I doubt that – at least for now. Remember, Dorothy’s currently dropping activities that affected her time for learning – it’s very unlikely that she’d now at this point join Robin’s staff. Besides other factors.
I dunno, I think it’s pretty common (not “right,” but common) for people to imagine themselves as the hero of their favorite romantic comedy/fantasy/action movie, and for them to expect other people to behave like supporting characters in the narrative.
Usually, when somebody does this, they don’t realize that’s what they’re doing. If somebody in real life did what Robin does here (not just create the fantasy, but actually put into words the nature of the fantasy they are creating), that person would realize how wrong it is to view other people as characters in a book, as opposed to real people with their own agency and desires.
I know that Robin doesn’t really understand the magnitude of how badly she wronged Leslie, but again, that’s a thing that is depressingly common. People tend to view the wrongs committed by other people more critically than those committed by them (or their friends/children/”side”/etc.).
Team Rocket helps the heroes fight off the more menacing threat plenty of times in the movies, but they’re still criminals who mist absolutely be apprehended.
Is it weird I’m still rooting for Jessie, James and Meowth to quit Team Rocket and somehow avoid any more real consequences for their actions. But I want Robin to face the consequences of hers. Part of it might be that Jessie James and Meowth have already had consequences though not legal ones beyond the stigma of being criminals.
That would be good for Jessie and James I sort want Meowth to use his skills as a translator. Few enough Pokemon can speak English that his skill is valuable. There was actually an episode dedicated to other people making lots of money pretending to be able to do what Meowth does.
In fact, that’s probably him who turned on the lights in Robin’s campaign headquarters. He showed up for work as scheduled, because no one actually fired him. He’s right behind her and she doesn’t even know it.
Honestly, I have never hated this version of Robin. She obviously has something wrong up in the attic, and she is in need of some serious therapy…
That’s the reason I hate what Roz has done, and I dislike that Leslie seems unable to realize Robin isn’t well in the head and keeps treating her as merely a bigot that needs to be taught the truth rather than as a person with a handful of personality disorders…
Robin obviously has problems. She adopts diferent roles in order to give people what they want, but she doesn’t know how to be herself, how to be a normal person. She shows the maturity of a 9 years old. She can’t interact with other people normally, be as friends, romantic interests or co-workers. She shows little awareness of the world around her, needing others to help her to act with a modicum of logic.
In Shortpacked, it was just she being quirky, but in Dumbing of Age the characters are more realistic, and if they act abnormally, it is acknowledged.
I’m not quite sure if it’s really some kind of mental illness or if she’s just not written realistically.
But yeah, it keeps me from hating her, because I just can’t take her seriously enough.
Maybe not intentionally, but yeah, you kinda were. What you’ve described is someone with an over inflated sense of entitlement, in a person who doesn’t like responsibility despite having sought a career which demands it.
There is no mental illness required. People aren’t BORN knowing what is or is not appropriate social behavior. They’re not born knowing how to take responsibility for their actions. These things have to be taught, and then reinforced by the people around her.
Robin has spent her career surrounded by Congressional Republicans. Even being raised my wolves would have left her better prepared to behave like a mature, responsible adult who actually respects people’s boundaries.
Now, would Robin benefit from seeing a therapist? Yes. absolutely, assuming that one could get her to listen. Most people would benefit from a bit of therapy, even if they’re already happy and relatively well-adjusted. Robin would benefit greatly from it, but that’s not the same as being mentally ill.
And even if she WERE, it isn’t Leslie’s duty to sacrifice her own mental health to help or diagnoses someone she doesn’t know who is invading her home. She already went above and beyond what should be expected of her.
Except she hasn’t. She’s spent a couple of years surrounded by Congressional Republicans. Before that, we have to assume she led some kind of normal life with school and maybe even some kind of job – we know she ran for Congress at 25, but we don’t know what she did before then (or even how old she is now.)
There’s no evidence I know of that she comes from the kind of money that lets you ignore all consequences and never bother growing up.
How the hell did someone like her ever get to where she is? Without the benefit of Cadbury Creme Egg cereal.
And “inflated sense of entitlement, in a person who doesn’t like responsibility despite having sought a career which demands it” doesn’t really cover Robin. This is a politician who doesn’t even bother to pretend that she’s not faking it. She has to be told, openly in front of the audience how much to pander. She lists off the personas she can play.
She just walked across town in nothing but a shirt, carrying a lamp marked “Aide”. This isn’t normal. This isn’t even entitled politician normal.
I don’t know if it’s “crazy”. It doesn’t match any mental illness I’m aware of, but it’s not how normal people behave either. Honestly, I just write most of it off as over the top parody. An echo of the old SP Robin zaniness. It doesn’t work for me here.
I see how it’s bothering Leslie, but I still just can’t take Robin seriously as a threat.
Okay, so many of those years were spent with republicans and conservatives who WEREN’T in congress.
But as for the realism? Have you SEEN the raging imbecile we elected president? He is a thousand times worse than Robin. He’s not mentally ill either. He’s that way because he’s never had to work a day in his life. He’s had money and pampering from the day he was born, and no real parenting, love or guidance as a child. He’s surrounded himself with sycophantic yes-men and successfully used money to fend off any real consequences for any of his actions for 70 years.
“Normal behavior” is not some intrinsic thing that exists unto itself, especially when it comes to social behavior. It’s not this ingrained thing that’s programmed into us. Bits and pieces are, but the kind of complexity we’re talking about is entirely a learned thing.
Wandering around without pants might be hamming it up for laughs, but the rest of it can entirely be explained by Robin having come to have really crappy ideas about how to treat other people and how to behave, and the people around her who re-enforced those ideas were more successful than the people who tried to challenge them.
Right now, she’s also facing some serious denial because a lot of her life is in upheaval at the moment, and Robin just is not equipped with the emotional tools to cope with or even process it.
And that’s the point. Not only is he an idiot, but he’s mean and vindictive in ways that Robin shows no signs of.
Were Robin’s early years spend with Republicans and conservatives who weren’t in Congress? Who knows. It hasn’t come up. Were Roz’s? Were Riley’s? I don’t think there’s any evidence they were like Trump’s – private schools and “military” academies.
I think people miss my point when I make this argument. It’s not that I can’t believe anyone could be as horrible as Robin. Plenty of people are as bad or far worse. I follow politics. I’ve dealt with gaslighters. There are people who behave kind of like Robin (minus some of the more hamming it up bits), but in my experience they’re all really malicious if you see them without the masks on.
Maybe Robin’s really like that and a lot of people seem to be taking her that way, but I can’t see it. We’ve seen enough of her – like right here. This isn’t performance. Someone deliberately gaslighting and manipulating Leslie wouldn’t be standing here in the dark waiting for the movie scene to play out – they’d be cursing her out and plotting their next attack.
“And even if she WERE, it isn’t Leslie’s duty to sacrifice her own mental health to help or diagnoses someone she doesn’t know who is invading her home. She already went above and beyond what should be expected of her.”
I don’t think it’s Leslie’s duty to do anything for Robin, at all. As a matter of fact, she shouldn’t have done anything regarding Robin. That’s part of the problem…
Leslie has been, to a lesser degree, acting as if life were a sitcom, just like Robin: She has obsessed with a politician who upholds homophobic values, hoping that she could “redeem” her, make her see the light, take her out of the closet (it was just wishful thinking from her part to think that she was in the closet at all, it was just blind luck that Robin is really interested in girls) and have an affair with her…
If Robin was merely an ultra-conservative politician, she would just have broken Leslie’s heart…
What she found instead was a ball of crazy. And rather than realizing it upon watching her antics, she kept trying to “redeem” her, bringing Becky so she could understand how her policies are affecting homosexual people, which doesn’t matter anymore, because 1.-Robin won’t have political power anymore, ever, so it won’t achieve anything beyond trying to make her feel guilty about the past, 2.-Robin has a “special” relationship with Reality, and merely confronting her with facts won’t be enough to break through, 3.-Leslie already made Robin feel guilty and confronted her with her own sexuality, and all it achieved was to make her run down into the rabbit hole of reality denial and crazyness… what does she expect to achieve now? Does she think that she can fix Robin this way?
Really, all Leslie should have done was to keep voting for other people, discard her unhealthy obsession for Robin, denounce/campaign against her homophobic policies (which she has already been doing effectively in her classes) and tell Roz to f**k off, roll her crazy plans and stuff them up her butt, where they belong.
Also, I expect all these shenagigans to have a negative impact on Leslie’s life now… to US she is now the woman who either “corrupted” Robin or set a trap to ruin her career… Did she really need to get into that mess? Taking into account the political climate in their state, I expect the religious right to try hard to ruin her career and prevent her from working as an educator.
As for Roz, she has set herself to fail spectacularly. She wasn’t expelled only because Robin saved her ass. And she enjoyed the perks of being the sister of a wealthy, successful woman (helicopter trips, for example). Let see how well will she deal with the loss of status.
Not gonna lie, I’m gonna rest easier when Ryan’s dealt with. I’m a lot better with material that used to be triggery these days, but it still makes me vaguely anxious.
Well….I mean it looks like it’s getting closer to a resolution but he’s been floating around in the background for years realtime..Maybe it’ll end before 2018? *shrug*. Good luck til then.
The plot: Robin has a crisis because her former life is gone and still “her” lesbian doesn’t come back to her, then she imagines the job she would like most to do, which is to watch over kids in a field playing innocently and be the catcher of any Ryan before he is able to shove a kid down into an abyss.
I hope it’s clear enough that this isn’t a genuine question, or at least not one that’s any sort of an answer to, as much as a comment on my experience of the comic.
Maybe not manipulated, but that doesn’t mean she actually set any of her policy, even on a broad scale.
Sounds like she just took political advice on “how to win as a Republican in this swing district” and went along with whatever it was. Lazy and irresponsible, but it’s not like she was particularly attached to any of the horrible policy.
Which is almost worse in a way. She was actively trying to harm people’s lives not even out of genuine conviction, but out of a lazy tribalism to acquire and maintain power.
Yeah. The only significant difference is that it’s easier to get her to change (or at least to stop her) than if she were doing it based on real convictions and had an emotional investment in the results.
Sooo… what exactly is Robin hoping for? A romantic relationship with Leslie? A platonic friendship? Merely exoneration for all the crap that she put Leslie through? Or some combination of the above?
Also: How does Robin imagine Leslie will show up? Did Robin text her or something? Is she standing in the university parking lot?
I think Robin is hoping for romance, while telling herself she’s hoping for friendship. I’m not sure that she quite realizes that she did anything wrong and needs to be forgiven, but if she does, she’ll want exoneration, too.
Robin thinks Leslie will show up through the power of movie magic, possibly in a pink Cadillac in which they’ll drive off into the sunset or something. Her relationship with reality is… kinda fuzzy at best.
“Get behind me, my Lesbian! I don’t care if I only have one good hand (the other having been lost to Twitteritis)! If anyone makes you uncomfortable I’ll punch them in the face!”
I can legitimately imagine her spending hours out there without pants, smiling at the passing cars and cameras and keeping the same pose, only occasionally checking her phone and adding another tweet or two (can somebody check her Twitter feed?). And maybe Leslie poking her head outside to make sure she’s still there. Actually, the news crews probably got bored and left hours ago. I would. XD
…. but more seriously, I’m worried that this sequence of events will lead to Robin angrily breaking down Leslie’s door at 3 AM demanding to know why she left her hanging, or some other category of awful like that.
Wow. Um, how long did Robin stand on asphalt without shoes? With a smile that must be making her face sore by now? And whose establishment is that in the background? Because I think she could be considered to be loitering at this point.
…
Also, you can’t just skip the second act of a movie Robin. You just finished act one, now it’s time to get cranking on act two. Second acts are important.
For a second I got nostalgic over Robin saying ‘my lesbian’, then I remembered what universe we’re in and got mad. Shut up, Robin. She’s not your anything.
Every time someone asks this question about any character who does something appalling, there’s usually at least half a dozen people who come in later and mention how they have personal experience with such people.
I’m afraid there’s every kind of people out there.
Not really. People more awful than Robin exist. People who kind of pretend to be Robin while they’re chasing something they want.
But Robin’s kind of awful combined with oblivious innocence combined with power and success just isn’t – she’s an over the top parody.
So, here’s a fun story about asphalt and bare feet: when I was around twelve, I was super into Toph, and I wanted to toughen up the soles of my feet so I could be more like this fictional cartoon character. So I got up early one day in the summer, and I went on this long barefoot walk that included circling the school track a bunch of times and some roads, parking lots, and park paths.
Well, Indiana rather than Ohio but even then the night temps in October are going to be similar. Looking up October weather for Bloomington, it’s likely between 55°F and 65°F (if we presume it’s around 8pm) with wind around 5MPH
Living in Ohio myself (as I said, similar), that’s weather I’d still be wearing shorts in and foregoing shoes/slippers standing/sitting outside for up to half an hour smoking, maybe drinking a beer and checking online stuff on my phone rather than at my PC. By 10pm I’d be wanting pants and shoes/slippers while doing that as the temp would drop (on average) another 10°F. If it was a particularly warm day, you could safely add another 10°F to all that. *shrugs*
And my my, aren’t you hardy around cold weather? My dad wanted to move to warmer pastures because he couldn’t take the chills. His Ukrainian ancestors – and myself – are disappointed.
This is… a step in the right direction. Her motivations re: policy changes are still primarily self serving, but her attitude towards Ryan* shows that she is at least capable of being genuine. It brings up a wrinkle for me, though: what power does Robin actually have to set things in motion for bringing Ryan to justice? By her own admission, she was too far removed from her interns to have enough information to track him down herself, and her staff has all apparently abandoned her already. She’s probably also burned too many bridges to call in any favors to facilitate actually getting Ryan convicted, because honestly, there isn’t much of a legal case against him unless more victims come forward. The only physical evidence of his encounter with Joyce is his scar, which isn’t exactly helpful, and while there were plenty of witnesses, almost all of them were either too drunk, too biased towards Joyce, or both (Billie) for their testimony to prop up the case in court. It might be too little, too late for Robin to actually be of any meaningful help.
I love how Robin just accepted Becky’s tweets as her new opinions. “Sure, I might have said that. Why not? It fits with my new public persona so let’s go with it.”
I think people who were assuring everyone that Robin is this incorrigible villain who hates gay people and is deliberately manipulative towards everyone to protect her definitely existing bigoted opinions… must be evaluating their estimation of her now.
Of course, now she’s the kind of villain who’ll stand for whatever as long as it gets her what she wants, even if she hasn’t fully grasped the implications or consequences. Which is not really an improvement.
Honestly the people who thought Robin actually hated gay people instead of being indifferent to them were underwhelming. I might have been tuning the more ridiculous things out but I mostly remember hearing that she can’t admit to her own queerness because of internalized homophobia, and she believes its sort of a choice because she has feelings which she chooses not to acknowledge.
I don’t think it’s intended as a guilt trip. More just Willis revisiting how this would play out in a more realistic setting. (Maybe there’s a tiny bit of self-correction in there, too.)
With SP!, my usual reaction was 50% laughter, 50% horror; that’s basically the reason I got hooked on it. I’d be like, “This is awful, how the fuck does Willis manage to make it funny?” But SP! was wacky as heck: SP! Robin got high on Cardburry egg cereal and achieved world peace. In a more realistic, less over the top setting like DoA, her antics are a lot less amusing.
Ouch. Is there a doctor in the house? A psychiatric doctor? Are we looking at a possible manic personality disorder here, because this is starting to remind me of Silver Linings Playbook.
“I’m gonna take all this negativity and use it as fuel!”
So Becky DID mess with Robin’s campaign, that’s probably where all the pro-LGBT policies Robin didn’t write came from. Becky you clever girl, now if Robin does somehow get elected it’ll be on a platform of pro-LGBT rights and she’ll be forced to commit to that cause. And if she doesn’t get elected you lost nothing in the deal. Genius XD
I can’t help but wonder how long Robin is going to stand our there, grinning inanely and waiting for Leslie to turn up. It could be a very long time, because she’s stupidly oblivious about how others view her. Of course, when she next meets Leslie it will somehow be Leslie’s fault. Like I said, oblivious.
Rather than the usual chapter closer of someone in bed, from now on each chapter ends with the lights going down on Robin standing in the parking lot waiting for Leslie.
Her policies were chosen for her by the party hierarchy and it is thus possible that they were wrong. However, it is completely impossible to her mind that she could personally make a mistake in how she treated others.
i feel like we got some symbolism going on here between her previous use of costume/accessories as props in the story she’s telling about herself, whether hot librarian or cool girl. and current robin is completely unfiltered, semi-nude robin, pantlessness and all
but like also this is just kind of funny How Long Can One Woman Go without pants or exposing her muffin
Is Robin self aware enough to realise she’s effectively outing herself? When even she isn’t comfortable acknowledging her sexuality to herself? Or that coming out is going to be harder during an election campaign, under the harsh glare of a “sex scandal” media swarm, and making the announcements via Twitter?
What am I saying, It’s Robin, of course she isn’t..
Also reminded of the Beatles parody episode of Pinky and the Brain, (singing) “All we are saying, is take off your pants”.
I don’t think Robin will think in those terms. The angle from which she views reality is wayyyy too convoluted for her to even notice that there is such a thing as ‘closet’ which she might or might not have been in. It’s just… her being Robin. As Robin does.
On a completely unrelated note: I’ve just learned the term “grey rocking”, and now have a name for the skill I had to develop when I was living with a certain person who has probably been mentioned a few times.
the funny thing about it is that because the narcissist is so self-centered they’ll never actually guess that you’re anything other than how you personally affect them
I…really needed to know this technique. (I’m kinda stuck in a bad situation until I finish grad school.) Thank you so much for letting me know it exists!
Buy some pepper spray, Les. This stalker is going to need a lot of negative reinforcement to finally make her stay gone; especially as reality closes in.
So, here’s hoping this comic indicates that Robin will absolutely not be getting the girl.
I think I can see this pairing as actually being something Willis wanted to take another crack at, not completely unlike Ruth/Billie. But right now at least what we’re seeing is a second crack that might be about giving Leslie more self-respect and Robin maybe having to grow up without also getting the girl as a reward.
I’d like that. I’d like to see Leslie say, No. I’m physically attracted to you, but you’ve been awful to me both politically and personally, and it’s frankly really unsettling that you don’t seem to get that. Try again in another life.
I think Cerberus has been floating this idea for a while: a “redemption is not enough” storyline,
At the very least even a really determined romantic comedy requires the hero to have ACTUALLY learned a lesson, though, instead of just 98% faking it like Robin is doing here.
So yeah, I’m currently eeeijg this as half a baby step in the general direction of Robin becoming a better person, and hopefully it will be without Leslie.
And the thing is, that the redemption might be good in a lot of ways for her. Allow her to live more honestly with herself, support policies that don’t hurt people, use her wealth and influence for a good cause.
But it might not “get the girl”, because girls aren’t shiny prizes handed out for positive character growth and no matter what she does, it might not ever be enough to overcome how scary and awful the last few days have been for Leslie.
And it’s a hard lesson, but an important one. Getting better might not mean you get back everything you used to have or everything you want, unlike the movies claim. And that’s okay. That’s consent. It’s not your choice whether you get a second chance from a specific person or not.
Especially now as Robin would learn all the wrong lessons and still mistreat Leslie if Leslie actually were to give her another chance now. Robin has a lot of growth to do to be safe in a relationship with anyone, but especially Leslie given what she just did.
“Redemption is a rare and special thing, it’s not for everyone.”
There’s good here. Quite a lot. It’s good that Robin is taking her strong stand against a sexual assaulter and making that public. It’s good that she’s not publicly denying the pro-queer-folks tweets Becky made. And given where she was, it’s steps in the right direction and that matters and it may end up getting her to a place where she starts undoing some of the damage she did as someone specifically running as an anti-gay politician.
But the second half also reveals the shallowness of this face turn. Would she be as willing to stick this out if the response to her pro-queer tweets had been overwhelmingly negative? Will she be as willing to keep doing work that is harder than a few supportive tweets? Especially as the consequences of doing the right thing start hitting more and more? When she gets the full blast of societal homophobia?
And her motivation is still stuck in her intentional fantasy. Where she’s just in a wacky rom-com she never has to admit is a rom-com with Leslie and that by doing the right thing, she’ll get the “reward” of getting her back in her life. And well, that type of redemption is frequently less trustworthy, because what happens when that person says “no, you were not safe, that’s not happening even if you get better”?
And that’s what I suspect this strip is hinting at for Robin. Cause the thing is she is still deeply unsafe for Leslie. She has bad boundaries and recruits folks for her mental story. And well, she’s still doing it here, casting her as the rom-com love interest who forgives the hero all their sins of “love” even though he hasn’t actually done much to directly address the worldview that spawned them.
And she’s still unwilling to even admit what she wants from Leslie and speaks of her as a possession (which is another nice little switch caused by the greater realism where a cute running gag becomes something a bit more… awful). Which means if Leslie were to fulfill this fantasy and give her another second chance, she’d likely put her in much of the same position including bowling over her stated desires to fulfill an internal narrative of how the relationship “should go” all while denying the chemistry between them and shoving that all on Leslie so Robin can be “not queer”.
And this Leslie has the self-respect to know that she doesn’t actually want that even if part of her still fantasizes about and craves Robin and holds out a torch of hope.
And the sad part is, Robin could have had Leslie in her life. If she had respected boundaries. If she had listened to what Leslie was saying and thought about it before her life was ruined or if she hadn’t tried to force Leslie to adopt her as her new live-in girlfriend who denies being a girlfriend without her consent.
But now, it may take a very long time before Leslie might ever trust Robin again and it very likely may never happen, this experience being so amazingly awful for her. And certainly it will not occur until Robin is ready to fully own what she did to Leslie and that making that right is not going to be as simple or as pleasant for her as standing by a conviction she actually has and accepting someone else’s vaguely queer-positive tweets as her own.
It may take real soul-searching and may still wind up with her having eternally fucked it up and having to move on to someone new.
And that’s okay. Her redemption will have meaning even if she doesn’t get the “Hollywood reward”, but I worry that Robin will lose steam on this superficially good path once it’s clear that she’s not going to get the instant Hollywood ending without doing real, hard introspective work.
Yeah I think part of what’s making Robin so gung-ho about things now is that she’s gotten some positive reinforcement for it on twitter, and a lifetime of romcoms telling her that her lesbian will apologetically run back into her ostensibly heterosexual arms.
I think at the least, regardless of how she’ll be perceived or whatever blowback she gets, she’s still serious about getting Ryan in jail.
Now that the universe has forced me to learn my lesson Leslie will instantly come back to me acknowledge that I’ve changed and help me rebuild the life I had before but as a good person now, and as Ryan goes to jail because of the work we did together I shall get my office back and Leslie and I will cement our relationship.
The funny thing is that In a way, DoA *is* a Rom-Com. Just not the kind Robin wants it to be. And she’s not the main character. She’s close to being right, but in all the wrong ways.
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next strip: copy-paste of panels 4 and 5
strip after that: copy-paste of panels 4 and 5, but [surprise ending]
You mean Carla?!…ends up joining her staff? That seems kinda out of character for her
She doesn’t have to join the staff. She can whoosh by on her skates for a pie and run.
I was thinking Dorothy would…
I doubt that – at least for now. Remember, Dorothy’s currently dropping activities that affected her time for learning – it’s very unlikely that she’d now at this point join Robin’s staff. Besides other factors.
Tumblepaper.
Needs a catchier name.
Driftwad
Isn’t that the name of a Transformer?
Tumblewaste
Tumblr
I think somebody already claimed that one.
Bimblescrap
Litter.
That’s no piece of paper, that’s all that’s left of Joe after Rachel dealt to him.
Random pieces of what may or not be useful information or entertainment cascading by too fast to really focus on? The Internet.
Oops, seems Robin’s succumbed to the same line of thinking that’s caused Bojack Horseman so many problems.
The nights cold when you’re alone…….and you have no pants.
And no shoes or socks.
Overrated!
Gonna get cold tonight. Might want to cover your… delicates.
What I find especially funny is that she is wearing Leslie’s shirt.
Wouldn’t it hurt your feet standing barefoot on asphalt all day?
she’s at her most powerful when she’s expecting her lesbian
It would if you kept all your weight on your heels, as if you had regular shoes on.
Yep, it’s just a matter of distributing the weight, and Robin looks like she’s well within recommended BMI, which makes it easier on the feet as well.
Well, at least Becky had a positive influence…
Is it wrong to hate Robin again for all the creepiness of the third panel? Because she’s still against Ryan.
Absolutely not wrong. Being against someone worst doesn’t make her a good person or anything.
People are rarely as simple as “all good” or “all bad”. Instead, they are good and bad in different contexts.
I dunno, I think it’s pretty common (not “right,” but common) for people to imagine themselves as the hero of their favorite romantic comedy/fantasy/action movie, and for them to expect other people to behave like supporting characters in the narrative.
Usually, when somebody does this, they don’t realize that’s what they’re doing. If somebody in real life did what Robin does here (not just create the fantasy, but actually put into words the nature of the fantasy they are creating), that person would realize how wrong it is to view other people as characters in a book, as opposed to real people with their own agency and desires.
I know that Robin doesn’t really understand the magnitude of how badly she wronged Leslie, but again, that’s a thing that is depressingly common. People tend to view the wrongs committed by other people more critically than those committed by them (or their friends/children/”side”/etc.).
Yeah but she’s still acting like she owns Robin and is owed affection by her.
Team Rocket helps the heroes fight off the more menacing threat plenty of times in the movies, but they’re still criminals who mist absolutely be apprehended.
Is it weird I’m still rooting for Jessie, James and Meowth to quit Team Rocket and somehow avoid any more real consequences for their actions. But I want Robin to face the consequences of hers. Part of it might be that Jessie James and Meowth have already had consequences though not legal ones beyond the stigma of being criminals.
I want them to pursue their backup plan of being chefs. They were so happy the time they tried it.
That would be good for Jessie and James I sort want Meowth to use his skills as a translator. Few enough Pokemon can speak English that his skill is valuable. There was actually an episode dedicated to other people making lots of money pretending to be able to do what Meowth does.
“Against Ryan” in finger quotes. That bum should have been caught several times over, but his pursuers keep tripping over their own drama.
What.
In fact, that’s probably him who turned on the lights in Robin’s campaign headquarters. He showed up for work as scheduled, because no one actually fired him. He’s right behind her and she doesn’t even know it.
I like the way you think.
Nah, those things are based on sensors/timers to maintain minimum acceptable light levels during hours of operation.
Honestly, I have never hated this version of Robin. She obviously has something wrong up in the attic, and she is in need of some serious therapy…
That’s the reason I hate what Roz has done, and I dislike that Leslie seems unable to realize Robin isn’t well in the head and keeps treating her as merely a bigot that needs to be taught the truth rather than as a person with a handful of personality disorders…
Can we please stop treating mental illness as some catch all for someone being evil?
I’m not doing that.
Robin obviously has problems. She adopts diferent roles in order to give people what they want, but she doesn’t know how to be herself, how to be a normal person. She shows the maturity of a 9 years old. She can’t interact with other people normally, be as friends, romantic interests or co-workers. She shows little awareness of the world around her, needing others to help her to act with a modicum of logic.
In Shortpacked, it was just she being quirky, but in Dumbing of Age the characters are more realistic, and if they act abnormally, it is acknowledged.
I’m not quite sure if it’s really some kind of mental illness or if she’s just not written realistically.
But yeah, it keeps me from hating her, because I just can’t take her seriously enough.
Maybe not intentionally, but yeah, you kinda were. What you’ve described is someone with an over inflated sense of entitlement, in a person who doesn’t like responsibility despite having sought a career which demands it.
There is no mental illness required. People aren’t BORN knowing what is or is not appropriate social behavior. They’re not born knowing how to take responsibility for their actions. These things have to be taught, and then reinforced by the people around her.
Robin has spent her career surrounded by Congressional Republicans. Even being raised my wolves would have left her better prepared to behave like a mature, responsible adult who actually respects people’s boundaries.
Now, would Robin benefit from seeing a therapist? Yes. absolutely, assuming that one could get her to listen. Most people would benefit from a bit of therapy, even if they’re already happy and relatively well-adjusted. Robin would benefit greatly from it, but that’s not the same as being mentally ill.
And even if she WERE, it isn’t Leslie’s duty to sacrifice her own mental health to help or diagnoses someone she doesn’t know who is invading her home. She already went above and beyond what should be expected of her.
Except she hasn’t. She’s spent a couple of years surrounded by Congressional Republicans. Before that, we have to assume she led some kind of normal life with school and maybe even some kind of job – we know she ran for Congress at 25, but we don’t know what she did before then (or even how old she is now.)
There’s no evidence I know of that she comes from the kind of money that lets you ignore all consequences and never bother growing up.
How the hell did someone like her ever get to where she is? Without the benefit of Cadbury Creme Egg cereal.
And “inflated sense of entitlement, in a person who doesn’t like responsibility despite having sought a career which demands it” doesn’t really cover Robin. This is a politician who doesn’t even bother to pretend that she’s not faking it. She has to be told, openly in front of the audience how much to pander. She lists off the personas she can play.
She just walked across town in nothing but a shirt, carrying a lamp marked “Aide”. This isn’t normal. This isn’t even entitled politician normal.
I don’t know if it’s “crazy”. It doesn’t match any mental illness I’m aware of, but it’s not how normal people behave either. Honestly, I just write most of it off as over the top parody. An echo of the old SP Robin zaniness. It doesn’t work for me here.
I see how it’s bothering Leslie, but I still just can’t take Robin seriously as a threat.
Okay, so many of those years were spent with republicans and conservatives who WEREN’T in congress.
But as for the realism? Have you SEEN the raging imbecile we elected president? He is a thousand times worse than Robin. He’s not mentally ill either. He’s that way because he’s never had to work a day in his life. He’s had money and pampering from the day he was born, and no real parenting, love or guidance as a child. He’s surrounded himself with sycophantic yes-men and successfully used money to fend off any real consequences for any of his actions for 70 years.
“Normal behavior” is not some intrinsic thing that exists unto itself, especially when it comes to social behavior. It’s not this ingrained thing that’s programmed into us. Bits and pieces are, but the kind of complexity we’re talking about is entirely a learned thing.
Wandering around without pants might be hamming it up for laughs, but the rest of it can entirely be explained by Robin having come to have really crappy ideas about how to treat other people and how to behave, and the people around her who re-enforced those ideas were more successful than the people who tried to challenge them.
Right now, she’s also facing some serious denial because a lot of her life is in upheaval at the moment, and Robin just is not equipped with the emotional tools to cope with or even process it.
Yes, I’ve noticed him.
Yes, he’s worse than Robin, by far.
And that’s the point. Not only is he an idiot, but he’s mean and vindictive in ways that Robin shows no signs of.
Were Robin’s early years spend with Republicans and conservatives who weren’t in Congress? Who knows. It hasn’t come up. Were Roz’s? Were Riley’s? I don’t think there’s any evidence they were like Trump’s – private schools and “military” academies.
I think people miss my point when I make this argument. It’s not that I can’t believe anyone could be as horrible as Robin. Plenty of people are as bad or far worse. I follow politics. I’ve dealt with gaslighters. There are people who behave kind of like Robin (minus some of the more hamming it up bits), but in my experience they’re all really malicious if you see them without the masks on.
Maybe Robin’s really like that and a lot of people seem to be taking her that way, but I can’t see it. We’ve seen enough of her – like right here. This isn’t performance. Someone deliberately gaslighting and manipulating Leslie wouldn’t be standing here in the dark waiting for the movie scene to play out – they’d be cursing her out and plotting their next attack.
“And even if she WERE, it isn’t Leslie’s duty to sacrifice her own mental health to help or diagnoses someone she doesn’t know who is invading her home. She already went above and beyond what should be expected of her.”
I don’t think it’s Leslie’s duty to do anything for Robin, at all. As a matter of fact, she shouldn’t have done anything regarding Robin. That’s part of the problem…
Leslie has been, to a lesser degree, acting as if life were a sitcom, just like Robin: She has obsessed with a politician who upholds homophobic values, hoping that she could “redeem” her, make her see the light, take her out of the closet (it was just wishful thinking from her part to think that she was in the closet at all, it was just blind luck that Robin is really interested in girls) and have an affair with her…
If Robin was merely an ultra-conservative politician, she would just have broken Leslie’s heart…
What she found instead was a ball of crazy. And rather than realizing it upon watching her antics, she kept trying to “redeem” her, bringing Becky so she could understand how her policies are affecting homosexual people, which doesn’t matter anymore, because 1.-Robin won’t have political power anymore, ever, so it won’t achieve anything beyond trying to make her feel guilty about the past, 2.-Robin has a “special” relationship with Reality, and merely confronting her with facts won’t be enough to break through, 3.-Leslie already made Robin feel guilty and confronted her with her own sexuality, and all it achieved was to make her run down into the rabbit hole of reality denial and crazyness… what does she expect to achieve now? Does she think that she can fix Robin this way?
Really, all Leslie should have done was to keep voting for other people, discard her unhealthy obsession for Robin, denounce/campaign against her homophobic policies (which she has already been doing effectively in her classes) and tell Roz to f**k off, roll her crazy plans and stuff them up her butt, where they belong.
Also, I expect all these shenagigans to have a negative impact on Leslie’s life now… to US she is now the woman who either “corrupted” Robin or set a trap to ruin her career… Did she really need to get into that mess? Taking into account the political climate in their state, I expect the religious right to try hard to ruin her career and prevent her from working as an educator.
As for Roz, she has set herself to fail spectacularly. She wasn’t expelled only because Robin saved her ass. And she enjoyed the perks of being the sister of a wealthy, successful woman (helicopter trips, for example). Let see how well will she deal with the loss of status.
Ain’t gonna be that easy in this universe, Robin. Shenanigans are less powerful here. And that’s a good thing, I like this version of Leslie better.
I suspect this is where Willis considered altering the storyline just to annoy a particular (and fairly obvious) commenter.
I am reasonably convinced that was a joke.
But just in case it wasn’t;
GOSH IT SURE WOULD BE AWFUL IF SAYID SHOWED UP MORE I HATE THAT GUY
Right um SAYID IS JUST THE WORST. HIM AND JASON SHOULD JUST JUST JUMP IN A DUMPSTER FIRE
I thought that already happ… get rightfully smacked down by half the fans before can finish terrible joke
Together? Um, I mean, YES, THAT SOUNDS DREADFUL.
UGH, NO MORE STUPID BOWTIE DUDE.
OH BOY I LOVE REVERSE PSYCHOLOGY CAN I JOIN IN
Not enough reverse.
But what would the T-Rexes eat then?
Good for Leslie for not showing up and all, but why do we keep cutting back to Robin
Cause her character arc’s not over yet.
I mean, true for a lot of characters.
Also seems like it’s gonna tie into the Ryan subplot.
Not gonna lie, I’m gonna rest easier when Ryan’s dealt with. I’m a lot better with material that used to be triggery these days, but it still makes me vaguely anxious.
Well….I mean it looks like it’s getting closer to a resolution but he’s been floating around in the background for years realtime..Maybe it’ll end before 2018? *shrug*. Good luck til then.
It seems to me that Book 7 is gonna be “the One Where We Catch Ryan”.
Or “The catching of the Ryan” ?
The plot: Robin has a crisis because her former life is gone and still “her” lesbian doesn’t come back to her, then she imagines the job she would like most to do, which is to watch over kids in a field playing innocently and be the catcher of any Ryan before he is able to shove a kid down into an abyss.
“The One Where We Catch Ryan” was an odd episode, I mean, how did a David Willis comic character even end up in Friends?
Actually Ryan is the name of an STD. They named it after him.
I’ll be similarly glad when Ryan is officially dealt with, though I’m still wondering what that will look like.
Is it normal to have anxiety over series you enjoy?
Sorry. I was asking for myself but I didn’t think how awful that sounded.
How else would we know that she still hasn’t figured out it was Becky who posted all those tweets? Or that she still isn’t wearing pants?
…Because she’s a character in this comic?
I hope it’s clear enough that this isn’t a genuine question, or at least not one that’s any sort of an answer to, as much as a comment on my experience of the comic.
That’s fair, since I figured giving the vaguest correct answer to the question would be funny.
Also, it occurs to me Panel 2 indicates Robin really didn’t make ANY of her policy. She was as much a puppet of her handlers as Tommen.
“GAME OF THRONES!”
Not really. She just delegated the details to her subordinates and just went along with their recommendations on most issues.
She was never being manipulated. She was just being lazy and irresponsible.
I concur.
Maybe not manipulated, but that doesn’t mean she actually set any of her policy, even on a broad scale.
Sounds like she just took political advice on “how to win as a Republican in this swing district” and went along with whatever it was. Lazy and irresponsible, but it’s not like she was particularly attached to any of the horrible policy.
Which is almost worse in a way. She was actively trying to harm people’s lives not even out of genuine conviction, but out of a lazy tribalism to acquire and maintain power.
Yeah. The only significant difference is that it’s easier to get her to change (or at least to stop her) than if she were doing it based on real convictions and had an emotional investment in the results.
Ethically it’s not an improvement
(Alt-Text) Robin has always been a Farce to be reckoned with.
The Farce Awakens?
You could even say she’s a farce of nature.
BTW, Something*Positive damned Willis again.
“The farce is strong with this one.”
What do you *mean* this is going to require *EFFORT*?!
Maximum effort!
Which for Robin is only achieved with quantaties of sugar that are measured by fatality rates, and… shall we say: varying results?
seriously
“who pulled the drama tag”
The drama tag came pre-pulled.
That’s the true difference between the two universes… either that, or sliding timeline plus Digimon Tamers show setting. /sarcasm
Sooo… what exactly is Robin hoping for? A romantic relationship with Leslie? A platonic friendship? Merely exoneration for all the crap that she put Leslie through? Or some combination of the above?
Also: How does Robin imagine Leslie will show up? Did Robin text her or something? Is she standing in the university parking lot?
She probably assumes that Leslie follows her on twitter.
I think Robin is hoping for romance, while telling herself she’s hoping for friendship. I’m not sure that she quite realizes that she did anything wrong and needs to be forgiven, but if she does, she’ll want exoneration, too.
Robin thinks Leslie will show up through the power of movie magic, possibly in a pink Cadillac in which they’ll drive off into the sunset or something. Her relationship with reality is… kinda fuzzy at best.
GAL PALS!!!!
I assume it is something like room mates-who-are-bestets-friends with A LOT of subtext, and Robin has not quite decided what that subtext means yet.
Come to think of it, quite a lot like Becky’s and Joyce’s relationship as it might seem to Robin.
“Get behind me, my Lesbian! I don’t care if I only have one good hand (the other having been lost to Twitteritis)! If anyone makes you uncomfortable I’ll punch them in the face!”
“YOU MAKE ME UNCOMFORTABLE, ROBIN!”
Hell, quite a lot like their relationship seemed to Becky until she went to Anderson.
Robin expects that her reward is due, and magic/god will arrange it to be served.
Serendipitous Tumbleweed power, activate!
http://grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1506/comment-page-2
I can legitimately imagine her spending hours out there without pants, smiling at the passing cars and cameras and keeping the same pose, only occasionally checking her phone and adding another tweet or two (can somebody check her Twitter feed?). And maybe Leslie poking her head outside to make sure she’s still there. Actually, the news crews probably got bored and left hours ago. I would. XD
Unfortunately, Robin’s Twitter has not updated since Becky’s last few tweets.
Huh, weird. I guess maybe it would be a spoiler?
Sorry, Robin. Just because you spent the past several days dominating her life, doesn’t mean she’s subbed to your twitter feed.
#notsorryRobin
#kindasorryforthispunkinda
…. but more seriously, I’m worried that this sequence of events will lead to Robin angrily breaking down Leslie’s door at 3 AM demanding to know why she left her hanging, or some other category of awful like that.
Uh oh. Didn’t even think of that, but that is an alarming possibility. :\
Nice to see Robin’s started becoming a better person, but reality doesn’t work like that.
Reality and Robin have a very tenuous relationship.
Would have expected her to put on pants by now.
I wouldn’t.
Pants are for quitters
Pants are for cowards. Pants make you weak!
Well, that’s…something, but she’s still got a long way to go.
Wow. Um, how long did Robin stand on asphalt without shoes? With a smile that must be making her face sore by now? And whose establishment is that in the background? Because I think she could be considered to be loitering at this point.
…
Also, you can’t just skip the second act of a movie Robin. You just finished act one, now it’s time to get cranking on act two. Second acts are important.
hold that L, robin
I spent a good part of the day reading about Burt Ward (don’t worry, he’s fine) and come back to another Robin not wearing pants.
I am now picturing Robin as Robin…
…and Robin as Robin.
Robin, buy some pants and a clue
Gotta respect Robin for giving no fucks about doing this still wearing nothing but a stolen shirt.
Maybe not “respect” exactly. But definitely something.
…looks like it’s true that idiots don’t catch colds.
No, honey; and put some damn pants on.
For a second I got nostalgic over Robin saying ‘my lesbian’, then I remembered what universe we’re in and got mad. Shut up, Robin. She’s not your anything.
Objectification is not just for Joe anymore!
People like Robin don’t really exist in real life, do they?
Every time someone asks this question about any character who does something appalling, there’s usually at least half a dozen people who come in later and mention how they have personal experience with such people.
I’m afraid there’s every kind of people out there.
Not really. People more awful than Robin exist. People who kind of pretend to be Robin while they’re chasing something they want.
But Robin’s kind of awful combined with oblivious innocence combined with power and success just isn’t – she’s an over the top parody.
Something I’ve picked up over past two years:
There is no such thing as “cartoonishly evil”.
well, there is; it’s just not confined to cartoons.
Apparently Donald Trump was the inspiration for multiple Saturday morning cartoon villains. (Source: Cerberus)
Appropriate considering he’s basically Biff Tannen.
Someone check the White House for a worn-out 2015 sports almanac!
Trump was also inspiration for Biff Tannen. Source: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/oct/23/back-to-the-future-writer-bad-guy-biff-was-based-on-donald-trump
That was not the Back to the Future II prediction anybody wanted to see in 2015.
OMG We’re living in the BTTF2 alterverse, aren’t we?
Let’s see. Biff’s in charge, Michael J Fox can’t play guitar anymore, there’s a wave of 80s nostalgia…
Oh dear…
Robin, go home and put some pants on.
So, here’s a fun story about asphalt and bare feet: when I was around twelve, I was super into Toph, and I wanted to toughen up the soles of my feet so I could be more like this fictional cartoon character. So I got up early one day in the summer, and I went on this long barefoot walk that included circling the school track a bunch of times and some roads, parking lots, and park paths.
And I burnt the soles of my feet.
oh my gosh that’s adorable
and painful
Damnit, I just lost my comment with my barefoot story. Basically, it works better on barnacles. Probably because they’re just sharp, not hot.
“I did a good thing, now where is my rewaaaaaaaard?”
When is Robin going to put pants back on? It’s October in Ohio and I can’t imagine it getting any warmer at night.
it’s a lesser known lesbian superpower to not need pants
“So who wears the pants in the relationship?”
“Oh, it’s a pantless relationship.”
“if we’re doing it right, nobody is!!” *fingerguns*
Well, Indiana rather than Ohio but even then the night temps in October are going to be similar. Looking up October weather for Bloomington, it’s likely between 55°F and 65°F (if we presume it’s around 8pm) with wind around 5MPH
Living in Ohio myself (as I said, similar), that’s weather I’d still be wearing shorts in and foregoing shoes/slippers standing/sitting outside for up to half an hour smoking, maybe drinking a beer and checking online stuff on my phone rather than at my PC. By 10pm I’d be wanting pants and shoes/slippers while doing that as the temp would drop (on average) another 10°F. If it was a particularly warm day, you could safely add another 10°F to all that. *shrugs*
Oops, Indiana my mistake.
And my my, aren’t you hardy around cold weather? My dad wanted to move to warmer pastures because he couldn’t take the chills. His Ukrainian ancestors – and myself – are disappointed.
Oh jeez, now she’s saying My Lesbian again…
yup she…genuinely believed in her fantasy
This is… a step in the right direction. Her motivations re: policy changes are still primarily self serving, but her attitude towards Ryan* shows that she is at least capable of being genuine. It brings up a wrinkle for me, though: what power does Robin actually have to set things in motion for bringing Ryan to justice? By her own admission, she was too far removed from her interns to have enough information to track him down herself, and her staff has all apparently abandoned her already. She’s probably also burned too many bridges to call in any favors to facilitate actually getting Ryan convicted, because honestly, there isn’t much of a legal case against him unless more victims come forward. The only physical evidence of his encounter with Joyce is his scar, which isn’t exactly helpful, and while there were plenty of witnesses, almost all of them were either too drunk, too biased towards Joyce, or both (Billie) for their testimony to prop up the case in court. It might be too little, too late for Robin to actually be of any meaningful help.
*Or whatever the hell his real name is
I love how Robin just accepted Becky’s tweets as her new opinions. “Sure, I might have said that. Why not? It fits with my new public persona so let’s go with it.”
Yup.
I think people who were assuring everyone that Robin is this incorrigible villain who hates gay people and is deliberately manipulative towards everyone to protect her definitely existing bigoted opinions… must be evaluating their estimation of her now.
Of course, now she’s the kind of villain who’ll stand for whatever as long as it gets her what she wants, even if she hasn’t fully grasped the implications or consequences. Which is not really an improvement.
But at least that’s what she’s always been. Hate what the villain actually is, not the one you make up in your mind.
Honestly the people who thought Robin actually hated gay people instead of being indifferent to them were underwhelming. I might have been tuning the more ridiculous things out but I mostly remember hearing that she can’t admit to her own queerness because of internalized homophobia, and she believes its sort of a choice because she has feelings which she chooses not to acknowledge.
She actually said it. She actually called Leslie that >_<
“my” lesbian? I didn’t even notice that until I reread following your post.
Why wouldn’t she? It was Leslie’s original name after all.
It[s creepy to call someone you’ve been stalking and harassing for days “my lesbian.”
What worked in Shortpacked! doesn’t work in a more grounded setting. Robin’s just a creepass here.
Robin was a creepass in Shortpacked too.
Yeah and it was funny because SP! was wacky slapstick about toys and bad romances.
It isn’t funny here.
My feelings exactly.
Maybe this is all meta-commentary about how it shouldn’t have been funny then either and we should all feel bad for laughing at it.
I see it that way. Kinda like how Amazi-Girl in this series is a far darker interpretation of “Amber’s coping mechanism.”
I think, ultimately, Robin will redeem herself by being instrumental in Ryan’s incarceration, but I don’t think she’ll hook up with Leslie.
I don’t think it’s intended as a guilt trip. More just Willis revisiting how this would play out in a more realistic setting. (Maybe there’s a tiny bit of self-correction in there, too.)
I didn’t mean a guilt trip per se – just meta-commentary as an art form in itself. Like Spec Ops The Line.
With SP!, my usual reaction was 50% laughter, 50% horror; that’s basically the reason I got hooked on it. I’d be like, “This is awful, how the fuck does Willis manage to make it funny?” But SP! was wacky as heck: SP! Robin got high on Cardburry egg cereal and achieved world peace. In a more realistic, less over the top setting like DoA, her antics are a lot less amusing.
The alt text would make a great DoA book title.
Yes because likes always translates to votes
No, that’s how our elections work now. No more electoral college. In three years the Department of Elections will just post a Twitter poll
Oh dear lord
i look forward to our new democracy
ITYM *brave* new democracy. :/
of course how could i forget how courageous we all are
It had damn well better have “Unknown Evil” as one of the options or I will be very disappointed.
Ouch. Is there a doctor in the house? A psychiatric doctor? Are we looking at a possible manic personality disorder here, because this is starting to remind me of Silver Linings Playbook.
“I’m gonna take all this negativity and use it as fuel!”
Sorry*, Robin, in this universe you actually have to put in the work )=
(*I am not actually sorry)
did you know: i love robin, i always believed in her, loving a woman is a great motivation for personal growth, and i’m cheering for her all the way
How fucking long was she standing there, in the same position? That’s probably why nobody came, you fucking weirdo.
This woman is having a high speed come-apart.
I’m disappointed that I can’t see that new tweet on her Twitter 🙁
So Becky DID mess with Robin’s campaign, that’s probably where all the pro-LGBT policies Robin didn’t write came from. Becky you clever girl, now if Robin does somehow get elected it’ll be on a platform of pro-LGBT rights and she’ll be forced to commit to that cause. And if she doesn’t get elected you lost nothing in the deal. Genius XD
Wait…
Where… did her phone go after panel 2?
nature’s pocket
I wonder how many of us get that reference, butt I digress…
Futurama ‘eco-warrior’ types?
Damn, reaching the phone must a pain.
Though it gives new meaning to “hands free mode”
More practical options: in her bra or the waistband of her underwear.
I can’t help but wonder how long Robin is going to stand our there, grinning inanely and waiting for Leslie to turn up. It could be a very long time, because she’s stupidly oblivious about how others view her. Of course, when she next meets Leslie it will somehow be Leslie’s fault. Like I said, oblivious.
Rather than the usual chapter closer of someone in bed, from now on each chapter ends with the lights going down on Robin standing in the parking lot waiting for Leslie.
And that’s all we ever see of her again.
So I’m reading panel three like she’s aware her lgbtq policies were jerkish, but not how she treated Leslie??
Her policies were chosen for her by the party hierarchy and it is thus possible that they were wrong. However, it is completely impossible to her mind that she could personally make a mistake in how she treated others.
Also, she continues to not care about anything but her immediate satisfaction.
That’s our Robin!
Except now the world she’s in actually has consequences… And no Drama Tag.
…..has robin been without pants all day?
Yes; it appears to be one of the things that she is enjoying about this whole situation.
That and it means she doesn’t need to wear Sarah Palin’s hand-me-down pantsuits anymore.
i feel like we got some symbolism going on here between her previous use of costume/accessories as props in the story she’s telling about herself, whether hot librarian or cool girl. and current robin is completely unfiltered, semi-nude robin, pantlessness and all
but like also this is just kind of funny How Long Can One Woman Go without pants or exposing her muffin
I presume she’s wearing underwear, but this IS Robin, so it’s 50-50 odds. 🙂
i mean like. do YOU see underwear cause i dont
She already exposed her muffin, back in Leslie’s house. In front of two teenagers, no less.
she exposed several muffins
or at least things that were mildly recognizable as muffins
Is Robin self aware enough to realise she’s effectively outing herself? When even she isn’t comfortable acknowledging her sexuality to herself? Or that coming out is going to be harder during an election campaign, under the harsh glare of a “sex scandal” media swarm, and making the announcements via Twitter?
What am I saying, It’s Robin, of course she isn’t..
Also reminded of the Beatles parody episode of Pinky and the Brain, (singing) “All we are saying, is take off your pants”.
I don’t think Robin will think in those terms. The angle from which she views reality is wayyyy too convoluted for her to even notice that there is such a thing as ‘closet’ which she might or might not have been in. It’s just… her being Robin. As Robin does.
On a completely unrelated note: I’ve just learned the term “grey rocking”, and now have a name for the skill I had to develop when I was living with a certain person who has probably been mentioned a few times.
Uh, and now I’ve learnt it too. LEARNING!!!! ^_^
Yay learning *hugs everyone*
I’m glad you guys..er… people? found those resources, and sad that you needed them in the first place.
I looked it up too. ^^ What you said JBento
Made me think of this: https://youtu.be/yIRT6xRQkf8
the funny thing about it is that because the narcissist is so self-centered they’ll never actually guess that you’re anything other than how you personally affect them
like idk i just…find that hysterical
I…really needed to know this technique. (I’m kinda stuck in a bad situation until I finish grad school.) Thank you so much for letting me know it exists!
Hey, I’m finally laughing at a punchline involving Robin.
I’m chuckling. Laughing would require the punchline to involve more punching.
just two gals that are pals
I hope the paper ball is a message with Ryans real name
She has the resilience to stand there all day and never go eat, drink, or go pee. Amazing!
I am finding the Ohio tourism ads hilarious above this comic “togetherness. find it here.”
I feel that “in denial” or “closet” would have been better titles for this comic.
Buy some pepper spray, Les. This stalker is going to need a lot of negative reinforcement to finally make her stay gone; especially as reality closes in.
It’s a bit sad that we have reached the last Robin strip of the comic.
It’s the last Robin strip? Are you sure? You promise? Did Willis say it somwhere I’ve missed?
And you seem to have misspelled “fucking finally” there.
Oh gods, Leslie is still “my lesbian.” That paper ball should’ve been a truck.
It should just flit back to her every month or so of her just standing there, and then the cardboard cutout falls over.
So, here’s hoping this comic indicates that Robin will absolutely not be getting the girl.
I think I can see this pairing as actually being something Willis wanted to take another crack at, not completely unlike Ruth/Billie. But right now at least what we’re seeing is a second crack that might be about giving Leslie more self-respect and Robin maybe having to grow up without also getting the girl as a reward.
I’d like that. I’d like to see Leslie say, No. I’m physically attracted to you, but you’ve been awful to me both politically and personally, and it’s frankly really unsettling that you don’t seem to get that. Try again in another life.
I think Cerberus has been floating this idea for a while: a “redemption is not enough” storyline,
At the very least even a really determined romantic comedy requires the hero to have ACTUALLY learned a lesson, though, instead of just 98% faking it like Robin is doing here.
So yeah, I’m currently eeeijg this as half a baby step in the general direction of Robin becoming a better person, and hopefully it will be without Leslie.
Yeah, I suspect that’s where this story is going.
And the thing is, that the redemption might be good in a lot of ways for her. Allow her to live more honestly with herself, support policies that don’t hurt people, use her wealth and influence for a good cause.
But it might not “get the girl”, because girls aren’t shiny prizes handed out for positive character growth and no matter what she does, it might not ever be enough to overcome how scary and awful the last few days have been for Leslie.
And it’s a hard lesson, but an important one. Getting better might not mean you get back everything you used to have or everything you want, unlike the movies claim. And that’s okay. That’s consent. It’s not your choice whether you get a second chance from a specific person or not.
Yeah honestly, Robin and Leslie hooking up in this universe would be terrible.
Especially now as Robin would learn all the wrong lessons and still mistreat Leslie if Leslie actually were to give her another chance now. Robin has a lot of growth to do to be safe in a relationship with anyone, but especially Leslie given what she just did.
Yeah.
I can IMAGINE ways of doing it that aren’t terrible, but they take a lot of work and they’re not what I want right now.
That is the story I want Li; again, if Robin turns karma houdini, I’d be out, and frankly, I suspect more than a few others will follow.
…She should really put on some pants.
Does she have to? I mean…legs.
This is a civilized society, one where we wear pants.
What’s this “we”?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA!!!!!!
Comic Reactions:
“Redemption is a rare and special thing, it’s not for everyone.”
There’s good here. Quite a lot. It’s good that Robin is taking her strong stand against a sexual assaulter and making that public. It’s good that she’s not publicly denying the pro-queer-folks tweets Becky made. And given where she was, it’s steps in the right direction and that matters and it may end up getting her to a place where she starts undoing some of the damage she did as someone specifically running as an anti-gay politician.
But the second half also reveals the shallowness of this face turn. Would she be as willing to stick this out if the response to her pro-queer tweets had been overwhelmingly negative? Will she be as willing to keep doing work that is harder than a few supportive tweets? Especially as the consequences of doing the right thing start hitting more and more? When she gets the full blast of societal homophobia?
And her motivation is still stuck in her intentional fantasy. Where she’s just in a wacky rom-com she never has to admit is a rom-com with Leslie and that by doing the right thing, she’ll get the “reward” of getting her back in her life. And well, that type of redemption is frequently less trustworthy, because what happens when that person says “no, you were not safe, that’s not happening even if you get better”?
And that’s what I suspect this strip is hinting at for Robin. Cause the thing is she is still deeply unsafe for Leslie. She has bad boundaries and recruits folks for her mental story. And well, she’s still doing it here, casting her as the rom-com love interest who forgives the hero all their sins of “love” even though he hasn’t actually done much to directly address the worldview that spawned them.
And she’s still unwilling to even admit what she wants from Leslie and speaks of her as a possession (which is another nice little switch caused by the greater realism where a cute running gag becomes something a bit more… awful). Which means if Leslie were to fulfill this fantasy and give her another second chance, she’d likely put her in much of the same position including bowling over her stated desires to fulfill an internal narrative of how the relationship “should go” all while denying the chemistry between them and shoving that all on Leslie so Robin can be “not queer”.
And this Leslie has the self-respect to know that she doesn’t actually want that even if part of her still fantasizes about and craves Robin and holds out a torch of hope.
And the sad part is, Robin could have had Leslie in her life. If she had respected boundaries. If she had listened to what Leslie was saying and thought about it before her life was ruined or if she hadn’t tried to force Leslie to adopt her as her new live-in girlfriend who denies being a girlfriend without her consent.
But now, it may take a very long time before Leslie might ever trust Robin again and it very likely may never happen, this experience being so amazingly awful for her. And certainly it will not occur until Robin is ready to fully own what she did to Leslie and that making that right is not going to be as simple or as pleasant for her as standing by a conviction she actually has and accepting someone else’s vaguely queer-positive tweets as her own.
It may take real soul-searching and may still wind up with her having eternally fucked it up and having to move on to someone new.
And that’s okay. Her redemption will have meaning even if she doesn’t get the “Hollywood reward”, but I worry that Robin will lose steam on this superficially good path once it’s clear that she’s not going to get the instant Hollywood ending without doing real, hard introspective work.
Yeah I think part of what’s making Robin so gung-ho about things now is that she’s gotten some positive reinforcement for it on twitter, and a lifetime of romcoms telling her that her lesbian will apologetically run back into her ostensibly heterosexual arms.
I think at the least, regardless of how she’ll be perceived or whatever blowback she gets, she’s still serious about getting Ryan in jail.
Now that the universe has forced me to learn my lesson Leslie will instantly come back to me acknowledge that I’ve changed and help me rebuild the life I had before but as a good person now, and as Ryan goes to jail because of the work we did together I shall get my office back and Leslie and I will cement our relationship.
At the bottom of every clickbait-listicle site: “Pantless Congresswoman Stands Outside Office for Hours.”
Life is not a rom-com, little bird.
The funny thing is that In a way, DoA *is* a Rom-Com. Just not the kind Robin wants it to be. And she’s not the main character. She’s close to being right, but in all the wrong ways.
“There’s no sense of closure! I don’t know what happens next! THIS IS A TERRIBLE ENDING!”
I can’t even imagine what a DoA ending would look like.
Unless it’s Ross going back in time to murder Roomies!Danny, thus creating a time storm that threatens to wipe the cast from existence anyway.
(I’m watching Beast Wars again. Sorry)
They’re abducted by aliens.
And thus the great cycle of the cosmos continues.
My greatest hope is that at some point we get another Willis Sci-Fi comic. It’s Walky! is a masterpiece.
If Dina and Becky do enough science together, would that count as science fiction?
Graduation, probably, but none of use will live that long. Alternately, the end of the school year, and graduation for any seniors.
Delusional politician? Oh, please, that’s so old news…
Obviously we need some callbacks to the final ‘tumbleweed’ panel, and my vote is for a giant lesbian potato
The fuck am I looking at?
I think it’s because she’s standing in her underwear and a shirt. This is what we call a ‘political meltdown’.
Just off camera is a small horde of reporters.
Reporter: “Why are we still just standing here?”
Other Reporter: “Shhh, nobody can move until she does.”
I was going to post something about Robin also wondering where the cheesy background music was.
Then I realised that, no, she’s actually hearing it.
Yes.
Robin just threw herself under the bus that is life…
Robin’s just incapable of learning, isn’t she?
Kind of like another politician…..