenty of places I can read about *other* people’s thoughts, but it might be nice not to deal with mine alone so much. (just one more week to my next therapist appointment… but I dunno if she’s ever watched Steven Universe…)
hmm, there’s a long list of forums at http://did-research.org/resources.html – maybe I’ll check some of those out.
There’s no interactive discussion with Mark, but there’s plenty of discussion in the comments. Or, at least, there is on other stuff he does. I haven’t Steven Universe yet, so I haven’t done Mark’s stuff.
Also, love that Mark’s getting mentioned here by someone beside me! Dude is pretty awesome. If you’re a Trek fan, he’s watching all of it unspoiled. If you’re a Discworld fan, he’s doing all the books unspoiled, too. And if you like to see Twilight torn a new one, his original “Mark reads Twilight” is still awesome. Dude does not pull any punches in pointing out how awful every part of it is, and not in the “Twilight suckslol” way.
archived comments don’t count 😉 he did season 2 last year. but it does look like an interesting thing to read sometime. um. sometime I’m not about to be late for an appointment. fuuuuck why did I do this….
Well Robin, Becky calls your deflection tactics and raises a “convincing impersonation of you through text messages”. Also, Becky officially became my favorite character. Sorry Dina and Carla, you’re tied tied for second plus. Oh, and uh could you just kindly fuck right off Robin?
Kind of shocked by all the comments about Becky warming Robin’s icy heart or w/e and them becoming future bff’s holding hands through daisies. Like they’re not bonding here. Becky’s making an effort and Robin is doing everything she can to stop this from being a human moment. She handed Becky that phone to shut her the fuck up about all her tragic life shit because Robin is fully aware that her politics are terrible but she doesn’t like to be made to feel bad about them. And honestly? Even if they do get along enough for Robin to decide to do what she should have done hours ago and leave Leslie’s house it’s still shitty that so much had to happen for her to do that and even if she’s willing to admit Becky’s a person deserving of the bare minimum of human compassion for five minutes what’s going to happen when she’s back among her handlers hastily scrambling to rebuild her career? Hell Leslie’s been there to remind Robin that lgbt people are people multiple times and how many times has Robin pretended to hear her and then ignored it? How long would it take her to go right back to what’s going to get her ahead again when Becky’s not in her immediate field of vision?
Some comments really aren’t getting that Robin being redeemed or even defensible at this point would require quite a bit more than being decent to Becky and Leslie personally, or starting to show the tiniest iota of decent and positive behavior.
Like, redemption is not becoming a better person. Redemption is atoning for what you’ve done. If Robin warms up to Becky (and I am not seeing it happen, for Christ’s sake, she’s fucking stating outright above that she doesn’t care and won’t care out of principle) then Robin is still not redeemed. She is still not defensible, or a good person, by being very slightly less of a shitty person, and we haven’t even got a CASE for that yet. Robin’s giving us nothing. And yet people are taking Becky’s decision to forgive and reach out as a signal that Robin deserves it and is not just being awarded out of generosity benefit of the doubt she’s not entitled to even the tiniest little bit.
They’re too attached to SP Robin (even though SP Robin was also a terrible human being the universe just bent over backwards to accommodate her) and they can’t divorce their expectations of her here from how they remember her being portrayed.
I do suspect different meaning for “redemption” are part of the problem with the discussion here.
Robin is almost certainly going to change and grow and become a better person, even if there are few signs of it yet. There are some – the very defensiveness and deflections are hints she actually realizes the problems with what she is, even if she’s not ready to change or even admit it. We don’t see that with the (other) villains in the strip.
At some point, she’s going to come to terms with actually being queer. That’s a common life-changing experience, probably even more so in this case. (Note: Yes it’s not unknown for anti-gay politicians to be closeted and active and still anti-gay. This isn’t likely to be Robin.)
Whether she suffers enough or does enough good for you to considered her redeemed will have to be a personal call. As I’ve said before, I don’t expect this to be quick or easy – or to just be the result of Leslie putting up with her long enough.
I consider “redeemed” at the scale of a politician with Robin’s history as acknowledging in full–and living forever without allowing herself to rationalize away–what her actions have done or could have done to people because she didn’t want to care.
It means that she changes her actions and behaviors and compensates by doing as much good in the opposite direction that she becomes sympathetic even in light of the stuff she voted on and campaigned about.
It means that, while she doesn’t need to spend the rest of her life punishing herself or never forgive herself for her actions, she is not allowed to pretend they didn’t happen, they weren’t defensible when they happened, her being sorry now does not entitle her to forgiveness from other people who were affected even if she is 100% committed to never doing those things again.
People cite Joyce’s redemptive character arcs for comparison but Joyce’s flaws and history and the elements of her worldview/past actions that need be self-examined and purged…they’re not comparable to Robin’s. Joyce in her history grew up doing things that hurt people and perpetuated a system of hurting people. She in her history participated in a bigoted protest at a Chik-fil-A when she and Becky were kids, that was intended to and did hurt queer people and deny them respect. She was a kid and her parents gave her a sign to hold that day and she was too young to question it even without that she grew up indoctrinated to not question why. It’d be extremely stupid of me to say Joyce is a horrible person. Joyce has hurt a lot of people unwittingly in small but important ways that took away their humanity, and she’s realized that, and she is going to do everything under the sun from now on to do the opposite. And she will never not remember that she was a part of the system because her ferocity in defending Becky is the action of her atoning in body and heart. Joyce isn’t going to end up a despicable person and she never was one. Robin decided to make it her life’s goal to be in a position of power over others and she abused that power. She did that at the federal level. She willingly participated in the coalition within the political machine that would and did automatically stop any positive reform from happening they could unless certain members balked because that’s what the Republican party line is.
Robin can be redeemed but it is not a redemption that can or would be heartwarming and come without her having to wear the kind of scar on her character forever for what she did that Ryan got physically carved onto his face. It’s there forever. Even if you’re not that you forever. You carry it and you do so knowing anyone could see it if they looked at you. That is how much it would take to make Robin a good person that I could love and treat with empathy.
Panel 1: I find Robin’s eyes throughout all of this fascinating, because it looks like Leslie may have in fact been right and even Robin is not enough of a empathy-less monster to hold firm on this, even though she so desperately wants to to cling to her fantasy where she doesn’t actually have to grow and just gets all the things she wants anyways (which is an aspect of Robin’s character in SP that it’s cool to see under a more realistic and outsider lens to just fully wallow in how unhealthy and toxic it is).
Like, her eyes, her whole shtick is cracking here and I think the problem is that Robin is used to undoing folks who follow logical consistency and try and argue in good-faith. And Becky definitely tries to be those things, but when her wacky shields are up, she also has a habit of coming in sideways in ways folks don’t expect and that disrupts a lot of developing narratives.
And I think that might be the thing Manley also has mastered, which has infuriated her on the campaign trail. Because she’s well suited in erasing actual content and making it all about show, but she needs someone taking things seriously to work off of to do her horrible magic.
And Becky… is. But not in the way she expects. Like, I bet she thought that this bonding thing would go in a very specific way and was not expecting Becky to round the conversation back to the elephant in the room and what was just distressing Robin. And to do so innocuously it would be difficult for her to claim offense or justify going off on a tangent.
And it’s interesting, because it’s Robin being placed on the back-foot instead of getting ahead and directing things where she wants it to go.
Also, dear Bob, Becky is a sweet wonderful child and I want to protect her forever because she is so pure and good.
Panel 2: Mmm, I have a lot of feels about this, because I’ve also been in the sort of conversations where it’s like “oh, why don’t you X” or “what are you doing on Y”, where I can either remain tight-lipped or bring down the mood by having to reference the horrible backstory behind why I’m not Xing or Ying.
And it’s beautiful that Becky has not learned that shame yet. She’s still so beautifully honest and just blurts it all out. Doesn’t build up to it, just references it, because while it hurt, it’s a thing that happened to her and she sees no reason why she should be the one to feel shame about it. She doesn’t have a phone because she’s got a jerkass dad who wanted to keep her controlled to the point where he kidnapped her. So she says that.
And that’s part of that coming in sideways that’s really interesting and where this verbal spar becomes fascinating, because Robin has such great ability to wound Becky with an errant comment, but Becky does this.
And this seems to penetrate more than Leslie’s backstory did, because there’s no build-up, nothing she can get her “I’m not listening” guard up on, it’s just, boom, there it is, no performance, no weight, just reality.
Whether it’ll be enough…? Unlikely. But it’s definitely doing damage to Robin’s resolve and game.
Also, oi, Robin is so deeply drowning in her privilege. She expects a certain origin of everyone. To the point where she’s assuming that all teenagers have phones, because rich and middle class kids do tend to all have phones. She’s never dared to look at the margins that her policies affect. Actual homeless lives. Folks who’ve had to scramble for their living. People on the edges. She’s never considered them as people. And she’s avoided any chance to ever do so, even when one she is attracted to is pouring her heart out to her.
It makes me pessimistic this will get through, but it’s definitely doing something. And it’s something Robin was definitely not at all prepared for.
That point about the phones says it all, doesn’t it? And it makes me wonder how long Marcie’s parents needed to scramble to buy her one (or how long she had to work for one).
^^^ this. This is what makes me absolutely love this storyline, because Becky is not being performative here (beyond the most basic ‘let’s pretend everything is fine’ aspect, which if anything is the exact opposite of what Robin expects and is ready to deflect). Robin is being confronted with LIVED REALITY, and it absolutely is making cracks in her shell. She can’t not notice that she’s being horrible and it distresses her. If this keeps up, she’s most likely going to get to the point of wanting to get the fuck out of this house and this situation, which is the exact best case scenario… AND she’s going to get the memory of this stuck with her, because we know she remembers what she hears (see: her remarks about what Roz said)
Yeah, it’s powerful, because what Becky shows is so very genuine and that can be powerful (it’s what shook Joyce out of both her overt homophobia as well as her more subtle cultural homophobia).
Which makes it a lot harder for Robin to be Robin, because it’s one thing to be awful when she can pretend her policies don’t affect “anyone who matters” or that the lovely teacher she doesn’t have a dangerous obsessive crush on mentions she used to be one of those types of people, but like, she’s not anymore so it’s not really real in a way she has to care about. It’s another when a person in it, right now, dealing with the consequences of it, is sitting right next to her, being genuine and open.
It’s affecting her deeply. Whether it will be enough though is an entirely different question, but it’s definitely throwing Robin off her usual game.
“And it’s beautiful that Becky has not learned that shame yet.”
Yes, it is. It’s so nice to see people putting words to this thing becky is doing, because it’s a thing I sometimes do, or used to… that side of me doesn’t come out much any more, and I think shame is a big part of it. being more aware of social things in general, it’s harder to slip into that innocence, harder to forget how risky it can be to be that vulnerable, or all the ways that people might be judging me. I didn’t quite realise that I feel shame when I think of how dangerous some of those moments were. Or how other people might think badly of me for oversharing or being friendly to the Bad Person or some other social faux pas.
There’s something icky about being ashamed of innocence. :/
There’s also something icky about letting people that close to me, though. I have boundaries now, and they don’t like being ignored.
urgh. how do I deal with aspects that don’t have those boundaries? no wonder there was so much anger in there… the parts with boundaries want those boundaries up all the time, but that’s not happening… and they’re scared because those boundaries are meant to protect us…
Here’s a random thought. How many comments regulars here are tabletop gamers? Don’t worry, you don’t have to be a hardcore player with entire shelves full of game books in order to answer. It’s a question I’ve had in the back of my mind.
I have one right now. Not sure if I’ll stick with it, but that’s more for the sake of my own time and goals; they’re a good bunch, though one of them is kind of a That Gamer.
I’m lucky that way. But it also takes time and cultivation.
When I was new in town I helped a neighbour move in and just happened to see a box of Settlers among their stuff… and after that we were best of friends. We both had young kids at the time so it ended up with the two of us playing a game of Agricola a few nights each week, each rocking a kid in a baby carrier that fell asleep as we cursed each other for stealing the last reed.
My boyfriend and I were wondering just yesterday what exactly is the difference between tabletop games and boardgames. We’re into the latter, I know that, but some webshops make the first sound like a broader definition, even though we previously thought it meant a fifferent thing.
A tabletop game can be a board game, but not all of them require a board. Dungeons & Dragons has had a few board games, for example, but I don’t think any of its various editions need a board to play. In fact, you can play 5th Edition D&D with nothing but pens, paper, and dice, if you so choose.
“Tabletop games” generally refers to role-playing games, in which the rules are defined and dice are used to determine the outcomes of character actions, but in which there is no single board configuration, scenario, or victory condition(s). Game components – rule books, dice, character sheets, scenario modules, etc etc – are usually sold separately rather than contained in a single box, though starter or introductory sets do exist (and are often cross-marketed to those with experience playing board games).
While the term technically encompasses board games and card games as well as RPGs, in my experience “tabletop game” primarily serves these days to identify “traditional” role-playing games (those played in person, with physical dice, books, etc around a table) and contrast them to computer or console games with RPG elements, massively-multiplayer games, games played via chat channels, “virtual tabletop” websites or other software tools and services, etc.
Thanks, this was my impression, too, but I got confused. I’m not into tabletop games, then. I like strategy board games, mostly, like Scythe and stuff, but I play many things in the “club” every Monday.
I *can’t* roleplay, but I like board games. lots of Roll for the Galaxy (roll! I always hear that in the voice of Murray the talking skull 😉 ) … because I have to ration my thinking these days. (but not as much as last year, yay)
I think I have about 30 books, they’re a bit scattered around the house so no exact count. I gamed for a long time with a group and our collective library was a 150+. There was several duplicates of core books and I’m counting a fare number of supplemental lit. ( 50-60pages)
At least two of the gamers had a decade or two on me in playing the game.
I’ve had a chance to play 5e last year, very fun, much more streamlined than the last couple editions. They also address the one spell and done issue with beginning mages and clerics. I did feel that they may have slimmed the skill section down a bit further than necessary.
I played plenty of board and card games but never got into DND. I’ve wanted to…but there’s just so much dice rolling and I could get an RPG experience without dice through video games. On the other hand, I do have a lot of experience that are video games based heavily on DND.
Been a p’n’p player for some twenty years. Sadly, these days it’s hard to find dates as we are a large group and, you know, adult responsibilities and shit.
I recommend a play-by-post game, if you can get it set up. It’s pretty much a zero-pressure environment, since it’s all in the form of an online thread. You can take as long as you need to.
*looks at 5 shelves* I, uh, have a few RPG books. It’s not the whole 5 shelves, alright?! One of those is for fiction (plus a bunch of boxes and about 6 other shelved furniture pieces), and half of another is about dinosaurs!
We get together twice a week – today is Gloomhaven night, and on Fridays it’s RPG or boardgame night, depending on population. One of us is the administrator of a literal gaming store, so we never lack for stuff. I’m currently DMing a DnD 5e campaign, and we’re looking to start a Dresden campaign as well.
You seem to have lucked out, what with having an actual store runner in your group. Since you mentioned DMing 5e, how much preparation is usually required before a session? I mean mental preparation, more than actual game prep.
Depends? I’m running a campaign I’m writing myself, so I already know how NPCs will react in a given situation or how to handle things if (ok, WHEN) the party goes off rails. A published campaign probably needs a bit more effort to get into the right frame of mind (but involves a whole lot less prep work, of course).
Actual work at the table depends on how skilled at the game your players are – especially if you have a lot of spellcasters you might need to impose some limits to keep things moving along at an acceptable pace, double especially if your players never know what their spells do or keep misreading what they do (you know you are, I say to the person who’ll never read this).
That’s to bad. The group I was with passed the GM seat around quite a bit. Often because work usually meant someone might might not be able to make a particular session. So often had 1 main campaign and 2-3 minor campaigns going at once depending on who showed.
Also if one of us was burning out we’d switch up the GM’s to give people a breather.
Oh, man. Replace “frequently” with “pretty much always” and that’s been my experience. Finding groups in Southern Illinois is a huge hassle. Maybe it has something to do with the systems I run. Which ones do you usually play?
Palladium’s Rifts and their super hero world as well. Shadowrun every once and a while. And occasionally White Wolf, D&D, Warhammer Medieval (rpg not
the miniature.)
Personally every rpg has pro’s and cons it really depends on the group which rpg fits the best.
I started up last December, and recently finished my first campaign by poorly inventing socialism and then knowingly turning the burgeoning socialism movement into a pawn for an Evil oathbreaker paladin’s power play in a city we were JUST supposed to establish contact with.
Part of the problem is that the initial socialism movement was solely comprised of ambassadors and the other people who attended the party I threw at the palace. I was only there for a day and didn’t have a lot of resources to work with, and also my CHA was much better than my INT or WIS because I was a bard.
Don’t ask how I managed to throw a party at the palace if I wasn’t even from the city. 5e skill checks for supposedly-irrelevant-but-secretly-relevant shenanigans work in mysterious ways.
I’ve never played. But I do enjoy a lot of stuff related to it. Like Order of the Stick or Darths and Droids or a fanfic called Harry Potter and the Natural 20 where a D&D wizard arrives in Hogwarts (though the author did get stuck partway through book 3 and hasn’t finished)
And my absolute favorite is a podcast called Dice Funk, where they play a modified version of D&D 5e. It’s not your typical D&D podcast, as they designed it to work well for “radio.” And the DMs both want explicitly to avoid the most common tropes, like, for example, having dungeons to plow through or dragons (though Wyverns do show up.) And I have to tell people about it, since word of mouth is the only way anyone hears about it.
The first season is kinda Lovecraftian. It stars Rinaldo the Human Fighter, Anne the Halfling Cleric, and Jayne the Human Druid. But Rinaldo has a ton of charisma and looks and acts like Zorro the Gay Blade. Anne is Chaotic Good, has an intelligence of 3, and has a propensity for fire. And Jayne is a sarcastic shapeshifter who basically hates the party. And they don’t so much solve the Lovecraftian mystery as bumble around in it, making mistake after mistake.
Season 2 is completely different, with a different DM, and stars a fat half-dryad who used to be human, a smart Eladrin elf on his first adventure out of the Fey Wild, a sad human monk who seems to be cursed to have people die around him, and a freaking unicorn barbarian. Also has bird people, and very few non-minorities.
Season 3 has just started, and it’s about a town that no one can leave with a human justiciar (a smart paladin, basically), a Nixie warlock who serves Ghaunadar (god of abominations), a very modified vampire, and a young Wild Magic user who wants to make a name for herself. And the magic is really Wild, as it rolls every time she uses a spell slot.
(She also looks like a little girl thanks to an accident, but I promise they do not do what often happens in anime with that sort of thing. In fact, the only shipping that goes on in the fandom is with the two men. It’s a very gay show, in a very good way.)
Darths & Droids was one of my first introductions to the tabletop world. The first was DM of the Rings, back in early 2013. I still go back and re-read it every so often. As for that podcast, can it be found with a quick search, or is it obscure enough that I’ll need to dig?
Big boardgame freak; played a bit of battletech. Really wanna get into tabletop gaming in the World Of Darkness, or D&D 5e or Shadowrun Anarchy; only one of those that I’ve seen in the offing here is the 2nd; only other system I’ve seen folks wanting to play in these parts is Eclipse Phase (Fucking. Ew.).
So, yeah, I feel so much Becky here, because yeah, there’s a very specific type of dismissal when you share the shit that’s happened to you, where you get put in this pity box. But a pity box without humanity. Just seen as a pitiful wretch that you’ll throw a bone to and move on from.
And it’s like, no, I’m a person. I’ve been through shit and I appreciate sympathy, but I also have worked hard to build my way out of stuff and I have parts of my life that are wonderful and great that I have fought hard to get. And being dismissed as “just another sob story” that erases that hurts.
So yeah, Robin’s attempted dismissal here to retain desperately her fantasy and resist her strong cognitive dissonance and reimpose her desired order of whim is kinda shitty and I love that Becky just refuses to take it.
She doesn’t have a pitiful life. Yeah, she’s been through some major hell, but she’s fought all along to get a life that’s fully hers. She has a network of friends, she has an awesome dino-loving girlfriend who is helping her catch up in Biology, she is starting on her path to restarting college, she has a job, she now has a cool older lesbian mentor who can connect her to community.
She has things that are real and worth acknowledging and celebrating. And that’s true of a lot of people in shitty circumstances. Because you need those little victories and hopes and goals to hold on. Even the folks on the streets are working towards something. It might be mental health. It might be a stable living situation. It might be being able to be themselves. But it’s something. And it’s something they deserve to get and have celebrated when they get it.
And not just be written off as a “pitiful” warning story for privileged people to go “oh my larks, I’m so glad I’m not one of those unfortunate souls” while dismissing the central humanity of those they are “feeling for”.
Becky loves her life. She doesn’t love everything that’s happened to her. But she loves that she is winning back a life that is fully hers. And that’s not something that’s “pitiful” just because a giant toe-shaped asshole tried to do everything he could to ruin it.
The feels are real. I dislike pity. I hate it when I get it. Pity didn’t help me pull myself up when my life got ruined every month. It still doesn’t. I pulled myself up, out of determination to dismiss pity, and climbed up again. I still do. Pity, even if I get it, is not something to want. It is the reverse. Pitying is rude to those who you pity.
Yeah. And it’s hard sometimes to explain the difference between sympathy and pity. Like, yeah sympathize, empathize with what I went through, but don’t just pity and write off and erase everything I’ve done to survive situations I should never have been expected to have to survive.
Sympathy is not pitying, but going there and helping them back up. All the things I should have died or left or ran away for I didn’t. There were free who gave me sympathy. But that little support was enough to pull myself back up and it still supports me. I’m still in denial that I live. And people pity us for going through that. They should respect that we’ve survived worse than they have, not pity it
I see this a lot and I respect it and want to understand although the sentiment does not ring with me personally. Like, I’ll take pity. Sure. Pity’s great. Please help me because I’m pitiful or for whatever reason you like, I will take and use gladly what you’d give me to make it through this without tearing myself apart more than I already have to.
I wonder if it’s a “in it” versus “through it” thing. Like Becky considers herself through and on the other side of all the awful in her life. Like, yeah, stuff is hard, but hey, she’s making a strong go of it. And for that it can be like, but my life isn’t currently pitiful, I got through the hell and built something.
But when you’re more “in it”, pity feels very different because it’s like “yeah, things really are this terrible so it means a lot that you’re recognizing that in any form that centers that and helps me get out”.
I think at some point when / starting out when I was “in it” made me happy to take pity and use it for my own ends just out of a lack of self-respect or a wrong interpretation of “reality” where things were just so because they were? I don’t remember looking back ever having a cognitive reaction or recognition of validity in the idea of not wanting pity because it seemed silly and pointless to get hung up about from where I stood.
Now of course I’m fine with pity because I’ve been like 97-99% purged of any ability to give a fuck what others think of me after I’ve found it out and also I’m 100% done pretending I’m not lazy and in fact very happy to cut every corner I can that reality allows if it means I have to expend less effort on the nearly-everything my anxiety has made me also unable to care about
i’m with this one like…wtf…u don’t know my life…where is this pity emotion coming from….like bad things don’t happen to people all the time. where have you been living. mars???
Becky is, as sometimes has been mentioned, awesome. And as you noted above, she does not try to package or smooth over her situation. Yes, it sucks. No, it’s not a pitiful sob story. And I really think that blunt honesty gets to Robin.
If nothing else because she would LOVE to answer with “Well, MY girlfriend likes Star Wars, so nu-huh!”
Like the worst part for me is not that Becky is even being put in the pity box, or having her pain treated like a “sob story” and not actually real and powerful. It’s that Robin states flat-out she sees Becky as ‘aiming’ for the pity box, acknowledges it’s there, and with that said Robin is making it clear she is not going to care no matter what happens to Becky.
Like, not making it clear in the metaphorical sense, she literally says she is refusing to grant a homeless girl a shred of empathy for her plight. Even if Robin is bluffing on that and changes her mind eventually, that is not a thing you can say to someone and be given the benefit of the doubt for whatever comes next.
Hey Becky has a job now! She can get a phone eventually!
…If she’s not fired for being late on her second day for being dragged into the stupid bullshit of someone who can’t stand to acknowledge her basic goddamn humanity for five whole minutes at a time.
Panel 4: Again, the eyes are interesting, because they are breaking more and more throughout this conversation she is desperately trying to eel away from. Like, that first off-center, moving into distress, and full defensiveness and now here, pulling out a trump card of her own, while looking away and trying to will away the guilt she is feeling.
Like, it’s affecting her. Whether that will be enough to get through, to make Robin stop harming others to cling to her self-delusions? Again, I think it’s unlikely though certainly possible. But it’s definitely doing a better job than anyone’s managed so far.
Now as for her distraction… ugh. Minder has already touched on the biggest issue for me as well and that’s the fact that this is a tactic to dismiss Becky’s humanity and having to continue to confront that directly. Continuing to look down on her as just “another kid” she doesn’t have to listen to, who can be bought off with a shiny object or two so she never has to give up this alternate reality she is trying to build.
And given that the thing she is being dismissive to is well, something really big and partially her fault for creating and supporting laws that normalized behavior like Toedad’s and makes it harder for folks like Becky to build their lives back up?
It’s… pretty dang shitty.
Panel 5: Oh Becky, you wonderful, perfect cinnamon roll, you. Like, she’s just refusing to even acknowledge Robin’s continued attempts to dehumanize her. She might not even notice them and she’s just so pure in her intentions and actions. Not bothering with the social filter of self-minimization that we so often learn.
And her wacky shield here is masterful. Taking her bullshit and turning it into something. And accidentally making Robin have to confront aspects of herself. A homeless teen lesbian she looks down on is indistinguishable from her in email form. The connections that she so desperately wants to deny with regards to shared humanity are there.
And she can try desperately to deny them to justify operating in service to hate movements, but… it doesn’t change reality.
But still, I worry for Becky here. Cause Robin is a master in getting people locked in sunk costs and despair by her intransigence. Like, being a sieve to everything her sister tried to explain to the point where her sister was celebrating her outing simply because it meant she was finally free of her and her bad faith bullshit. Being obstinate to every boundary of Leslie’s to the point where Leslie is beating herself up for not being willing to beat up a sitting US representative.
Robin is a master of holding out just enough hope for something to finally get through and stick that folks keep trying, while being stubborn enough to ensure that it never affects any meaningful change. And I don’t want to see sweet awesome Becky get locked into the same dehumanizing ritual that broke Roz and Robin’s aide and is breaking Leslie.
Because she’s already been through so so much already. She deserves a break.
Please just kick Robin out Leslie! There’s two of you for God’s sake! Robin can leave and let Becky live a life, like you’re saying Cerb. I’d love to see press show Robin how she dehumanized everyone else, and dehumanize her for it. I hope it’s not too late for Becky
This is something I’ve wanted to mention for a few days, and I like that you bring up how Becky is indistinguishable from Robin in e-mail form, and I feel like this is one of the key ways in which Becky, more than anybody else, could potentially get through to Robin. It isn’t so much that Becky comes in at angles no one else would expect, it’s that, from a personality standpoint, Becky is probably the character who is the closest to just flat out being Robin. From their manor of speech, to their love of wackiness and attempt to use zany antics to distance themselves from or impose their will on reality, to even some of their actions. Robin imposing herself on Leslie afterall could be viewed as much, much, much, much more extreme variation of Becky’s own attempt to get together with Joyce. From a certain point of view, Becky is practically Robin’s clone, and this goes such a long, long way to getting somebody who’s being a jackass to empathize with someone else’s situation.
The more different somebody is, the easier it is to ‘other’ them, and in turn the easier it is to disregard everything they want and care about. But the more alike two people are, the easier it is to see yourself in their shoes. And usually you (hopefully) wouldn’t need someone who’s completely identical to you to see their point of view, but Robin appears to be a pretty extreme case. Good thing then that Becky is a pretty extreme match for her.
I’m not sure I fully agree with a lot of that, but I definitely can see her being the person that Robin can most easily relate to and it’s clear how much that terrifies her, because her whole everything depends on never ever empathizing and seeing herself in the shoes of the folks fucked over by her policies and political strategies.
I agree that both use “teh wacky” as a deflection tactic, but note that Robin uses it to avoid or dismiss anything that might inconvenience her, keep her from doing whatever she pleases, or make her aware of things she doesn’t want to be… whereas with Becky, it’s covering very real trauma.
It’s currently covering the very real trauma, but I can’t help but think back to the inaugural poop. It’s always been there, right?
(and as someone who uses whimsy as a tool to manage CDH/CFS, and hence is biased: Becky strikes me as using teh wacky to engage with people, as opposed to Robin’s use of it as a wall.)
I don’t think she lives IN it, so much as she always keeps it handy.
We’ve seen her be goofy and playful at times when she CLEARLY was actually happy, like when she and Dina were playing on Sal’s bike, or when she and Joyce were super excited that both of them were wearing plaid.
And otherwise, the implication of that always being a mask would be that Becky is never as happy as she seems, which I strongly doubt is what Willis intended. The narrative has clearly shown that she’s very reliant and most of the time is genuinely upbeat, despite the crappy things that she’s been through
idk i think that sometimes like. the choice to be happy is really brave? and really important. like. happiness isn’t something that just comes to you. sometimes it’s something you have to actively go after. Becky choosing to be wacky, choosing to live in her own private sitcom life is her choosing to make the most out of what she has. it’s her choosing to be happy. and it’s why she survived.
so like: partially a mask, because she doesn’t want to be a Debbie Downer. but also partially just keeping her spirits up, because if she took time to feel bad about everything she’s gone through and pity herself she probably wouldn’t stop crying for, like, a month at least. and there’s a level of which it is kind of healthy to be like: ok, this is something I’ve gone through, but it doesn’t have to be my whole life. I lost a jerkdad, gained a cool dinosaur girlfriend. I’m homeless, but I have a job.
choosing to live her happiest, best life is the biggest fuck you to her dad I can imagine, because I guarantee you: Toe!Dad has never known what it means to be happy in his entire life.
I wish Becky would stop being so wonderful if just for this moment because Robin doesn’t deserve the joy Becky brings to the world by her very adamant existence.
I mean even putting my petty grudge against Robin aside–Becky doesn’t deserve the worst of what Robin is capable of.
It’s a real possibility of happening.
I am so scared that Robin will do something that intentional/malicious or not, will reinforce for Becky (and / or Joyce) echoes of trauma from what they’ve just survived and are currently working through.
I am afraid Joyce is going to escalate very quickly at one of these little unwitting dismissals of humanity, on Becky’s behalf, where Becky herself would not.
I am afraid that if / if not an escalation results in an even more tense or blown-up situation, any consequences of one would hit Robin next-to-none because she can wave money at the problem. And Joyce and Becky and Leslie and everyone else suffer instead for trying to do right by one another.
I’m afraid. I’m afraid any of these things will happen and I’m afraid too that Robin can give just enough hope to Becky by a show of awareness before snapping right back to the same awful production and letting her burn.
Yeah, it’s a dangerous situation, because yeah, that’s Robin’s traditional game. It’s what broke Roz and it’s what she initially used against Leslie at the bar. Not intentionally, but giving just enough signs of listening and internalizing to make it feel worth keeping going.
Becky is a bit different in that she comes in in ways Robin doesn’t expect, but we’ve seen Robin stumble so easily into being unbelievably cruel so Becky does need to keep her guard up throughout and be careful.
I’m not sure whether Becky’s urgent question to the Ag Sec is from her being like Robin, or whether it’s from her deliberately doing something Robin might do.
In the next to last panel, Becky is telling Robin “OK, you give me your phone to brush me off, I’ll use it to do something that will actually affect you: talk to your colleagues.
Robin says “You can’t successfully pretend to be me, so what you’re doing won’t affect me.
Becky responds, “Yes, I can. I know you well enough, and I’m enough smarter than you, that I can successfully simulate you by writing the same kind of dumb-ass thing you’d write.”
Robin says, “Yeah, you’ve got me nailed. Oops.”
So, I think Becky is presenting herself, not as a kindred spirit, but as a worthy opponent. Which is really awesome.
If Robin takes back her phone, then she’s admitting she lost in a few ways: She underestimated Becky, and gave Becky too much power over her. Becky has the upper hand and Robin is on the defensive. From there, it’s a slippery slope to giving up the couch and the house.
If Robin doesn’t take back her phone, then Becky can send emails undermining Robin’s political positions.
In fact, once Becky has fully established herself as being dangerous to Robin with Robin’s phone, all she has to do is run out of the house carrying the phone. Robin will have to chase her, and then Robin has voluntarily left the house.
Robin has already lost. She maybe doesn’t know it yet, but she will soon. Because Becky is just that smart and awesome.
or maybe Becky’s just honestly interested in cows and whether or not the house secretary knows what sound a cow makes. i mean. spam-emailing people who don’t believe in her personhood is a reasonably worthwhile goal
I can’t be sure, because data calibration is awefully hard when you get close to perfection, but it is possible that of all Becky panel 3 Becky is best Becky.
So – fun fact: MY congressman (I guess technically, the Congressman for where I’m currently doing a year-long internship) is the current head of the House Agriculture Committee. Bob Goodlatte, R – VA 9th.
It’s bongos like Mary and Robin that caused people like me to enter post-suicidal states and conditions. This shit is sad because I’ve been in Becky’s place many times. She’s keeping calm, but every pity, every hate, brings her closer to snapping. Eventually, she will be like others, including me, and darken. Turn for the worse, and retaliate
I don’t think Becky’s going to snap unless the snapping in question is the act of her snapping Robin’s shitty dismissal of her existence into sharp little pieces and giving the bird.
It’s pretty easy – even without checking what sort of phone was used to post – to tell whether a given Trump tweet was by the man himself, or some anonymous staffer/minder.
Hmm, okay, this might be completely out of left field, but I’m picking up on very subtle clues here that she may in fact… like girls. I know, I know. It’s a stretch, but I’ve just got a strong hunch.
Dammit. Everyone is so absolutely right in seething at Robin, but I’m just enjoying her interactions with Becky so much. Because you can SEE every single time something gets through her armor of denial, and yeah, she immediately tries to rebuild it, but you just know it chips away. It’s not all that big a distance between conceding the phone and conceding the couch. My prediction is that Becky manages to ramp up Robin’s hidden guilt about hogging the couch to the point that Robin makes some horrific-sounding excuse and gets the fuck out, which is exactly the win-win situation that’s the goal here.
Like, yeah, Robin is definitely in deep, deep denial, which is horrible. But it’s also really, really fun to watch as Becky just keeps hauling her out of there, making her all the more desperate to dive back in.
Like, Robin felt guilty about having a phone while Becky doesn’t, so she assuaged the guilt by giving the phone over for the moment, and the covered it up with a condescending remark about Candy Crush. The guilt was there tho, and Becky knows it was, and she didn’t even have to try and be manipulative in any way – Robin just does this to herself in her presence.
Also I still love Robin’s direct childishness – like, her reaction to Becky trying to impersonate her is SOLID GOLD. She’s not even trying to stop her (yet), her first reaction is to comment on how feasible it is, and she’s so fucking SELF AWARE about her own ridiculousness, and it’s adorable.
Like, Robin doesn’t have to be likable as a person to be adorable as a character. And the Leslie/Becky plan of getting her off the couch might just work.
And no, I don’t think Robin will at any point snap at Becky to get off her couch. That’s way, way not the kind of person she is. Robin tries her best at all times to look good in HER OWN eyes. That’s why she deflects, minimizes and refuses to engage the way she does. There is a core of moral self-awareness in her, and she will not do something that’s OBVIOUSLY cartoon villain grade of evil. She’ll do what makes her look the best in her own eyes in any situation, and the way to manipulate it is to push the situation in the direction where Robin would look the best in her own eyes by ACTUALLY doing the right thing.
Don’t push her towards revelations. Push her towards actions, and there might just be results :>
(Like, I am not saying that this would redeem Robin as a person or something. I am saying that she can be made a force for good, even if ‘good’ in this case means just mitigating her own earlier horrible shit.)
This is such a great way to be reading this ongoing interaction! There is in fact an element of it that’s very fun to watch and no one has to feel guilty for that in and of itself.
I’ve got zero issues with people who’re enjoying whole trainwreck, for all my angry angry comments that might speak otherwise. So long as we’re all on the same page that trainwrecks aren’t very easy to deescalate so people don’t get hurt? Bring out the popcorn, I am loving Becky in every panel of this comic.
(Not least because I know Becky could def totes do some very naughty stuff with that little phone in her hand, if Robin thinks to insult Becky’s dinosaur girlfriend again.)
I just reread my own comment and realized I made your entire breakdown of the strip all about myself. Bad Minder. Stick to pointing out how much radness is in the comment because it brings up awesome observations that are really good to read |D
I mean given that you might just be the person I was vaguely addressing (like I wasn’t particularly keeping track but your avatar seems familiar from those parts of the discussion), actually the clarification that you didn’t meant to bring on the guilt trip for those who love this storyline is very appreciated XD thanks
(and for, ya know, that other stuff you said too 9u9)
Nah it’s cool disagreement is cool! I was totally the person you were talking about! I’ve written like 70 comments today alone because I’m still worked up with stress and looking for catharsis and I’ll be gone in like maybe a day and not comment a day for another few days or seven months. I got happy today because I realized there are parts of that I’m able to use in the way I think in my own head to stop reinforcing some stuff that is giving me anxiety! Your comment’s appreciated too
It’s kind of annoying to me when people gather in the comments to bash on Robin and in the process ignore her actual personality and the very obvious cues in her behavior right now. She’s not an abstract ‘worst bigot ever Trump analog’ like yeah she’s played that role but she’s also got her own consistent personality. Like, yeah, appealing to marginalized people to notice a bigot’s humanity is a shitty derailing tactic and all, but in this case all I want is for people to ACTUALLY READ THE COMIC THAT IS THERE and not the version in their heads.
It’s not fucking hopeless. Reality isn’t hopeless. Yes, you’re not obligated to break through to bigots, and Becky is putting a lot on the line here and putting a lot of effort which she doesn’t have to, but IT IS POSSIBLE. The lived reality is that it’s possible and people DO change. Don’t go making the situation seem EVEN WORSE THAN IT IS. Please.
This actually reminds me of that time everyone ganged up on Gem Harvest for showing a kid trying to break through to their racist relative like NO HE DOESN’T DESERVE IT STOP SHOWING TO KIDS THAT THEY MIGHT BE ABLE TO GET THROUGH TO THEIR FAMILY BY BEING SWEET like okay I get that your experience makes this look painful but there are also kids for whom the effort is worth the result? There are people who’ve managed to get through to their bigot relatives and lessen the total amount of bigotry in the world?
Like, no, people aren’t obligated to do this. But when media shows that it’s possible, that those bigots are still people who can be got through to, that we don’t live in a world full of terrifying empathiless monsters who want nothing but our deaths and cannot be swayed… It’s a hopeful thing, too
It’s totally possible for Robin to be redeemed! In fact from where I’m standing, I think that’s actually a very likely eventuality for her character arc. And when she redeems herself, it will be legitimate and all that entails. She can change and she always can change in the future, even if right now she displays nothing I can see that says she is willing to yet.
My huge issue and why I’m bashing Robin’s ability to be defended all over the place is because………none of this has happened yet. Her personality and discomfort or recognition of anything and potential for the future are not as important as her, right here, right now, treating Becky like a disruptive toddler who can be dismissed out of hand for trying to be heard or given recognition by offering a silly phone game.
It’s not bad to show awful characters being redeemed. It’s beautiful and if it happens I’m sure it’ll be done right. It’s just not a thing that’s happened yet, if it is going to. It hasn’t happened. I don’t see evidence that it is inevitable or even probable solely on the basis of Robin’s behavior in DoA without dragging in optimism that has a valid but not-what-we’re-looking-at basis in decades of history in another universe.
The problem is that media shows it as actually working way more frequently than it actually works in reality and it sets people up for either pretty brutal disappointment or a lifetime of TRYING to get through to someone who is never going to change because everything they’ve seen tells them it will work eventually if they just keep trying.
Yeah. This. Like it’s awesome when it works and important and beautiful. But a lot of folks get stuck in abusive cycles doing hard painful emotional labor trying to get folks to see their basic humanity who have no interest in ever doing so.
And where it gets really awful is yeah, when the news media sells it as a painful emotional labor that the marginalized person is expected to do. Like, all the articles soft-selling bigotry and excoriating all the liberals living in a “bubble” to try and reach out to them and understand that their deep hatred of X minority groups is actually just because they are so worried about Y bad-faith argument.
And that’s one of the beautiful things about this comic. Most everyone has the potential to be redeemed or is offered the chance. But it does not shy away from the fact that some people you just got to get away from to recover and for those who do get better, there’s often a lot of work and a lot of baggage to work through to get to the other side.
And I think that’s why Robin gets so strongly mixed reactions. Because she feeds just enough signs of awareness and of things getting through in some manner to make folks hold out hope that she’s really close to realizing the awfulness of her current position and growing, while subverting or punishing the attempt to reach out and through enough to make those of us with bad experiences spending way too long trying to reach someone we never could have nasty flashbacks.
And with Robin, I’m feeling the same mix of hope and “eee, get away everyone” that I do when I think about the attempts to reach through to my mother and get her to see what was happening to me.
And I’m extra worried, because her response to someone opening the door a crack is her inserting herself way too much in that person’s life. Like, constantly trying to enforce a happy families illusion with Roz or the stalking hell nightmare she’s doing to Leslie right now. If Becky successfully breaks open that armor a little, it’s very possible for Robin to try and reinterpret that in a way where she’ll be bowling over Becky’s boundaries to “bond” with her more.
But there’s still that sliver of hope that maybe this will be what finally does it and begins that long road to self-awareness and redemption.
It does make it very compelling even if it is extremely distressing at times to read.
Of course, we only tell those stories (in part) because the alternative — the one where you put in years of your life trying to reform someone and it just comes back to bite you in the end — the one that’s far too real — is too horrible to contemplate. Pop culture just doesn’t do cynicism like it used to.
You literally made my horrible mood do a 180 and the day a good one by default. I cannot be unhappy in the face of Nihilist Arby’s at this quality. Thank you.
@Emily – a fucking redemption for Robin would be, no exaggeration, a jump-the-shark-moment on so many conceivable levels –
-Gross-ass liberal feel-good porn that oddly enough, puts the onus on the minority to do emotional labour and bear our necks for people that would just stomp on us.
-It would be really gross about abusers and reform of such.
-It would be both a undermining of the writing of Robin thus far and would squander a character that is far more interesting and plot useful in her current position.
– Frankly, it wouldn’t say complementary things about the author; Ruth/Billie just makes me feel gross on a lot of levels – it becoming a pattern… no, just no.
Honestly, I think you’re just thinking that because you are imagining the gross scenario of it happening. Like, yeah, it can be a drop of writing quality… or Willis can do it the hard way that will really sell the audience on the full reality of it, and it will actually be a new high.
And more to the point, the hordes of folks who can’t drop their love of of SP!Robin and smell the fucking coffee is gross – especially as I’ve been someone whose tried to persuade authority figures of their humanity and been shat on; leaves a revolting taste for me.
Uncle Andy wasn’t interested in any relationship with the gems (with the exception of Steven) at first. Uncle Andy never tried to establish an abusive relationship as normal as far as I know. If Robin gets redeemed at this point I do not want Leslie to be responsible unless Leslie successfully kicks Robin out of her life and that leads to Robins redemption.
If Jasper ever gets redeemed I don’t want Lapis doing the redeeming.
Hey so it’s 5AM and I’m at the point where the anger has cooled off and I am going through the part of the anger cycle where I question / reevaluate. And I want to apologize to you guys for being vitriolic in a lot of my comments today/yesterday and going above and beyond the extent of bluntness and directness which is typically what I like to imagine I’m aiming to write with.
I’ve been hypocritical over bludgeoning as point of contention that other people’s biases are or might be coloring their optimism, reading, or projections for Robin, while 100% letting my own huge-ass bias (my grudge against Robin is very unapologetically real; sometimes petty, sometimes personal) color my reactions while reading and responding to arguments. I’m sorry for the and the condescension. And I let my anxiety / coping mechanisms in the form of getting catharsis in debating stuff online and getting emotions from it become other people’s problem in a way that violates the spirit of the posting rules.
And I will say now and let it be on the record that this apology is not a prelude to change the way I usually argue using language that’s opinionated and extremely analytic / critical / way too fucking intense for someone that could be doing like, anything else. That’s all stuff I know about myself and I’m kind of a dickbag for it so you can always call me that with 100% agreement on my part and no ill-will on my part for future conversation.
But I like to think at least that being blunt, sometimes an asshole, and not hiding my opinion perceived stupid arguments means I think that the person I’m talking to is stupid or bad or not worthy of respect on a personal level. I will strive to limit myself on demeaning other people on a level that hurts them or damages emotional health or insinuates that their talking points don’t deserve being acknowledged and broken down with rationale behind it explaining why and why I think it matters enough to point out. Yes, even if I find the arguments dumb for lots of reasons and won’t shut up about those reasons because this is literally a comforting tactic I use. And I do it with so much energy because it is extremely soothing to spend a day or a week caught up in one thing or another where I can argue stuff in a context of a work of fiction where we can always go back and review history without the horribleness of people being able to say that no, [X] said [y] with one ounce of ambiguity when the actual words in the bubbles are an easy reference point everyone has to acknowledge.
So yeah I’m sorry if this is reading like a notpology or trying to give my excuse because I do not think that attacking people over fictional characters is okay or I should be allowed to. I need to be mindful of that if for whatever reason I decide I am hyped to write 50+ comments and like a million words explaining why yes, I do think is Robin is not sympathetic as of yet and yes, I want so very much for you to agree with me about it, and yes, this has everything to do with the fact that I can’t stand Robin personally and I like it when people can be persuaded not to say anything nice about her that is provably wrong.
You know what I think I’m more of an asshole than I was when I started writing this comment but you know what if you’re commenting on this comic and I start in with the millions of words dismantling something you said it’s just because that’s the most effective way of getting others to agree with me and to have them point out why I actually should maybe agree with them. So unless someone’s like, I don’t know, commenting some shit about racism being overblown or whatever I’m not actually mad at you and I would love to reach a common understanding and then be cool with each other and friendly and not acting based on prejudice from it anytime after we finish arguing about whatever character has me worked up this particular strip!
Also while I’m at it, HEY GUYS I think Robin’s an awful shitbag and I’d love to fight about it if you don’t agree with me!! The possibility of myself being proven 100% wrong by someone else is not a problem just so long as I get to vent and overanalyze things
are you cool with having to eat your words like I will if a miracle happens and we learn something that would make all Robin’s bad stuff either not bad or not really her fault, b/c I’m neurotic about only saying things that are true and being as true-only-things-saying as I can when I’m arguing, like to an utterly pathological degree
if that’s cool sure let’s go to fuckin’ town on the comments I’m glad for the diversion from job apps off and on
Unless she’s actually, literally possessed, I fail to see what could come to light to that effect, but sure, why not? I’ll have you know my words are delicious! Even BEFORE you put mustard on them!
And also, truth is important. There’s no-one in your current administration whose removal would please me more than alternative facts woman. There’s no such thing as alternative facts, unless you subscribe to the multiverse theory, in which case they’re things that happen in alternative universes.
man I feel you so hard on this. The temptation to overblow my points just to attract someone to come argue with me is ever present XD
So, okay, my life experience has been pretty insulated from shitty bigotry on most accounts, so I’m kind of hella connecting with Robin from the position of privilege here. This is just how it works sometimes: you grow up taught that the problems aren’t that bad and that someone always has to be at the bottom and you’re only obligated to care about people directly adjacent to you, and the cognitive dissonance when that conflicts with like, actual empathy, is hard and painful. And there are lots of ways of coping with it, and Robin’s is the simplest and most default one, because it’s literally taught to us privileged folk.
Robin is not being like this because she’s A TERRIBLE PERSON who lacks basic empathy and basic morals. She does not lack either, that’s why her denial is so… bouncy. There is this wall of completely misdirected (well, like 90% misdirected) guilty feeling in the way of understanding the terrible shit of the world and really internalizing the social justice stuff, and I’m not kidding about ‘misdirected’ there. You end up feeling the blame for everything that is out of your control so long as you’re privileged, and even your own mind recognizes that this is bullshit and tries to push it away, except it ends up pushing away whole concepts instead.
(The way around that wall that I have found was by getting into the community from my own marginalization axis. Can’t feel guilty about oppressing others when you’re the one being oppressed, and it’s much easier to reject the guilt bullshit when it comes from you just ‘not being oppressed enough’ like wow no. And once you’ve found your bearings in how to think about this stuff it’s easier to really -get- other things, too)
And yes, Robin’s actual behavior and actual consequences of her actual actions are horrifying, except all they are is bringing the existing system of pulling people into this shit up to 11. Robin amplifies the system, but she’s not a source of it. She doesn’t actually benefit from how terrible her positions are, she just doesn’t see a way to change them other than what to her looks like basically breaking herself in two.
I can’t bring myself to be mad at Robin for rejecting Becky’s story as a ‘people prop’ because in this system, most of what she was exposed to WAS. That’s why pity porn and tokenization is so fucking awful – all it does is desensitize people to this kind of thing, make them assume that whenever something lik this is shown to them, it’s always meant to be a manipulative attack on their emotions without actual substance. Like, 90% of the time I was ever exposed to BUT STARVING CHILDREN IN AFRICA, the action I was being guilt-blackmailed into doing WOULD NOT HAVE ACTUALLY DONE ANYTHING MEANINGFUL FOR THE CHILDREN IN AFRICA. You pass beggars on the street and you wonder if they’re working for someone else who takes their money and if they really are all that poor anyway, because that’s what everyone you grew up around has told you about them: that they’re all fake, that everything you see around you that seems to form a connection between you and marginalized people is FAKE.
And yeah, Robin is being very dense here in not recognizing that Becky’s situation is not like this at all and that she CAN help in a way that will be meaningful compared to what she’d be giving up (the couch). But that’s the thing about Robin: she’s really fucking dense. Like go back to her early appearances and interaction with her staff. This is not Evil Putting On Appearances. Robin is just… like that. It’s hard to get through to her, it’s hard for her to ‘get’ things, and it’s hard for her to live in reality that is so dead-set about being confusing and malicious to her.
(And like, let’s be real, she’s not entirely wrong there – Leslie absolutely DID bring Becky in as an argument in a discussion, and Robin’s BS sensors tingled to that quite appropriately… too bad the reaction was to shut everything out entirely because Robin just doesn’t have the mental faculties to evaluate this kind of information in a safe non-emotional-center engaging way. It’s always just immediately RED ALERT SOMEONE IS TRYING TO BREAK IN WITH MALICIOUS INTENT SEAL ALL ENTRANCES)
Like, yeah, the way Robin’s particular brand of dense goofiness + somehow acquired power (SERIOUSLY HOW DID THAT HAPPEN. CADBURY CREAM EGG CEREAL ONLY WORKED AS AN EXPLANATION IN SHORTPACKED!VERSE) interacts with the shitty bigotry system she’s inside is absolutely chilling and has terrible consequences for vulnerable people around her.
But it doesn’t really change that she’s… pretty get-through-to-able, if you just start with giving her a real outlet of stuff she can easily do rather than trying to make her feel awful. And like, yeah, she’s pretty prone to feeling awful, partly because she’s dense and doesn’t really ‘get’ all the connections of stuff about her and what she’s responsible for / capable of changing and what not, so she just bounces between ‘everything is fun and I’m just dandy’ and ‘everything is terrible and I am ok no no fuck back to position 1’.
Note how willing she was to help with tracking down the rapist. That was something she understood how to deal with, so she was very willing to.
She just… doesn’t know how to deal with most of the other stuff. It’s horrifying that someone like that has gone all the way to Congress, yes. How much of it is really on Robin, though?
I dunno. I’m not sure I’m managing to get across what I’m trying to say here. I guess I just… can see the path to Robin becoming an ally very clearly and easily and don’t really think in categories of redemption so -shrug-
To clarify on the “don’t think in terms of redemption” part, I don’t really care if Robin deserves the forgiveness/redemption/having effort spent on her? The in-universe reality deserves having an ally Robin in it, and the characters deserve to have their already existing efforts to ‘convert’/coexist with Robin succeed. Roz deserves having Robin suddenly listen to her, and Leslie deserves having Robin stop acting like a complete fuck. Becky deserves that couch. So I hope it works out well and doesn’t work out horribly, and prefer to talk about the optimistic possibility. What Robin deserves or does not deserve is rather beside the point, to me.
Okay I’m gonna be honest and I stopped reading this word brick at “Robin is not a terrible person” because if that’s the theme here it’s a waste of my time because her being a terrible person isn’t even in the realm of debatable. She’s literally squatting in Leslie’s home despite her VEHEMENT opposition to her presence. Her response to Becky’s situation is “idgaf.” She supports destructive and dehumanizing policies and simply does not care about their impact so long as doing so benefits her. Like nearly every significant thing she has done has been somewhere on the terrible side of things from just being casually rude and dismissive to being a monstrous bigot who endangers the lives of an entire community for political points.
That’s honestly fine. “This person’s actions are terrible but their personality isn’t” is… not everyone’s cup of tea as an approach. I was aware of it when writing that post, and actually contemplated including a disclaimer along the lines of ‘you might want to stop reading now’ at the start but couldn’t figure out how to word it.
Her personality is also terrible! She’s rude and dismissive and hypocritical and has no regard for other people’s feelings if they are in any way inconvenient to her. The only thing she has going for her is superficial charm but that’s undercut by a deep well of being an awful human being with no real regard for anyone but herself.
“This person’s actions are terrible but their personality isn’t” is a preposterous stance. It’s like saying Ryan tried to rape Joyce but he isn’t a rapist. Our actions are the manifestations of our personality. If 99% of your actions are those of a shitbag, you are, in fact, a shitbag.
Okay I did like the other comment you made but I will make a very concise and very firm argument that starts and ends with Robin is: firmly in control of decisions, votes, and whether reform of legislation or new legislation gets to the floor of the House of Reps for argument, and she is that using that power to cheerfully check off on policies that willingly and knowingly murder entire swathes of people based on others’ bigotry or their own.
Robin was a terrible person before she walked into this comic. She would be a terrible person if she apologized to Leslie right now and left and gave Becky $10,000 dollars and a cell phone.
Robin voted for a bill that would have made it nearly impossibly legal to have a home even if she could afford one because it discriminates against gay people.
Robin is evil because she is the one deciding this and doing it for power and then not caring and not stopping even if she did.
If it makes you feel better, I’m a white cis straight male, which means that discounting my atheism, I’m right on the demographic Robin is pandering to. I have 0 bias in all of this, and I’ve wanted Robin to take a truck to the face, like, 2 strips in.
Is it terrible that I’m beginning to openly hate my country and the sickness that ever made it close enough for these fascist fucks to steal their way into possibly permanent power?
Thank you! Have I mentioned today that you’re nice and you deserve things, and also you are 100% free whil 100% not obligated to tell me if I say something that doesn’t ring well with you on the moral-o-meter I respect your opinions coming with a giant stack of papers’ worth of resources in terms of things that are true and researched
“I appreciate your opinions [FOR] coming with* oh my god that typo ruined the joke that you know lots of stuff and turned it into a passive-agressive request for favors
lol at least if you know where your assholeness is you can, like, mitigate the effect it has on other people. i agree tho, it can be very relaxing to argue fiction because everything is laid out, right there, where it can be cited and no one can gaslight you.
I appreciate that you’re very firm about your opinions! And, I mean, it’s fair to just not like somebody. Not Everyone Has To Be Liked All Of The Time. I do appreciate you trying to tone it down a little. Your passion is one of your good points though!! It’s good to be invested in things!
thank you 🙂 and thanks and I will always try to realize and own up to and be mindful of…………when I’m an asshole and also wrong. because oh my god I hate being wrong, I’ll do anything to not be wrong AND stay wrong
Funny how timely “I’m not gonna be seduced by your pitiful life story” is the day after Joe Walsh basically says “Yer baby can die for all I care”. Even though written months ago. Maybe on any given day you can find an example of conservative indifference to suffering so it just looks that way.
If you look at Paul Ryan on any given day (not recommended), you can find an example of Republican joy to suffering. Indifference would, at this point, be an upgrade.
Yup, Robin’s general shtick is really the compassionate wing of modern mainstream conservatism and that’s pretty stark and terrifying to consider. Like, things have gotten so bad in this country that half of the folks we allow to vote are all in on a religious and political philosophy that is openly hateful to the idea that people other than folks of that tribe get to live and they’ve stolen enough power to make their genocidal goals a legitimate threat they are already beginning to carry out (people dying in ICE containment, prison conditions getting worse, all the shit happening on the borders and in the airports, trans people about to lose the ability to receive healthcare).
Totally unrelated to the comic: we’re going to start a Dresde Files RPG campaign, and since the DM is cribbing some plot points from the books we’re not allowed to read them as of yet. I’m going to play a focused practitioner, slowly upgrading into full-blown wizard as our refresh increases, and my theurgy-lite specialisation is crafting – but since I’m not allowed to read the books, I dunno how potions are in-world. Can someone let me know if the ingredients for this one sounds right:
An Unprimed Boom-Boom Potion can be turned into a Primed Boom-Boom Potion (i.e., a zone-affecting attack) by adding raw magic and an extra ingredient to “target” the potion to a specific type of being. Ingredients are:
Touch: Some acid
Taste: Salt water (representing tears)
Smell: Napalm
Sight: Blood
Sound: A scream of pain
Mind: A thought of loathing
Heart: Whisky (because an Unprimed Boom-Boom Potion does jack, get it? Ahahah… ahah… ah…)
Does this sound like something that would fit with the universe?
Despite as much as this arc shows Robin is a terrible person…
I would totally read a spinoff “Dumbing of Congress”, that’s all about her legislative career all the time and how all the normal congresspersons react to her.
Can Robin be redeemed? yes. Has she earned redemption or forgiveness or friendship? Nope. But those things are gifts and can’t really be earned anyway. But Robin isn’t interested in any of those things, so she can’t have them even if they are offered.
There is one pressing and unanswered question here: Just when did Robin ask the chairman of the Agriculture Subcommittee what noises cows make and why? That alone may be one of the strangest political stories of a generation.
Robin has lost, and will soon have to leave the house.
In the last panel, Becky demonstrates that she’s smart enough, and comprehends Robin well enough, to hurt Robin by using her phone. And Robin receives the message.
Lots of people – even Bagge and Cerberus – seem to see the last panel as Robin recognizing that Becky is similar to her. Several other commenters have called for Robin to hire Becky.
The situation is a lot more adversarial than that, and both of them know it. Becky certainly has not forgotten that Robin is her enemy. And Robin has not forgotten that Becky needs Robin gone. The last panel is Becky saying “I have power over you” and Robin saying “Yes, yes you do.”
So, within the next few strips, Becky leaves the house holding Robin’s phone, and Robin is forced to run after her to get the phone back.
Because Becky is just that smart and awesome.
Icing on the cake would be if Becky stops in front of the media, and Robin tries to physically wrestle the phone away from Becky, on live TV. Becky is smart enough to try this, and Robin is dumb enough that it might work.
In fact, re-reading the strip, I wonder how far back Becky hatched this plan? Even in the first panel, she’s putting Robin’s focus on her phone. Then, making Robin uncomfortable in a way that Robin will want to give Becky the phone.
Because yes, Becky is that smart, and certainly that motivated. And has lots of experience with manipulative people to draw on. (Like Jocelyne.)
Now that’s an interesting angle I hadn’t considered, but yeah, it makes sense. She’s proven in the past to be slick with phones when she has a mind to be and this definitely has reset the power balance a bit after Robin made such a strong initial push to flex her power at the beginning of their interaction.
And that potential end-point makes sense as a plot development. I’ll have to keep my eye on the phone in the coming strips.
Oh, now this would be good – it ends this shitshow, it gets Becky a home, and it draws a target for Robin on the backs of all concerned and gets her mad enough for revenge – it’s pretty much a perfect plot development.
Yep. I think Becky’s willing to open up and show genuine and earnest goodwill toward Robin for saying prejudiced things in her presence.
I think very much that Becky’s not going to let anyone tell her to her face the life she fought tooth and nail to reclaim for herself, with a gun to her head, is somehow not important or anything less than amazing a life to have. Becky has nothing to her name but she’s risked every single other thing in her existence for this life she wanted where she can start a conversation with a lady with the phrase “I’m a lesbian!” Where she won’t face consequences for it of defying a man that would kill her, if he thought it was his right to kill her when she said it.
Robin said that to Becky out loud and Becky fucking gave her the ugliest expression Becky’s given to a conversation partner. Becky shut her down. Becky is smiling like a wacky, friendly, approachable def totes Fellow Kid bundle of joy in the final panel. Becky is putting on the wacky mask and letting Robin have the benefit of her continued tolerance and mind-blowingly patient friendliness.
I don’t think the friendliness itself is fake or that Becky wasn’t (still isn’t?) coming into this hoping she can make some rapport with a lady that’s gotta, maybe, assumedly be cool on some level of existence because liking women’s the coolest!
I think Becky if she’s giving Robin leeway is also openly antagonistic by displaying she could contact a Congressperson with that phone.
I mean all conjecture really but I hope to god that being reminded of Dina the way Robin did it is going to give Becky some ideas of exactly what you can accomplish with a cell phone and what you can accomplish when people underestimate you.
…I REALLY don’t think that’s how this works.
“Someone broke into my account and did some stupid shit sorry” is a VERY easy thing to recover from. All the financial stuff is usually protected with additional passwords and shit, not to mention fiddling with it is actually criminal and would be very stupid of Becky when everyone knows it’s her doing this.
This is not much more than ‘sweet pranks’ and honestly the entire point of Robin going ‘okay maybe they won’t know it’s not me’ is that THIS IS HARDLY GOING TO AFFECT HER REPUTATION even if people take it for the genuine article.
If Robin were smarter, she would think of the points you raised.
Since Robin is very short-sighted, she will probably run after Becky if Becky leaves the house with Robin’s phone. Thus removing herself from Leslie’s house. Thus losing her self-created battle to stay there.
And even with the points you raise, there’s a difference between “Someone broke into my account” and “I gave my phone to someone without locking it.” Especially if there’s any confidential information available in her email – which is probably not specially protected.
At this point, Becky is in physical possession of Robin’s “office equipment”; Robin has been proved wrong and over-confident in her statement that people would know Becky wasn’t her; Robin has basically given her permission to play with her email account (how else to read “They’ll know it’s not me?”) so Becky won’t be doing anything criminal until Robin rescinds that permission.
Remember, Becky doesn’t have to send a single email. She just has to get Robin so focused on the belief that Becky with Robin’s phone is dangerous that, when Robin says “Give that back!” and Becky sprints out of the house, Robin follows.
There’s a lot of talk about whether Robin should or should not be redeemed.
She’s a member of congress. If she redeems herself (figures out that she’s hurting people and does something about it), that could potentially make life better for marginalized people like Becky.
So yeah, I’m totally down with Robin redeeming herself.
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still doing better than Trump’s handiwork
I mean, COMPLETE SENTENCES
She also hasn’t said the words “great” or “tremendous”.
The pinned “office” sign on the background tho XD
(yes, I hadn’t noticed eysterday)
I can’t decide what’s best about it!
It’s just a piece of paper, but Robin thought it was necessary to use four nails to hold it up. Half the nails are bent so she put some effort into hanging it, but not too much because it’s crooked.
Makes me wonder if she nailed the sign to the lamp too and perhaps that’s what started the electrical fire that Leslie doesn’t know about
Or “bigly”.
Trump didn’t actually say that though, he really did say big league, why do people keep bringing that uo
Because he scarcely bothers to enunciate the second G, making it sound like “bigly”. And because it probably annoys him whenever he reads about it.
It’s just, why mock him over something he didn’t say when you could be mocking him over things he did say?
Just a guess. It could be because you can do both.
I personally don’t see the comedy in making fun of things Trump didn’t actually do is all.
Pablo360: For me it’s because he sounds like he’s saying “bigly.” For someone who has “all the best words,” he’s pitiful at pronouncing them. We’re making fun of his lack of language skills. Which would be a dickish thing to do in any other situation, but this dude is convinced that he’s this amazing speaker.
I wonder if she knows of President Jackson’s (lack of) connection to the civil war
But North Carolina once tried to secede over a tariff thing in his time and he stopped it so it totally counts. Nevermind that a minor economic dispute is not nearly the same thing as slavery and if Jackson were in a position to prevent the south from seceding over that it would have been by being a slave-owning president, not exactly something to be proud of or want to model oneself after.
In all seriousness, I think Trump knows exactly what he’s doing with things like this. It’s just like Bowling Green. There’s some tiny obscure twisted grain of truth that there’s no way people will even understand what he means at first, but it’s something his supporters can point to and say that the lying media is misrepresenting him.
This is how post-truth politics works.
And nothing about how “great she’s doing” and how “idiotic” Obama is!
One word summary of Trump’s communication style:
SAD!
It IS pretty low energy.
Yeah, but still – SAD!
If a cow says moo alone, does it make a sound?
For reference, cows make more of a HMMMMMMMRRRRRRRRRRRRRRROOOOOOOOO sound.
Mu.
*slow clap building to rapturous applause*
With one hand, I presume.
Well, yeah. Gotta type with the other
I didn’t think they could applaud, what with the short forelimbs and those claws.
You’re now among my favorites.
LOL!
I thought that was the Chao.
Shazoooo!
If telling a girl who’s just reminded you about her traumatic kidnapping and homelessness to play some Candy Crush doesn’t confirm Robin is and always has been fucking despicable then I don’t know what it’d take to convince the comments section she’s not actually “connecting” here with Becky at all.
She’s trying really hard to dismiss Becky’s situation but it’s seems like she might crack soon.
‘She’s being a fucking horrible unconscionable and shitty hurtful person right now but eventually she maybe could concede that Becky is a person who deserves basic fucking decency’
At long last I’ve decided you may in fact be a human being, now where’s my trophy?
I choose to believe it’s a Candy Crush trophy.
If we wish really hard and are lucky enough she made be alienated enough by her own cognitive dissonace to leave Leslie’s apartment just because Becky’s there and is clearly starting to make her uncomfortable. It would be a move for her own self preservation.
‘If we pretend really hard we can go back three months and make the rest of the week’s strips about Robin being inconvenienced enough by guilt to do the absolute least to maybe not be terrorizing Leslie personally in addition to voting atrocities, because then Robin won’t have to feel guilt for doing bad things’
It may be all we can hope for. Or y’know this is the new reality. Robin lives at Leslie’s house. Becky’s gonna be homeless forever. Tomorrow we’ll cut to what Joe’s doing!
‘It may be Robin gets everything she wants and that’s the only possibility I can imagine for the future of this storyline without Robin slowly and painfully starting to not be a horrible person while others suffer it out’
Like. I get what you’re saying – and hell, I agree that Robin is and has been trash on all counts – but maybe being super condescending and “translating” the comments of those whom you perceive as disagreeing with you is not the best way to make your case? Because that’s all this comes across to me as.
I get that people’s denials and waffling about on her shittiness is incredibly irritating, but every time I see a comment of yours, it seems to escalate in passive-aggression.
I am being condescending on purpose, I do not care if people do not take my interpretations of their comments well, I am not trying to be passive at all so I guess I need to ramp it up
Your persuasive skills are positively Trumpian.
Trump doesn’t back up his rhetoric with evidence and detailed reasoning upon request.
Indeed.
Have you considered standing on a street corner and howling? I’ve found that it’s a much better way of getting people to pay attention to me, though your mileage may vary.
Trump also doesn’t admit when other people bring up points that dent holes in his arguments. Trump isn’t willing to change his mind or consider he could be when someone else makes valid points.
I am not a nice person but I am 100% open to being proven wrong if someone else’s counterpoint is more accurate. That’s how we get better. I have convinced and been convinced more times on this forum than I can count and I haven’t always been nice or even right about it.
What I’m saying is, I am not Trumpian in that I care more about being right than I am willing to face reality, and considering how much I like being right this isn’t a small point of difference.
@Judas Peckerwood *shrug* I mean, I’m fine with what I have. You can go back and read my comments from yesterday or any other day I’ve been here if you want to know how I go about arguing things and how it’s been turning out.
You’re open to counterargument? Really? Okay then:
Robin already recognizes that Becky has been through a lot and ‘deserves basic fucking decency’. She’s recognized that that since Joyce mentioning her back in class made her facade crack. What she’s not doing is *admitting it*, and the reason she’s not doing that is because she believes that Leslie is using Becky as a ‘people prop’ (to make a problem seem more pressing or widespread than it actually is by providing a single possibly non-representative example). And as it happens she’s completely right – that’s exactly what Leslie is doing. Well, that and offering Becky a place to stay – but the reason Leslie introduced Becky to Robin was, in fact, people propping.
@begbert2 Okay, sure. My stance is that it wouldn’t matter to me even if Robin was doing any of this for reasons based on good principles, or if she is as you’re arguing doing this for reasons that have some grounding in her recognition of Becky as a person.
Sure. Whatever. Robin’s not incapable of showing basic fucking decency. Character growth. Cool. That’s not redemption. I may hate Robin past the point where she shows that she’s capable of caring about Becky sincerely or I may not, but I won’t stop thinking she’s a bad person until she disavows and seeks to spend the rest of her life doing whatever she can to mitigate the reality of what career has done to people (as in, hundreds of thousands of people) up to and including killing them because she didn’t want to care when she was voting on it.
I know the condescension is intentional. That’s why I’m asking you to stop. If you were just making an argument and it came off that way, I don’t care.
But rewriting what someone says in order to mock them is just not something I support. I’ve had it done to me so many, many times. And even when it’s an accident, it makes you feel horrible. And it definitely doesn’t make me want to believe the person actually has a decent argument.
To be honest, I agree with you about Robin being horrible and that too many people seem to want to excuse her bad behavior, as they enjoy seeing her character. It’s not unlike the people who liked Trump’s anger and so made excuses for him. It sucks.
But I don’t see how what you’re doing helps. Plus, well, it affects not just the person you are responding to. Seeing this pattern I see used against me all the time makes me kinda angry, too.
I totally get the frustration. I mean, read my posts on the Roz stuff. But please don’t go that far. Make arguments, sure. Express anger. But don’t make up shit people didn’t say in order to mock them or their opinions. Or dog people by doing it over and over to what they say.
Please?
@trlkly Okay. This is all true stuff I did not stop and think out earlier when I came in having a chip on my shoulder and it was shitty and I’m sorry. I’m not going to mock people anymore. I’m sorry for mocking them and hurting them and you. Ask me again (or don’t ask, just straight-up say it) if I do it again
Counter-counterargument: While that is what Leslie is doing, Robin’s denying it not because she recognizes the tactic, but because she’s in deep, deep denial. The tactic is just an excuse. The real problem is that if she admits it, she’s going to have to change everything. Lose the election, even more certainly, but she’s also going to have to admit that she’s been backing something that seriously hurts people. That’s a really hard thing to admit to yourself. It’s a major worldview change. Never easy to do.
I do think she’s going to get there, but not yet. Becky may make a few cracks in the facade. Joining those Leslie’s already made.
Isn’t that what Kris said?
Yes, Robin, it’s all about you. Her pitiful life story is only there to seduce you.
Like I don’t understand how on Earth people are not understanding that this matters
It’s as Carla says, Robin’s biggest problem with Becky is she exists.
I am not a fan of the shipping but I don’t see this action as making Robin despicable. She looks really uncomfortable in panel three, then relinquishes her phone with a lighthearted (again, covering up the discomfort) comment. And I’m not saying that’s great or anything, but yeah a lot of people are super uncomfortable interacting with people who are less well-off than them, let alone ones involved in a big family abuse and police involved thing. It just seems kind of average person average reaction to me.
(of course, her various political views are still despicable even/especially if they’re ones she only really has for the sake of holding her position)
‘Sure, she just flat-out told a girl who has no home and was held at gunpoint by her father that there was no chance this story would earn her any sympathy, but some people are uncomfortable around others that don’t have a goddamn huge pile of money and privilege handy like themselves so they make horrible jokes at their expense’
Maybe you have better experiences with people than I do, to think that this is not average?
I mean, as a young, trans, gay man, I know I’ve undoubtedly got some internalized stuff going on, but this just seems to boil down to how people act. Robin is despicable as a person, but this particular action just seems normal, if nonetheless lousy.
I feel like outright telling someone you refuse to care about them because they’re operating on some kind of agenda is………beyond lousy, because of who exactly Robin’s talking to and Robin being aware of what Becky’s very very immediate predicament when Robin says these things.
I guess what I mean is that it doesn’t seem malicious or anything, and I get that people can be completely awful without being malicious, but in this case it feels more like badly handling a situation than harming someone.
I don’t think it’s malicious either! But it was horrible. Robin not worrying about the impact of her words is a willful thing that she does even when she could do, not that. Every time.
Robin is almost never malicious because that would require her to take other people’s feelings into consideration in any way whatsoever. She is viciously self-centered and simply does not care how her actions affect the people around her for the worse or for the better. It’s all about Robin all the time.
Politics is a very cynical game. Many politicians have been taught this exact thing- to avoid being tricked into caring about someone else’s agenda.
Politics isn’t a game and every time it is referred to as such we sink a tiny bit closer to oblivion.
Honestly, even without the game and cynicism, it’s kind of a requirement. You can’t legislate based on every sad story that someone brings to you. Even on all the true ones.
Nearly anything politicians do can and probably will hurt someone. Even if it’s a good thing over all.
@thejeff Please repeat and confirm / deny my reading and accuracy of your statement being a roundabout but implied way of saying you think all political actions having consequences that’ll “probably hurt someone” means: that there is not one side of the current party system, one party people may join, that’s primary objective has made itself to maintain the most horrible status quos for the least-worthy reasons that affecting the ability of millions and millions of people to fucking live.
If your meaning of “over all” is dismissive like I think it is and used so very casually, then I am upset you believe that is okay. “Over all” is the difference between someone getting slighted, someone getting hurt, entire sections of the global population getting hurt, or how long that has to go on and what or how comparative the cost is.
No. That’s more like: These environmental regulations will improve millions of people’s lives (and save some of them) and even generally improve the economy, but I’ve got this one guy in my office who’s losing his job because of them and that’s going to be really hard on him.
It’s more an “anecdotes aren’t data” argument. Anecdotes can help persuade (because humans work like that), but you need to look at the overall consequences, not just the people with tragic stories that get brought into your office.
The experiences being not uncommon or even rampant doesn’t mitigate in any way whether those experiences are right are wrong or should happen to people.
Pretty sure she handed her phone to Becky to distract Becky from annoyingly reminding her she’s a person.
Becky is sitting on Robin’s couch. I wonder if Robin will have to sit her down and clarify that, no, in fact she can’t have the couch and she should go find somewhere else to be homeless.
The fact that you stated that’s “Robin’s” couch means this situation has gone to far.
Well it’s certainly not Leslie’s couch anymore. That would allow Leslie to determine who slept in it. Robin is operating under Prince John rules where the rich are allowed to steal from the poor to give to themselves. Aka the rules of her party.
Plus she licked it.
Yeah I’ve been waiting for that one too.
“the youth are being too relatable. must give them technology so that they can ignore me like all of the other unrelatable youths”
the true legacy of the baby boomer generation
I mean basically
and then when the youth use it for effective change it’s like “o.O when did you become a person”
I was going to say this elsewhere but it makes more sense over here. Roz has mentioned having quite a few siblings, I think, and either way Robin definitely has Roz and Riley as younger siblings. It’s hella condescending but I can sort of see Robin (consciously or not) giving her the phone because that’s something that quiets down kids who are upset or getting annoying.
mmmmmmmmmmm yeah
without investing anything in them. which is half the problem here
TBH people (including me) like DOA Robin mainly because they liked Walkyverse Robin. She could be horrible and selfish in that universe too, but she was a protagonist there and it was all farce – everything could go back to normal after each arc regardless (to some extent) of what anyone did.
Anyways yeah I still like Robin but I probably shouldn’t???????
Yeah, this. It’s also why people want to believe she can be better than she is. (But yes, she has a long fucking way to go)
It’s not so much that she has a long way to go as that she’s not getting there fast enough. Redemption is one thing for characters like Joyce who can do it gradually but also quickly when faced with the personhood of a gay best friend. Redemption is a different animal for a grown Congressperson whose character growth is the difference between federal votes on matters of mass-scale oppression and she’s got a body count already under her belt and hasn’t cared about it.
“got a body count already under her belt”? Who has she killed? Or even been responsible for killing?
Robin’s a one-term junior Congresswoman. She’s a big fish in the small pond of Indiana, but a minnow in Washington. And, if we’re currently talking the 2015-2016 Congress, a pretty do nothing one as well.
I mean, her politics are despicable, but let’s not blow her actual influence out of proportion. We know she supported one awful law that didn’t pass. That’s a reason to oppose her, but it’s not a body count.
U.S. House of Representatives members get to vote on (or not vote on, by failing to act) lots of stuff, including whether or not hypothetical bills even get officially put to a federal vote or just rot and die in the committee referral stage where they can’t make a bit of difference!
It’s a Congress position so Robin “not doing anything” in this context out of laziness and/or pandering = Robin quashing attempted reformations to overhaul terrible stuff at the stage before she gets to vote horribly on it at the floor stage!
And then she does anyway!!
So, each and every Republican Congresscritter is a mass murderer? Even the most junior and least effective.
(Probably most of the Democrats too. In different ways.)
I mean, I despise them, but I’m not willing to go that far.
Again, certainly reason to oppose her or anyone similar in the real world, but if we’re going to be talking about “body counts” I’d really want something specific to tie it too.
Yes.
Every Republican Congressperson is accountable for mass murder.
I am not fucking joking one iota on this. They are accountable. They as a collective have a bodycount that is not contingent on whether anyone in the world thinks they’re bad or not. They. Are. Murderering.
@thejeff If you would scroll down two inches and read what Ceberus already wrote two hours ago about how a junior representative in the House of Representatives is collectively, individually, completely, a maker of the potential difference on whether you or I or anyone in the United States of America gets to live. If something happens dramatically to us, or like quite a few of us, our personal status quo is unable to adjust for changes that will render us unable and continually harder to pay for health care that’d keep us alive.
If you want to be very, very specific, I turn 26 next month. I will no longer be covered by insurance without having to pay an in-not-a-long-time unaffordable amount just to keep any coverage to my name at all.
How long I can make that expense sustainable, and how much it is going cost me further in every capacity, for all additional blows on U.S. healthcare that gets added / is allowed to happen via loopholes. This is the math that is going to start deciding very soon how many more birthdays I get to have after the month of June. I am tied to that vote. You are also tied to that vote, but god knows if I am able to sit still long enough to break down all the ways when my brain keeps shutting down. Because my birthday is in June. People like Robin are doing stuff now with the express intention of transforming health care to make my life worse or to end it completely at some point in time very soon or very soon enough.
I am so scared and upset and furious I am not seeing straight at this second and am not taking the usual pains to double-check everything I type for factual accuracy but right now and yesterday and for the conceivable future I would not feel anything if a Republican member of Congress dropped right now.
I would not feel anything. Tell me that you being able to feel something for them or find them less than reprehensible I damn well have to.
Tell me that you going to argue with me over this. Tell me that your opinion is just an opinion and that opinion is that it’s a talking point to poke fun at the idea these people are trying be responsible for murdering me in the name of money.
Tell me a junior Republican Congressperson is absurd to consider a mass murder. Tell me that every politician being responsible for committing some kind of bad thing means that this is somehow relevant to my opinion of members of the coalition that does it with every ounce of influence they have for reasons that are horrible.
Tell me this and if you’re feeling charitable tell me it plainly and in plain language to spare me the effort of doing this over again just to make sure I understand what your words are by proxy saying or if I’m completely off base in my reasoning and you have a very good explanation of how.
I need citations for the next person I will inevitably get to argue on it.
@thejeff And while you’re at it please tell me that my specific example’s applicability is only anecdotal and isn’t something I’m getting at will be en masse for the reasons Cerb described below. Just so we’re good.
This logic, when thoroughly applied, makes nearly everyone guilty of actuarial murder.
@foamy You know I wrote a bunch of shitty and problematic stuff above when I posted without a proofreading and you have managed to still give me exactly what I wanted before I tell you the argument on Republican politicians like Robin I’m not changing.
I’m wearing three articles of clothing right now manufactured by Nike in Vietnam. One I bought. Two were bought for me. All were made by ruthlessly exploited laborers working in factories for wages below $1/hr.
None of them I can afford not to have based on how many clothes I need to be able to wear clothes clothes. None of them I could have skipped over for clothes manufactured at their actual price made by people being paid nonexploitative wages and suffering the production cost.
This is a system I’m perpetuating when I buy clothes. I need to buy clothes. I can scream at people with every ounce of energy and passion in my body and existence–there is exactly enough in my mental self-inventory to do this about any given cause for perhaps one to three days at a time minus burnout from denialism–I will still not be the one who decides that it changes. I will not be benefiting from in mansions and the powerful support of a hive cult of personality based on those decisions. I’ll be buying fucking clothes. At my absolute worst I am responsible for purchasing clothes that did kill people to make. I didn’t do this because I wanted to. I didn’t decide this is how it has to work. I would not comply with a request to keep deciding that in exchange for two houses on top of being in THE House where members get to decide (or never let be decided) what does or doesn’t happen to every person. Members of both political parties benefit a goddamn heap from what they do to earn and keep the jobs. One side benefits by championing and doing everything possible to support outdated, immoral, stupid, bigoted laws targeting those least able to defend based on appealing to an equally toxic worldview with a voterbase.
They are horrible people and they have done what I accuse them of and far far worse.
Minder: I’m stuck between “whoa you need to chill friend” and “you are completely right and I admire your enthusiasm.” I’m gonna go with the latter.
Like yeah, okay, some of the -way- you’re saying things is a little much, but the actual content and the issues you’re bringing up are completely justified, and that’s more important than the way the information is presented.
And honestly, I don’t know your life. You could be in a group that is personally affected by these homophobic/transphobic/racist/etc. policies that these jerks keep pumping out, and that would completely explain your tone, so I’m trying not to tone-police too much here.
Anyway, I guess the point of this reply was just to say that I pretty much agree with the content of your posts here.
‘Sure, my own reasoning means I’ve murdered people, but I don’t care’.
Also note: This concept you’re pushing is a perfect reason to ignore an individual person suffering right in front of you.
@foamy Sure, my own reasoning means I’ve murdered people, and I do care. I hate every sharp, painful, and completely justified reminder that my existence comes at cost to others. I hate it. I’m desperate for that to stop. I don’t get to pick. I do not have political aspirations or the mental fortitude for the work it takes to go into politics and reap the rewards up to and including the right to fucking decide things that murder, not just people, millions and millions of people.
I am participating in a system that has been created that I cannot escape from and that places me in a position where I get the honored privilege of survival and I get it because of my survival hinging on the denial and dehumanization of people who don’t get as much survival as me or as much privilege in the form of livable conditions as I do. This is because of people, really important people, who did everything required of a politician in the hopes of being part of the machine deciding how many people I have to be responsible against my will for murdering.
They wanted it more than anything. Some hopefully for good reasons such as Dorothy’s.
Absolutely none of them Republicans.
‘Sure, I’m killing people, but stopping that is hard, so I won’t’
we’ve come full circle, you’re writing exactly what I was writing when I was busy being a condescending jerkbag to people and mocking them and the best part is I still get to be right because being deflected so obviously is the easiest way to know when I’m talking to someone that is only talking to show it doesn’t matter what I say or what you say or what reality is. that’s when I can rest easy knowing that this is something I can do all day and so can you and we’re not actually arguing because you’ll say anything it takes to make me wrong and I know without much doubt or anything but satisfaction in my mind.
because the reason I know that is the same reason I’m so sick in the head and the same reason why I’m unable to work enough hours in the week to afford clothes sold at actual prices without giving up in despair. on the work. and the clothes. and the ability to move or to want to eat food if it means having to make it or sleep if it means pausing on doing things all day for days in a row to distract myself from how unhappy I am
because a good man using the same silly deflections and avoiding the argument was also a man that was willing to end the charade by blaming a dog for stuff I saw him do because I was mad and then hit me and terrorize me for disagreeing so long and he was bored and felt entitled to being right or not accountable for my anger.
he’s accountable for my anger. he’s probably accountable for the same killing-people-system participation that I am. he’s not as bad as a single Republican in Congress.
the punchline of that long and very boring joke I just wrote for you is that my brain has been rewired forcibly to construe the situation as winning.
“we’ve come full circle, you’re writing exactly what I was writing when I was busy being a condescending jerkbag to people and mocking them ”
Well I’m glad you realized that, maybe we can move forward!
” the best part is I still get to be right because being deflected so obviously is the easiest way to know when I’m talking to someone that is only talking to show it doesn’t matter what I say or what you say or what reality is. ”
GUESS NOT.
@foamy Ok I will break my vow of I WAS RIGHT silence to give you 100% agreement because this comment? This comment is dead-on correct and I was wrong when I said the things above you quotes.
When today’s comic hit at midnight I went in biased by incorrect assumptions. I paraphrased my counterarguments before explaining them, and I put it all in quotes to mock people by putting my arguments in quotes like they were saying the bad stuff I thought Robin did.
You…kinda put a few words in quotes, maybe kinda written in reaction to something I said, and put it in quotes to mock me by implying that the stuff I wrote was a summary of what I said? I guess?
I’m fully prepared to cop to my flowery metaphor of not-so-different being not-so-applicable now that you pointed it out!! Thanks for that. It feels better having pointless conversation when I am actually able to learn and be shown I overlooked something.
Yeah, like right now, there’s a bill inches from the house floor that will decimate health care for millions upon millions of Americans and directly lead to a lot of deaths and the margin is a thin thin line of Republicans who are being held in check by desperate phone calls and town halls that make them very nervous at the potential backlash.
Not to mention that it’s only the Republican numbers superiority that allows them to forestall the impeachment investigation that should have started day one if the whole party wasn’t complicit in this act of theft and treason.
One single junior representative has immense power in the real world context in which she would occupy.
You do know that ‘mass murder’ is part of the job description, don’t you? There isn’t a successful politician in the world who doesn’t have the blood of hundreds on their hands. IT’S PART OF THE JOB.
I am not kidding here. Wielding coercive force is what governments *exist* for.
The reason *why* they exist has to do with the evolutionary history of the human brain and human societies – Pterry knew what he was saying with the ‘tendency to bend at the knee’ thing, deference to Alphas is literally as much a biological imperative as sex and eating for anyone who isn’t themselves an Alpha, as is the Power Drive in those who by happenstance end up Alphas themselves.
You can’t expect leadershit to behave rationally. They aren’t. No sane person *can* run for office of their own volition – psychopathy is a job requirement.
Sorry, *almost* anyone who isn’t an Alpha themselves. Deltas (whose blind drive to oppose authority counteracts the Alphas’ equally blind drive to possess it) do exist, though neither primary Deltas nor primary Alphas are common – alpha primes are about 0.01% of the population, while Deltas are around 0.0001%. Both arise more or less randomly throughout a given society regardless – almost – of genetics, personal history, social standing, etc.
“deference to Alphas is literally as much a biological imperative as sex and eating for anyone who isn’t themselves an Alpha, as is the Power Drive in those who by happenstance end up Alphas themselves. ”
Of course, “alphas” as we generally know it is pretty much a debunked concept anyway, and wolf researchers in particular are groaning on a daily basis on how this has been known for several decades, yet refuses to lose its hold in the general population. Sort of like how people still refer to Freud as if his hypothesises were still valid in today’s world of psychiatry.
It’s true that, in-comic, we’ve not actually seen Robin vote for or otherwise do anything that acutally kills people. But we know her policy positions, and those definitely have killed people. We know that she was okay with the stuff that made Leslie homeless. And the kicking the homeless out.
And, no, part of the job is not murder. Part of the job may be that you have to make tough decisions that result in unfortunate deaths to save more lives. But that’s not murder. That’s doing the best under bad circumstances.
And, no, completely shutting yourself off from these sorts of thing is not good. You need that compassion to make sure you make the right decision. Sure, it may be hard to be compassionate while also voting to do something that hurts people, but you need to hold on to that to have a working moral compass, even if you lessen its effect somewhat.
Yes, that thing that saves many but hurts some small group of farmers may be the best option. But feeling bad for the farmers means you can try to do things to make their lives better, too.
And, of course, that sort of thinking would lead to minorities being ignored because they’re too small, which isn’t good, either. Let’s say, for example, you’re a homoromantic asexual transgender woman. That’s a pretty small minority. But her concerns matter just as much as the white heterosexual cismale.
And Becky’s minority is even larger than that.
+1
Robin’s behavior hasn’t changed from Walkyverse to DoA, the universe just stopped warping to accommodate her ability to be read as a protagonist.
And it’s fine if you like Robin! Liking Robin is not a problem. She’s written to be likable in Walkyverse especially, even, from an audience standpoint.
My issue is when liking Robin means seeing good or potential future good in her currently godawful behavior because you want it to be there. And arguing that it is there. That she might not be the worst to Becky or that it matters if she slowly, gradually comes around after the stuff Robin already has done.
It’s almost like people are treating this like a comic instead of real life. Infuriating, no?
It’s almost like this comic isn’t explicitly created with real-world matters of ethics and oppression in mind.
Mm hmm. Also, every piece of fiction is through its world and its characters trying to say something that resonates with a particular part of the human experience. Like, even the most mindless comedy relies on assumed universal aspects of being human to draw it’s humor and makes statements whether it intends to or not that have the potential to harm or heal.
Like the idea that fiction is this dead thing that we shouldn’t expect or read anything into is so alien to me, because for me, fiction is beautiful in all you can see in it and how much a good piece of fiction can impact whether it’s world is meant to be realistic or not.
OTOH, fiction remains fiction and there are narrative patterns that can be recognized and anticipated. While it may well be saying things about the real world, it isn’t the real world. That’s why the same behaviors in different fictions affect readers in different ways – like Robin (or Mike) in SP! vs DoA.
One thing about this comic that confuses sometimes and I can’t quite decide if it’s a feature or a flaw is how it can change tone (or genre?) so it’s hard to shape expectations consistently?
Is Amber a superhero who saved Becky or a crazy girl who almost got everyone killed? The actual chase sequence treated it very much as the first. The aftermath more as the second.
Is Robin a wacky slapstick parody of a politician played for laughs or a serious creepy stalker? Depends on which strips you’re reading and how you’re approaching the comic.
That’s because (imo) this comic, like reality itself, has enough nuance that it isn’t melodramatic. Nobody is just one thing. (Well, usually.) You’re confused by the difficulty of fitting it into a genre because you’re expecting it to fit into a genre. That’s perfectly okay and natural, but it won’t work for this comic, because not fitting into a genre is its genre.
Also, please don’t call Amber crazy. That’s not okay.
Not my point, I think. For the car chase (and in some other ways – secret id, for example) Amazi-Girl is clearly playing by super-hero genre rules. (And it rubbed off on Sal. Or at least action hero rules did.) Not nuanced, not reality, not anything else. Realistically, she died there, probably along with others – if she even managed to get far enough for that rather than just not catching the car in the first place.
But later on, others treat that as if that was close to what it would be in reality. And the narrative tends to treat that as a real valid concern. Commentators even more so.
Oh and fiction is all genre, not just the melodramatic stuff. “realism” is a literary genre. The “Great American Novel” is a literary genre. Playing with different genres may be part of this comic’s genre, but I’m not sure how well it’s working. I’m mostly okay with it actually, but you often see a lot of whiplash in the comments when he’s switching to a different one for a bit.
Whether that’s heroics or wacky hijinks and then suddenly taking the wacky hijinks as serious drama.
The reason for the surrealism in the car chase is because of Becky, not Amazi-Girl, and there’s nothing surreal about the secret identity imo because frankly, if this were my hall, I doubt many people would suspect Amber. Hell, I could have been a vigilante and only my roommate (and possibly RA) would have known, given how peninsular I was.
And I’m not arguing that it isn’t genre, I’m simply saying it isn’t a standard genre, and anyone who expects something nonstandard to fit within a standard will exhibit the same confusion you appeared to. There is a large enough audience that it seems to be working, just not for you. It’s okay to not like it, but it’s not fair to say that it’s not working.
And none of that justifies calling Amber crazy. I’ve seen you in the comments before so you should have known better than that.
1) As I said both times, I’m not really bothered by it. I do see a lot of comments here that I think are driven by those genre shifts.
2) Meant to add before: I wouldn’t normally use the word to describe her myself, but that’s the tone I’ve seen from many of those who blame her for nearly getting everyone killed in that sequence. Maybe I should have avoided using it anyway.
Personally, I think the changing tone reflects life in that real-life experiences don’t always have one right and clear interpretation. Like, if someone makes a joke targeted at a particular person, the target might not care in the moment, but as time goes on and the jokes become a pattern, the original joke gets cast in a more sinister light. Or like, there are stories from my life that I sometimes spin as funny stories, because I genuinely see the humor in the fact that I was so painfully shy when I was younger, or in the fact that basically everything in my life suddenly imploded in a single mont. I do have negative emotions related to those times, because being painfully shy sucks and having everything implode in one month also sucks, but the humor and pain aren’t mutually exclusive. I kind of like that weird in-between, not-sure-which-way-to-take-this quality of DoA because it captures that nuance in a way few other texts do, although I can see why someone else might find it jarring.
No. Making excuses for why what a shitty character is doing isn’t actually all that shitty is not “just treating it like a comic.”
And not all comics are the same. This is a comic that ostensibly set in reality dealing with real issues. While it’s one thing to dismiss some “wacky shenangans” that are just there to make the comic work, the stuff that resembles reality should not be so easily dismissed.
I don’t doubt for a moment that the people who make excuses for Robin would make excuses for a real life Robin doing the same things. To treat her as a character that needs defending, you’re already pretending she’s a real person.
It’s fine to like a villain or otherwise awful person in a comic. But, when you start making excuses for them, it gets bad. And when those shitty things are based on real life, it’s just too far.
I’m undecided on whether I still like Robin. We haven’t seen enough of her to decide! Oh, you might say, “Look, she is CAMPING OUT IN LESLIE’S APARTMENT, UNINVITED” but she’s also barely had any time to be established as a character. She could be Book 1 Zuko here.
I was gonna add a long hypothesis I devised, but my iPad seems to be shitting itself, so maybe later
Home invasion is pretty beyond the pale, though. Book 1 Zuko’s closest approach to that was smashing his way into the SWT village, and, you know, he held to his word and left them alone after Aang surrendered himself, whereas someone like Zhao would not’ve.
Also: Epic fantasy series v. slice-of-life college drama.
look Robin is closer to Azula here and that’s saying something. like. an unholy hybrid of Azula and Ty Lee. somehow.
or at least that’s my opinion lmao if u want to go on a “which character is most like which character” spree i am well up for that debate
Ooh, if we’re playing Character Compare for Avatar? I’d say Robin is…uh who’s that guy who won’t let the Gaang tell the Earth King about the eclipse? Because if there’s a war outside Ba Sing Se (and if there must be, stop telling me in detail about the casualties) then it’s not in Ba Sing Se itself so no one is allowed to do anything about it inside the city!
@Minder Long Feng, the guy in charge of the Dai Lee, the cultural preservation corps turned secret police force. Man I hated that guy.
I believe you’re thinking of Long Feng, the one who later got rewarded as a traitor deserves by Azula.
I dunno. Robin combines “zaniness” with what is functionally psychopathy. When I think of descriptive terms for Feng, zany is not necessarily the first one that springs to mind, you know?
The closest match for Robin in the Avatarverse is, IMO, Varrick.
@foamy That…kinda works actually.
headcastings!!
aang: dorothy
katara: joyce, sal
sokka: walky
toph: carla
zuko: amber
idk clearly not a one to one parallel type situation but i believe that dorothy can save the world
also i’m personally annoyed that most of the characters i thought would match up best are white
I dunno if I’d call them castings, exactly, because there’s notable physical differences, but as far as outlook and personality goes:
1. Aang: Becky
2. Katara: Joyce
3. Sokka: Walky
4. Toph: Marcie
5. Zuko: Amber
6. Ozai: Blaine
7. Azula: Mike
8. Suki: — drawing a blank. She’s too well-adjusted. :v
9. Mai: Sarah
10. Ty Lee: Taking suggestions here, too.
lolol yes. i’m not really sure what you call this tbh. “parallelisms between characters” doesn’t really have the same ring to it
Ty Lee just kind of has that bubbly subordination to her – she’s like Harley Quinn, a bit. it’s hard to match her up with anyone!
Yeah Ty Lee minus the compassion and plus a bunch of selfish ambition is a pretty good fit for Robin.
And that’s just the first three-four episodes of book 1. By the time book 1 ends, it’s become incredibly apparent that Zuko is a deeply misguided but fundamentally good person. Heck one of his last acts in book 1 is to try to save Zhao from the ocean spirit. Zhao, a man he hates, who has repeatedly thwarted and antagonized him, who has tried to kill him, and who he was just fighting against is in danger, and Zuko’s first reaction is to try and save him because he’s a member of the Fire Nation. That’s just, wow. And this was all apparent before we even got all his backstory and development in book 2.
Was it invasion? If the landlord LET her in, I think that’s a different issue.
Failing to get the clue about leaving after that, ok idk
See, still chips of rose in these glasses, probs.
Erm, she’s not camping out in Leslie’s apartment uninvited, she broke in and broke in again after every attempt of Leslie’s to get her out included doing it physically.
She just said to a girl that spoke about held at gunpoint by her own father, “I’m not gonna be seduced by your pitiful life story.”
Book 1 Zuko was trying to redeem himself. Everything of Zuko’s character was him redeeming himself. To redeem yourself, you have to admit and believe you have done something wrong–and Robin is not believing it even when she knows it to be true. I will grant her sympathy when she acts sympathetically. Likability isn’t really my issue one way or the other.
Plus, in episode…either 8 or 9 I think, whenever that big storm happened, we found out that what he did was protest against the sacrifice of loyal soldiers in a suicide attack and he risks his own life to save a member of his crew. A crew that apparently only started serving with him recently if Lieutenant…Jin I think it was? Well if he’s anything to go off of. Point is, even before he pulls the Blue Spirit move, he’s already established himself as someone who is morally good, but just so happens to be on the opposite side of the conflict. Sorry, I just really love ATLA and sometimes can’t stop from gushing about it.
The point I was trying to make on an inferior device was something I once named “The Gene Catlow Corollary” (which might not be a corollary but I didn’t have a dictionary at the time), where in the infancy of the Gene Catlow webcomic, a bunch of people were upset that the ONE human that had appeared was Obviously Evil and therefore All Humans Are Evil.
This was after Mr. Obviously Evil Human had all of a handful of appearances over a three-times-a-week comic.
Once other humans had the chance to appear over the next YEAR or so, it was clear that, while not THAT diverse of character, there was significant diversity to the human cast, and Mr. Obviously Evil was motivated by some misguided notion or other.
Sadly, Gene Catlow’s creator Albert Temple passed away two months ago, so a LOT of loose ends will never be tied up, but the point is perhaps Robin is going to undergo a severe change of character, including realizing she is a young, female, slightly more eloquent version of 45 and taking actions to change. Who knows? (other than Willis)
Of course, she could also just go straight down the shitter–like my bro once said (making fun of a gaffe), “Man, once you hit rock bottom, you keep on digging.” EVERYONE has the potential to redeem/fuck up as the narrative dictates. I was trying to use “Book 1 Zuko” as a quick “shit, my iPad is fucking up, I don’t have time to deal with this at 2am” shorthand for the above, not a direct comparison.
not that anyone will bother to read this, but eh, wanted to clear that up for the zero people reading
i just want to know how the art never evolved even one bit in all those years of that comic
now i will never know
Well-
Basically: Robin is shitty, is being shitty, is infuriating, and I want her to get the FUCK out of Leslie’s house.
*BUT*, I think she *is* connecting with Becky, *as much as she is desperately trying not to*. Like, that whole facial expression was “Oh no oh no she is making me care”. This is not a *defense* of Robin. She is a shitty, shitty person right now. But I do think she is starting to connect with Becky, which is *why* she’s trying to get becky to play Candy Crush, so Becky will stop talking.
I wonder if Leslie will be annoyed that the teen she brought to guilt Robin ends up becoming BFFs with her.
I think that’s an unlikely endgame.
Maybe, but now I really want to see it happen.
Mooooooooooooo
My life’s not pitiful I HAVE A GIRLFRIEND SHES REAL
sure jan
Let me guess . . . she’s Canadian?
Visiting America while she’s there?
she’s from the mesozoic era and she’s real in my heart!!
You, my good sir, deserve a manual upvote
<3
And this is how Becky became Robin’s Chief of Staff.
I love Becky so much, especially in panel 3.
I kind of want this interaction to go on forever.
Time for her to send congress urgent links to out of context Onion articles.
“area woman avoids responsibility indefinitely”
Oh my god.
We hereby declare this perfect follow-up to be known as “danni-ing it up”!
excellent
Here! Cite this one to support your economic policy!
That’s incredible.
Becky rules.
You would say that.
…
All I got is Jane Siberry. I doubt you wanna hear that.
Because COW.
“DeSanto this is the third e-mail you’ve sent today about cows, why are you asking?”
“I am not coming up with a killer THEME SONG for the agricultural department. Also the DoTAaF isn’t responding, why???”
I’m going to guess the theme song is an early-90s style rap
“I just heard of a terrorist plot by cows to DESTROY CHICAGO!!!”
“…That was in 1871. And it was an accident.”
“SAYS THE COWS!!!”
“No, the cows say ‘mooo’. We have been through this.”
Sure, but the question everyone wants answered, is: what does the fox say?
…I will forward you to the department of Wildlife Services…
Fazoooo! That’s the sound a cow makes.
Oh, I would give my right leg to send spam mail to Mike Conway
I kind of want a fake Twitter account for Robin …just so I can see it As Run By Becky.
TheRealRobinDesanto
Do NOT believe the lies from hacked @RobinDesanto feed, that is a hacked account, this is my real account for realz!
#FakeMoos
The hashtag makes that comment a thing of beauty.
There’s a @RepDesanto Twitter, don’t know if it’s official or not.
omg i love it
DOA Robin is a horrible person.
That is all.
Once more for the sympathizers in the back.
Walkyverse Robin was also a horrible person.
I thought people said she was liberal in that comic. (I still haven’t read it–I find I mix up the characters too much, and DofA is my jam.)
If so, even if she’s awful, she’d get points for being on the right side on many, many social issues.
If not, then I have to admit I don’t get people liking her so much.
She wasn’t liberal. She didn’t really have any kind of opinion on anything important. The closest she got was wanting to see Ethan make out with a dude.
And World Peace! She got World Peace. That’s pretty liberal.
She was, IIRC, a Democrat in SP! Even though she was a Sarah Palin parody.
This being part of the ‘horrible person’ thing, of course.
If anybody can make Robin realize how terrible her politics are, it’s Becky by just being her awesome self.
Robin fully realizes how terrible her politics are. That’s the problem.
She wants so desperately not to have to change, to acknowledge that she’s been wrong the whole race, to have to deal with all the messy stuff that comes with it. And she’s hoping she can keep the shattered pieces of her hate train running just a little bit longer and get all the things she wants by just holding on to this fantasy moment as long as she can.
And by doing so is dooming everything she has and wants. Which… yeah.
Now this is why I’d kind of like to see her get a “redemption arc”; ironically, because it can be much vengeful fun to watch someone walk themselves into the point where they have to completely restructure their identity and belief system and drag themselves through the emotional broken glass of guilt, all the while realizing they did it to themselves.
I mean, there’s Joyce, but there wasn’t much pathos there. Given a conflict, Joyce has (as far as I remember) always made the right decision, and she’s so young and naive, so there’s not much that needs redeeming. Much more fun to do it to a fictional reactionary.
^^^ this. I want desperately a redemption arc for Robin because HOO BOY THAT’S GUN BE PAINFUL
With pretty fires and fun explosions!
…. what are these… politics…. you speak of? Robin doesn’t have politics. She just votes the way that her handlers and constituents want her to — their politics, not hers — and tries to stay in office.
That is a political position, in its own way.
So, why are we humanizing Robin and not Mary? The arbitrary designated Hate Sink rule or what?
FYI – I support both of them being awful so bad things can happen to them. Which I understand is either ironic or apropos.
Mary hasn’t really done much that can be humanized. Also, a fuckton of people have humanized Mary, especially during the whole arc with Carla.
Yes, I sympathized with screwing with the noisy neighbor until it became about hatespeech. Which I suppose it always was. Understand I don’t believe everyone has deep layers. In fact, I’m actually hoping Robin doesn’t. That underneath that black vile of selfish hypocrisy and gaslighting is….more selfishness and hypocrisy and gaslighting because it seems a troubling message that all monstrous bigots need is sufficient time and patience to awaken their humanity.
I’d think a better message would be that, even though there’s probably something under most people, that doesn’t mean that sufficient time and patience is the right way to go.
I can think that people are possibly redeemable (I mean, Roz is the poster child for this) while not being “patient” with them. Hell, I try to do that all the time.
Yeah, I think even Trump could in theory be redeemable, even if, in practice, I think it’s too late in his life. Doesn’t mean I don’t hate his guts and will in any way be patient with him. Impeach him.
What’s that quote? Something pithy about how it’s important to humanize evildoers so that we recognize humanity’s capacity for evil?
The thing that most annoys me about Wills writing is that the villains are fucking boring. I want to see what Mary does when she’s not acting villainous. Honestly, I think Faz was Willis’ best villain, because he had a personality outside of being a villain. So yeah Willis should humanize his villains like Shakespeare, Rebecca Sugar, Huxely etc.
It’s basically my issue with Robin as I think she’s an amazing villain but I don’t know if she’s meant to be.
In my opinion, the villains are good foils because they are true to folks people who are marginalized regularly encounter in life. And they are as they are in life. Maybe that’s boring to some, but this cuts real. This is who actual villains in real life are. This is how much damage they can do.
Oh, I understand. Back in my fundamentalist despicable asshat days in high school, I never stopped to question why the hell my fellow fundamentalists supported war and rich people getting richer while hammering down on the gays 24/7. It’s when I had my religious experience where God told me to quit being such a scumbag. Many people just LIVE for the opportunity to punch down. Kick too.
Yeah, it helps one feel on top to know there are those lower and it can feel good to believe it is a moral good to enjoy how looking down on a whole swath of “unfortunates” makes one superior without doing a damn thing. And there’s that evil bully edge that just comes out so easily against the designated marginalized target, to enforce the status quo one is so tightly clinging to.
And it is so stark when seen from the outside how awful that all is.
Making most of his villains boring? He’s just following Marvel’s example.
(And now you’re imagining Tom Hiddleston as Faz. You’re welcome.)
I sense a great disturbance in the Fandom … As if thousands of libidos cried out in disgust, and were suddenly silenced.
But you’re forgetting that in real life, people really are like this.
Look at who the effin’ PRESIDENT OF AMERICA IS.
If they’re boring to you, then you’ve never been pitted against one or imagined what it’d be like if they had power over you.
Or you’ve become so desensitized by living in that situation yourself that it doesn’t seem significant or compelling anymore, which, if that’s the case, I am so sorry even while I will maintain it’s by itself terrifying in its impact for many of us.
Different type of boring, I think. The situation isn’t boring. The threat isn’t boring. The villains themselves can be. That’s okay. You can do a good story by focusing on the protagonists and their struggles and character development while having the threats come from stock villains. Doesn’t even mean the villains aren’t realistic – just that we don’t examine them closely to see why they’re like that and how they got where they are.
It can also be interesting to give the villains their own development and more depth – while still keeping them villains.
I do agree in a way. It would be interesting to see Willis humanize one of his villains more – let us get inside and see what makes them tick. Understand and empathize with them, while still leaving them as a villain. That’s hard to do in any work and it may be even harder in a joke a day comic format.
Huh. I don’t find his villains boring at all. Every last one of them has a reason why they are the way they are. They have believable motivations. They may be awful, but they are awful for a reason–a reason that exists in real life, too.
Granted, we don’t know what that reason is for “Clint” yet. And there are other parents who haven’t yet been fleshed out. But, of those who took front and center, all but “Clint” have had their reasons.
I further like that this comic isn’t black and white with “villains” and “good guys.” Amber has done some awful things, but she’s not an awful person. Roz kinda is an awful person, but she’s got the right ideas, and could just be a phase, as she was for many of us. Carla can actually be an asshole, even though it’s actually more of a front for protection, and she seems to have a heart of gold underneath.
So I think the characters are plenty interesting. If they weren’t, I’d treat this comic more like Misfile, where I check in every so often because I’m curious how it will all work out, but not because any of the characters or plot is compelling.
Really? Do we know anything about Blaine besides “He’s an abusive manipulative parent”? Why is he like that? What are his reasons?
Do we know anything about Ryan, beyond him being a “dudebro” rapist? He’s apparently really a pastor’s son, I guess. Does that tie into it somehow?
Ross got a little more – we know about the religion. We know his wife committed suicide, which likely pushed him farther over the edge, but may itself have been related to Ross’s existent behavior, rather than an explanation.
Those people exist in real life. None of them are unrealistic, but they’re also not really examined. We don’t know how they got to the point of being villains.
And that’s fine. It was enough for their role. It made sense. It drove the action. In the parental cases, it helped illuminate the actual important characters.
Giving a lot of screentime to the people you have to live with and are oppressing you is not exactly necessary for tension to exist if you can put yourself for a second in the shoes of someone that already knows them. If people are reading this with a wholly cognizant understanding of abuse you’re aware that Blaine and Ryan are not just conceivably real people.
They are individual instances of a goddamn conga line of Blaines and Ryans and no one really needs to have explained what their reasons are in fiction on top of real life. Because all those reasons are familiar and none of those reasons make them nonhuman caricatures or boring, if you have lived or cared for someone who lived with ones of their own.
They are as capable of human behavior and niceness and nonevil as all the Blaines and Ryans that had reasons for acting while they callously were ruining your life. Any Blaine or Ryan you find boring has dozens of people (innumerable if we go outside the readership) that are ready and waiting to get very invested in these villains’ role in the story because it turns out they already know him.
The reason this does not make the villains boring or unexplored is supposed to be that you’re aware that all the reasons are there, are unimportant, and are reasons that don’t actually stray much from the same foundation even if you spell out every little detail that dressed them up.
We already know.
As I said, it works for his purposes. I’m generally pretty happy with it. His villains are mostly stock types. That’s okay. They’re realistic stock types. We don’t have to delve into them for them to fill their role.
Let’s say I don’t find them boring, but I do find them unexplored.
You did not process what I was saying or just didn’t read it fully or forgot about it immediately but, I think I have already explained why anything you are looking for can be assumed, filled in, and would in fact be very boring to me (far worse than boring to many others) to spend some time or narrative focus on unexplored villains.
But sure I will say it again. That answering the question of what Ryan does when he isn’t being evil to people is not a question because we know or should know the answer is “the same thing as anyone else.” And that’s boring and pointless and it’s actually a shitty boringly pointless thing to write for the audience this comic’s aiming at who might be reminded in the process of things that are less important than skipping to the part where bad people get beat up by good people and everyone cheers.
If Blaine or Ryan are “boring” enough to you that you keep treating it as a narrative weak spot that’d be better off improved upon even if “it works” is the most charitably you can speak about Blaines and Ryans that are not stock characters, but checklists of people around you that do exist that you haven’t been given a reason to think are not boring themselves.
We’re definitely talking past each other. Not sure what else to say.
Yeah, people have been humanizing Mary at every turn, even while she’s been engaged in literal hate speech and demonizing Carla to justify it and many people express regular wishes for her to have a redemption arc and what that would need to entail. So, yeah.
Albeit, the fans who want Robin to remain unredeemed aren’t probably the ones who want Mary redeemed. I’m not sure how the logic on that would follow.
Well, if someone fits that hypothetical, I’m sure they’ll let us know.
Actually, I just thought of people who’d want Mary redeemed because she’s “just” a bigot still white and straight. Robin being queer and Hispanic might be why they’d want her to go down. So…yeah, ugh.
But isn’t she perfect than? She’s just like they are.
There’s also the matter of how, while Mary is a hateful asshole bigot, she’s also a college student and not a high ranking government official. She also hasn’t basically microcolonized anybody else’s house, so there’s that. Robin is legitimately the worse of the two in a lot of ways, although she’s still not the worst character by virtue of having not kidnapped anyone at gunpoint.
I will be incredibly bitter if Robin gets redeemed because I just do not dig the message that sends at all at this point. Maybe if it had happened before it became clear just how little she cares about the well being of anyone but herself even people she claims to like but at this point she’s I just want her to go to jail.
I could argue for a Mary redemption simply because there’s no where else to go now. She’s a joke. Everyone in the dorm hates her. Billie punched her in the face and no one did a thing about it. It set a standard that if she ever gets out of line it’s okay to use violence to shut her up. Billie even threatened her later. Sooooo what else can you do with her? She can go away because no really likes her anyway. She can keep repeating her hatespeech and be used for the occasinal punchline. Or she can change and become interesting.
I dunno, she still has potential as a foil and yes, she’s had a major setback, but she’s got a lot of nasty tools she hasn’t begun to break out yet.
And I think she’s going to be kept as a foil, because she works for so many characters and is more direct and personal for the characters. Also because she’s… well, she’s what Willis was told to venerate when he was younger. It’s the type of person he was told to strive to be, to view as the perfect Christian.
She’s the poison he came from and the harm it poses to everyone on that floor.
Robin might have the power. Blaine, “sir”, and Toedad the visceral abusive vileness. Ryan, the implicit threat. But Mary is the only one who lives with them all day in and day out, trying to find anything she can exploit and a built up martyr complex to justify harming anyone on that floor.
Robin being queer and hispanic would grant her FAR more concession to allowance for a charitable reading than most villains. The problem is Robin has done so much horrible shit that there is no room left to give her leeway on benefit of the doubt and she refuses to give us even a hint of ‘not currently and down the road being horrible after chances rain down on you to show anything worth sympathizing for at this time’
I want everyone redeemed
Except for Clint, but that’s because I want him to die in a giant explosion when Howard doesn’t “hold the door”
At first I read that as “I want everyone redeemed…except for Christ”
That guy threw over my stand at church. I knew I should have bought a heavier one. I was just selling lemonade and girl scout cookies for charity!
Your Bizarro Christianity sounds intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter
And Blaine.
And Ryan. Don’t forget Ryan.
If everyone is redeemed, then the narrative is essentially telling us that everyone hurting us right now is possible to redeem as well.
That is not a truth and it’s a lie that people exploit to do even worse hurt. It’s not a good message narratively especially in a comic about oppression, perspective, and character growth, with the protagonists largely being young adults just entering the world outside their family’s routine for the first time.
Seriously, sometimes people are just relentlessly bad people and the only thing you can do is remove them from your life for the sake of your own health and safety.
Redemption usually means shitty person realizes they were shitty and stops being shitty. It is a nice fantasy to want all the problematic people to just stop being problematic on their own since every other solution is rather hard to swallow.
Actually a villain who was technically on the heroes side but preferred the other solution would be really interesting…
And would also be a certain Steven Universe character who I won’t mention in order to avoid spoiling
Pearl?
An actual narrative redemption arc is rarely just “shitty person realizes they were shitty and stops being shitty”.
I fully expect a redemption arc for Robin. I do not expect Becky to talk her around in the next couple strips and everything to be sunshine and flowers for ever. Robin’s got some work to do. At the best, we’re sowing seeds now.
Mary was a hypocrite and Robin isn’t. That honestly makes all the difference in how people see it, even if they’re equally awful otherwise.
Weirdly, I thought that was reversed. Mary is sincere in her bigoted awful monstrous beliefs. Robin just signs the discrimination bills because it gets her fame and wealth.
Is it easier to change someone who honestly thinks they are good or someone who does it for money and power?
Is it easier to fight a feline or a canine without weapons?
Honestly I think Robin has a better chance of changing than Mary.
Mary appears to be a lawful sadist troll. (Sadist meaning she likes to see others hurt and troll meaning she likes to hurt others.)
Robin appears to be selfish but so long as it doesn’t inconvenience her appears to want good stuff for others and want to do good stuff for others, and appears not to want to hurt others. With the exception of those she dislikes.
That being said. Unless their also sadistic, a troll, or law full with the wrong laws, a mercenary will usually “change” if they thing they can get a better deal. The thing is unless they are charitable, empathetic, feel guilt when they hurt people, or are law full with good laws, they will just as easily change back.
Mary is the not standardcreligioys royalty hypocrite that preaches Christian moral values while also fully believing that those same standards don’t apply to her, just to everyone else.
Robin is a lesbian, but she doesn’t even realize it, she’s in complete denial about it. She’s not applying a different set of standards to herself than she does to others.
Hem, auto correct changed bog standard to not standard and I missed it.
…. so, this is a thread where we argue about which turd is more shitty.
…..
…. nope.
*walks away*
Hypocrisy is Robin’s entire fucking thing.
+1111
robins a big ol hypocrite though what are you talking about
Callously pushing someone towards suicide and then antagonizing their girlfriend about it will burn a good number of bridges, oddly enough.
Yeah, Mary has genuinely committed some felonies and almost killed people. So, definitely, Robin isn’t necessarily a monster yet. However, we don’t know what her laws HAVE done to people.
Gonna take a wild guess here and say probably discriminatory policies/laws that definitely resulted in some deaths.
Yes, we do know what her laws have done to people. We have seen it in real life.
Technically, we don’t.
The only specific legislation we know about didn’t pass, though she’s definitely still culpable for the harm that bill would’ve caused.
Mary personally, deliberately twisting the knife just feels more viscerally evil to me, even though intellectually I know Robin’s more abstract motives for crappiness can cause far more harm.
When did Mary akmost kill someone! Not trying to start anything I legitimately want to know. I know she tried to blackmail Ruth but that wasn’t through attempted murder was it?
She actively contributed to Ruth becoming suicidal through her blackmail.
I thought Ruth was already suicidal? I can understand that though. Ruth was stressing about the blackmail.
Difference between being close to the edge and someone almost pushing them all the way off.
She was managing to hang on before the blackmail, and the stress from the blackmail pushed her towards the edge.
Also, when Chloe was called in because Carla told everyone Ruth was suicidal, Mary tried to get her to leave.
That last one, there. Mary tries to prevent Ruth from getting life-saving help (because Mary wants Ruth to keep being her pawn). Monstrous.
Let’s not forget her attempt later to convince Billie to throw Carla off the troika.
Yup, she risked a person dying by their own hand just to try and hide their own complicity and try and retain a position of power they had no right to occupy.
And that’s something that resonates very personally after the hell I’ve been through with my very-soon-to-be-ex-head-of-school.
Cerberus:
OH GOOD that asshat is actually getting removed?!
I shall prepare the conical hats and festive fizzy drinks.
@Cerberus @Felgraf I can all but physically taste the spite in “very-soon-to-be-ex-“, I am so glad to know there’s some form of consequence for the ghastly shit he’s pulled on you that we readers’ve been privy to!
and I’m hopeful that this means betterment and resolution on some of that ghastly shit, and that it coincides with good or not-worse developments on the other and also ghastly shit that that was piling on top of because of other dudes like him
Felgraf- Yup! Finally! And it’s a proper shitcan too. Most folks who leave more voluntarily have a “exciting new opportunity at X” part, but he just got a form letter with “pursuing other opportunities”. So yeah, fired fired. Just have another 2 and a half weeks until he’s gone for good, but the new boss is already taking over major functions and undoing some of his petty stuff against me.
I just hope she also works to make amends with the student who was much more directly hurt.
Minder- No, never. I would never enjoy the petty spite of this. I certainly didn’t have a massive evil grin on my face the entire day after finding out about his shitcanning. No, indeed. I’m a good person who never ever feels joy about the loss of power of folks who use that power to harm marginalized people.
I used to think schadenfreude was horrible. But then I realized just how awful some people can be.
You’re happy a shitty person who was hurting people got some sort of consequence. Nothing wrong with that. Same way I felt when my sister’s narcissistic boss (and a psychiatrist) got hoisted by her own petard.
As Hank Hill would say, she was “putting a lot of strain on a structure that’s already not up to code.” Ruth was standing on the edge and Mary did her best to tilt the ground she was on. If you start jerking an already suicidal person around, you’re trying to kill them.
As of this comic’s writing (hint: it applies at any point in time and especially the next four years) there are several examples of how her last term of voting on bills in the House of Representatives has both created and blocked legislative reform on many decisions that result in a body count!
That specific bill not passing doesn’t mean that other dangerous bills didn’t, and it doesn’t mean that bills that should have passed got shut down as routine and that is killing people.
It does burn bridges, believe me. That’s why I have so much anxiety and social issues.
i mean Mary wore an outfit directly tied to Nazi styles. after making a transphobic comment to Carla and trying to blackmail Ruth for being a lesbian. i’m not sure there’s much redemption possible here. she’s the local self-righteous cockroach who won’t leave
whereas Robin is so blatantly performative at whatever she is trying to be that it’s hard to believe that there isn’t some self-awareness going on there. like, she’s aware that she ought to be feeling sorry for Becky, even as she verbally refuses to. that’s…something I guess. that she’s capable of some level of shame.
for someone who excused voting for a anti-gay rights bill with “it didn’t pass” like that makes it ok
like just because your shitty action was ineffectual doesn’t make it ok
Whether you hurt me through callous disregard or intentional malice, the effect is just the same and the hurt is equally real in either way.
Robin has been dancing around not holding hate in her heart, but she still has done terrible things that directly impact all the characters. And we’ve seen the damage her active attempts to craft a “happy narrative” have to folks like Leslie whose consent they steamroll over to hold on to this fantasy of “being a good person”.
It makes for an interesting scenario. And honestly I find both of them very compelling even though Robin is hard to watch sometimes and I absolutely loathe Mary. But they serve as very important foils and represent real problems that folks encounter.
yeee. they both serve important purposes!! it just can be painful to watch.
and like…Robin’s avoidance of these issues has made her more shallow and more incapable of actually engaging with people and their emotions in a forthright way. I’m…pretty sure she got into politics because she wanted to be a superhero. http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-7/01-glower-vacuum/interns/
which, if the case, is…super depressing. because like the political arena seems to be all about what compromises you make when and where to get things done. how do you maintain integrity when everything coasts on public approval? and when the voices that need the most protecting aren’t the ones that can speak the loudest, they lose. hard. but that doesn’t mean they aren’t speaking and don’t need to be listened to
so yes, all of this
True, the damage is the same. But the potential to change them is different.
I don’t believe sadists really can be changed. Anyone above that can be changed, but it can be so hard as to be impractical, and it’s not your responsibility to change them. Sure, you can and should try if you can do so without harm to yourself or others, but that’s only becuase you may have misjudged them.
I do tend to align with the people who say that Robin has more potential to change that Mary. Robin’s obliviousness is a protection mechanism to keep her from feeling things, so, if you can actually get past that, she could decide to change.
But Mary just hates everyone. There is no “aha” moment possible here, barring some sort of near death experience. The only chance she has at redemption is a long journey after being hurt so many times by the people she’s trying to hurt. It would basically be the “start acting nice (to get people off my back)” version where you actually sorta become nicer.
But I also see nothing immediate that would convince her she needs to even start down that road. While I can see Robin being dethroned in her politics and accepting her queer-ness as a start towards fixing things.
Still doesn’t mean she’s not an awful person right now.
i mean yeah but also people have to be willing to change themselves. you can’t just do all the work for somebody, because if they don’t do the work of changing they won’t learn. and also it’s kind of unfair to love someone for who they might be instead of who they are, which i think is the trap that Leslie fell into. :/
i don’t think Mary is gonna go the Belkar redemption route, tho, because she genuinely doesn’t care about other people unless they fit into her schema. she’s more of a Miko Miyazaki. (if these references don’t make sense to you, they’re from Order of the Stick: Belkar is the resident sociopath who acts good to make things easier for himself and finds himself growing a conscience, and Miko is the Lawful Good who assumes everything she does is good because she’s LG, without considering consequences for her actions.)
why does humanizing a character have to mean sympathizing with and defending their actions or projecting possible decency onto actions that are themselves terrible like it matters that something might be there eventually and the harm just goes on in the meantime
I love that Robin’s just going to let her do it
Having Becky screw around with Robin’s campaigning should be quite interesting.
Becky, you beautiful person you. 😀
You know, thinking about what Leslie said earlier, about how much Becky reminds her of herself as a baby gay, I wonder how she’d feel about Becky’s usage of tactical frivolity in a pinch. (I’ve read a lot about that recently, especially its significance and historic use in the LGBT community. It’s fascinating and awesome.)
You keep making me proud, you perfect gingersnap. :3
By tactical frivolity, do you mean the attitude of “Well, you want me dead by proxy, but fuck you, I have somethings I want to discuss”?
I was referring to her emailing chiefs of staff while logged in as Robin.
Nah. It would be intentionally acting goofy and fun to disarm people.
It’s also not dissimilar to what Robin is doing with her goofiness, except Robin isn’t doing it to stand up to any sort of authority or bigotry. She’s just doing it to make herself “likeable” and keep herself from feeling bad about the bad things she does.
AND WHAT DOES THE FOX SAY ?
That Bill O’Riley has been fired for sexual harassment.
…
Oooohhhhhh, you meant the song? I don’t know, never listened to it or an actual fox for that matter.
… dammit, now I can only 99.9% hate FNN.
Well if you want that .1% back, it was after several years and many accusations that Fox finally did something besides pretend it wasn’t happening.
Also he got severance pay. Lots of it.
Yep. Damn bastard. And has the nerve to complain.
More, in fact, than the *victims of the sexual harassment got combined*
fuck
Okay, back to 100%. Thanks everyone for telling me tha….
…. fuck.
They replaced him with Tucker Carlson.
Let the hate flow through you.
It’s probably a good thing that no one on earth is force sensitive (that we know of), otherwise there would probably be a million wannabe Sith Lords running around on this planet.
…
Then again, that might be an improvement…
Death cries, if we’re talking the cable news channel.
Does anyone want it to be revealed that Robin had a program for getting rid of homelessness back when she was mayor of Billie’s hometown? Because, right now, her reaction makes me think that’s where Representative Desanto’s career began with the help of Billie’s dad.
Man that’s perfect. If other world her is anything to go by she actually would have thought outlawing homelessness would magically give people homes.
That would actually be funny and horrifying if she thought she did a bill to give them homes.
To be fair the war on drugs is still a thing.
I’ve always assumed this was the case. It lines up with what Billy’s parents say happened.
That is what Billie’s parents say happened. It’s tying it to Robin that’s the new idea.
I doubt Robin was ever mayor of anything. Politicians in executive positions like that have to actually get stuff done. Robin would flounder so badly.
Yay, becky’s reality-distortion field is beginning to disrupt robin’s! (I hope)
I’m about halfway through season 2 of steven universe now. nearly every episode is another punch to the gut. in a good way. (that made more sense inside my head 😛 ) Is there somewhere I can discuss that without getting spoilers? there’s just… so much everything. and gem fusion as a metaphor for DID/OSDD stuff seems to fit even better now :/ the ironic thing is, I… I’m not sure if I just straight-up forgot half the stuff I read from Cerberus’ links or if an alter is actually hiding things. It’s hard to tell; my memory has always been nonlinear and patchy.
I don’t know about live discussion, but I enjoyed reading the AV Club recaps while I was catching up on it.
Mark watches!
http://markwatches.net/reviews/tag/mark-watches-steven-universe/
Downside is it’s not real-time, so interactive discussion is not really there, but he goes into things blind without spoilers, so his reviews are all based on just what he’s seen so far and he’s got video episodes of him watching it in real time so you can vicariously live the experience of someone seeing stuff fresh with you.
Plus he’s super aware on a lot of different axes, tags potential triggers with regards to ableism, transphobia, abuse, etc… and the discussion threads under his posts have a ROT13 rule where any spoilers have to be ROT13’d.
It’s not exactly what you are looking for and I don’t think he’s made many connections relating specifically to DID (though he is kinda doing so in his Mark Reads of Carpe Jugulum), but it’s probably the closest I can think of. Plus, he’s just heart-warming to watch, because he’s a giant teddy bear.
darn, interactive discussion is the part I’m looking for. there are plenty of places I can read about *other* people’s thoughts, but it might be nice not to deal with mine alone so much. (just one more week to my next therapist appointment… but I dunno if she’s ever watched Steven Universe…)
hmm, there’s a long list of forums at http://did-research.org/resources.html – maybe I’ll check some of those out.
There’s no interactive discussion with Mark, but there’s plenty of discussion in the comments. Or, at least, there is on other stuff he does. I haven’t Steven Universe yet, so I haven’t done Mark’s stuff.
Also, love that Mark’s getting mentioned here by someone beside me! Dude is pretty awesome. If you’re a Trek fan, he’s watching all of it unspoiled. If you’re a Discworld fan, he’s doing all the books unspoiled, too. And if you like to see Twilight torn a new one, his original “Mark reads Twilight” is still awesome. Dude does not pull any punches in pointing out how awful every part of it is, and not in the “Twilight suckslol” way.
archived comments don’t count 😉 he did season 2 last year. but it does look like an interesting thing to read sometime. um. sometime I’m not about to be late for an appointment. fuuuuck why did I do this….
omg, Mark Watches is pretty good 🙂 but now I wanna watch all of SU so I can read the spoiler bits 😉
Becky pwns Robin (and the Sec. of Ag.)
Yesssss I love this.
Robins breaking to Becky’s powa.
And together they will fuck with high ranking political officials.
Well Robin, Becky calls your deflection tactics and raises a “convincing impersonation of you through text messages”. Also, Becky officially became my favorite character. Sorry Dina and Carla, you’re tied tied for second plus. Oh, and uh could you just kindly fuck right off Robin?
Kind of shocked by all the comments about Becky warming Robin’s icy heart or w/e and them becoming future bff’s holding hands through daisies. Like they’re not bonding here. Becky’s making an effort and Robin is doing everything she can to stop this from being a human moment. She handed Becky that phone to shut her the fuck up about all her tragic life shit because Robin is fully aware that her politics are terrible but she doesn’t like to be made to feel bad about them. And honestly? Even if they do get along enough for Robin to decide to do what she should have done hours ago and leave Leslie’s house it’s still shitty that so much had to happen for her to do that and even if she’s willing to admit Becky’s a person deserving of the bare minimum of human compassion for five minutes what’s going to happen when she’s back among her handlers hastily scrambling to rebuild her career? Hell Leslie’s been there to remind Robin that lgbt people are people multiple times and how many times has Robin pretended to hear her and then ignored it? How long would it take her to go right back to what’s going to get her ahead again when Becky’s not in her immediate field of vision?
Some comments really aren’t getting that Robin being redeemed or even defensible at this point would require quite a bit more than being decent to Becky and Leslie personally, or starting to show the tiniest iota of decent and positive behavior.
Like, redemption is not becoming a better person. Redemption is atoning for what you’ve done. If Robin warms up to Becky (and I am not seeing it happen, for Christ’s sake, she’s fucking stating outright above that she doesn’t care and won’t care out of principle) then Robin is still not redeemed. She is still not defensible, or a good person, by being very slightly less of a shitty person, and we haven’t even got a CASE for that yet. Robin’s giving us nothing. And yet people are taking Becky’s decision to forgive and reach out as a signal that Robin deserves it and is not just being awarded out of generosity benefit of the doubt she’s not entitled to even the tiniest little bit.
They’re too attached to SP Robin (even though SP Robin was also a terrible human being the universe just bent over backwards to accommodate her) and they can’t divorce their expectations of her here from how they remember her being portrayed.
I do suspect different meaning for “redemption” are part of the problem with the discussion here.
Robin is almost certainly going to change and grow and become a better person, even if there are few signs of it yet. There are some – the very defensiveness and deflections are hints she actually realizes the problems with what she is, even if she’s not ready to change or even admit it. We don’t see that with the (other) villains in the strip.
At some point, she’s going to come to terms with actually being queer. That’s a common life-changing experience, probably even more so in this case. (Note: Yes it’s not unknown for anti-gay politicians to be closeted and active and still anti-gay. This isn’t likely to be Robin.)
Whether she suffers enough or does enough good for you to considered her redeemed will have to be a personal call. As I’ve said before, I don’t expect this to be quick or easy – or to just be the result of Leslie putting up with her long enough.
I consider “redeemed” at the scale of a politician with Robin’s history as acknowledging in full–and living forever without allowing herself to rationalize away–what her actions have done or could have done to people because she didn’t want to care.
It means that she changes her actions and behaviors and compensates by doing as much good in the opposite direction that she becomes sympathetic even in light of the stuff she voted on and campaigned about.
It means that, while she doesn’t need to spend the rest of her life punishing herself or never forgive herself for her actions, she is not allowed to pretend they didn’t happen, they weren’t defensible when they happened, her being sorry now does not entitle her to forgiveness from other people who were affected even if she is 100% committed to never doing those things again.
People cite Joyce’s redemptive character arcs for comparison but Joyce’s flaws and history and the elements of her worldview/past actions that need be self-examined and purged…they’re not comparable to Robin’s. Joyce in her history grew up doing things that hurt people and perpetuated a system of hurting people. She in her history participated in a bigoted protest at a Chik-fil-A when she and Becky were kids, that was intended to and did hurt queer people and deny them respect. She was a kid and her parents gave her a sign to hold that day and she was too young to question it even without that she grew up indoctrinated to not question why. It’d be extremely stupid of me to say Joyce is a horrible person. Joyce has hurt a lot of people unwittingly in small but important ways that took away their humanity, and she’s realized that, and she is going to do everything under the sun from now on to do the opposite. And she will never not remember that she was a part of the system because her ferocity in defending Becky is the action of her atoning in body and heart. Joyce isn’t going to end up a despicable person and she never was one. Robin decided to make it her life’s goal to be in a position of power over others and she abused that power. She did that at the federal level. She willingly participated in the coalition within the political machine that would and did automatically stop any positive reform from happening they could unless certain members balked because that’s what the Republican party line is.
Robin can be redeemed but it is not a redemption that can or would be heartwarming and come without her having to wear the kind of scar on her character forever for what she did that Ryan got physically carved onto his face. It’s there forever. Even if you’re not that you forever. You carry it and you do so knowing anyone could see it if they looked at you. That is how much it would take to make Robin a good person that I could love and treat with empathy.
I completely agree.
Comic Reactions:
Panel 1: I find Robin’s eyes throughout all of this fascinating, because it looks like Leslie may have in fact been right and even Robin is not enough of a empathy-less monster to hold firm on this, even though she so desperately wants to to cling to her fantasy where she doesn’t actually have to grow and just gets all the things she wants anyways (which is an aspect of Robin’s character in SP that it’s cool to see under a more realistic and outsider lens to just fully wallow in how unhealthy and toxic it is).
Like, her eyes, her whole shtick is cracking here and I think the problem is that Robin is used to undoing folks who follow logical consistency and try and argue in good-faith. And Becky definitely tries to be those things, but when her wacky shields are up, she also has a habit of coming in sideways in ways folks don’t expect and that disrupts a lot of developing narratives.
And I think that might be the thing Manley also has mastered, which has infuriated her on the campaign trail. Because she’s well suited in erasing actual content and making it all about show, but she needs someone taking things seriously to work off of to do her horrible magic.
And Becky… is. But not in the way she expects. Like, I bet she thought that this bonding thing would go in a very specific way and was not expecting Becky to round the conversation back to the elephant in the room and what was just distressing Robin. And to do so innocuously it would be difficult for her to claim offense or justify going off on a tangent.
And it’s interesting, because it’s Robin being placed on the back-foot instead of getting ahead and directing things where she wants it to go.
Also, dear Bob, Becky is a sweet wonderful child and I want to protect her forever because she is so pure and good.
Panel 2: Mmm, I have a lot of feels about this, because I’ve also been in the sort of conversations where it’s like “oh, why don’t you X” or “what are you doing on Y”, where I can either remain tight-lipped or bring down the mood by having to reference the horrible backstory behind why I’m not Xing or Ying.
And it’s beautiful that Becky has not learned that shame yet. She’s still so beautifully honest and just blurts it all out. Doesn’t build up to it, just references it, because while it hurt, it’s a thing that happened to her and she sees no reason why she should be the one to feel shame about it. She doesn’t have a phone because she’s got a jerkass dad who wanted to keep her controlled to the point where he kidnapped her. So she says that.
And that’s part of that coming in sideways that’s really interesting and where this verbal spar becomes fascinating, because Robin has such great ability to wound Becky with an errant comment, but Becky does this.
And this seems to penetrate more than Leslie’s backstory did, because there’s no build-up, nothing she can get her “I’m not listening” guard up on, it’s just, boom, there it is, no performance, no weight, just reality.
Whether it’ll be enough…? Unlikely. But it’s definitely doing damage to Robin’s resolve and game.
Also, oi, Robin is so deeply drowning in her privilege. She expects a certain origin of everyone. To the point where she’s assuming that all teenagers have phones, because rich and middle class kids do tend to all have phones. She’s never dared to look at the margins that her policies affect. Actual homeless lives. Folks who’ve had to scramble for their living. People on the edges. She’s never considered them as people. And she’s avoided any chance to ever do so, even when one she is attracted to is pouring her heart out to her.
It makes me pessimistic this will get through, but it’s definitely doing something. And it’s something Robin was definitely not at all prepared for.
Paragraph 2: Sideways eh? Must become a crab then
Paragraph 7: Totally agree. Learned the hard way not to make an option Z
That point about the phones says it all, doesn’t it? And it makes me wonder how long Marcie’s parents needed to scramble to buy her one (or how long she had to work for one).
^^^ this. This is what makes me absolutely love this storyline, because Becky is not being performative here (beyond the most basic ‘let’s pretend everything is fine’ aspect, which if anything is the exact opposite of what Robin expects and is ready to deflect). Robin is being confronted with LIVED REALITY, and it absolutely is making cracks in her shell. She can’t not notice that she’s being horrible and it distresses her. If this keeps up, she’s most likely going to get to the point of wanting to get the fuck out of this house and this situation, which is the exact best case scenario… AND she’s going to get the memory of this stuck with her, because we know she remembers what she hears (see: her remarks about what Roz said)
Yeah, it’s powerful, because what Becky shows is so very genuine and that can be powerful (it’s what shook Joyce out of both her overt homophobia as well as her more subtle cultural homophobia).
Which makes it a lot harder for Robin to be Robin, because it’s one thing to be awful when she can pretend her policies don’t affect “anyone who matters” or that the lovely teacher she doesn’t have a dangerous obsessive crush on mentions she used to be one of those types of people, but like, she’s not anymore so it’s not really real in a way she has to care about. It’s another when a person in it, right now, dealing with the consequences of it, is sitting right next to her, being genuine and open.
It’s affecting her deeply. Whether it will be enough though is an entirely different question, but it’s definitely throwing Robin off her usual game.
“And it’s beautiful that Becky has not learned that shame yet.”
Yes, it is. It’s so nice to see people putting words to this thing becky is doing, because it’s a thing I sometimes do, or used to… that side of me doesn’t come out much any more, and I think shame is a big part of it. being more aware of social things in general, it’s harder to slip into that innocence, harder to forget how risky it can be to be that vulnerable, or all the ways that people might be judging me. I didn’t quite realise that I feel shame when I think of how dangerous some of those moments were. Or how other people might think badly of me for oversharing or being friendly to the Bad Person or some other social faux pas.
There’s something icky about being ashamed of innocence. :/
There’s also something icky about letting people that close to me, though. I have boundaries now, and they don’t like being ignored.
urgh. how do I deal with aspects that don’t have those boundaries? no wonder there was so much anger in there… the parts with boundaries want those boundaries up all the time, but that’s not happening… and they’re scared because those boundaries are meant to protect us…
VOTE! Becky for Congress! Remember, to be happy, we must be gay! *original definition/wordplay* So choose Becky for Congress!
This advertisement is endorsed by Becky2017 and is supported by the National Becky Foundation.
i’d vote for her
give Becky a house. give her…the White House!!
Here’s a random thought. How many comments regulars here are tabletop gamers? Don’t worry, you don’t have to be a hardcore player with entire shelves full of game books in order to answer. It’s a question I’ve had in the back of my mind.
(raises hand)
Nice. Have you got a steady group? That’s pretty important.
I have one right now. Not sure if I’ll stick with it, but that’s more for the sake of my own time and goals; they’re a good bunch, though one of them is kind of a That Gamer.
And what doth you care about what games thy Highness plays? Is there of importance to thee? *Raises Hand*
It’s very important to me that every website I frequent shares my exact set of interests, so I can avoid ever having to leave my comfort zone.
Joking, of course. Just a mild curiosity.
I might have dabbled once or twice…. this week.
Oh, to have a large enough circle for that much gaming…
I’m lucky that way. But it also takes time and cultivation.
When I was new in town I helped a neighbour move in and just happened to see a box of Settlers among their stuff… and after that we were best of friends. We both had young kids at the time so it ended up with the two of us playing a game of Agricola a few nights each week, each rocking a kid in a baby carrier that fell asleep as we cursed each other for stealing the last reed.
Good times.
My boyfriend and I were wondering just yesterday what exactly is the difference between tabletop games and boardgames. We’re into the latter, I know that, but some webshops make the first sound like a broader definition, even though we previously thought it meant a fifferent thing.
A tabletop game can be a board game, but not all of them require a board. Dungeons & Dragons has had a few board games, for example, but I don’t think any of its various editions need a board to play. In fact, you can play 5th Edition D&D with nothing but pens, paper, and dice, if you so choose.
“Tabletop games” generally refers to role-playing games, in which the rules are defined and dice are used to determine the outcomes of character actions, but in which there is no single board configuration, scenario, or victory condition(s). Game components – rule books, dice, character sheets, scenario modules, etc etc – are usually sold separately rather than contained in a single box, though starter or introductory sets do exist (and are often cross-marketed to those with experience playing board games).
While the term technically encompasses board games and card games as well as RPGs, in my experience “tabletop game” primarily serves these days to identify “traditional” role-playing games (those played in person, with physical dice, books, etc around a table) and contrast them to computer or console games with RPG elements, massively-multiplayer games, games played via chat channels, “virtual tabletop” websites or other software tools and services, etc.
Does this help?
Thanks, this was my impression, too, but I got confused. I’m not into tabletop games, then. I like strategy board games, mostly, like Scythe and stuff, but I play many things in the “club” every Monday.
I *can’t* roleplay, but I like board games. lots of Roll for the Galaxy (roll! I always hear that in the voice of Murray the talking skull 😉 ) … because I have to ration my thinking these days. (but not as much as last year, yay)
Two plus decades of tabletop gaming.
Wow, that’s pretty long. I’ve only been doing it on-and-off for a few years. Have you accumulated a collection to match?
I think I have about 30 books, they’re a bit scattered around the house so no exact count. I gamed for a long time with a group and our collective library was a 150+. There was several duplicates of core books and I’m counting a fare number of supplemental lit. ( 50-60pages)
At least two of the gamers had a decade or two on me in playing the game.
Yeah, tabletop.
Do you go with the classics, or are you more into the newer systems?
Board games and a limited amount of DND 5e.
I’m looking into 5e at the moment, since I’ve heard it’s really easy to run, especially compared to 4e.
I’ve had a chance to play 5e last year, very fun, much more streamlined than the last couple editions. They also address the one spell and done issue with beginning mages and clerics. I did feel that they may have slimmed the skill section down a bit further than necessary.
You rang?
I rolled, but close enough.
I played plenty of board and card games but never got into DND. I’ve wanted to…but there’s just so much dice rolling and I could get an RPG experience without dice through video games. On the other hand, I do have a lot of experience that are video games based heavily on DND.
Card games, you say? Mind sharing which ones?
Been a p’n’p player for some twenty years. Sadly, these days it’s hard to find dates as we are a large group and, you know, adult responsibilities and shit.
I recommend a play-by-post game, if you can get it set up. It’s pretty much a zero-pressure environment, since it’s all in the form of an online thread. You can take as long as you need to.
I’ve managed to find a DnD group this year, so: fuck yes.
(I mean, it’s over the internet and not a table, but it’s still DnD so still counts yo)
Hey, D&D is D&D, no matter how you play it. Anyone who says otherwise is a LIAR and should probably be ignored on pretty much any topic.
Not as often as I used to, but still keep my hand in!
It’s always good to keep up old hobbies. Keeps the mind fresh.
Haven’t actually been playing much the last decade or so, but I still pay some attention. And yeah, I’ve got a bookshelf. Or two.
So many replies from folks with actual bookshelves. It’s starting to make me envious.
*looks at 5 shelves* I, uh, have a few RPG books. It’s not the whole 5 shelves, alright?! One of those is for fiction (plus a bunch of boxes and about 6 other shelved furniture pieces), and half of another is about dinosaurs!
We get together twice a week – today is Gloomhaven night, and on Fridays it’s RPG or boardgame night, depending on population. One of us is the administrator of a literal gaming store, so we never lack for stuff. I’m currently DMing a DnD 5e campaign, and we’re looking to start a Dresden campaign as well.
You seem to have lucked out, what with having an actual store runner in your group. Since you mentioned DMing 5e, how much preparation is usually required before a session? I mean mental preparation, more than actual game prep.
Depends? I’m running a campaign I’m writing myself, so I already know how NPCs will react in a given situation or how to handle things if (ok, WHEN) the party goes off rails. A published campaign probably needs a bit more effort to get into the right frame of mind (but involves a whole lot less prep work, of course).
Actual work at the table depends on how skilled at the game your players are – especially if you have a lot of spellcasters you might need to impose some limits to keep things moving along at an acceptable pace, double especially if your players never know what their spells do or keep misreading what they do (you know you are, I say to the person who’ll never read this).
Yup, frequently end up being the DM, so it’s been a long time since I was just a player.
That’s to bad. The group I was with passed the GM seat around quite a bit. Often because work usually meant someone might might not be able to make a particular session. So often had 1 main campaign and 2-3 minor campaigns going at once depending on who showed.
Also if one of us was burning out we’d switch up the GM’s to give people a breather.
Oh, man. Replace “frequently” with “pretty much always” and that’s been my experience. Finding groups in Southern Illinois is a huge hassle. Maybe it has something to do with the systems I run. Which ones do you usually play?
Palladium’s Rifts and their super hero world as well. Shadowrun every once and a while. And occasionally White Wolf, D&D, Warhammer Medieval (rpg not
the miniature.)
Personally every rpg has pro’s and cons it really depends on the group which rpg fits the best.
I started up last December, and recently finished my first campaign by poorly inventing socialism and then knowingly turning the burgeoning socialism movement into a pawn for an Evil oathbreaker paladin’s power play in a city we were JUST supposed to establish contact with.
Part of the problem is that the initial socialism movement was solely comprised of ambassadors and the other people who attended the party I threw at the palace. I was only there for a day and didn’t have a lot of resources to work with, and also my CHA was much better than my INT or WIS because I was a bard.
Don’t ask how I managed to throw a party at the palace if I wasn’t even from the city. 5e skill checks for supposedly-irrelevant-but-secretly-relevant shenanigans work in mysterious ways.
Sounds like a promising campaign.
Did I mention it was a medieval Pokemon setting? And the city we took over was Saffron?
If you think that campaign was interesting you should have seen the one-shot that prompted it.
I’ve never played. But I do enjoy a lot of stuff related to it. Like Order of the Stick or Darths and Droids or a fanfic called Harry Potter and the Natural 20 where a D&D wizard arrives in Hogwarts (though the author did get stuck partway through book 3 and hasn’t finished)
And my absolute favorite is a podcast called Dice Funk, where they play a modified version of D&D 5e. It’s not your typical D&D podcast, as they designed it to work well for “radio.” And the DMs both want explicitly to avoid the most common tropes, like, for example, having dungeons to plow through or dragons (though Wyverns do show up.) And I have to tell people about it, since word of mouth is the only way anyone hears about it.
The first season is kinda Lovecraftian. It stars Rinaldo the Human Fighter, Anne the Halfling Cleric, and Jayne the Human Druid. But Rinaldo has a ton of charisma and looks and acts like Zorro the Gay Blade. Anne is Chaotic Good, has an intelligence of 3, and has a propensity for fire. And Jayne is a sarcastic shapeshifter who basically hates the party. And they don’t so much solve the Lovecraftian mystery as bumble around in it, making mistake after mistake.
Season 2 is completely different, with a different DM, and stars a fat half-dryad who used to be human, a smart Eladrin elf on his first adventure out of the Fey Wild, a sad human monk who seems to be cursed to have people die around him, and a freaking unicorn barbarian. Also has bird people, and very few non-minorities.
Season 3 has just started, and it’s about a town that no one can leave with a human justiciar (a smart paladin, basically), a Nixie warlock who serves Ghaunadar (god of abominations), a very modified vampire, and a young Wild Magic user who wants to make a name for herself. And the magic is really Wild, as it rolls every time she uses a spell slot.
(She also looks like a little girl thanks to an accident, but I promise they do not do what often happens in anime with that sort of thing. In fact, the only shipping that goes on in the fandom is with the two men. It’s a very gay show, in a very good way.)
Darths & Droids was one of my first introductions to the tabletop world. The first was DM of the Rings, back in early 2013. I still go back and re-read it every so often. As for that podcast, can it be found with a quick search, or is it obscure enough that I’ll need to dig?
Big boardgame freak; played a bit of battletech. Really wanna get into tabletop gaming in the World Of Darkness, or D&D 5e or Shadowrun Anarchy; only one of those that I’ve seen in the offing here is the 2nd; only other system I’ve seen folks wanting to play in these parts is Eclipse Phase (Fucking. Ew.).
Love tabletop RPG. Not in a campaign at the moment, sadly.
(Does roleplay in Minecraft count?)
Panel 3: >:(
So, yeah, I feel so much Becky here, because yeah, there’s a very specific type of dismissal when you share the shit that’s happened to you, where you get put in this pity box. But a pity box without humanity. Just seen as a pitiful wretch that you’ll throw a bone to and move on from.
And it’s like, no, I’m a person. I’ve been through shit and I appreciate sympathy, but I also have worked hard to build my way out of stuff and I have parts of my life that are wonderful and great that I have fought hard to get. And being dismissed as “just another sob story” that erases that hurts.
So yeah, Robin’s attempted dismissal here to retain desperately her fantasy and resist her strong cognitive dissonance and reimpose her desired order of whim is kinda shitty and I love that Becky just refuses to take it.
She doesn’t have a pitiful life. Yeah, she’s been through some major hell, but she’s fought all along to get a life that’s fully hers. She has a network of friends, she has an awesome dino-loving girlfriend who is helping her catch up in Biology, she is starting on her path to restarting college, she has a job, she now has a cool older lesbian mentor who can connect her to community.
She has things that are real and worth acknowledging and celebrating. And that’s true of a lot of people in shitty circumstances. Because you need those little victories and hopes and goals to hold on. Even the folks on the streets are working towards something. It might be mental health. It might be a stable living situation. It might be being able to be themselves. But it’s something. And it’s something they deserve to get and have celebrated when they get it.
And not just be written off as a “pitiful” warning story for privileged people to go “oh my larks, I’m so glad I’m not one of those unfortunate souls” while dismissing the central humanity of those they are “feeling for”.
Becky loves her life. She doesn’t love everything that’s happened to her. But she loves that she is winning back a life that is fully hers. And that’s not something that’s “pitiful” just because a giant toe-shaped asshole tried to do everything he could to ruin it.
The feels are real. I dislike pity. I hate it when I get it. Pity didn’t help me pull myself up when my life got ruined every month. It still doesn’t. I pulled myself up, out of determination to dismiss pity, and climbed up again. I still do. Pity, even if I get it, is not something to want. It is the reverse. Pitying is rude to those who you pity.
Yeah. And it’s hard sometimes to explain the difference between sympathy and pity. Like, yeah sympathize, empathize with what I went through, but don’t just pity and write off and erase everything I’ve done to survive situations I should never have been expected to have to survive.
Sympathy is not pitying, but going there and helping them back up. All the things I should have died or left or ran away for I didn’t. There were free who gave me sympathy. But that little support was enough to pull myself back up and it still supports me. I’m still in denial that I live. And people pity us for going through that. They should respect that we’ve survived worse than they have, not pity it
I see this a lot and I respect it and want to understand although the sentiment does not ring with me personally. Like, I’ll take pity. Sure. Pity’s great. Please help me because I’m pitiful or for whatever reason you like, I will take and use gladly what you’d give me to make it through this without tearing myself apart more than I already have to.
I can see that.
I wonder if it’s a “in it” versus “through it” thing. Like Becky considers herself through and on the other side of all the awful in her life. Like, yeah, stuff is hard, but hey, she’s making a strong go of it. And for that it can be like, but my life isn’t currently pitiful, I got through the hell and built something.
But when you’re more “in it”, pity feels very different because it’s like “yeah, things really are this terrible so it means a lot that you’re recognizing that in any form that centers that and helps me get out”.
I think at some point when / starting out when I was “in it” made me happy to take pity and use it for my own ends just out of a lack of self-respect or a wrong interpretation of “reality” where things were just so because they were? I don’t remember looking back ever having a cognitive reaction or recognition of validity in the idea of not wanting pity because it seemed silly and pointless to get hung up about from where I stood.
Now of course I’m fine with pity because I’ve been like 97-99% purged of any ability to give a fuck what others think of me after I’ve found it out and also I’m 100% done pretending I’m not lazy and in fact very happy to cut every corner I can that reality allows if it means I have to expend less effort on the nearly-everything my anxiety has made me also unable to care about
i’m with this one like…wtf…u don’t know my life…where is this pity emotion coming from….like bad things don’t happen to people all the time. where have you been living. mars???
She’ll also have a sweet couch to sleep on once Robin gets the hell off of it.
Becky is, as sometimes has been mentioned, awesome. And as you noted above, she does not try to package or smooth over her situation. Yes, it sucks. No, it’s not a pitiful sob story. And I really think that blunt honesty gets to Robin.
If nothing else because she would LOVE to answer with “Well, MY girlfriend likes Star Wars, so nu-huh!”
Like the worst part for me is not that Becky is even being put in the pity box, or having her pain treated like a “sob story” and not actually real and powerful. It’s that Robin states flat-out she sees Becky as ‘aiming’ for the pity box, acknowledges it’s there, and with that said Robin is making it clear she is not going to care no matter what happens to Becky.
Like, not making it clear in the metaphorical sense, she literally says she is refusing to grant a homeless girl a shred of empathy for her plight. Even if Robin is bluffing on that and changes her mind eventually, that is not a thing you can say to someone and be given the benefit of the doubt for whatever comes next.
Robin hires Becky to her congressional staff. I’m predicting this now.
She’d need to make some dramatic changes to her platform to get Becky to agree to that
I dunno. Trickle-down economics, right?
I still can’t fully believe USAmericans got suckered into something that’s literally named about getting pissed on.
Well, at least some of the people pushing those policies are apparently really into that…
That should make for some fun “hot mic” moments.
Hey Becky has a job now! She can get a phone eventually!
…If she’s not fired for being late on her second day for being dragged into the stupid bullshit of someone who can’t stand to acknowledge her basic goddamn humanity for five whole minutes at a time.
It’s Galasso. All she has to do is tell him she was trying to corrupt a politician.
honestly if she shows up thirty minutes late she’s probably still better than his other employees
“I don’t really know. My district’s nothing but suburbs. I got on this committee by appointment, not by expertise.”
*actually double-checks* Oh, no, nevermind, it’s some guy from West Texas.
“I bet you haven’t got a girlfriend who’s into dinosaurs. Huh? Do you?”
“You just lost the bet. SO SAURRY!”
What an Outrapturous pun! How Mesozoic!
“Mine is into Star Wars, so there”“No… I haven’t got a girlfriend, because… I’m straight.
Almost have one. We’re dating, but no one else knows
Why, my girlfriend doesn’t even know, that’s how secret it is.
*Applause* Relatable. It’s funny, took me and my girlfriend a good year to realize we probably liked each other, and now we are dating.
Panel 4: Again, the eyes are interesting, because they are breaking more and more throughout this conversation she is desperately trying to eel away from. Like, that first off-center, moving into distress, and full defensiveness and now here, pulling out a trump card of her own, while looking away and trying to will away the guilt she is feeling.
Like, it’s affecting her. Whether that will be enough to get through, to make Robin stop harming others to cling to her self-delusions? Again, I think it’s unlikely though certainly possible. But it’s definitely doing a better job than anyone’s managed so far.
Now as for her distraction… ugh. Minder has already touched on the biggest issue for me as well and that’s the fact that this is a tactic to dismiss Becky’s humanity and having to continue to confront that directly. Continuing to look down on her as just “another kid” she doesn’t have to listen to, who can be bought off with a shiny object or two so she never has to give up this alternate reality she is trying to build.
And given that the thing she is being dismissive to is well, something really big and partially her fault for creating and supporting laws that normalized behavior like Toedad’s and makes it harder for folks like Becky to build their lives back up?
It’s… pretty dang shitty.
Panel 5: Oh Becky, you wonderful, perfect cinnamon roll, you. Like, she’s just refusing to even acknowledge Robin’s continued attempts to dehumanize her. She might not even notice them and she’s just so pure in her intentions and actions. Not bothering with the social filter of self-minimization that we so often learn.
And her wacky shield here is masterful. Taking her bullshit and turning it into something. And accidentally making Robin have to confront aspects of herself. A homeless teen lesbian she looks down on is indistinguishable from her in email form. The connections that she so desperately wants to deny with regards to shared humanity are there.
And she can try desperately to deny them to justify operating in service to hate movements, but… it doesn’t change reality.
But still, I worry for Becky here. Cause Robin is a master in getting people locked in sunk costs and despair by her intransigence. Like, being a sieve to everything her sister tried to explain to the point where her sister was celebrating her outing simply because it meant she was finally free of her and her bad faith bullshit. Being obstinate to every boundary of Leslie’s to the point where Leslie is beating herself up for not being willing to beat up a sitting US representative.
Robin is a master of holding out just enough hope for something to finally get through and stick that folks keep trying, while being stubborn enough to ensure that it never affects any meaningful change. And I don’t want to see sweet awesome Becky get locked into the same dehumanizing ritual that broke Roz and Robin’s aide and is breaking Leslie.
Because she’s already been through so so much already. She deserves a break.
Please just kick Robin out Leslie! There’s two of you for God’s sake! Robin can leave and let Becky live a life, like you’re saying Cerb. I’d love to see press show Robin how she dehumanized everyone else, and dehumanize her for it. I hope it’s not too late for Becky
This is something I’ve wanted to mention for a few days, and I like that you bring up how Becky is indistinguishable from Robin in e-mail form, and I feel like this is one of the key ways in which Becky, more than anybody else, could potentially get through to Robin. It isn’t so much that Becky comes in at angles no one else would expect, it’s that, from a personality standpoint, Becky is probably the character who is the closest to just flat out being Robin. From their manor of speech, to their love of wackiness and attempt to use zany antics to distance themselves from or impose their will on reality, to even some of their actions. Robin imposing herself on Leslie afterall could be viewed as much, much, much, much more extreme variation of Becky’s own attempt to get together with Joyce. From a certain point of view, Becky is practically Robin’s clone, and this goes such a long, long way to getting somebody who’s being a jackass to empathize with someone else’s situation.
The more different somebody is, the easier it is to ‘other’ them, and in turn the easier it is to disregard everything they want and care about. But the more alike two people are, the easier it is to see yourself in their shoes. And usually you (hopefully) wouldn’t need someone who’s completely identical to you to see their point of view, but Robin appears to be a pretty extreme case. Good thing then that Becky is a pretty extreme match for her.
I’m not sure I fully agree with a lot of that, but I definitely can see her being the person that Robin can most easily relate to and it’s clear how much that terrifies her, because her whole everything depends on never ever empathizing and seeing herself in the shoes of the folks fucked over by her policies and political strategies.
I agree that both use “teh wacky” as a deflection tactic, but note that Robin uses it to avoid or dismiss anything that might inconvenience her, keep her from doing whatever she pleases, or make her aware of things she doesn’t want to be… whereas with Becky, it’s covering very real trauma.
It’s currently covering the very real trauma, but I can’t help but think back to the inaugural poop. It’s always been there, right?
(and as someone who uses whimsy as a tool to manage CDH/CFS, and hence is biased: Becky strikes me as using teh wacky to engage with people, as opposed to Robin’s use of it as a wall.)
Becky’s been dealing with awful – despite, I’m sure, her mom’s best attempts to protect her – since long before move-in day.
Yes, but when Becky is being a wacky goofball, it isn’t always a mask.
Are we sure?
She’s been living in that mask an awful long time.
I don’t think she lives IN it, so much as she always keeps it handy.
We’ve seen her be goofy and playful at times when she CLEARLY was actually happy, like when she and Dina were playing on Sal’s bike, or when she and Joyce were super excited that both of them were wearing plaid.
And otherwise, the implication of that always being a mask would be that Becky is never as happy as she seems, which I strongly doubt is what Willis intended. The narrative has clearly shown that she’s very reliant and most of the time is genuinely upbeat, despite the crappy things that she’s been through
idk i think that sometimes like. the choice to be happy is really brave? and really important. like. happiness isn’t something that just comes to you. sometimes it’s something you have to actively go after. Becky choosing to be wacky, choosing to live in her own private sitcom life is her choosing to make the most out of what she has. it’s her choosing to be happy. and it’s why she survived.
so like: partially a mask, because she doesn’t want to be a Debbie Downer. but also partially just keeping her spirits up, because if she took time to feel bad about everything she’s gone through and pity herself she probably wouldn’t stop crying for, like, a month at least. and there’s a level of which it is kind of healthy to be like: ok, this is something I’ve gone through, but it doesn’t have to be my whole life. I lost a jerkdad, gained a cool dinosaur girlfriend. I’m homeless, but I have a job.
choosing to live her happiest, best life is the biggest fuck you to her dad I can imagine, because I guarantee you: Toe!Dad has never known what it means to be happy in his entire life.
Yeah I disagree — they talk similarly and are both goofy, but the differences stop there.
I completely agree about Robin’s eyes. I think she’s cracking, at least slightly.
Though her conscience is still only quietly nagging at her when her actions warrant more of a blood-curdling scream
Can I just print this post out and distribute it in fliers to everyone
In the last panel I also think they connect a bit in wackiness. Robin has to admit, that WOULD be a sweet prank.
In some ways, Robin is jealous on this goofy, out-in-the-open-lesbian with a sweet girlfriend and licence to goof.
I wish Becky would stop being so wonderful if just for this moment because Robin doesn’t deserve the joy Becky brings to the world by her very adamant existence.
I mean even putting my petty grudge against Robin aside–Becky doesn’t deserve the worst of what Robin is capable of.
It’s a real possibility of happening.
I am so scared that Robin will do something that intentional/malicious or not, will reinforce for Becky (and / or Joyce) echoes of trauma from what they’ve just survived and are currently working through.
I am afraid Joyce is going to escalate very quickly at one of these little unwitting dismissals of humanity, on Becky’s behalf, where Becky herself would not.
I am afraid that if / if not an escalation results in an even more tense or blown-up situation, any consequences of one would hit Robin next-to-none because she can wave money at the problem. And Joyce and Becky and Leslie and everyone else suffer instead for trying to do right by one another.
I’m afraid. I’m afraid any of these things will happen and I’m afraid too that Robin can give just enough hope to Becky by a show of awareness before snapping right back to the same awful production and letting her burn.
Yeah, it’s a dangerous situation, because yeah, that’s Robin’s traditional game. It’s what broke Roz and it’s what she initially used against Leslie at the bar. Not intentionally, but giving just enough signs of listening and internalizing to make it feel worth keeping going.
Becky is a bit different in that she comes in in ways Robin doesn’t expect, but we’ve seen Robin stumble so easily into being unbelievably cruel so Becky does need to keep her guard up throughout and be careful.
No, Robin does deserve Becky, in this moment.
Because Becky’s awesomeness is a very well-placed mine under Robin’s walls of denial.
the becky she deserves, or the becky she needs? 😉 (and TIL the actual quote is not what I thought it was at all. wow.)
I’m not sure whether Becky’s urgent question to the Ag Sec is from her being like Robin, or whether it’s from her deliberately doing something Robin might do.
In the next to last panel, Becky is telling Robin “OK, you give me your phone to brush me off, I’ll use it to do something that will actually affect you: talk to your colleagues.
Robin says “You can’t successfully pretend to be me, so what you’re doing won’t affect me.
Becky responds, “Yes, I can. I know you well enough, and I’m enough smarter than you, that I can successfully simulate you by writing the same kind of dumb-ass thing you’d write.”
Robin says, “Yeah, you’ve got me nailed. Oops.”
So, I think Becky is presenting herself, not as a kindred spirit, but as a worthy opponent. Which is really awesome.
If Robin takes back her phone, then she’s admitting she lost in a few ways: She underestimated Becky, and gave Becky too much power over her. Becky has the upper hand and Robin is on the defensive. From there, it’s a slippery slope to giving up the couch and the house.
If Robin doesn’t take back her phone, then Becky can send emails undermining Robin’s political positions.
In fact, once Becky has fully established herself as being dangerous to Robin with Robin’s phone, all she has to do is run out of the house carrying the phone. Robin will have to chase her, and then Robin has voluntarily left the house.
Robin has already lost. She maybe doesn’t know it yet, but she will soon. Because Becky is just that smart and awesome.
or maybe Becky’s just honestly interested in cows and whether or not the house secretary knows what sound a cow makes. i mean. spam-emailing people who don’t believe in her personhood is a reasonably worthwhile goal
I can’t be sure, because data calibration is awefully hard when you get close to perfection, but it is possible that of all Becky panel 3 Becky is best Becky.
Becky used Taunt.
Robin gained Agri-o.
…. sorry, just reinterpreting this as a MOORPG.
….
*flees for dear nerd-punning life*
PokéMOOn!
So – fun fact: MY congressman (I guess technically, the Congressman for where I’m currently doing a year-long internship) is the current head of the House Agriculture Committee. Bob Goodlatte, R – VA 9th.
Nevermind he’s Vice Chairman. The internet lied to me.
Good… latte? Like, for real?
Also, he’s JohnnyOs’ uncle!
*Uses all credit on in-app purchases*
I assume her aide has already blocked that possibility.
It’s bongos like Mary and Robin that caused people like me to enter post-suicidal states and conditions. This shit is sad because I’ve been in Becky’s place many times. She’s keeping calm, but every pity, every hate, brings her closer to snapping. Eventually, she will be like others, including me, and darken. Turn for the worse, and retaliate
I don’t think Becky’s going to snap unless the snapping in question is the act of her snapping Robin’s shitty dismissal of her existence into sharp little pieces and giving the bird.
True. She’s more of the type that releases emotions immediately, not letting them build up
I think that it would be hilarious if the media notes that Robin’s Tweets suddenly sound more intelligent and coherent!
It’s pretty easy – even without checking what sort of phone was used to post – to tell whether a given Trump tweet was by the man himself, or some anonymous staffer/minder.
I’ve really got this sudden impression that Robin is going to end up offering Becky a job.
Heh, I am reminded quite a bit of Becky’s interaction with Carol
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/02-that-perfect-girl/mortgage/
Becky *greeting*: I’m a lesbian.
Becky *panel 2*: I’ve got a girlfriend.
Becky *panel 3*: My girlfriend is into dinosaurs.
She is getting subtle about it 🙂
Knowing Robin, I think that she’ll interpret ‘into dinosaurs’ as some kind of unique personal kink. I’m not entirely sure that’s untrue.
Hmm, okay, this might be completely out of left field, but I’m picking up on very subtle clues here that she may in fact… like girls. I know, I know. It’s a stretch, but I’ve just got a strong hunch.
I dunno. You make very insightful (and much appreciated) analyses of the comic, but I’m really not seeing where you’d come up with that idea.
Just as friends, right? Couldn’t be implying anything more than that.
I mean, she did say girlfriend. That just means she’s a girl friend! A friend who is a girl! It’s simple addition.
guys. guys. it’s really simple.
they’re galpals.
Dammit. Everyone is so absolutely right in seething at Robin, but I’m just enjoying her interactions with Becky so much. Because you can SEE every single time something gets through her armor of denial, and yeah, she immediately tries to rebuild it, but you just know it chips away. It’s not all that big a distance between conceding the phone and conceding the couch. My prediction is that Becky manages to ramp up Robin’s hidden guilt about hogging the couch to the point that Robin makes some horrific-sounding excuse and gets the fuck out, which is exactly the win-win situation that’s the goal here.
Like, yeah, Robin is definitely in deep, deep denial, which is horrible. But it’s also really, really fun to watch as Becky just keeps hauling her out of there, making her all the more desperate to dive back in.
Like, Robin felt guilty about having a phone while Becky doesn’t, so she assuaged the guilt by giving the phone over for the moment, and the covered it up with a condescending remark about Candy Crush. The guilt was there tho, and Becky knows it was, and she didn’t even have to try and be manipulative in any way – Robin just does this to herself in her presence.
Also I still love Robin’s direct childishness – like, her reaction to Becky trying to impersonate her is SOLID GOLD. She’s not even trying to stop her (yet), her first reaction is to comment on how feasible it is, and she’s so fucking SELF AWARE about her own ridiculousness, and it’s adorable.
Like, Robin doesn’t have to be likable as a person to be adorable as a character. And the Leslie/Becky plan of getting her off the couch might just work.
And no, I don’t think Robin will at any point snap at Becky to get off her couch. That’s way, way not the kind of person she is. Robin tries her best at all times to look good in HER OWN eyes. That’s why she deflects, minimizes and refuses to engage the way she does. There is a core of moral self-awareness in her, and she will not do something that’s OBVIOUSLY cartoon villain grade of evil. She’ll do what makes her look the best in her own eyes in any situation, and the way to manipulate it is to push the situation in the direction where Robin would look the best in her own eyes by ACTUALLY doing the right thing.
Don’t push her towards revelations. Push her towards actions, and there might just be results :>
(Like, I am not saying that this would redeem Robin as a person or something. I am saying that she can be made a force for good, even if ‘good’ in this case means just mitigating her own earlier horrible shit.)
This is such a great way to be reading this ongoing interaction! There is in fact an element of it that’s very fun to watch and no one has to feel guilty for that in and of itself.
I’ve got zero issues with people who’re enjoying whole trainwreck, for all my angry angry comments that might speak otherwise. So long as we’re all on the same page that trainwrecks aren’t very easy to deescalate so people don’t get hurt? Bring out the popcorn, I am loving Becky in every panel of this comic.
(Not least because I know Becky could def totes do some very naughty stuff with that little phone in her hand, if Robin thinks to insult Becky’s dinosaur girlfriend again.)
I just reread my own comment and realized I made your entire breakdown of the strip all about myself. Bad Minder. Stick to pointing out how much radness is in the comment because it brings up awesome observations that are really good to read |D
I mean given that you might just be the person I was vaguely addressing (like I wasn’t particularly keeping track but your avatar seems familiar from those parts of the discussion), actually the clarification that you didn’t meant to bring on the guilt trip for those who love this storyline is very appreciated XD thanks
(and for, ya know, that other stuff you said too 9u9)
Nah it’s cool disagreement is cool! I was totally the person you were talking about! I’ve written like 70 comments today alone because I’m still worked up with stress and looking for catharsis and I’ll be gone in like maybe a day and not comment a day for another few days or seven months. I got happy today because I realized there are parts of that I’m able to use in the way I think in my own head to stop reinforcing some stuff that is giving me anxiety! Your comment’s appreciated too
It’s kind of annoying to me when people gather in the comments to bash on Robin and in the process ignore her actual personality and the very obvious cues in her behavior right now. She’s not an abstract ‘worst bigot ever Trump analog’ like yeah she’s played that role but she’s also got her own consistent personality. Like, yeah, appealing to marginalized people to notice a bigot’s humanity is a shitty derailing tactic and all, but in this case all I want is for people to ACTUALLY READ THE COMIC THAT IS THERE and not the version in their heads.
It’s not fucking hopeless. Reality isn’t hopeless. Yes, you’re not obligated to break through to bigots, and Becky is putting a lot on the line here and putting a lot of effort which she doesn’t have to, but IT IS POSSIBLE. The lived reality is that it’s possible and people DO change. Don’t go making the situation seem EVEN WORSE THAN IT IS. Please.
This actually reminds me of that time everyone ganged up on Gem Harvest for showing a kid trying to break through to their racist relative like NO HE DOESN’T DESERVE IT STOP SHOWING TO KIDS THAT THEY MIGHT BE ABLE TO GET THROUGH TO THEIR FAMILY BY BEING SWEET like okay I get that your experience makes this look painful but there are also kids for whom the effort is worth the result? There are people who’ve managed to get through to their bigot relatives and lessen the total amount of bigotry in the world?
Like, no, people aren’t obligated to do this. But when media shows that it’s possible, that those bigots are still people who can be got through to, that we don’t live in a world full of terrifying empathiless monsters who want nothing but our deaths and cannot be swayed… It’s a hopeful thing, too
It’s totally possible for Robin to be redeemed! In fact from where I’m standing, I think that’s actually a very likely eventuality for her character arc. And when she redeems herself, it will be legitimate and all that entails. She can change and she always can change in the future, even if right now she displays nothing I can see that says she is willing to yet.
My huge issue and why I’m bashing Robin’s ability to be defended all over the place is because………none of this has happened yet. Her personality and discomfort or recognition of anything and potential for the future are not as important as her, right here, right now, treating Becky like a disruptive toddler who can be dismissed out of hand for trying to be heard or given recognition by offering a silly phone game.
It’s not bad to show awful characters being redeemed. It’s beautiful and if it happens I’m sure it’ll be done right. It’s just not a thing that’s happened yet, if it is going to. It hasn’t happened. I don’t see evidence that it is inevitable or even probable solely on the basis of Robin’s behavior in DoA without dragging in optimism that has a valid but not-what-we’re-looking-at basis in decades of history in another universe.
The problem is that media shows it as actually working way more frequently than it actually works in reality and it sets people up for either pretty brutal disappointment or a lifetime of TRYING to get through to someone who is never going to change because everything they’ve seen tells them it will work eventually if they just keep trying.
Yeah. This. Like it’s awesome when it works and important and beautiful. But a lot of folks get stuck in abusive cycles doing hard painful emotional labor trying to get folks to see their basic humanity who have no interest in ever doing so.
And where it gets really awful is yeah, when the news media sells it as a painful emotional labor that the marginalized person is expected to do. Like, all the articles soft-selling bigotry and excoriating all the liberals living in a “bubble” to try and reach out to them and understand that their deep hatred of X minority groups is actually just because they are so worried about Y bad-faith argument.
And that’s one of the beautiful things about this comic. Most everyone has the potential to be redeemed or is offered the chance. But it does not shy away from the fact that some people you just got to get away from to recover and for those who do get better, there’s often a lot of work and a lot of baggage to work through to get to the other side.
And I think that’s why Robin gets so strongly mixed reactions. Because she feeds just enough signs of awareness and of things getting through in some manner to make folks hold out hope that she’s really close to realizing the awfulness of her current position and growing, while subverting or punishing the attempt to reach out and through enough to make those of us with bad experiences spending way too long trying to reach someone we never could have nasty flashbacks.
And with Robin, I’m feeling the same mix of hope and “eee, get away everyone” that I do when I think about the attempts to reach through to my mother and get her to see what was happening to me.
And I’m extra worried, because her response to someone opening the door a crack is her inserting herself way too much in that person’s life. Like, constantly trying to enforce a happy families illusion with Roz or the stalking hell nightmare she’s doing to Leslie right now. If Becky successfully breaks open that armor a little, it’s very possible for Robin to try and reinterpret that in a way where she’ll be bowling over Becky’s boundaries to “bond” with her more.
But there’s still that sliver of hope that maybe this will be what finally does it and begins that long road to self-awareness and redemption.
It does make it very compelling even if it is extremely distressing at times to read.
Of course, we only tell those stories (in part) because the alternative — the one where you put in years of your life trying to reform someone and it just comes back to bite you in the end — the one that’s far too real — is too horrible to contemplate. Pop culture just doesn’t do cynicism like it used to.
Eat Arby’s.
You literally made my horrible mood do a 180 and the day a good one by default. I cannot be unhappy in the face of Nihilist Arby’s at this quality. Thank you.
@Emily – a fucking redemption for Robin would be, no exaggeration, a jump-the-shark-moment on so many conceivable levels –
-Gross-ass liberal feel-good porn that oddly enough, puts the onus on the minority to do emotional labour and bear our necks for people that would just stomp on us.
-It would be really gross about abusers and reform of such.
-It would be both a undermining of the writing of Robin thus far and would squander a character that is far more interesting and plot useful in her current position.
– Frankly, it wouldn’t say complementary things about the author; Ruth/Billie just makes me feel gross on a lot of levels – it becoming a pattern… no, just no.
And there’s so many other reasons as well.
Honestly, I think you’re just thinking that because you are imagining the gross scenario of it happening. Like, yeah, it can be a drop of writing quality… or Willis can do it the hard way that will really sell the audience on the full reality of it, and it will actually be a new high.
THERE! IS! NO! WAY! TO! BELIEVABLY! DO! THAT!
And more to the point, the hordes of folks who can’t drop their love of of SP!Robin and smell the fucking coffee is gross – especially as I’ve been someone whose tried to persuade authority figures of their humanity and been shat on; leaves a revolting taste for me.
You, I like.
Uncle Andy wasn’t interested in any relationship with the gems (with the exception of Steven) at first. Uncle Andy never tried to establish an abusive relationship as normal as far as I know. If Robin gets redeemed at this point I do not want Leslie to be responsible unless Leslie successfully kicks Robin out of her life and that leads to Robins redemption.
If Jasper ever gets redeemed I don’t want Lapis doing the redeeming.
Panel 3 Robin: “Sudden feelings of humanity, rising! Must suppress! Easy, girl! Remember: You’re a member of Congress!”
Hey so it’s 5AM and I’m at the point where the anger has cooled off and I am going through the part of the anger cycle where I question / reevaluate. And I want to apologize to you guys for being vitriolic in a lot of my comments today/yesterday and going above and beyond the extent of bluntness and directness which is typically what I like to imagine I’m aiming to write with.
I’ve been hypocritical over bludgeoning as point of contention that other people’s biases are or might be coloring their optimism, reading, or projections for Robin, while 100% letting my own huge-ass bias (my grudge against Robin is very unapologetically real; sometimes petty, sometimes personal) color my reactions while reading and responding to arguments. I’m sorry for the and the condescension. And I let my anxiety / coping mechanisms in the form of getting catharsis in debating stuff online and getting emotions from it become other people’s problem in a way that violates the spirit of the posting rules.
And I will say now and let it be on the record that this apology is not a prelude to change the way I usually argue using language that’s opinionated and extremely analytic / critical / way too fucking intense for someone that could be doing like, anything else. That’s all stuff I know about myself and I’m kind of a dickbag for it so you can always call me that with 100% agreement on my part and no ill-will on my part for future conversation.
But I like to think at least that being blunt, sometimes an asshole, and not hiding my opinion perceived stupid arguments means I think that the person I’m talking to is stupid or bad or not worthy of respect on a personal level. I will strive to limit myself on demeaning other people on a level that hurts them or damages emotional health or insinuates that their talking points don’t deserve being acknowledged and broken down with rationale behind it explaining why and why I think it matters enough to point out. Yes, even if I find the arguments dumb for lots of reasons and won’t shut up about those reasons because this is literally a comforting tactic I use. And I do it with so much energy because it is extremely soothing to spend a day or a week caught up in one thing or another where I can argue stuff in a context of a work of fiction where we can always go back and review history without the horribleness of people being able to say that no, [X] said [y] with one ounce of ambiguity when the actual words in the bubbles are an easy reference point everyone has to acknowledge.
So yeah I’m sorry if this is reading like a notpology or trying to give my excuse because I do not think that attacking people over fictional characters is okay or I should be allowed to. I need to be mindful of that if for whatever reason I decide I am hyped to write 50+ comments and like a million words explaining why yes, I do think is Robin is not sympathetic as of yet and yes, I want so very much for you to agree with me about it, and yes, this has everything to do with the fact that I can’t stand Robin personally and I like it when people can be persuaded not to say anything nice about her that is provably wrong.
You know what I think I’m more of an asshole than I was when I started writing this comment but you know what if you’re commenting on this comic and I start in with the millions of words dismantling something you said it’s just because that’s the most effective way of getting others to agree with me and to have them point out why I actually should maybe agree with them. So unless someone’s like, I don’t know, commenting some shit about racism being overblown or whatever I’m not actually mad at you and I would love to reach a common understanding and then be cool with each other and friendly and not acting based on prejudice from it anytime after we finish arguing about whatever character has me worked up this particular strip!
Also while I’m at it, HEY GUYS I think Robin’s an awful shitbag and I’d love to fight about it if you don’t agree with me!! The possibility of myself being proven 100% wrong by someone else is not a problem just so long as I get to vent and overanalyze things
I’ll tag team with you, if you want.
are you cool with having to eat your words like I will if a miracle happens and we learn something that would make all Robin’s bad stuff either not bad or not really her fault, b/c I’m neurotic about only saying things that are true and being as true-only-things-saying as I can when I’m arguing, like to an utterly pathological degree
if that’s cool sure let’s go to fuckin’ town on the comments I’m glad for the diversion from job apps off and on
Unless she’s actually, literally possessed, I fail to see what could come to light to that effect, but sure, why not? I’ll have you know my words are delicious! Even BEFORE you put mustard on them!
And also, truth is important. There’s no-one in your current administration whose removal would please me more than alternative facts woman. There’s no such thing as alternative facts, unless you subscribe to the multiverse theory, in which case they’re things that happen in alternative universes.
man I feel you so hard on this. The temptation to overblow my points just to attract someone to come argue with me is ever present XD
So, okay, my life experience has been pretty insulated from shitty bigotry on most accounts, so I’m kind of hella connecting with Robin from the position of privilege here. This is just how it works sometimes: you grow up taught that the problems aren’t that bad and that someone always has to be at the bottom and you’re only obligated to care about people directly adjacent to you, and the cognitive dissonance when that conflicts with like, actual empathy, is hard and painful. And there are lots of ways of coping with it, and Robin’s is the simplest and most default one, because it’s literally taught to us privileged folk.
Robin is not being like this because she’s A TERRIBLE PERSON who lacks basic empathy and basic morals. She does not lack either, that’s why her denial is so… bouncy. There is this wall of completely misdirected (well, like 90% misdirected) guilty feeling in the way of understanding the terrible shit of the world and really internalizing the social justice stuff, and I’m not kidding about ‘misdirected’ there. You end up feeling the blame for everything that is out of your control so long as you’re privileged, and even your own mind recognizes that this is bullshit and tries to push it away, except it ends up pushing away whole concepts instead.
(The way around that wall that I have found was by getting into the community from my own marginalization axis. Can’t feel guilty about oppressing others when you’re the one being oppressed, and it’s much easier to reject the guilt bullshit when it comes from you just ‘not being oppressed enough’ like wow no. And once you’ve found your bearings in how to think about this stuff it’s easier to really -get- other things, too)
And yes, Robin’s actual behavior and actual consequences of her actual actions are horrifying, except all they are is bringing the existing system of pulling people into this shit up to 11. Robin amplifies the system, but she’s not a source of it. She doesn’t actually benefit from how terrible her positions are, she just doesn’t see a way to change them other than what to her looks like basically breaking herself in two.
I can’t bring myself to be mad at Robin for rejecting Becky’s story as a ‘people prop’ because in this system, most of what she was exposed to WAS. That’s why pity porn and tokenization is so fucking awful – all it does is desensitize people to this kind of thing, make them assume that whenever something lik this is shown to them, it’s always meant to be a manipulative attack on their emotions without actual substance. Like, 90% of the time I was ever exposed to BUT STARVING CHILDREN IN AFRICA, the action I was being guilt-blackmailed into doing WOULD NOT HAVE ACTUALLY DONE ANYTHING MEANINGFUL FOR THE CHILDREN IN AFRICA. You pass beggars on the street and you wonder if they’re working for someone else who takes their money and if they really are all that poor anyway, because that’s what everyone you grew up around has told you about them: that they’re all fake, that everything you see around you that seems to form a connection between you and marginalized people is FAKE.
And yeah, Robin is being very dense here in not recognizing that Becky’s situation is not like this at all and that she CAN help in a way that will be meaningful compared to what she’d be giving up (the couch). But that’s the thing about Robin: she’s really fucking dense. Like go back to her early appearances and interaction with her staff. This is not Evil Putting On Appearances. Robin is just… like that. It’s hard to get through to her, it’s hard for her to ‘get’ things, and it’s hard for her to live in reality that is so dead-set about being confusing and malicious to her.
(And like, let’s be real, she’s not entirely wrong there – Leslie absolutely DID bring Becky in as an argument in a discussion, and Robin’s BS sensors tingled to that quite appropriately… too bad the reaction was to shut everything out entirely because Robin just doesn’t have the mental faculties to evaluate this kind of information in a safe non-emotional-center engaging way. It’s always just immediately RED ALERT SOMEONE IS TRYING TO BREAK IN WITH MALICIOUS INTENT SEAL ALL ENTRANCES)
Like, yeah, the way Robin’s particular brand of dense goofiness + somehow acquired power (SERIOUSLY HOW DID THAT HAPPEN. CADBURY CREAM EGG CEREAL ONLY WORKED AS AN EXPLANATION IN SHORTPACKED!VERSE) interacts with the shitty bigotry system she’s inside is absolutely chilling and has terrible consequences for vulnerable people around her.
But it doesn’t really change that she’s… pretty get-through-to-able, if you just start with giving her a real outlet of stuff she can easily do rather than trying to make her feel awful. And like, yeah, she’s pretty prone to feeling awful, partly because she’s dense and doesn’t really ‘get’ all the connections of stuff about her and what she’s responsible for / capable of changing and what not, so she just bounces between ‘everything is fun and I’m just dandy’ and ‘everything is terrible and I am ok no no fuck back to position 1’.
Note how willing she was to help with tracking down the rapist. That was something she understood how to deal with, so she was very willing to.
She just… doesn’t know how to deal with most of the other stuff. It’s horrifying that someone like that has gone all the way to Congress, yes. How much of it is really on Robin, though?
I dunno. I’m not sure I’m managing to get across what I’m trying to say here. I guess I just… can see the path to Robin becoming an ally very clearly and easily and don’t really think in categories of redemption so -shrug-
To clarify on the “don’t think in terms of redemption” part, I don’t really care if Robin deserves the forgiveness/redemption/having effort spent on her? The in-universe reality deserves having an ally Robin in it, and the characters deserve to have their already existing efforts to ‘convert’/coexist with Robin succeed. Roz deserves having Robin suddenly listen to her, and Leslie deserves having Robin stop acting like a complete fuck. Becky deserves that couch. So I hope it works out well and doesn’t work out horribly, and prefer to talk about the optimistic possibility. What Robin deserves or does not deserve is rather beside the point, to me.
Okay I’m gonna be honest and I stopped reading this word brick at “Robin is not a terrible person” because if that’s the theme here it’s a waste of my time because her being a terrible person isn’t even in the realm of debatable. She’s literally squatting in Leslie’s home despite her VEHEMENT opposition to her presence. Her response to Becky’s situation is “idgaf.” She supports destructive and dehumanizing policies and simply does not care about their impact so long as doing so benefits her. Like nearly every significant thing she has done has been somewhere on the terrible side of things from just being casually rude and dismissive to being a monstrous bigot who endangers the lives of an entire community for political points.
That’s honestly fine. “This person’s actions are terrible but their personality isn’t” is… not everyone’s cup of tea as an approach. I was aware of it when writing that post, and actually contemplated including a disclaimer along the lines of ‘you might want to stop reading now’ at the start but couldn’t figure out how to word it.
Your position is honestly very right too.
Her personality is also terrible! She’s rude and dismissive and hypocritical and has no regard for other people’s feelings if they are in any way inconvenient to her. The only thing she has going for her is superficial charm but that’s undercut by a deep well of being an awful human being with no real regard for anyone but herself.
“This person’s actions are terrible but their personality isn’t” is a preposterous stance. It’s like saying Ryan tried to rape Joyce but he isn’t a rapist. Our actions are the manifestations of our personality. If 99% of your actions are those of a shitbag, you are, in fact, a shitbag.
Okay I did like the other comment you made but I will make a very concise and very firm argument that starts and ends with Robin is: firmly in control of decisions, votes, and whether reform of legislation or new legislation gets to the floor of the House of Reps for argument, and she is that using that power to cheerfully check off on policies that willingly and knowingly murder entire swathes of people based on others’ bigotry or their own.
Robin was a terrible person before she walked into this comic. She would be a terrible person if she apologized to Leslie right now and left and gave Becky $10,000 dollars and a cell phone.
Robin voted for a bill that would have made it nearly impossibly legal to have a home even if she could afford one because it discriminates against gay people.
Robin is evil because she is the one deciding this and doing it for power and then not caring and not stopping even if she did.
She’s terrible.
*impossible for for Becky to have a home,” Robin fucking has two
If it makes you feel better, I’m a white cis straight male, which means that discounting my atheism, I’m right on the demographic Robin is pandering to. I have 0 bias in all of this, and I’ve wanted Robin to take a truck to the face, like, 2 strips in.
DON’T MAKE ME FEEL BETTER I DON’T CARE ABOUT THAT
If it make you feel worse, the US government is now prosecuting someone for laughing?
Is it terrible that I’m beginning to openly hate my country and the sickness that ever made it close enough for these fascist fucks to steal their way into possibly permanent power?
It’s only terrible because you (and folks in a similar situation) can’t afford to get the hell away. Because it’s not like you lack REASONS to hate.
USA now stands for “Ugh, Shitty Assholes.”
*appropriate gesture of support* Take care of yourself as needed.
Thank you! Have I mentioned today that you’re nice and you deserve things, and also you are 100% free whil 100% not obligated to tell me if I say something that doesn’t ring well with you on the moral-o-meter I respect your opinions coming with a giant stack of papers’ worth of resources in terms of things that are true and researched
“I appreciate your opinions [FOR] coming with* oh my god that typo ruined the joke that you know lots of stuff and turned it into a passive-agressive request for favors
*hugs*
lol at least if you know where your assholeness is you can, like, mitigate the effect it has on other people. i agree tho, it can be very relaxing to argue fiction because everything is laid out, right there, where it can be cited and no one can gaslight you.
I appreciate that you’re very firm about your opinions! And, I mean, it’s fair to just not like somebody. Not Everyone Has To Be Liked All Of The Time. I do appreciate you trying to tone it down a little. Your passion is one of your good points though!! It’s good to be invested in things!
thank you 🙂 and thanks and I will always try to realize and own up to and be mindful of…………when I’m an asshole and also wrong. because oh my god I hate being wrong, I’ll do anything to not be wrong AND stay wrong
lolol that feel
THE SHAME WILL NEVER LEAVE
Funny how timely “I’m not gonna be seduced by your pitiful life story” is the day after Joe Walsh basically says “Yer baby can die for all I care”. Even though written months ago. Maybe on any given day you can find an example of conservative indifference to suffering so it just looks that way.
If you look at Paul Ryan on any given day (not recommended), you can find an example of Republican joy to suffering. Indifference would, at this point, be an upgrade.
Yup, Robin’s general shtick is really the compassionate wing of modern mainstream conservatism and that’s pretty stark and terrifying to consider. Like, things have gotten so bad in this country that half of the folks we allow to vote are all in on a religious and political philosophy that is openly hateful to the idea that people other than folks of that tribe get to live and they’ve stolen enough power to make their genocidal goals a legitimate threat they are already beginning to carry out (people dying in ICE containment, prison conditions getting worse, all the shit happening on the borders and in the airports, trans people about to lose the ability to receive healthcare).
Yeah, the timing of this really jumped out at me too.
At this moment, some part of Robin’s brain is screaming; “I’d give anything to be a lesbian teenager right now.” It’s messing up her defenses.
I get that vibe too. ESPECIALLY since said lesbian teenager just got “her” spot on the couch.
omg. i want a spin-off that’s just Becky and Robin hanging out.
Totally unrelated to the comic: we’re going to start a Dresde Files RPG campaign, and since the DM is cribbing some plot points from the books we’re not allowed to read them as of yet. I’m going to play a focused practitioner, slowly upgrading into full-blown wizard as our refresh increases, and my theurgy-lite specialisation is crafting – but since I’m not allowed to read the books, I dunno how potions are in-world. Can someone let me know if the ingredients for this one sounds right:
An Unprimed Boom-Boom Potion can be turned into a Primed Boom-Boom Potion (i.e., a zone-affecting attack) by adding raw magic and an extra ingredient to “target” the potion to a specific type of being. Ingredients are:
Touch: Some acid
Taste: Salt water (representing tears)
Smell: Napalm
Sight: Blood
Sound: A scream of pain
Mind: A thought of loathing
Heart: Whisky (because an Unprimed Boom-Boom Potion does jack, get it? Ahahah… ahah… ah…)
Does this sound like something that would fit with the universe?
I don’t see why not. It all seems to fit thematically.
That’s what I was aiming for, but as I said, we’re not allowed to read the novels and the gamebook has no recipe examples. so I want to make sure.
Just stay away from mind control, it’s a death sentence in the Harry Dresden world. But everything seems to check on your list.
And remember bribing the G.M. has been a time honored tactic in swaying decisions.
Despite as much as this arc shows Robin is a terrible person…
I would totally read a spinoff “Dumbing of Congress”, that’s all about her legislative career all the time and how all the normal congresspersons react to her.
Can Robin be redeemed? yes. Has she earned redemption or forgiveness or friendship? Nope. But those things are gifts and can’t really be earned anyway. But Robin isn’t interested in any of those things, so she can’t have them even if they are offered.
Can she be redeemed without me wanting to smack Willis on the nose with a rolled up newspaper? No.
Like I said, jump the shark moment.
There is one pressing and unanswered question here: Just when did Robin ask the chairman of the Agriculture Subcommittee what noises cows make and why? That alone may be one of the strangest political stories of a generation.
I think that’s Becky typing.
Robin has lost, and will soon have to leave the house.
In the last panel, Becky demonstrates that she’s smart enough, and comprehends Robin well enough, to hurt Robin by using her phone. And Robin receives the message.
Lots of people – even Bagge and Cerberus – seem to see the last panel as Robin recognizing that Becky is similar to her. Several other commenters have called for Robin to hire Becky.
The situation is a lot more adversarial than that, and both of them know it. Becky certainly has not forgotten that Robin is her enemy. And Robin has not forgotten that Becky needs Robin gone. The last panel is Becky saying “I have power over you” and Robin saying “Yes, yes you do.”
So, within the next few strips, Becky leaves the house holding Robin’s phone, and Robin is forced to run after her to get the phone back.
Because Becky is just that smart and awesome.
Icing on the cake would be if Becky stops in front of the media, and Robin tries to physically wrestle the phone away from Becky, on live TV. Becky is smart enough to try this, and Robin is dumb enough that it might work.
In fact, re-reading the strip, I wonder how far back Becky hatched this plan? Even in the first panel, she’s putting Robin’s focus on her phone. Then, making Robin uncomfortable in a way that Robin will want to give Becky the phone.
Because yes, Becky is that smart, and certainly that motivated. And has lots of experience with manipulative people to draw on. (Like Jocelyne.)
To be fair, I think a lot of those “best buddies” or “join her campaign”
comments are being ironic.
Now that’s an interesting angle I hadn’t considered, but yeah, it makes sense. She’s proven in the past to be slick with phones when she has a mind to be and this definitely has reset the power balance a bit after Robin made such a strong initial push to flex her power at the beginning of their interaction.
And that potential end-point makes sense as a plot development. I’ll have to keep my eye on the phone in the coming strips.
Oh, now this would be good – it ends this shitshow, it gets Becky a home, and it draws a target for Robin on the backs of all concerned and gets her mad enough for revenge – it’s pretty much a perfect plot development.
Yep. I think Becky’s willing to open up and show genuine and earnest goodwill toward Robin for saying prejudiced things in her presence.
I think very much that Becky’s not going to let anyone tell her to her face the life she fought tooth and nail to reclaim for herself, with a gun to her head, is somehow not important or anything less than amazing a life to have. Becky has nothing to her name but she’s risked every single other thing in her existence for this life she wanted where she can start a conversation with a lady with the phrase “I’m a lesbian!” Where she won’t face consequences for it of defying a man that would kill her, if he thought it was his right to kill her when she said it.
Robin said that to Becky out loud and Becky fucking gave her the ugliest expression Becky’s given to a conversation partner. Becky shut her down. Becky is smiling like a wacky, friendly, approachable def totes Fellow Kid bundle of joy in the final panel. Becky is putting on the wacky mask and letting Robin have the benefit of her continued tolerance and mind-blowingly patient friendliness.
I don’t think the friendliness itself is fake or that Becky wasn’t (still isn’t?) coming into this hoping she can make some rapport with a lady that’s gotta, maybe, assumedly be cool on some level of existence because liking women’s the coolest!
I think Becky if she’s giving Robin leeway is also openly antagonistic by displaying she could contact a Congressperson with that phone.
I mean all conjecture really but I hope to god that being reminded of Dina the way Robin did it is going to give Becky some ideas of exactly what you can accomplish with a cell phone and what you can accomplish when people underestimate you.
…I REALLY don’t think that’s how this works.
“Someone broke into my account and did some stupid shit sorry” is a VERY easy thing to recover from. All the financial stuff is usually protected with additional passwords and shit, not to mention fiddling with it is actually criminal and would be very stupid of Becky when everyone knows it’s her doing this.
This is not much more than ‘sweet pranks’ and honestly the entire point of Robin going ‘okay maybe they won’t know it’s not me’ is that THIS IS HARDLY GOING TO AFFECT HER REPUTATION even if people take it for the genuine article.
Like… no. Seriously. No.
If Robin were smarter, she would think of the points you raised.
Since Robin is very short-sighted, she will probably run after Becky if Becky leaves the house with Robin’s phone. Thus removing herself from Leslie’s house. Thus losing her self-created battle to stay there.
And even with the points you raise, there’s a difference between “Someone broke into my account” and “I gave my phone to someone without locking it.” Especially if there’s any confidential information available in her email – which is probably not specially protected.
At this point, Becky is in physical possession of Robin’s “office equipment”; Robin has been proved wrong and over-confident in her statement that people would know Becky wasn’t her; Robin has basically given her permission to play with her email account (how else to read “They’ll know it’s not me?”) so Becky won’t be doing anything criminal until Robin rescinds that permission.
Remember, Becky doesn’t have to send a single email. She just has to get Robin so focused on the belief that Becky with Robin’s phone is dangerous that, when Robin says “Give that back!” and Becky sprints out of the house, Robin follows.
I like that I qualify for an “even bagge” 🙂
I told you guys! They’re bonding! They’ll be spending the next hour writing trolling messages to half the congress.
Now let there be cupcakes.
There’s a lot of talk about whether Robin should or should not be redeemed.
She’s a member of congress. If she redeems herself (figures out that she’s hurting people and does something about it), that could potentially make life better for marginalized people like Becky.
So yeah, I’m totally down with Robin redeeming herself.
I’m just voting Chet Manley. 🙂
Isn’t Manley trying to primary Robin, though? That would imply that he too has an (R) next to his name.
I think the overall point of “We can just vote for someone else” is valid though.
No, not for primaries, this is the actual election campaign.
Hush, comment section!
I wanna hear what sound the Ag Sec makes!
(any muffins left?)