That’s my guess as well. Sort of like Brock Turner: a guy whose social status and “bright future” protects him from anything more than a slap on the wrist, even with rock-hard evidence (which Joyce doesn’t have).
Oh, he definitely lied to Joyce about it – I just figure that the reason they haven’t given up info about him ALREADY is due to the connections aspect.
Or Frieda is lying. Last we saw her, she was totally panicked at the accusation that one of her interns was roofying girls, and reacting by discrediting the messenger, Amazi-Girl.
Something I said years ago (Shameless self-promotion! Get yer shameless self-promotion here, fresh offa the Intarwebs!) seems to fit:
“The ‘Religious Right’, once you get beyond their rhetoric of personal ‘salvation’, is solidly collectivist and concerned primarily with social conduct.”
What the heck is Robin being sorta decent right now?
Also, did we see someone inform Robin of the Ryan situation or did she find out from social media by herself?
ok but trump goes beyond Really Awful People to Barely Human Rotting Pumpkins so i don’t think we can say that he and robin are really in the same category
like. robin’s not a straight white six-year-old sixty-year-old man who has spent most of his career losing, spinning losing as winning, committing various sexual assaults, and generally getting away with shit on the basis of that straight white manhood
robin’s had to work for all the bullshit she spins there’s a difference
I think you took me too literally. I was trying to imply that the only “standards” Trump has are the standards of physical attractiveness that he applies to women. I was certainly not trying to say that Trump is on the same “maybe has a shred of decency” level as Robin.
yeah i was very focused on moral standards; i think that’s why i saw what you were saying through that lens. and idk i just like. can’t even process that kind of rating as a standard at all, so there was definitely a level of Does Not Compute going on there, haha
She first heard about it the night of the rally, when Amazigirl and Sal chased him through the staging area(? whatever that place was that looked backstageish). I can’t remember if it was then or in one of the convos with Leslie where we saw how completely disgusted she was by what Ryan-whatever-his-actual-name-is was doing/had done.
I’ve known people like that. They are fundamentally decent, but genuinely wrong about something. If you bring it up and manage to show them how it is wrong, they’ll fight you and call you names because they hate to be wrong, but later, secretly, they’ll course-correct.
So he lied about his name? Not a surprise there but I wonder if there’s some name we’ve heard in passing that’ll make this a bigger thing. Like his full name reveal’s some kind of deeper connection to someone else because it’s not really a big deal if his name’s just like…Chad or something. That wouldn’t change anything but the tag’s.
Might be one of those big time tele-evangelist pastors, who’s using donations to “spread the word” to secretly live a lavish life style and get his son out of trouble with a “boys will be boys” mentality towards “Ryan’s” activities.
Nah, he’s dead. And according to the cartoon Queer Duck, he ended up in the gayest section of Heaven with Walt Whitman, Oscar Wilde and the like. It was meaner than hell. XD
If he was lying about his name do you really think he wasn’t lying about his dad? Probably scouted that Joyce was a church girl and used that so she’d let her guard down.
That, or that’s the part of his hook that is true, and that makes it so easy for him to identify and target girls like Joyce. He has the background to know what they want, make them think that he’s that thing, and then take advantage of them the way he does while knowing that they will likely be too meek/ashamed/traumatized to actually out him for what he is.
I think the biggest swerve would be if he were the son of the pastor of Joyce’s family’s current church, which would immediately put her/Jocelyn on opposite sides of this particular battle with her mom and brother, before either side even realizes that their kin is on the other. That would be a cataclysmic turn, and very Willis-esque.
I found the strip I was thinking of. Ryan actually states outright that the only part that was true of what he told Joyce was that he is the son of a pastor.
So he lied about his name, eh? You’d think someone would recognize him, but I guess anyone that knows him well enough to identify him from the blurry photo doesn’t care enough to name him or doesn’t think he did anything.
While looking up all the strips tagged Ryan, I noticed something funny. Ryan tells Joyce that his mother texted him a Bible verse, 2 Corinthians 11:14, “Just some random thing about, y’know, Jesus.” The verse is actually, “And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.”
Even if Clint had been a major contributor to Gashface’s development into an evil person (like, if Clint was an accidental Palpatine to Gashface’s Anakin)… bleh, I think it would just be too many horrid abusers to read at once.
the timing of a brand new name coming immediately before we learn ryan is a fake name just seemed suspicious to me, and i think in the walkyverse her ex was ryan anyway?
Something I’m liking: when she finally pulls her head out of her assgets out of Leslie’s apartment like she was told pulls her head out of her ass, her priority is putting that piece of shit behind bars.
If I remember right that’s the point that Leslie finally warmed to her on at the pub, before Robin brought in her stalker-home-invasion shit?
Yup. And yup, it was indeed the moment before Leslie softened up to her (unfortunately for her in the long run).
Though it makes me feel a bit awkward of trusting that a redemption arc might be beginning since we’ve seen her feed just enough to make people hope she can grow only to slam that door shut so many times with Leslie.
But, ‘s gotta be driven by Leslie. At Leslie’s timetable.
Robin walks away from politics, sends Leslie a regretful “Sorry I treated you so badly, I’m gonna do the right thing now and leave you alone” (maybe with a “totes” thrown in so Leslie knows it really was her), and 6/12/18 months later Leslie checks in to to say “Hi friend” and see what she’s learned?
I’m thinking that wouldn’t be all bad, but it’s probably the shipper (despite everything…) in me.
Yup. If she’s going to have a redemption arc, it’s going to have to be a real redemption arc and that’s going to include acknowledging, apologizing, and changing the behavior she used against Leslie.
Can’t be 6/12/18 months though, due to the decompressed time in this strip. Even six months would be more than a decade of real time.
Whatever happens is going to play out unrealistically fast in comic time and painfully slow in real time. 🙂
Well, it’s also another thing to grasp at to avoid dealing with what she’s done to her career.
Not that she isn’t sincere about it, but it’s still a deflection.
I mean, I assume the tags lied about Jocelyne until the reveal, so… probably? Which means the real question is will the tags get changed retroactively like Jocelyne’s were?
…okay who is he, really, did we confuse his name with one of the bros?!
Ryan could easily be an alias or a codename or even a nickname for Richard (teehee) or something, I guess? But then there are the tags, which usually get right to a person’s identity and are honest, so maybe its a middle or last name? Honestly I feared to check the tags when Robin mentioned him, but now I’m relieved he didn’t show up and also weirded out. Plot-twist, anyone?
Oh man you know what? I really thought I recalled them giving each other names in his introduction comic but I just checked and apparently not so now I’m just looking through the archives for when we first got a name.
joyce would probs remember tristan but that seems like the most crazy plot twist Willis could throw until he proves me wrong by next week or something.
Well, I mean, Amber did make up for a lack of visibility by stabbing Sal in the hand with a large knife after the attempted robbery. Since Sal barley recognizes Ethan, and hasn’t shown any sign of recognizing Amber, I’ll concede that point that Sal doesn’t recognize a lot of people from her past. In a lot of cases, I suppose it’s just a case of people who haven’t seen each other in a long time and don’t really suspect that those involved in past traumas are still around, particularly so nearby? When you’re not specifically looking for someone, you rarely find them.
I feel like Sal beat up a lot of little shits in her childhood, and I, for one, could not necessarily visually identify the adult faces of some of the people I went to elementary school with.
If it was his surname I’m sure Frieda wouldn’t say that Ryan isn’t his name.
Its probably just an alias. One his getaway driver knew, which means he’s probably in on it and they actively have a plan for when shit goes south with there horrible drugging girls thing.
It was the guy in the shotgun seat… we couldn’t see the driver. Maybe that’s who “Ryan” really was, but Amazi-Girl misunderstood? The other guy was grabbing his friend, and then telling the driver to go?
Oooooh, that is possible! I was thinking “Ryan” gave a false name when he volunteered as intern. Maybe he was using that position to scope-out new ‘marks’ for nefarious purposes.
Really dark prediction: Wasn’t “Ryan” paired up with Ruth in one of the previous universes? And we know he’s following Dorothy and Walky back to the dorm. Anyone want to bet it’s him that finds Ruth brooding alone in a corner? I’m just saying, it would perfectly explain the new haircut.
The last time we saw him, he was sticking his face out the door as they walked away. There’s a possibility Joe may have seen him — Joe turned around before catching up with D&W again — but no other on-panel appearances since them.
I didn’t mean that, I haven’t read It’s Walky or Roomies but I could have sworn I’ve heard someone mention Ruth was paired up with Ryan in one of those.
Oh shit. This isn’t good. Especially if “Ryan’s” pastor daddy is some sorta big time mega church type pastor who’s supporting Robin’s “family values” campaign in order to get “Ryan’s” foot into the door of politics in the form of a high access internship.
Possibly a nickname or he lied to to that guy about his name in case he learned about his activities or worst case that guy is a friend and knows what Ryan is doing.
Or, he’s such a high-profile individual that he’d give a fake name to the majority of those working on Robin’s campaign with him, so that they don’t know he’s whichever rich old white dude’s son and create a huge distraction for everybody.
The tags told us Ryan’s name well before that sequence though. Back during the actual party/attempted rape sequence. Judging by the old comments, the tags appeared a couple of strips into it and people were already guessing “ryan”, based on the Walkyverse version before then.
So, unless I’m missing something as I look back at strips, “Ryan” never lied about his name. He never said his name; it came from the tags and in-story from the guy in the car who came to get get him.
That’s what I meant exactly, like he pretended his name was Ryan because he’s Justin O’Ryan or Bart O’Ryan Jr. or whatever, and Bart O’Ryan is his dad.
However, others have said that there’s Word Of God that gashface really is a pastor’s son, so that probably torpedos my fan-speculation.
So does Not Ryan have a prior conviction that came out since they know his real name or something, because apparently this helped unendorse Robin and I doubt they’d add this into consideration if it was an intern ‘good son of a preacher white boy with a clean record and good future’ getting ‘smeared’ by some ‘crazy internet feminists’.
It helped with her unendorsement in that even if the republican party don’t give a shit about rape victims, the last thing theywant is a controversy involving one of their own. Particularly with a subject like rape. It’s in their best interest to cut their losses.
It’s possible he does have a criminal record, (should have more) but he could also just be using an alias since he seemed to have his roofying techniques down pretty well. Get the girl a drink, get her alone and then do the unpleasentness that I wish was always followed by glass and/or bat to the face
He never mentioned his name to Joyce (which, iirc, Willis once noted in an alt-text).
He lied about his name to whomever called him Ryan.
He could quote and cite bible verses, but there’s no real reason to assume he was truthful about being a pastor’s son, either.
After Joyce took her glass and went smashy-smashy on his face, giving him the scar (and before the drug took effect), she accused him of not being a Pastor’s son… and in that moment, he did say it was actually true. Given the tense moment, I don’t see how he’d have the wherewithal to continue crafting his lie there, not with how pissed he was.
Aw dang for my theory. Do we know any other people who could get implicated in a not-actually-named-Ryan scandal?
Or is it that he is named Ryan, but he isn’t actually working for Robin?
I could be wrong (I don’t seem to have the crazy memory for details most readers here seem to) but we’ve never seen/heard mention of Bart O’Ryan in this universe yet correct? Who’s to say he’s not a pastor this time around?I say your theory still holds merit.
I vote he’s the son of Bart O’Ryan!
That guy is sufficiently high-profile, and maybe he does all Robin’s partisan faux-news.
Also he’s like the only Walkyverse character who still needs to appear reimagined in DoA.
Yeah, funny thing about him citing Bible verses. The one he picked, telling Joyce his mom texted him something about Jesus, was actually about how Satan appears as a being of light. In other words, topical, given that he was trying to seduce Joyce at the time… and shows that he was totally making up the citation.
And it’s such a nice subtle action. Like, scandal plus tweeted reversals on queer issues. Robin’s current situation is such that it’s now much easier for her to just accept her own reality and let her views evolve out of the toxic swamp they are mired in rather than still try and reclaim the approval of folks that think she’s a demoness now.
And it’s sad. It’s sad that all it took for her twisted shitty party to abandon her was a queer scandal and a few tweets that were supportive of the rights of others.
Panel 2: Oh, Becky, you are very very good at what you do.
And Robin… this is a good moment for Robin, I feel. And it feels monumentous that it’s one of her earlier actions and one of the few we see that follows from an initial promise.
Does it mitigate all the harm she did to Leslie and the fear and distress she caused her? No. Nor does it mitigate her voting record and campaign and the harm that does to queer citizens, especially as she’s in the midst of trying to argue that nope, she’s still totes team homophobe.
But it’s a strong good action that she really cares about doing not only something, but leaning her relative power to try and do something meaningful about a rapist.
Will it be the start of something more? A redemption and all the hard work that goes into it? I dunno and well Robin has a bad habit of leaving just enough hope behind to make you overlook her flaws and try and double down in hoping for her to change and grow.
But even if it doesn’t, this is a beautiful moment to enjoy.
I’ve said this before but she should just rebrand herself as a democrat. Becky made it very easy for her and wanting to lock up date rapists is definitely more of a democrat thing.
Leslie might gain back some small respect for her if she did this though I don’t see Robin becoming less indifferent to the endgame of her politics. But at least she’d be indifferent on the less evil side?
That’s a really slick action by Becky, because yeah, with very little actions, she’s basically made it more work for Robin to stick to this path that isn’t working rather than to accept the ready made path that would be more true to her sexuality.
Like, she’s using Robin’s tendency to gravitate to whatever feels easiest to her whims to try and prompt a genuine change of heart and policy position.
All she’d really have to do is hold a professional press conference and say something like this “When I started in politics, I wanted to help people. And in order to hopefully get some of my ideas about things such as veteran care through I towed the part line. I supported legislation that targeted and hurt LGBT+ individuals in order to keep my position which eventually became my only goal: stay in office, without even remembering why I ran in the first place. And that was wrong. I was wrong. I treated people like…like me as if they weren’t human because of who they were attracted to. That’s right, I am not straight. I am bi. I didn’t know for the longest time and it was confusing for me. It helped play into my believe and rhetoric that people could just…turn themselves off. And the instant I figured that out, the instant I actually acknowledged non-straight and non-cis people as worthy of respect, my party kicked me to the curb. After years of doing everything they wanted, I was given abandoned as soon as I no longer fit. In, suffice it to say I’ve been disillusioned with my former party and politics in general. But, now that I realize I was wrong, I want a chance to make things right, and to try to mitigate what harm my former party might do. With that said, if they will have me, I intend to run next election cycle as a Democrat, and if they won’t, then as an independent. I know that this isn’t enough to repair the damage I’ve done, in fact probably nothing will ever be enough to fix what I did, but I will try. I’m sorry. I’m sorry to everyone I hurt. And, I want to try to help you now, while I still can. Before things are too late. And once again to the LGBT+ community, I am sorry. I am sorry that I hurt…that I hurt our cause. I deeply ask for your forgiveness, but I know it’s something I am going to have to earn, given my actions and my…hypocrisy. Thank you for your time.”
……
Not that Robin will actually say this (after all I did use the word professional to describe this idea of a conference), but an optimistic person can hope for such a change, right?
….
Also, I actually finally read some of Shortpacked to see why people shipped Robin and Leslie, and I have to say, they eventually came to a sweet place together, but oi vey that did not start well at all. Also, fuck both universes’ version of Leslie’s family.
i feel so weird about becky’s fake tweets being the impetus for robin to turnaround like
i mean. on one level. the blowback she gets should be enough to prove to her that it’s an actual important battle. but on the other hand it’s something she didn’t get to choose
when she was basically corralling her life around not having to choose
and now she does get to choose, whether to repudiate them or to embrace them
Honestly she’d just be choosing how to best rebuild her career and regain some power and at a certain point it would be less work to rebuild by going over to the other side than trying to win favor with the republicans again.
feels kind of like a tomi lahren situation tho. like. when the republicans reject you for being not one hundred percent what they think you should be like they have rejected SO MANY OTHERS why are u even shocked and why look for acceptance from the people you maligned
Why can the local branch of Robin’s party consider her a loose cannon on deck and give her the heave-ho over some tweeted reversals of policy, when the national GOP party is still falling over each other to make excuses for the POTUS whenever he reverses policy via Tweetstorm?
Because those tweets are in favor of orthodox or extreme right-leaning positions and aren’t doing something so awful as acknowledging the humanity and importance of rights of a group the right-wing hates.
Hell, I think Trump got more hate from his base for vaguely tolerating Caitlyn Jenner’s existence than for any of his acts of treason or other scandals.
On the other hand, a lot of old-school (Cold War type) people who hate Russia are turning on the Miralago Orange (which is a surpring amount of the “red population”) and a lot of moderates have been driven away. Given the fact that even some Reds in office are getting tired of his shit and a couple are starting to view his conduct as criminal (every time John McCain shows up on tv in an interview involving the Donald, pay close attention to his face and body language; it is that of a very disturbed and disgusted man who would be trying to impeach the Trump if he thought enough of his own party would behave with ethics instead of party loyalty) and that we have someone considered the best and most impartial in his field investigating the Trump-Russia connection, we might get the first successful impeachment of a president…most likely followed by the second successful impeachment of a president if Pence doesn’t resign before such proceedings begin because he can see the shit about to hit the fan. And if things keep going the way the are, it might happen before the midterms. Because there is one thing that conservative Americans hate more than or just as much as the poor, ethnic minorities, and the LGBT+ community; and that’s Russians. Ironic that our two countries hate each other so much now, when we had really good relations between the Civil War and World War I, but it’s the truth. If Muller finds irrefutable proof that Russia was involved with Trump’s campaign team and is blackmailing/ordering Trump around, then Trump is gone. Because no American wants an ex-KGB member’s personal hand puppet as president. We just need hard evidence, since currently it’s only (albeit highly convincing) circumstantial evidence. And Muller will find it, even if it takes him a little while, the only complaint against him was that he was too obsessive over what seem like small details. The next time Trump leaves the country, he might not come back.
…
Of course I’m being optimistic, but hey someone has to in order to try cheering people up. It’s also possible that the CIA and Secret Service will work together to kill him while he’s out of country, and that Pence will be to tainted by Trump to do anything, but that’s just wishful thinking.
…
Also, is it weird that we’ve come tho trust the FBI over Congress to defend the pillars of democracy, when no one in the FBI is elected?
His friend calls him that after Amazi-Girl’s gone after him, so probably said “this chick wants to know my real name so call me Ryan or something when you come pick me up to throw her off the trail” off-panel around that time.
Those original computer games were still some of the best ever… educational and fun. I wish they’d re-do those for modern computers… because I don’t have a Commodore 64 anymore.
Isn’t it possible that his real name IS Ryan, but he lied about his name when he joined Robin’s campaign?
…I mean, I’m not sure what his motivation for lying would be, but on the other hand what would be his motivation for lying to the friend who picked him up the night of the rally?
This strip blew my mind. I mean, we knew he could be lying about his name, but it kind of never sunk in. After all, there was a character in the Walkverse named Ryan that he seemed to be based off of. That said, I think I know who he is. This is a complete guess. I don’t follow Patreon, and all my experience with the Walkyverse comes from reading it as Willis re-uploads it. That being said, I think he’s this guy:
Willis said he knows where in the Dumbingverse Bart O’Ryan is. He looks similar to Ryan, at least when glaring. His last name is also O’Ryan, which seems too good to be a coincidence. From what Willis said he’s the “villian” of the third act of ItsWalky, so it doesn’t seem like too much of a stretch to think he’d be an asshole here as well.
Panel 3: Okay, now the strip is absolutely cartoon unbelievable. I mean, a Republican party that actually gives a fuck about sexual assault? There’s suspending disbelief and then there’s total loss of immersion.
But more seriously, again, I love that Robin is just on top of it in a really strong way. Like, if that really was a part of her being abandoned then her type of strong action would be exactly the right response to it. It would lose her the votes of folks that previously voted for her, but it’d be both morally and politically right.
Panel 4: Nah, you’re the Republican Party, any given organization is required to carry a certain number of Ryans and Steves by law.
Panel 6: Oh. Oh fuck. No no no, this is bad. Like, a) that they are using the wrong name on social media which will allow Ryan and his crew to try and discredit it, b) that this is the same Frieda who was all in for obfuscation before so this might be a tactic for erasing it that she’s put in motion, and c) well…
He’s a son of a pastor, which could mean small potatoes or could mean next generation of a mega-church leader and all the political connections that go with that.
Like, it’s bad enough the rapist is free, stalking the good guys, may have downloaded means of tracking people’s phones. But add on being potentially very politically connected and having powerful people willing to put pressure on “making the problem go away” and you get a nasty recipe for a massive smear job on Joyce that could be really really bad for her.
And the good guys don’t even have a real name yet.
Yeah, this is about to go places and very few of them are good.
Alt-text: No, never. They would never lie. *uses foot to slide Jocelyne’s dead name tags back under the table*
Again I have to ask do we have confirmation on that “son of a pastor” thing? I’m not saying it’s not true, (it could even be a great twist if that pastor’s the one that leads the church Joyce’s family goes to) but how do we know it’s not another lie?
He claimed that one was actually true at a time he was angry and owning up to the fact that he was full of shit. So, maybe it’s also a lie, but I suspect that, the fact that he’s a rapist, and that he has a scar might be the only true facts we know about him.
we dont have confirmation but honestly at this point i wouldn’t be surprised if it was the one true thing about him
like joyce was like “you lied to me! about everything!!” and he was like “well not about everything” in a im the son of a pastor kind of way
it’s not enough to write an article about b/c you need double confirmation for that but i’m personally comfortable being all “it’s true until we have reason to believe otherwise”. mostly because storywise, if it wasn’t true we would literally know nothing about him and have no consistent personality traits/backstory to link to him
like idk i feel like the fact that we misunderstood his name to be ryan (he didn’t even lie about what his name was!! willis did that and let us believe it!) means that it’s less likely for there to be more misdirections, mostly because after a point having too many misdirections stops being a cool wow horror moment and starts being frustrating. it stops being a plot twist and starts being a gimmick
To be very-reluctantly fair regarding your comments on Panel 3, the right might not care about sexual assault (at least, not the people on top, when it’s their own people). But it does care about widespread EXPOSURE of sexual assault and angry public reaction. This is why O’Reilly is no longer employable by anyone on the ri-…
You’re pretty much right, except that Ryan isn’t one of “their own people”. He’s an intern, a flunky. How dare his indiscretions threaten his betters!
Standard practice would be to sweep it under the rug or throw him under the bus, whichever is more expedient.
Since he’s already all over social media, the under the rug option is less appealing.
Until we see any other evidence, I am inclined to think he is named Ryan, and Frieda + the rest of the party is trying to hide their ties with the POS. Even if it means a bald face lie like “we never heard of this Ryan guy,” when he has been an intern with them the whole time.
He doesn’t have the ability to track anybody but AG. The app seems to be a contingency app to find AG’s phone in case it’s lost or stolen on patrol. That said….this is bad.
Everyone else is handling the “Ryan” situation pretty deftly so I’ll just say may the deity of her choice bless and keep Becky MacIntyre and leave it at that.
1) He’s stated he’s the son of a pastor. That doesn’t per se mean anything, but it can mean he has some reasonable familial social power and/or wealth to work with.
2) He’s been working for Robin’s reelection campaign. He could just be a politically interested person, but quite often in campaigns for national office those kinds of positions get filled by the children of wealthy and powerful families because their families donated money and/or pulled strings and called in favors to get them that on paper experience.
3) He’s likely not lying about Ryan being his name… it probably is his middle name. He probably goes by that name as a shield to protect his first and last name should anyone try and go after him for his activities.
3) is pretty much my guess. On the meta level he’s almost certainly “Ryan” – the Dumbiverse analogue to the creepy Walkyverse Ryan. How that matches up with what Frieda’s saying here isn’t clear.
hmm i wonder if this is the impetus for dorothy to stop working at the newspaper. like i dont know how attached her name is to this report, but if it was, then that would be a reason for them to fire her
and she is so stressed she might just take the opportunity and go
Going through the tags, isn’t the first instance of the name “Ryan” from when that guy picked him up after the fight at the rally? Honestly, it makes sense for his buddy to use a fake name, to keep people from identifying him and giving his name to any authorities. I fucking hate when shitbags are smart like this.
In comic, yes. He was tagged as Ryan since early on in the party sequence though. There are comments about it at the time. He’d already been pegged by some as Ryan, based on similarities to the Walkyverse Ryan.
okay let’s do a thread for all the dumbass hilarious names ryan might possibly have:
1) kylo bryan
2) sonny fitzwilliam bush the third
3) jimmy joe bob
4) methuselah “meth” martin
5) pray-to-the-lord “ryan” turner
6) admit-your-sins “ryan” saul
7) comeuppance phillips
8) ricker mayhew
11). Nebuchadnezzar “Chad” Ferrous, Admiral of the Seventh Fleet
12). Prince Joffrey the Second, King of the Andals and blah blah blah, Protector of the Realm
13). Six
14). Nuckin Futs, Heir to the Futs Dairy Empire
15). Wyatt “Oh God Why?” Masonenlawh
His name is pastor Landrum. If the name Landrum comes up tomorrow this has been officially scouted. Do you notice any family resemblance between “Ryan” and Landrum? Place your bets now.
apropros of little: any dress is a tearaway if u believe in yourself
apropros of more: where is landrum on this page OH OKAY IN THE TAGS. the tags that lie. i weep. but it is likely that they are not lying there, in that that is the name that the pastor is known by
I highly doubt that Joyce would have failed to recognize her own pastor’s son. This is the same girl who went to morning AND afternoon services, after all.
Also, I really don’t see any family resemblance between the two, now that you mention it.
I herby bet 400 eridium and 9 seraph crystals on Ryan NOT being pastor Landrum’s mistake/spawn.
(My real-life cash-money funds are a little low at the moment.)
Not saying it’s true…..but if you wanted to theorize. Hank did say they changed churches a lot when she was young, they might not be super familiar with the church they’re at now. Not everyone can have Joe’s dna where every son is a clone of their tather. And I wouldn’t put it past Ryan to no show church enough for Joyce not to recognize him. I’m personally 50/50 on it myself but it is plausible.
If they changed churches that much I would think they wouldn’t be that bound to this one, but on the other hand, I’m not sure what I would put past Mrs. Brown.
This occurred to me too, but they just don’t look alike. If anyone, not-Ryan looks a little more like youth pastor Powers, but Powers mainly looks like Harry Potter. Neither has a strong enough resemblance to be any fun.
I guess it could be youth pastor powers too. Personally I have trouble nailing down Power’s age. He looks slightly older than Joyce like maybe mid to late twenties? So he doesn’t look old enough (to me anyway) to have a son in college. It could also be a completely different pastor. Although I don’t know why you would reveal a mystery third pastor/father when you have two waiting backstage for a chance to be plot relevant.
When I read that, I assumed he lied to Robin’s team, and that Ryan was his real name, which was why his friend called him by it, and why it was in the tags. The thing about Jocelyne’s former tags is a point, though.
If it is Ciaran that would make sense, he might already go by Ryan for simplicity, since it is a similar nickname. Plus that would give a chance for added drama bringing Ruth into this particular drama. Not confident enough to speculate too much with what’s really going on though.
Friendly reminder that, no matter what, Sal is the person who this is all going to initially come down upon, as she’s the extremely out-of-place-looking and identifiable PoC with a history of trouble with the law from the rally fiasco who was actually spotted brutally decking this so-called “Ryan” character.
Yeeeeeep. If this rally brings down shit on anybody, it’s gonna be Sal. Because you’re right – she’s a PoC with a bad history with law enforcement who hit a white boy and she’s not the one with a mask.
Oh, I also remembered just now that it’ll definitely fuck with Sarah/her scholarship, as well. She’s the other PoC who has violently and blatantly (and, duh, deservedly) assaulted this guy in front of a huge crowd of witnesses, and that also establishes a pattern that aggressive women and PoC have some kind of vendetta against this guy in the eyes of the general public, which Faux News will have a field day running with as a story. Say goodbye to Sal’s freedom, and say goodbye to Sarah’s scholarship, and Amber, Amazi-Girl, and Joyce are all going to feel like it’s 100% their fault and probably go into their own separate personal tailspins.
Which is a thing Sal brought up to Sarah – “So, you’re basically volunteering to the cops that you assaulted a guy?” And yeah, if that does happen, the two of them are the ones going to jail forever.
Oh, really? Well in retrospect, it’s kind of obvious that he wouldn’t preface an attempted rape with a real name. So who is he? The Governor’s son? The senior senator’s grandson?
No, let me guess: His father, the preacher, is a major contributor to the GOP and, as such, ‘Ryan’ has effective immunity from prosecution lest ‘someone’ fund primary challenges to all the sitting GOP politicians in Indiana backed up by his grass-roots organisation (organised, in defiance of the law, through the churches he operates) who would use mass protests to drive the sitting folks out of office.
If !Ryan is an IU student and the close relative of a major pol, I would not be surprised if this means Dean McHenry knows, or has met, the family.
I can see an arc where a good man like the Dean is pressured, even threatened professionally, by a “family values” contingent, to make this problem go away.
Ryan is…wait for it…Ciaran! Ciaran was a decent guy but he got his heart broken by Ruth/Clint or Clint told Ciaran lies about Ruth and now Ciaran is looking for revenge on young women!
*I’ve had a few glasses of wine so this is most likely 100% wrong
Oddly enough I think the Leland theory was floated way back when he originally showed up, and people generally dismissed it with the idea that the tags wouldn’t lie in that particular way (having two different tags to refer to someone at the same time).
If so… Well, I wonder if Sal would be able to persuade her parents to offer some gesture of regret that, by not standing up to the school authorities about Leyland’s behaviour, they created a repeat felon? I doubt it; humans are good at telling themselves the lie: “No-one could have foreseen…!”
I don’t know if this is Willis’s writing style but I can see this arc ending with Amazi-Girl, Sal, Joyce and Marcie (plus a worried Dorothy) ganging up to give Leyland his just deserts. Naturally, officialdom flocks around to protect the “fine, upstanding young man”, the son of one of Indiana’s most respected clergymen. Consequently, they are forced to use… other methods to ensure that he cannot hurt anyone ever again. Thus were formed this universe’s equivalent of The Defenders.
It’s not Leland. Willis said in the comments that they’re two different dudes. So unless this is some Amber/Amazi-girl D.I.D. thing. Chances are it’s not him.
a) The ‘party’ knew about him.
b) They know he’s NOT called Ryan.
c) They must therefore know his real name.
and yet… Even though they were *concerned* about him being all over “social media” in one of “Robin’s shirts”…
They haven’t DONE anything about it?!
Surely damage limitation would also result in KUDOS for them (A rare thing indeed!) if they were to hand his arse to the Po-Po
Unless, of course, as mooted above he is ‘connected’ in some way to someone of power… but then, if it’s been all over Social Media, surely even the American Press would have picked up in that by now?
The way that the mainstream media has learned to deal with things like this is to pretend that it isn’t happening and, if all else fails, attack the source. The term that you’re looking for is “Fake News”.
Hand him to the police on what grounds? There’s no report. There’s no investigation. The police aren’t looking for him.
There’s just some social media chatter. I’m all for taking that seriously, but not for taking legal action based on it.
This. From my understanding, the cops don’t need the victim to accuse the rapist, but they DO need testimony of the rape (or attempt) actually happening. And no-one is going to pick whatshisname up without the accusation anyway, because it’s a waste of time – it’s stupidly hard to make the charge stick WITH the victim accusing and testifying; without? No prosecutor is going to touch the case.
Unfortunately, the “whatshisname-in-jail” ship, presuming it was ever seaworthy (a rather large presumption, if rape trail history is anything to go by), sunk all the way down to the Mariana trench when Joyce decided to not go to the cops pretty much immediately.
He’ll try to attack someone else and get nailed for that. That’s honestly pretty true to life, the average rapist has like 12 victims before getting caught because of how hard it is to make charges stick.
As Tarmaniel said, and seeing as Word of Willis is that no-one’s going to die in DoA, the best we can hope for is that whatshisname next attempt (rapists are VERY repeat offenders) goes horribly wrong. THEN, Joyce’s testimony (and any of previous victims) can lend credence to the charges.
Possibly goes horribly wrong because the target recognizes him from the pictures.
Or alternately previous victims contact them after seeing the pictures and between them there’s enough evidence now that they’ve tracked down who he is.
More likely, the stalking leads to an incident and some evidence. We’ve still got to find out who the guy in the car was.
I agree on the possibility of the horribly wrong being, at least in part, a result of the photos. I have doubts that you’d be able to get a prosecutor to take the case at this point, regardless. Presumably, you don’t have any evidence, and he-said-they-said has been proven to NOT go well for the they.
And, yes, we still have no idea who the two guys in the car were, though they’re probably in the know to what whatshisname being a rapist.
Someone else could have reported and actually gotten the rape kit and all, but not been able to find him afterwards.
It is unlikely. And not narratively satisfying.
2) he is a white dude and their contingent is made up primarily of protecting white dudes
3) their party is run on effectively pretending that women are a protected class and therefore deserve less rights
4) a lot of people don’t believe the victim first; but either way where this is at is effective rumor-mongering
5) there are literally so many cases of rapists getting off because the authorities don’t want this to ruin their bright futures, because that matters more than the lives they hurt i guess
6) robin was gone and they had no guidance on what to do about anything but esp. a dude named ryan who is not named ryan but apparently volunteers for them
reference to #4 — there have been far too many times (the Duke lacrosse team incident about ten years ago is one of the best known) where everybody *DID* believe the supposed victim, resulting in the (falsely-accused) suspects – the *real* victims – having their lives turned upside down and leaving their reputations in tatters even though it did eventually come out that the original accusation was indeed false.
Might also be a little bit of the mindset exhibited at Penn State during the Jerry Sandusky/JoePa scandal; everybody closing ranks and protecting their own because “our people wouldn’t do something like that!”
Not really. The Duke Lacrosse team a) did do something fucked up even if it didn’t end up being sexual assault with vaginal penetration b) have become the poster child of “wrongly done white men harmed by evil women crying rape”.
Like, their reputation is fucking great now and mentioning it is sure to get you tons of sympathy for what you “suffered” having people assuming you were creeps who mistreated women (which they were). And no one even remembers their name.
Compare that to a high-profile individual in a rape case and even if it happened and there’s a conviction at the end, that person tends to get heavily harassed by the town or country and they are assumed to be less trustworthy or “dangerous” because “she gets guys locked up”.
Many often lose livelihoods even years later and often have dedicated MRA stalkers who just spend their time harassing and trying to get fired women who admit to being raped.
And that’s before noting all the PTSD.
And yeah, the vast majority of time, it’s rape survivors being disbelieved. It happens to a terrifying amount. It’s why most of us not only not report it, but many are hesitant to talk about it in public for fear of being treated worse for having suffered it.
honestly there are far too many more cases of women being terrified to come forward because even the possibility of a false accusation is enough to ruin your life/career
i mean like: ideally: the position would be not to take a position, but offer the victim necessary aid and then investigate: but that is in a perfect world, where people actually go to jail for rape, and we’ve invested money into rape prevention and consent education, and the thousands of rape kits sitting dusty in evidence lockers have been mostly gone through, and people offer help before asking questions, and people’s safety is put before people’s egos
somehow it’s worse to accuse someone of rape than to be accused of rape because it rocks the boat and that’s not ok
1) Ryan gave a false name to the campaign so they don’t know his name IS Ryan (possibly because he was searching for a mark).
2) Ryan told his friend to call him by an alias.
3) Ryan is the getaway driver’s name and AG and Sal were mistaken.
4) Freida’s full of shit and just doesn’t want to start examining a guy who may have connections (if he told the truth about his dad being a pastor, depending on where he lives, that may be no small thing).
5) Ryan is a middle or surname.
Though I have hope that the campaign does have his real name (or hopefully a trackable one).
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“it’s Unpaid Labor”
actually YES the tags would lie!
look at all those “congressional aide” tags that should read “you”
Dun dun dun
Exactly what I “heard”
Ah, there’s the Robin we know and love! ^_^
I sense a 50% chance for a redemption arc.
I’d hardly bemoan that. Too many complete bastards, lately. Would be nice to see someone say “I’ve been a complete bastard? I’d like to stop that!”
Calling it now – one of his parents has some SERIOUS connections, a la the Rourke Family in “Sin City”.
Cue “WHORES WHORES WHORES WHORES” joke.
*plays the old “Miller Time” jingle on the hacked Muzak*
*laughs and claps*
Oh, that was beautiful.
I saw what you did there… and it was beautiful.
That’s my guess as well. Sort of like Brock Turner: a guy whose social status and “bright future” protects him from anything more than a slap on the wrist, even with rock-hard evidence (which Joyce doesn’t have).
such a bright future!!!!! of rape!!!
No, you’ve got it all wrong, it’s a bright future of being the pinnacle of human achievement!
(IE being filthy stinking rich and getting away with years of rape)
/s just in case, rape is terrible and Turner is a terrible human
-cries for a hundred years-
That’s not what I got out of it, though it could be that I’m just dense.
My thought was that the would-be rapist lied to Joyce about his name.
Or he lied to the election staff when he applied for the position.
His name was Ryan when he showed up in Roomies, at least according to the wiki.
I figured he goes by his middle name.
Hes called Ryan Ruen Royan
Oh, he definitely lied to Joyce about it – I just figure that the reason they haven’t given up info about him ALREADY is due to the connections aspect.
Or Frieda is lying. Last we saw her, she was totally panicked at the accusation that one of her interns was roofying girls, and reacting by discrediting the messenger, Amazi-Girl.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-7/01-glower-vacuum/huff/
Just saying, it’s possible Frieda isn’t so reliable here.
When his friends picked him up, Amazi-Girl heard them call him Ryan, too! (after the chase to get her phone)
He did mention being a pastor’s son. Big social conservative* campaign donor maybe?
*That’s how republicans pronounce theocratic fascist.
Something I said years ago (Shameless self-promotion! Get yer shameless self-promotion here, fresh offa the Intarwebs!) seems to fit:
“The ‘Religious Right’, once you get beyond their rhetoric of personal ‘salvation’, is solidly collectivist and concerned primarily with social conduct.”
Oh, and have some of that shameless self-promotion. I’ll even throw in some shameless fanboyism while I’m at it.
What the heck is Robin being sorta decent right now?
Also, did we see someone inform Robin of the Ryan situation or did she find out from social media by herself?
Leslie told her, back at the bar.
Leslie told her during their “not date” at the bar.
i mean like maybe she’s awful in other respects but that doesn’t mean she condones rape
Even Really Awful People Have Standards i guess
Trump certainly has standards. He won’t date anyone below a 9.
🙁
ok but trump goes beyond Really Awful People to Barely Human Rotting Pumpkins so i don’t think we can say that he and robin are really in the same category
like. robin’s not a straight white six-year-old sixty-year-old man who has spent most of his career losing, spinning losing as winning, committing various sexual assaults, and generally getting away with shit on the basis of that straight white manhood
robin’s had to work for all the bullshit she spins there’s a difference
I think you took me too literally. I was trying to imply that the only “standards” Trump has are the standards of physical attractiveness that he applies to women. I was certainly not trying to say that Trump is on the same “maybe has a shred of decency” level as Robin.
ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh i see
yeah i was very focused on moral standards; i think that’s why i saw what you were saying through that lens. and idk i just like. can’t even process that kind of rating as a standard at all, so there was definitely a level of Does Not Compute going on there, haha
Don’t rate women, Joe.
What a difference an indefinite article makes …
Here’s a link.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-7/01-glower-vacuum/interns/
She first heard about it the night of the rally, when Amazigirl and Sal chased him through the staging area(? whatever that place was that looked backstageish). I can’t remember if it was then or in one of the convos with Leslie where we saw how completely disgusted she was by what Ryan-whatever-his-actual-name-is was doing/had done.
I’ve known people like that. They are fundamentally decent, but genuinely wrong about something. If you bring it up and manage to show them how it is wrong, they’ll fight you and call you names because they hate to be wrong, but later, secretly, they’ll course-correct.
She may be on the right wing but that doesn’t make her any more in favour of roofie-happy rapists.
The problem is that for a lot of right wing assholes, even that isn’t a bridge they won’t cross;
Ohhhh that piece of shit.
Not at all surprised, but ohhh that shithead.
Okay, if we’re going with “the tags do lie,” guesses on his name?
‘Dang Schnozzola’, i desperately hope
Jimmy Durante rises from his grave and beats Ryan to death for besmirching his nickname.
Thank you for that laugh. XD
‘Dan G. Schnozzola’
Scarry McScarFace.
Ray Pissed
“We just call him ‘Intern’, like how you call Kyle ‘Aide’.”
Is his name Ruffy McRaperson?
So he lied about his name? Not a surprise there but I wonder if there’s some name we’ve heard in passing that’ll make this a bigger thing. Like his full name reveal’s some kind of deeper connection to someone else because it’s not really a big deal if his name’s just like…Chad or something. That wouldn’t change anything but the tag’s.
his name is sonny fitzwilliam bush the third
Let’s take guesses on what character he’s related to
I’m guessing Jake Manley’s brother
mallard filmore
Son of a bongo, of course he’d have a pseudonym. This guy’s building up quite a retribution tab; his comeuppance had better be glorious.
Nah! He’ll get away with it. Joyce will be shamed and he’ll end up running for public office. Cause he probably has connections.
this is fiction
Oh good. Fiction has to make sense.
Ryan being the son of someone influential or important? That will complicate things. I believe Ryan did say he was the son of a Pastor back in book 1
Might be one of those big time tele-evangelist pastors, who’s using donations to “spread the word” to secretly live a lavish life style and get his son out of trouble with a “boys will be boys” mentality towards “Ryan’s” activities.
jerry falwell
Nah, he’s dead. And according to the cartoon Queer Duck, he ended up in the gayest section of Heaven with Walt Whitman, Oscar Wilde and the like. It was meaner than hell. XD
omggggggg nice
haha apparently he has a kid with the same name but he doesn’t seem quite as popular
If he was lying about his name do you really think he wasn’t lying about his dad? Probably scouted that Joyce was a church girl and used that so she’d let her guard down.
That, or that’s the part of his hook that is true, and that makes it so easy for him to identify and target girls like Joyce. He has the background to know what they want, make them think that he’s that thing, and then take advantage of them the way he does while knowing that they will likely be too meek/ashamed/traumatized to actually out him for what he is.
I think the biggest swerve would be if he were the son of the pastor of Joyce’s family’s current church, which would immediately put her/Jocelyn on opposite sides of this particular battle with her mom and brother, before either side even realizes that their kin is on the other. That would be a cataclysmic turn, and very Willis-esque.
It would be unlikely that Joyce wouldn’t know and recognize the roughly the same age son of her pastor – he would have been in church and all.
I was thinking illegitimate son of Joyce’s pastor
I found the strip I was thinking of. Ryan actually states outright that the only part that was true of what he told Joyce was that he is the son of a pastor.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-1/06-yesterday-was-thursday/bat/
Of course, he could have been lying.
Hard to see why though.
So he lied about his name, eh? You’d think someone would recognize him, but I guess anyone that knows him well enough to identify him from the blurry photo doesn’t care enough to name him or doesn’t think he did anything.
His friend called him Ryan. That’s where Amazi-Girl got the name. He never said it.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-7/01-glower-vacuum/ryan/
While looking up all the strips tagged Ryan, I noticed something funny. Ryan tells Joyce that his mother texted him a Bible verse, 2 Corinthians 11:14, “Just some random thing about, y’know, Jesus.” The verse is actually, “And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.”
Wow. That Bible reference he made is incredibly creepy.
And entirely appropriate for Ryan.
Remember Willis’s background; he knows his way around the scriptures.
Though a potentially risky move with a mark who may know her way around the liable just as much.
>:0
ryan isn’t his name. it’s kylo ryan now
That name will be used to Start Wars.
Unless someone launches the Poelice at him.
well goshdarnit we better figure out a way to Finnish it then
And it has to be in a way where people don’t want Reyvenge.
Yodad not just go there.
Leia off him, he’s just playing the Han he was dealt.
is it ciaran
I hope not, because I don’t need to see people talking about what a hero Clint actually is after all.
Even if Clint had been a major contributor to Gashface’s development into an evil person (like, if Clint was an accidental Palpatine to Gashface’s Anakin)… bleh, I think it would just be too many horrid abusers to read at once.
Wait who is Ciaran?
ruth’s ex-boyfriend, namedropped a few days ago.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-7/03-the-thing-i-was-before/dawdled/
the timing of a brand new name coming immediately before we learn ryan is a fake name just seemed suspicious to me, and i think in the walkyverse her ex was ryan anyway?
Ciaran is a reference to another webcomic, so yeah, pretty unlikely to come up again.
As someone named Ryan, I am super-excited about this development.
Yeah I know how you feel.
Coming tomorrow!
Frieda: “His real name is Fart.”
Fart Captor: “DAMN YOU WILLIS.”
No, no, that’s good! Fart Captor would be the one who takes him in.
That’s flattering, but I gotta be honest. They escape like, all the time
Cheeky bastards. What’s their issue? They probably toot their own horn about it. If they’re not careful, they’ll be hoist on their own petard.
That was awesome.
As someone that comes for the drama I have to concur with this
Something I’m liking: when she finally
pulls her head out of her assgets out of Leslie’s apartment like she was toldpulls her head out of her ass, her priority is putting that piece of shit behind bars.If I remember right that’s the point that Leslie finally warmed to her on at the pub, before Robin brought in her stalker-home-invasion shit?
Yup. And yup, it was indeed the moment before Leslie softened up to her (unfortunately for her in the long run).
Though it makes me feel a bit awkward of trusting that a redemption arc might be beginning since we’ve seen her feed just enough to make people hope she can grow only to slam that door shut so many times with Leslie.
Can’t lie, I’d love to see the redemption arc.
But, ‘s gotta be driven by Leslie. At Leslie’s timetable.
Robin walks away from politics, sends Leslie a regretful “Sorry I treated you so badly, I’m gonna do the right thing now and leave you alone” (maybe with a “totes” thrown in so Leslie knows it really was her), and 6/12/18 months later Leslie checks in to to say “Hi friend” and see what she’s learned?
I’m thinking that wouldn’t be all bad, but it’s probably the shipper (despite everything…) in me.
Fully agree.
Leslie was robbed of so much agency this arc that something to restore that would have to be central to Robin’s redemption arc.
robin is just. kind of. one of those people who runs all over people through force of personality and sheer dynamism
so any relationship between her and leslie would have to involve leslie standing up to her and robin learning to fukin listen
Yup. If she’s going to have a redemption arc, it’s going to have to be a real redemption arc and that’s going to include acknowledging, apologizing, and changing the behavior she used against Leslie.
Except for the tiny detail that if it follows that timetable in-comic, we’d get to see it happen in around 20 years.
Can’t be 6/12/18 months though, due to the decompressed time in this strip. Even six months would be more than a decade of real time.
Whatever happens is going to play out unrealistically fast in comic time and painfully slow in real time. 🙂
Well, it’s also another thing to grasp at to avoid dealing with what she’s done to her career.
Not that she isn’t sincere about it, but it’s still a deflection.
I’m not entirely sure if it’s a deflection or more of a “I can’t fix the problems with my campaign, but I can fix this. And dammit I will.”
I mean, I assume the tags lied about Jocelyne until the reveal, so… probably? Which means the real question is will the tags get changed retroactively like Jocelyne’s were?
I assume so. And yeah, that’s the other big “the tags lie” moment I remember.
Maybe “Ryan” is a nickname, like “Walky”? Or a middle name or something?
Walky Walkerton.
Ryan… O’Ryan?
IS HE BART’S SON!?
…. I wasn’t thinking that, but….
We haven’t SEEN Bart yet…. and Willis said he’d run out of established Walkyverse names….
They did yeah.
There’s precedent for lying tags, like with Jocelyne until the reveal, and then they were retroactively changed.
…okay who is he, really, did we confuse his name with one of the bros?!
Ryan could easily be an alias or a codename or even a nickname for Richard (teehee) or something, I guess? But then there are the tags, which usually get right to a person’s identity and are honest, so maybe its a middle or last name? Honestly I feared to check the tags when Robin mentioned him, but now I’m relieved he didn’t show up and also weirded out. Plot-twist, anyone?
He told Joyce his name was Ryan.
Which strip? I only recall him being called Ryan by the other guy who came to get him when he was being chased by Sal and AG.
Oh man you know what? I really thought I recalled them giving each other names in his introduction comic but I just checked and apparently not so now I’m just looking through the archives for when we first got a name.
Yeah I guess we just got his name from the tags. I read through all his appearances and he’s never been referred to by name by anyone.
Oh wait nevermind this. The getaway driver called him Ryan.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-7/01-glower-vacuum/ryan/
It could be his last name, or something.
Maybe he goes by his middle name?
Past me, we were right. We were horribly, horribly right.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-7/01-glower-vacuum/ryan/
The guy who picked him up at the rally called him Ryan.
oh god is his name tristan
joyce would probs remember tristan but that seems like the most crazy plot twist Willis could throw until he proves me wrong by next week or something.
He also faintly looks like the little crap Sal beat up in her childhood, though she’d probably recognize him in that case.
I dunno, she didn’t recognize Amber.
We don’t know Sal even noticed Amber at the gas station that day. Amber was hiding behind the shelves the entire time.
Ethan was her convenient hostage, but Sal only vaguely recognized him at Joyce’s party.
Well, I mean, Amber did make up for a lack of visibility by stabbing Sal in the hand with a large knife after the attempted robbery. Since Sal barley recognizes Ethan, and hasn’t shown any sign of recognizing Amber, I’ll concede that point that Sal doesn’t recognize a lot of people from her past. In a lot of cases, I suppose it’s just a case of people who haven’t seen each other in a long time and don’t really suspect that those involved in past traumas are still around, particularly so nearby? When you’re not specifically looking for someone, you rarely find them.
TBF, Amber came up from behind Sal to stab her, and after said stab, Sal was a bit busy screaming (and probably crying).
ah, true! My own inability to derive conclusions from anything has struck me again. XD
I feel like Sal beat up a lot of little shits in her childhood, and I, for one, could not necessarily visually identify the adult faces of some of the people I went to elementary school with.
Who’s Tristan?
He’s someone from Joyce’s hometown who she was implied to have a crush on.
Ah, thanks! I knew the name sounded familiar.
But “Ryan” fit so nicely with the Ryan from Ruth’s Walkyverse backstory. Seems weird to have the tags lying about meta-connections like that.
If it was his surname I’m sure Frieda wouldn’t say that Ryan isn’t his name.
Its probably just an alias. One his getaway driver knew, which means he’s probably in on it and they actively have a plan for when shit goes south with there horrible drugging girls thing.
Which honestly makes it feel so much worse.
oh hell
Given what he intended to do, no wonder he lied to Joyce.
He never told Joyce his name. It’s just what his getaway driver called him
It was the guy in the shotgun seat… we couldn’t see the driver. Maybe that’s who “Ryan” really was, but Amazi-Girl misunderstood? The other guy was grabbing his friend, and then telling the driver to go?
Oooooh, that is possible! I was thinking “Ryan” gave a false name when he volunteered as intern. Maybe he was using that position to scope-out new ‘marks’ for nefarious purposes.
How far does this Ryan Rabbit hole goes.
MOTHERFUCK.
Well played gut-punch Willis.
I feel a little better seeing as how Robin’s further screentime is really just adding a greater rally against not-Ryan but still
Really dark prediction: Wasn’t “Ryan” paired up with Ruth in one of the previous universes? And we know he’s following Dorothy and Walky back to the dorm. Anyone want to bet it’s him that finds Ruth brooding alone in a corner? I’m just saying, it would perfectly explain the new haircut.
Wait, he’s following Walky and Dorothy?!
The last time we saw him, he was sticking his face out the door as they walked away. There’s a possibility Joe may have seen him — Joe turned around before catching up with D&W again — but no other on-panel appearances since them.
look in the background of the last few strips with walky and dorothy,
you’ll see him
I’m gonna punch things if his name turns out to be Ciaran.
I didn’t mean that, I haven’t read It’s Walky or Roomies but I could have sworn I’ve heard someone mention Ruth was paired up with Ryan in one of those.
Yes. In Ruth’s traumatic flashback, he was the older? boy who seduced her while she was supposed to be watching Walky and Billie and then dumped her.
Oh shit. This isn’t good. Especially if “Ryan’s” pastor daddy is some sorta big time mega church type pastor who’s supporting Robin’s “family values” campaign in order to get “Ryan’s” foot into the door of politics in the form of a high access internship.
What if Scarface gives a different fake name at every party he goes to.
I’m confused. It wasn’t the tags that told us his name was Ryan…
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-7/01-glower-vacuum/ryan/
Oh yeah, what’s up with that?
Yeah, if his name’s not Ryan then why did the guy who rescued him from Amazi-Girl call him by that name?
maybe he was talking to the driver????
that makes little sense tho
Possibly a nickname or he lied to to that guy about his name in case he learned about his activities or worst case that guy is a friend and knows what Ryan is doing.
Or, he’s such a high-profile individual that he’d give a fake name to the majority of those working on Robin’s campaign with him, so that they don’t know he’s whichever rich old white dude’s son and create a huge distraction for everybody.
this seems much more likely imo
The tags told us Ryan’s name well before that sequence though. Back during the actual party/attempted rape sequence. Judging by the old comments, the tags appeared a couple of strips into it and people were already guessing “ryan”, based on the Walkyverse version before then.
In retrospect, what serial rapist would give out their name to someone they were targeting?
So, unless I’m missing something as I look back at strips, “Ryan” never lied about his name. He never said his name; it came from the tags and in-story from the guy in the car who came to get get him.
Ironically, his given name is actually “Gashface”. “Ryan” is a nickname his friends gave him in high school.
Maybe his last name is Ryan?
Or O’Ryan. (I’m still waiting for Bart O’Ryan to show up somewhere, you see.)
He could be the father of “Ryan”.
That’s what I meant exactly, like he pretended his name was Ryan because he’s Justin O’Ryan or Bart O’Ryan Jr. or whatever, and Bart O’Ryan is his dad.
However, others have said that there’s Word Of God that gashface really is a pastor’s son, so that probably torpedos my fan-speculation.
So does Not Ryan have a prior conviction that came out since they know his real name or something, because apparently this helped unendorse Robin and I doubt they’d add this into consideration if it was an intern ‘good son of a preacher white boy with a clean record and good future’ getting ‘smeared’ by some ‘crazy internet feminists’.
It helped with her unendorsement in that even if the republican party don’t give a shit about rape victims, the last thing theywant is a controversy involving one of their own. Particularly with a subject like rape. It’s in their best interest to cut their losses.
It’s possible he does have a criminal record, (should have more) but he could also just be using an alias since he seemed to have his roofying techniques down pretty well. Get the girl a drink, get her alone and then do the unpleasentness that I wish was always followed by glass and/or bat to the face
He never mentioned his name to Joyce (which, iirc, Willis once noted in an alt-text).
He lied about his name to whomever called him Ryan.
He could quote and cite bible verses, but there’s no real reason to assume he was truthful about being a pastor’s son, either.
After Joyce took her glass and went smashy-smashy on his face, giving him the scar (and before the drug took effect), she accused him of not being a Pastor’s son… and in that moment, he did say it was actually true. Given the tense moment, I don’t see how he’d have the wherewithal to continue crafting his lie there, not with how pissed he was.
Aw dang for my theory. Do we know any other people who could get implicated in a not-actually-named-Ryan scandal?
Or is it that he is named Ryan, but he isn’t actually working for Robin?
–oh, derp, I didn’t see today’s last panel. I am clearly too sleepy to fan-speculate properly. good night!
IIRC, there’s Word of God that he wasn’t lying about being a pastor’s son, too.
Phooey. Word of God torpedoes my theory — “Bart O’Ryan’s nephew or whatever” just wouldn’t have the same dramatic flair.
I could be wrong (I don’t seem to have the crazy memory for details most readers here seem to) but we’ve never seen/heard mention of Bart O’Ryan in this universe yet correct? Who’s to say he’s not a pastor this time around?I say your theory still holds merit.
I vote he’s the son of Bart O’Ryan!
That guy is sufficiently high-profile, and maybe he does all Robin’s partisan faux-news.
Also he’s like the only Walkyverse character who still needs to appear reimagined in DoA.
:ooooo i like that theory actually
Yeah, funny thing about him citing Bible verses. The one he picked, telling Joyce his mom texted him something about Jesus, was actually about how Satan appears as a being of light. In other words, topical, given that he was trying to seduce Joyce at the time… and shows that he was totally making up the citation.
Iirc he said his grandma picked that one, and he wasn’t all that pleased about it, it was foreshadowing from Willis to us.
I was thinking of this strip: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-1/06-yesterday-was-thursday/thessalonians/
(I suppose he could’ve seen Joyce alone there, read her, and refreshed his memory on his phone before he went over. But that seems too complicated, I think he really can cite on the fly.)
How do we know Ryan is a FIRST name?
Maybe he’s related to the House Majority Leader.
Comic Reactions:
Panel 1: Becky is absolute love, I got to say.
And it’s such a nice subtle action. Like, scandal plus tweeted reversals on queer issues. Robin’s current situation is such that it’s now much easier for her to just accept her own reality and let her views evolve out of the toxic swamp they are mired in rather than still try and reclaim the approval of folks that think she’s a demoness now.
And it’s sad. It’s sad that all it took for her twisted shitty party to abandon her was a queer scandal and a few tweets that were supportive of the rights of others.
Panel 2: Oh, Becky, you are very very good at what you do.
And Robin… this is a good moment for Robin, I feel. And it feels monumentous that it’s one of her earlier actions and one of the few we see that follows from an initial promise.
Does it mitigate all the harm she did to Leslie and the fear and distress she caused her? No. Nor does it mitigate her voting record and campaign and the harm that does to queer citizens, especially as she’s in the midst of trying to argue that nope, she’s still totes team homophobe.
But it’s a strong good action that she really cares about doing not only something, but leaning her relative power to try and do something meaningful about a rapist.
Will it be the start of something more? A redemption and all the hard work that goes into it? I dunno and well Robin has a bad habit of leaving just enough hope behind to make you overlook her flaws and try and double down in hoping for her to change and grow.
But even if it doesn’t, this is a beautiful moment to enjoy.
I’ve said this before but she should just rebrand herself as a democrat. Becky made it very easy for her and wanting to lock up date rapists is definitely more of a democrat thing.
The republicans make them their leaders.
Leslie might gain back some small respect for her if she did this though I don’t see Robin becoming less indifferent to the endgame of her politics. But at least she’d be indifferent on the less evil side?
That’s a really slick action by Becky, because yeah, with very little actions, she’s basically made it more work for Robin to stick to this path that isn’t working rather than to accept the ready made path that would be more true to her sexuality.
Like, she’s using Robin’s tendency to gravitate to whatever feels easiest to her whims to try and prompt a genuine change of heart and policy position.
It’s fucking brilliant.
Becky’s a clever girl and ha, I like how your response is basically the exact same one i made down below but much better said 🙂
I dunno if I’d call a change of heart prompted by “this is easier” genuine, precisely.
All she’d really have to do is hold a professional press conference and say something like this “When I started in politics, I wanted to help people. And in order to hopefully get some of my ideas about things such as veteran care through I towed the part line. I supported legislation that targeted and hurt LGBT+ individuals in order to keep my position which eventually became my only goal: stay in office, without even remembering why I ran in the first place. And that was wrong. I was wrong. I treated people like…like me as if they weren’t human because of who they were attracted to. That’s right, I am not straight. I am bi. I didn’t know for the longest time and it was confusing for me. It helped play into my believe and rhetoric that people could just…turn themselves off. And the instant I figured that out, the instant I actually acknowledged non-straight and non-cis people as worthy of respect, my party kicked me to the curb. After years of doing everything they wanted, I was given abandoned as soon as I no longer fit. In, suffice it to say I’ve been disillusioned with my former party and politics in general. But, now that I realize I was wrong, I want a chance to make things right, and to try to mitigate what harm my former party might do. With that said, if they will have me, I intend to run next election cycle as a Democrat, and if they won’t, then as an independent. I know that this isn’t enough to repair the damage I’ve done, in fact probably nothing will ever be enough to fix what I did, but I will try. I’m sorry. I’m sorry to everyone I hurt. And, I want to try to help you now, while I still can. Before things are too late. And once again to the LGBT+ community, I am sorry. I am sorry that I hurt…that I hurt our cause. I deeply ask for your forgiveness, but I know it’s something I am going to have to earn, given my actions and my…hypocrisy. Thank you for your time.”
……
Not that Robin will actually say this (after all I did use the word professional to describe this idea of a conference), but an optimistic person can hope for such a change, right?
….
Also, I actually finally read some of Shortpacked to see why people shipped Robin and Leslie, and I have to say, they eventually came to a sweet place together, but oi vey that did not start well at all. Also, fuck both universes’ version of Leslie’s family.
Well, LGBTQ rights aren’t the only issue where Republicans and Democrats differ.
Is she changing her stances on everything? Makes her seem like a complete opportunist.
i feel so weird about becky’s fake tweets being the impetus for robin to turnaround like
i mean. on one level. the blowback she gets should be enough to prove to her that it’s an actual important battle. but on the other hand it’s something she didn’t get to choose
when she was basically corralling her life around not having to choose
and now she does get to choose, whether to repudiate them or to embrace them
ergh
Honestly she’d just be choosing how to best rebuild her career and regain some power and at a certain point it would be less work to rebuild by going over to the other side than trying to win favor with the republicans again.
eh. fair enough
feels kind of like a tomi lahren situation tho. like. when the republicans reject you for being not one hundred percent what they think you should be like they have rejected SO MANY OTHERS why are u even shocked and why look for acceptance from the people you maligned
ergh
Why can the local branch of Robin’s party consider her a loose cannon on deck and give her the heave-ho over some tweeted reversals of policy, when the national GOP party is still falling over each other to make excuses for the POTUS whenever he reverses policy via Tweetstorm?
Because those tweets are in favor of orthodox or extreme right-leaning positions and aren’t doing something so awful as acknowledging the humanity and importance of rights of a group the right-wing hates.
Hell, I think Trump got more hate from his base for vaguely tolerating Caitlyn Jenner’s existence than for any of his acts of treason or other scandals.
On the other hand, a lot of old-school (Cold War type) people who hate Russia are turning on the Miralago Orange (which is a surpring amount of the “red population”) and a lot of moderates have been driven away. Given the fact that even some Reds in office are getting tired of his shit and a couple are starting to view his conduct as criminal (every time John McCain shows up on tv in an interview involving the Donald, pay close attention to his face and body language; it is that of a very disturbed and disgusted man who would be trying to impeach the Trump if he thought enough of his own party would behave with ethics instead of party loyalty) and that we have someone considered the best and most impartial in his field investigating the Trump-Russia connection, we might get the first successful impeachment of a president…most likely followed by the second successful impeachment of a president if Pence doesn’t resign before such proceedings begin because he can see the shit about to hit the fan. And if things keep going the way the are, it might happen before the midterms. Because there is one thing that conservative Americans hate more than or just as much as the poor, ethnic minorities, and the LGBT+ community; and that’s Russians. Ironic that our two countries hate each other so much now, when we had really good relations between the Civil War and World War I, but it’s the truth. If Muller finds irrefutable proof that Russia was involved with Trump’s campaign team and is blackmailing/ordering Trump around, then Trump is gone. Because no American wants an ex-KGB member’s personal hand puppet as president. We just need hard evidence, since currently it’s only (albeit highly convincing) circumstantial evidence. And Muller will find it, even if it takes him a little while, the only complaint against him was that he was too obsessive over what seem like small details. The next time Trump leaves the country, he might not come back.
…
Of course I’m being optimistic, but hey someone has to in order to try cheering people up. It’s also possible that the CIA and Secret Service will work together to kill him while he’s out of country, and that Pence will be to tainted by Trump to do anything, but that’s just wishful thinking.
…
Also, is it weird that we’ve come tho trust the FBI over Congress to defend the pillars of democracy, when no one in the FBI is elected?
I’m predicting his real name is Paul.
Why would his friend call him something else though? What if he actually lied to Robin’s people?
Maybe his friend reads the tags.
Right now I’m thinking Ryan is either his last name or he’s a part of some kind of rape club and they all go by alias’.
Or for a little bit of both he could be in a frat?
His friend calls him that after Amazi-Girl’s gone after him, so probably said “this chick wants to know my real name so call me Ryan or something when you come pick me up to throw her off the trail” off-panel around that time.
Perhaps he told Robin’s people that his name was Boyce Willoughby-Boyce, and they believed him …
Dang. So he either used an alias or his name isn’t Ryan. Freaking guy is like Carmen Sandiego except actually evil and not someone to root for.
Those original computer games were still some of the best ever… educational and fun. I wish they’d re-do those for modern computers… because I don’t have a Commodore 64 anymore.
i love carmen sandiego…i have such a crush……
apparently they’re making a new series with gina rodriguez as carmen sandiego and my heart is Literally A-Flutter
Fingers crossed the revival goes well.
gina rodriguez seems to have a good head on her shoulders but yes, fingers well crossed
carmen sandiego deserves a decent reboot and some good cash inflow
They’d better get Rockapella involved, too.
heck. yes.
I remember a Carmen Sandiego game for PC. It was with the Tower of Babble. I loved it.
Of course it isn’t. That sneaky butt weasel
Isn’t it possible that his real name IS Ryan, but he lied about his name when he joined Robin’s campaign?
…I mean, I’m not sure what his motivation for lying would be, but on the other hand what would be his motivation for lying to the friend who picked him up the night of the rally?
Or, you know, Frieda is lying so that they can deny having had a serial rapist helping the campaign.
I wonder if he starts to say his name in this one and then turns it into something else and he’s actually a Justin.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-7/01-glower-vacuum/intern/
That’s… that’s actually a good shout.
So “Tern” is his last name, then! That means we actually have more on him now!
Justin N. Tern, son of Past R. Tern. ‘Past’ is short for Pastrick.
This strip blew my mind. I mean, we knew he could be lying about his name, but it kind of never sunk in. After all, there was a character in the Walkverse named Ryan that he seemed to be based off of. That said, I think I know who he is. This is a complete guess. I don’t follow Patreon, and all my experience with the Walkyverse comes from reading it as Willis re-uploads it. That being said, I think he’s this guy:
http://www.itswalky.com/comic/first-contact/
Willis said he knows where in the Dumbingverse Bart O’Ryan is. He looks similar to Ryan, at least when glaring. His last name is also O’Ryan, which seems too good to be a coincidence. From what Willis said he’s the “villian” of the third act of ItsWalky, so it doesn’t seem like too much of a stretch to think he’d be an asshole here as well.
he’s a redhead tho and this ryan is very, very blonde
Panel 3: Okay, now the strip is absolutely cartoon unbelievable. I mean, a Republican party that actually gives a fuck about sexual assault? There’s suspending disbelief and then there’s total loss of immersion.
But more seriously, again, I love that Robin is just on top of it in a really strong way. Like, if that really was a part of her being abandoned then her type of strong action would be exactly the right response to it. It would lose her the votes of folks that previously voted for her, but it’d be both morally and politically right.
Panel 4: Nah, you’re the Republican Party, any given organization is required to carry a certain number of Ryans and Steves by law.
Panel 6: Oh. Oh fuck. No no no, this is bad. Like, a) that they are using the wrong name on social media which will allow Ryan and his crew to try and discredit it, b) that this is the same Frieda who was all in for obfuscation before so this might be a tactic for erasing it that she’s put in motion, and c) well…
He’s a son of a pastor, which could mean small potatoes or could mean next generation of a mega-church leader and all the political connections that go with that.
Like, it’s bad enough the rapist is free, stalking the good guys, may have downloaded means of tracking people’s phones. But add on being potentially very politically connected and having powerful people willing to put pressure on “making the problem go away” and you get a nasty recipe for a massive smear job on Joyce that could be really really bad for her.
And the good guys don’t even have a real name yet.
Yeah, this is about to go places and very few of them are good.
Alt-text: No, never. They would never lie. *uses foot to slide Jocelyne’s dead name tags back under the table*
Again I have to ask do we have confirmation on that “son of a pastor” thing? I’m not saying it’s not true, (it could even be a great twist if that pastor’s the one that leads the church Joyce’s family goes to) but how do we know it’s not another lie?
He claimed that one was actually true at a time he was angry and owning up to the fact that he was full of shit. So, maybe it’s also a lie, but I suspect that, the fact that he’s a rapist, and that he has a scar might be the only true facts we know about him.
we dont have confirmation but honestly at this point i wouldn’t be surprised if it was the one true thing about him
like joyce was like “you lied to me! about everything!!” and he was like “well not about everything” in a im the son of a pastor kind of way
it’s not enough to write an article about b/c you need double confirmation for that but i’m personally comfortable being all “it’s true until we have reason to believe otherwise”. mostly because storywise, if it wasn’t true we would literally know nothing about him and have no consistent personality traits/backstory to link to him
like idk i feel like the fact that we misunderstood his name to be ryan (he didn’t even lie about what his name was!! willis did that and let us believe it!) means that it’s less likely for there to be more misdirections, mostly because after a point having too many misdirections stops being a cool wow horror moment and starts being frustrating. it stops being a plot twist and starts being a gimmick
To be very-reluctantly fair regarding your comments on Panel 3, the right might not care about sexual assault (at least, not the people on top, when it’s their own people). But it does care about widespread EXPOSURE of sexual assault and angry public reaction. This is why O’Reilly is no longer employable by anyone on the ri-…
…. DAMMIT BECK!
That only happened because he was hemorrhaging advertisers. Fox was perfectly happy to keep sweeping that under the rug as long as he brought in money
You’re pretty much right, except that Ryan isn’t one of “their own people”. He’s an intern, a flunky. How dare his indiscretions threaten his betters!
Standard practice would be to sweep it under the rug or throw him under the bus, whichever is more expedient.
Since he’s already all over social media, the under the rug option is less appealing.
Until we see any other evidence, I am inclined to think he is named Ryan, and Frieda + the rest of the party is trying to hide their ties with the POS. Even if it means a bald face lie like “we never heard of this Ryan guy,” when he has been an intern with them the whole time.
There is still the possibility that his real name is Ryan and that he lied to THEM because people sometimes lie. But that might be too hopeful.
He doesn’t have the ability to track anybody but AG. The app seems to be a contingency app to find AG’s phone in case it’s lost or stolen on patrol. That said….this is bad.
This Whitney guy kinda looks like the Congressional Aide. For a moment I thought he might have actually earned a name.
Everyone else is handling the “Ryan” situation pretty deftly so I’ll just say may the deity of her choice bless and keep Becky MacIntyre and leave it at that.
i misread the alt text for a moment and was like “wow that’s really off-message”
Better question, why would he give a fake name and/or why would Frieda protect him?
Because he’s either:
A) the son of a very supportive campaign financed
B) secretly her brother!!!! Dun Dun Duh!!!
1) He’s stated he’s the son of a pastor. That doesn’t per se mean anything, but it can mean he has some reasonable familial social power and/or wealth to work with.
2) He’s been working for Robin’s reelection campaign. He could just be a politically interested person, but quite often in campaigns for national office those kinds of positions get filled by the children of wealthy and powerful families because their families donated money and/or pulled strings and called in favors to get them that on paper experience.
3) He’s likely not lying about Ryan being his name… it probably is his middle name. He probably goes by that name as a shield to protect his first and last name should anyone try and go after him for his activities.
3) is pretty much my guess. On the meta level he’s almost certainly “Ryan” – the Dumbiverse analogue to the creepy Walkyverse Ryan. How that matches up with what Frieda’s saying here isn’t clear.
Possible real names: Donald, Roger, or Bill.
hmm i wonder if this is the impetus for dorothy to stop working at the newspaper. like i dont know how attached her name is to this report, but if it was, then that would be a reason for them to fire her
and she is so stressed she might just take the opportunity and go
His name is clearly “Bro” (or possibly “Our Boy”) http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-7/01-glower-vacuum/satisfied/
are we sure it isn’t “the first time any of you have ever satisfied a woman”
got some biblical resonance to it
Well let’s look at the bright side. They HAVE identified him, even if the name was wrong.
Plot Twist!
…Tina, that doesn’t make any–
PLOT TWIST!!!
(I’m sorry, I recently played through Dragon Keep again and I couldn’t resist).
Is the plot twist that Brick appears and solves all the problems by punching them? I could dig that.
WHAT
Going through the tags, isn’t the first instance of the name “Ryan” from when that guy picked him up after the fight at the rally? Honestly, it makes sense for his buddy to use a fake name, to keep people from identifying him and giving his name to any authorities. I fucking hate when shitbags are smart like this.
In comic, yes. He was tagged as Ryan since early on in the party sequence though. There are comments about it at the time. He’d already been pegged by some as Ryan, based on similarities to the Walkyverse Ryan.
okay let’s do a thread for all the dumbass hilarious names ryan might possibly have:
1) kylo bryan
2) sonny fitzwilliam bush the third
3) jimmy joe bob
4) methuselah “meth” martin
5) pray-to-the-lord “ryan” turner
6) admit-your-sins “ryan” saul
7) comeuppance phillips
8) ricker mayhew
9) Bro Broson
10) Douchey McDoucheface
11). Nebuchadnezzar “Chad” Ferrous, Admiral of the Seventh Fleet
12). Prince Joffrey the Second, King of the Andals and blah blah blah, Protector of the Realm
13). Six
14). Nuckin Futs, Heir to the Futs Dairy Empire
15). Wyatt “Oh God Why?” Masonenlawh
yes
16) Fart.
Fart Fenderson
yes
Rye’n Ham.
bless u i think u sneezed some puns in here
i shouldn’t have numbered this. score one for the learning experiences scoreboard
This is just for reference
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/04-it-all-returns/kazam/
His name is pastor Landrum. If the name Landrum comes up tomorrow this has been officially scouted. Do you notice any family resemblance between “Ryan” and Landrum? Place your bets now.
apropros of little: any dress is a tearaway if u believe in yourself
apropros of more: where is landrum on this page OH OKAY IN THE TAGS. the tags that lie. i weep. but it is likely that they are not lying there, in that that is the name that the pastor is known by
Shit. The hair color looks similar and so does face shape.
…
Welp, here’s the final nail that leads to the division of the Brown family.
i mean we can’t see the chin
I highly doubt that Joyce would have failed to recognize her own pastor’s son. This is the same girl who went to morning AND afternoon services, after all.
Also, I really don’t see any family resemblance between the two, now that you mention it.
I herby bet 400 eridium and 9 seraph crystals on Ryan NOT being pastor Landrum’s mistake/spawn.
(My real-life cash-money funds are a little low at the moment.)
Not saying it’s true…..but if you wanted to theorize. Hank did say they changed churches a lot when she was young, they might not be super familiar with the church they’re at now. Not everyone can have Joe’s dna where every son is a clone of their tather. And I wouldn’t put it past Ryan to no show church enough for Joyce not to recognize him. I’m personally 50/50 on it myself but it is plausible.
If they changed churches that much I would think they wouldn’t be that bound to this one, but on the other hand, I’m not sure what I would put past Mrs. Brown.
It’s because (to make her even more hateful and hypocritical to her Christianity) Carol Brown has secretly been sleeping with the pastor!!
Just a theory. Repeat. Just a theory.
This occurred to me too, but they just don’t look alike. If anyone, not-Ryan looks a little more like youth pastor Powers, but Powers mainly looks like Harry Potter. Neither has a strong enough resemblance to be any fun.
I guess it could be youth pastor powers too. Personally I have trouble nailing down Power’s age. He looks slightly older than Joyce like maybe mid to late twenties? So he doesn’t look old enough (to me anyway) to have a son in college. It could also be a completely different pastor. Although I don’t know why you would reveal a mystery third pastor/father when you have two waiting backstage for a chance to be plot relevant.
I am confused at the word schnozzola. Is it… Yiddish? o.O Why is Robin using Yiddish?
maybe her stepdad is jewish
“schnozzola” has always meant “nose” since before the days of Jimmy Durante.
Yeah, but it’s Yiddish. You can blame Jimmy Durante for the cultural penetration
When I read that, I assumed he lied to Robin’s team, and that Ryan was his real name, which was why his friend called him by it, and why it was in the tags. The thing about Jocelyne’s former tags is a point, though.
If it is Ciaran that would make sense, he might already go by Ryan for simplicity, since it is a similar nickname. Plus that would give a chance for added drama bringing Ruth into this particular drama. Not confident enough to speculate too much with what’s really going on though.
Frieda has the best day, hasn’t she?
wow o wow. just luv days like this when u work in politics
her and the White House staffers.
Friendly reminder that, no matter what, Sal is the person who this is all going to initially come down upon, as she’s the extremely out-of-place-looking and identifiable PoC with a history of trouble with the law from the rally fiasco who was actually spotted brutally decking this so-called “Ryan” character.
:(((
Yeeeeeep. If this rally brings down shit on anybody, it’s gonna be Sal. Because you’re right – she’s a PoC with a bad history with law enforcement who hit a white boy and she’s not the one with a mask.
Oh, I also remembered just now that it’ll definitely fuck with Sarah/her scholarship, as well. She’s the other PoC who has violently and blatantly (and, duh, deservedly) assaulted this guy in front of a huge crowd of witnesses, and that also establishes a pattern that aggressive women and PoC have some kind of vendetta against this guy in the eyes of the general public, which Faux News will have a field day running with as a story. Say goodbye to Sal’s freedom, and say goodbye to Sarah’s scholarship, and Amber, Amazi-Girl, and Joyce are all going to feel like it’s 100% their fault and probably go into their own separate personal tailspins.
Which is a thing Sal brought up to Sarah – “So, you’re basically volunteering to the cops that you assaulted a guy?” And yeah, if that does happen, the two of them are the ones going to jail forever.
Oh no…
Anyways, guys. I’ve returned to the Internet. Sorry about my lack of commenting but my week has been very busy.
NOT BUSY ENOUGH
That is a plot twist I did not expect.
Oh, really? Well in retrospect, it’s kind of obvious that he wouldn’t preface an attempted rape with a real name. So who is he? The Governor’s son? The senior senator’s grandson?
No, let me guess: His father, the preacher, is a major contributor to the GOP and, as such, ‘Ryan’ has effective immunity from prosecution lest ‘someone’ fund primary challenges to all the sitting GOP politicians in Indiana backed up by his grass-roots organisation (organised, in defiance of the law, through the churches he operates) who would use mass protests to drive the sitting folks out of office.
If !Ryan is an IU student and the close relative of a major pol, I would not be surprised if this means Dean McHenry knows, or has met, the family.
I can see an arc where a good man like the Dean is pressured, even threatened professionally, by a “family values” contingent, to make this problem go away.
oh my god I can’t believe Robin actually didn’t forget about that???
I
I actually gave her too little credit
wow
Ryan is…wait for it…Ciaran! Ciaran was a decent guy but he got his heart broken by Ruth/Clint or Clint told Ciaran lies about Ruth and now Ciaran is looking for revenge on young women!
*I’ve had a few glasses of wine so this is most likely 100% wrong
Let’s go ahead and never ever ever say “this dude is only a rapist because someone broke his heart”.
This.
…because of course it wasn’t. meh.
Could it be… Leland?
Marcie’s bully? Yes, it could.
Well there’s a kicker if it is true.
It would also mean that Amazi-Girl would probably have to be the one to pull Sal off of him before she did something stupid!
Oddly enough I think the Leland theory was floated way back when he originally showed up, and people generally dismissed it with the idea that the tags wouldn’t lie in that particular way (having two different tags to refer to someone at the same time).
Found it http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-7/01-glower-vacuum/landed/ – he’s all over the comments, including “we only know his name ‘cuzza the tags”, so that’s not new either.
They look the SAME:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-7/01-glower-vacuum/balances/
LELAND LELAND LELAND, it’s totally him
leLAND
YOU FOUND HIM
u mad genius u
What is this, Final Fantasy 8?
Holy molly, if that were the case…
If so… Well, I wonder if Sal would be able to persuade her parents to offer some gesture of regret that, by not standing up to the school authorities about Leyland’s behaviour, they created a repeat felon? I doubt it; humans are good at telling themselves the lie: “No-one could have foreseen…!”
I don’t know if this is Willis’s writing style but I can see this arc ending with Amazi-Girl, Sal, Joyce and Marcie (plus a worried Dorothy) ganging up to give Leyland his just deserts. Naturally, officialdom flocks around to protect the “fine, upstanding young man”, the son of one of Indiana’s most respected clergymen. Consequently, they are forced to use… other methods to ensure that he cannot hurt anyone ever again. Thus were formed this universe’s equivalent of The Defenders.
Some were always destined to be heroes.
kill leland, a movie coming out in webcomics near you
If it IS him, something very weird happened to his nose in-between times.
Hopefully it was punches. Lots of them.
You, of course, mean tripping. He’s a very clumsy individual. He keeps tripping and hitting people’s fists with his nose. That’s assault, that is.
Little kids typically have little kid noses,even if they’ll be bigger in their early teens (Ethan) or in adulthood.
It’s not Leland. Willis said in the comments that they’re two different dudes. So unless this is some Amber/Amazi-girl D.I.D. thing. Chances are it’s not him.
“Oops, Leland. You tripped.”
One can but hope that Leland’s life is filled with banana peels and oil slicks.
Son of a bongo!!!! That bastards been tormenting girls forever!!
I’m voting for Dicky McDickface
Why has no-one picked up on the fact that
a) The ‘party’ knew about him.
b) They know he’s NOT called Ryan.
c) They must therefore know his real name.
and yet… Even though they were *concerned* about him being all over “social media” in one of “Robin’s shirts”…
They haven’t DONE anything about it?!
Surely damage limitation would also result in KUDOS for them (A rare thing indeed!) if they were to hand his arse to the Po-Po
Unless, of course, as mooted above he is ‘connected’ in some way to someone of power… but then, if it’s been all over Social Media, surely even the American Press would have picked up in that by now?
The way that the mainstream media has learned to deal with things like this is to pretend that it isn’t happening and, if all else fails, attack the source. The term that you’re looking for is “Fake News”.
Hand him to the police on what grounds? There’s no report. There’s no investigation. The police aren’t looking for him.
There’s just some social media chatter. I’m all for taking that seriously, but not for taking legal action based on it.
This. From my understanding, the cops don’t need the victim to accuse the rapist, but they DO need testimony of the rape (or attempt) actually happening. And no-one is going to pick whatshisname up without the accusation anyway, because it’s a waste of time – it’s stupidly hard to make the charge stick WITH the victim accusing and testifying; without? No prosecutor is going to touch the case.
Unfortunately, the “whatshisname-in-jail” ship, presuming it was ever seaworthy (a rather large presumption, if rape trail history is anything to go by), sunk all the way down to the Mariana trench when Joyce decided to not go to the cops pretty much immediately.
Then…
What do we expect will actually happen?
Yes, I was a tad flippant with the “hand him to the polis!”
(Lots to happen prior to that…)
But if that is NOT what is/should be the eventual outcome to this story… (given the caveats above) …then what is?
He’ll try to attack someone else and get nailed for that. That’s honestly pretty true to life, the average rapist has like 12 victims before getting caught because of how hard it is to make charges stick.
As Tarmaniel said, and seeing as Word of Willis is that no-one’s going to die in DoA, the best we can hope for is that whatshisname next attempt (rapists are VERY repeat offenders) goes horribly wrong. THEN, Joyce’s testimony (and any of previous victims) can lend credence to the charges.
Possibly goes horribly wrong because the target recognizes him from the pictures.
Or alternately previous victims contact them after seeing the pictures and between them there’s enough evidence now that they’ve tracked down who he is.
More likely, the stalking leads to an incident and some evidence. We’ve still got to find out who the guy in the car was.
I agree on the possibility of the horribly wrong being, at least in part, a result of the photos. I have doubts that you’d be able to get a prosecutor to take the case at this point, regardless. Presumably, you don’t have any evidence, and he-said-they-said has been proven to NOT go well for the they.
And, yes, we still have no idea who the two guys in the car were, though they’re probably in the know to what whatshisname being a rapist.
Someone else could have reported and actually gotten the rape kit and all, but not been able to find him afterwards.
It is unlikely. And not narratively satisfying.
Oh, alternatively, there’s a VERY angry Joe heading our way mid-August.
bc 1) they don’t have proof that he did this
2) he is a white dude and their contingent is made up primarily of protecting white dudes
3) their party is run on effectively pretending that women are a protected class and therefore deserve less rights
4) a lot of people don’t believe the victim first; but either way where this is at is effective rumor-mongering
5) there are literally so many cases of rapists getting off because the authorities don’t want this to ruin their bright futures, because that matters more than the lives they hurt i guess
6) robin was gone and they had no guidance on what to do about anything but esp. a dude named ryan who is not named ryan but apparently volunteers for them
reference to #4 — there have been far too many times (the Duke lacrosse team incident about ten years ago is one of the best known) where everybody *DID* believe the supposed victim, resulting in the (falsely-accused) suspects – the *real* victims – having their lives turned upside down and leaving their reputations in tatters even though it did eventually come out that the original accusation was indeed false.
Might also be a little bit of the mindset exhibited at Penn State during the Jerry Sandusky/JoePa scandal; everybody closing ranks and protecting their own because “our people wouldn’t do something like that!”
Not really. The Duke Lacrosse team a) did do something fucked up even if it didn’t end up being sexual assault with vaginal penetration b) have become the poster child of “wrongly done white men harmed by evil women crying rape”.
Like, their reputation is fucking great now and mentioning it is sure to get you tons of sympathy for what you “suffered” having people assuming you were creeps who mistreated women (which they were). And no one even remembers their name.
Compare that to a high-profile individual in a rape case and even if it happened and there’s a conviction at the end, that person tends to get heavily harassed by the town or country and they are assumed to be less trustworthy or “dangerous” because “she gets guys locked up”.
Many often lose livelihoods even years later and often have dedicated MRA stalkers who just spend their time harassing and trying to get fired women who admit to being raped.
And that’s before noting all the PTSD.
And yeah, the vast majority of time, it’s rape survivors being disbelieved. It happens to a terrifying amount. It’s why most of us not only not report it, but many are hesitant to talk about it in public for fear of being treated worse for having suffered it.
honestly there are far too many more cases of women being terrified to come forward because even the possibility of a false accusation is enough to ruin your life/career
i mean like: ideally: the position would be not to take a position, but offer the victim necessary aid and then investigate: but that is in a perfect world, where people actually go to jail for rape, and we’ve invested money into rape prevention and consent education, and the thousands of rape kits sitting dusty in evidence lockers have been mostly gone through, and people offer help before asking questions, and people’s safety is put before people’s egos
somehow it’s worse to accuse someone of rape than to be accused of rape because it rocks the boat and that’s not ok
Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa???
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO SNAP! Plot twist!
https://youtu.be/kmMYFEsl-B0
^^^ My reaction
“According to the sign-in sheet his name is Heywood Jablome.”
The moment when the whole thing snaps into focus and Robin realises how no-one has noticed she’s spent her entire political career faking it.
this would be, because, everyone is faking it twenty-four/seven
Oooooooh, plot twist *gets a bucket of chocolate icecream*
That’s why I always preferred “Old Gashface”.
“Would the tags lie.”
G’damnit Willis.
Further thinking about my musing re: Ryan being a LAST name and not a first…
Willis DID have a Bill O’Reilly pastiche in his other comics named Bart O’Ryan.
Okay, so possibilities
1) Ryan gave a false name to the campaign so they don’t know his name IS Ryan (possibly because he was searching for a mark).
2) Ryan told his friend to call him by an alias.
3) Ryan is the getaway driver’s name and AG and Sal were mistaken.
4) Freida’s full of shit and just doesn’t want to start examining a guy who may have connections (if he told the truth about his dad being a pastor, depending on where he lives, that may be no small thing).
5) Ryan is a middle or surname.
Though I have hope that the campaign does have his real name (or hopefully a trackable one).
I figure it’s number one. I have used an alias on occasion as well.
And I want to make it clear that it was not for nefarious purposes.
His real name is Leland. Calling it now. Good family, good student, promising future….
Because a guy who commits crimes like that would actually give his real name most of the time.
swear to god if his name is mokkun