Seeing that reminds me that James Bond movies suffer from a shitty image of women.
There was a compilation film “chlichees, lesbians in film’ made in the middle to late eighties which made me realize that James Bond movies were part of what taught me to know that being a lesbian was not ok.
‘Stereotype’ gets much less in trouble with my autocorrect that doesn’t deal well with me being multilingual and not often bothering to switch the language setting.😉
I’m assuming you avoided the books then! I’m not anywhere in your “alphabet,” and I found myself getting creeped out by Fleming’s take on lesbians! “Goldfinger” was the last one I read after becoming an adult. (I’d read all the books in my late teens, but the sociological aspects of Fleming’s writing went over my head!
James Bond’s image of men is pretty shitty, too. Amoral, violent, ends justify the means, use women, dispose of women, kill without qualm. I never did like James Bond. He’s be right up Blaine’s alley, though.
I’m kind of hoping these two never get anywhere near the rest of the cast and they just end up snapping and taking each other out.
You just know Blaine can only go so long before he snaps and openly condescends at Ross. And Ross is going to go berserk when he finds out he’s being used.
Nobody dies because the comic would be stuck dealing with it basically forever. Two assholes everyone hates kill each other where the cast never finds out? Totally doable.
TFW you’re a shitty person because you’re a nihilist who only wants power and you don’t know how to deal with someone who’s shitty because they believe strongly in something repulsive
Responsible gun owners use ear protection for that reason. Of course, a responsible gun owner would never try to abduct someone with it anyways, so it would not surprise me if Ross never used ear protection.
All gun owners are responsible gun owners. It’s an article of faith.
Until they get caught doing something to egregious to deny, like an accidental discharge that wounds or kills someone.
Then they never were and their failure can’t be used to say anything about responsible gun owners.
Even beyond that, there’s often a conflation between “responsible” in the sense of following gun safety rules and “responsible” as in “not deliberately committing violent crimes with your gun”. I’m not at all convinced there’s any connection there.
Ross could quite well have been fully conscientious about gun safety – worn ear protection, kept his gun safely locked away, etc and still decide that his attempt to abduct his daughter was justified.
There was one article going around a while ago about a woman who was a member of the NRA who said that almost everyone she knew who said they were a responsible gun owner was going against at least one safety rule (like pointing it at things they did not intend to shoot, not keeping the gun, the clip, and ammo stored in separate locked areas, etc.)
Annnd and legit family patriarch….Annnnd someone who’s on the mental and emotional level of a normal man his age….Have fun playing along with him, Blaine…
The Catholic numbering is different from the Protestant. The Catholics compress the worship commandments into 3 instead of 4, and split the coveting commandment into 2.
There’s a table in Wikipedia setting out the eight different systems for dividing the fourteen commandments into Ten. I have to say that the difference between the Septuagint ordering and the Reformed Christian ordering is not very substantial.
There’ve been a few times when I was getting particularly heated where I’ve debated a name switch to “Wrath” and using Joyce’s red-eyed “BECAUSE I AM” face.
The thing we need to keep in mind is that every abhorent act we saw him perform and every hurtful word he said during that whole stalking-and-threatening-and-gun-wielding-and-kidnapping-and-almost-getting-daugther&friend-killed thing were seen out out context.
Because when we read that we didn’t know that Becky’s mother was dead, that she died of suicide, that it would be a VERY long stretch to assume that her suicide wasn’t at least in part caused by a life with ToeDad, that when Becky talked about ‘the extent of her danged aspirations’ that was what she was talking about, that the hints of ToeDad building up to suicide by cop were not lost on Becky at all and that the last thing – the VERY last thing he did to his daughter was to blame her for ‘destroying their family’, i.e. blaming her for her mothers death.
We have been way too soft on the fucker all this time. He is a way worse piece of shit than we realised.
I dunno, I don’t know that context adds much to the picture of someone’s waving a loaded gun at kids and kidnapping a child to force them into “conversion therapy,” more accurately called torture.
Blaine might be an unmitigated pr1ck but Ross is worse. I hate people like Ross with the heat of a thousand suns, nuance or no nuance.
From what we saw, Becky’s mom wasn’t driven to suicide. She was suffering from untreated depression. I think it’s probably more accurate it was medical rather than mental abuse. Indeed, that seems to have helped drive Ross into his current state of insanity.
Not that he wasn’t a bigoted nutjob ala Carol before.
Its an interesting question as to what their homelife is as he’s an unflinching religious fanatic but its possible that she was “happy” in it (as we see Becky and Joyce in similar nutty homes) until her condition killed her.
Did we know Ross was involved in her not being able to get treated? I ask because of the oddity that plenty of fundamentalist households don’t prohibit psychological medicine and in fact encourage it.
There is no definate proof in this comic that it was Ross’s fault and unless Willis actually decided that and wants to drive the point home I’m guessing there will never be. But the thing about depression is while its not always anyone’s fault it can be the result of abuse. The man religiously believes a man is above his wife and went after his daughter with a shot gun for being herself.
Authoritarian Christians are all about power. Ross lost power over his wife, and now he lives to reassert power over Becky. He’ll do well in prison, because he also knows how to bow to those who have more power than he.
What state of insanity? He drove all the way there with a gun. That’s premeditated. He believed in bigoted shit his entire life, and I think it’s safe to assume that it includes some very worrying ideas about women’s place in society.
He thinks his daughter BELONGS to him. That’s not insanity. That’s abuse.
Ross is indoctrinated to a cult and clearly doesn’t understand any other value. I actually question how much he is able to make decisions as well since his reactions are not of a particularly functioning adult. These are not defenses, FYI. Ross is clearly a danger to himself and others.
First of all, people in cults are still culpable for their choices and behaviour. Second of all, whether or not Joyce’s church is a cult os highly, highly debatable.
We all know Ross isn’t above physical abuse and coercion, so I’m not sure why we’d believe that never came into play with Bonnie.
Mostly because Becky implies Ross’ nuttery came in part from his wife dying in such a horrifying way. That, at some point, he wasn’t as bad as he was because she wants to have a relationship with him.
I don’t think that’d be the case if he abused her mom.
A slightly more sympathetic view of that is that much of Ross’s approach there was driven by his reaction to Bonnie’s suicide. It’s still shit of course, especially blaming Becky for ‘destroying their family’, but the suicide by cop aspect of the whole scenario could be seen as a way to join her. And while he’s certainly at least partly responsible for Bonnie’s death, he’s not capable of seeing that, since it’s not just him but their entire little subculture.
Brosnan, I feel. Goldeneye is not enough to balance out the abominations that are the rest of his time as Bond, ergo anyone who likes the entirety of the Brosnan-era films is evil.
I prefer to think that he watches CBN news from the christian news channel. Yes it’s a thing. There’s also TBN which isn’t all news but does have news programs daily. And I wish both of them would vanish in a white-hot ball of plasma, preferably 24 hours apart so the survivor had a full day to speculate why their “competition” would be destroyed in a disaster of Biblical proportions. Now maybe they have changed since I last checked them out, but leopards and spots.
They’re starting to reject Faux as it is apparently at the heart of the deep state with only Hannity and the Morning Couch Tumors keeping it from going full socializticks-squad-tifa. Toedad is definitely an OANN man, or maybe Tami Larman, whatever in fuck her name is.
I don’t even understand most of the words you write there.
I suspect I don’t know enough about US media landscape to understand the references but it sounds terrible.
I’m assuming there must be a horrible Willis anecdote about Days Inn. Why else would he make that chain the accommodation of choice for the Axis of Evil Dads?
My fondest wish is for the realization “My worldview and actions are and always have been bad, and I should feel bad” to somehow creep through the slimey oil they call a psyche. I don’t realistically think that can happen.
A very likely outcome is people they care about are harmed and distance themselves from them, maybe forever, but they seem heavily invested in that being the fault of external forces arrayed unfairly against them.
Damn, I didn’t bookmark the comic about Joyce processing new information.
Can anyone help me out? It appeared around the time Dina talked about dinosaurs first. Or maybe the first gender studies class?
Honestly I’m not sure Blaine genuinely cares about anyone other than himself. (I also don’t believe for a second that Blaine’s NOT actively abusing Yuri and Faz. Especially given the strong hints he groomed Yuri and the fact that she doesn’t think they have money but Blaine managed to make bail for Toedad.) I suspect them getting free would only make him angry he didn’t have someone to control anymore.
Ross, meanwhile? That bridge is so fucking burned. He has had numerous chances to reassess his worldview and chose each time to double down. Becky isn’t going to willingly spend time with him again. If her final scene with him in the hospital didn’t clue him into the fact that she’s a real person with real wants and she will never be happy in the life he demands of her, I doubt anything will.
Possible. (Though even if he does change, I find it extremely unlikely Becky would be able to really trust him again. Pretty damn hard to come back from kidnapping someone by threatening them and their friends with a gun.)
Sounds like a job for the Lord of Dreams. In Gaiman’s Sandman, Dream of the Endless visits a pedophile gathering. He sends them dreams of the reality of what they do. Most kill themselves.
So… I’m not saying I have sympathy for Ross. I don’t.
I just have a little less antipathy for him compared to Blaine. Or maybe a few grams of pity.
See, the thing about Blaine is, he pretty much knows what he is: A complete and utter bastard. He even delights in it. He couldn’t care less about anyone or anything that doesn’t ultimately serve him and his own self interests. And I’m not even sure there’s much of him that would be very different no matter how he was raised. Possible, but unlikely. Some people really are like that despite everyone’s best efforts.
Ross, on the other hand, is trapped.
See, I think that with the right guidance and the right environment, Ross could actually have been at least half-decent. But instead he grew up in a place that said that a Man does This and a Woman does That; and that’s the Bottom Line, because God Said So.
It’s fucked him over so damn hard.
And he in turn would then of course fuck over his wife and his only child even harder. And let’s not forget that. Let us not forget how he is an abuser. Never!
But unlike Blaine, he truly thinks that he is doing what he needs to do. He truly believes that if only he devotes his life to SkyDaddy even more and make sure to let SkyDaddy guide his steps, then everything will be all right.
And because of that, Ross is not only abusing others, he is also abusing himself. He will never actually succeed in his task; only gaining a few short-term victories. And every new failure, he will beat himself up even more for not being good enough for SkyDaddy.
He will never find happiness on his path. He will never be content on his path. He will continue to abuse himself as he abuses others that fails to live up to his Ideal Life.
I guess it’s like they say, a villain is the hero of his own story. Ross is under the impression that doing whatever horrible thing he’s planning is the best thing for his daughter (“You will be tortured forever in the afterlife if you don’t follow the rules in this one” is a belief that means you can justify a lot of shit if you think it means the person is spared an infinity more shit in the long run). Blaine might think of himself as being in the right, but knows he’s ultimately screwing over his daughter if he does what he’s planning to do.
Ross is a sh1tty Christian because he’s a sh1tty person.
Good people hear what churches like his say and recoil. Not so good people, these churches bring out the worst in them.
Ross might not have started out this bad, but he heard something he liked in their message so he stayed. And it nourished and encouraged his initial spark of hatefulness and bigotry, until it grew into the current monster.
Ross is in this particular flavor of Christianity because he just so happens to agree with this particular SkyDaddy. What a coincidence, right?
So sure, Ross believes he’s doing what is right. Because he found a God that agrees with him that a man should be authoritarian and abusive.
Unlike Carol, who chooses her belief of being right over all the things she knows, I don’t think Ross is mentally competent enough to realized he was taught bullshit about religion
This makes him dangerous in ways Carol isn’t because he actually is willing to die for his beliefs and you don’t really have a chance to talk him down with anything remotely sensible (God told me he doesn’t want you to die being the only thing that comes to mind that might reach him).
While Carol is more dangerous in other ways because she is a planer, a sneak and conspiratress.
There are good reasons to hate them both.
When has she planned or been sneaky, on-panel? She’s been very upfront about her bigotry, as far as I remember. I’m not sure what a “conspiratress” is, though.
Some people complain that they are only asked to gender in positive contexts.
The group who gathered to free Ross seemed rather conspiratory to me and I don’t Elke ever for a minute that Hank knew about it before the fact.
Though most people don’t actually pick churches, they’re raised in them and stay there. They don’t choose a church that matches their worldview, their worldview is shaped by the church from childhood. You can blame their parents, but that just pushes it back a generation.
Some break out of the indoctrination of course – glances at Joyce, but it’s not quite as simple as “is in this particular flavor of Christianity because he just so happens to agree with this particular SkyDaddy”.
That is sort of true but even in a church you choose whether you side with the members who believe in thing like charity and not judging and mercy, or if you want to side with those who believe in hating the right minorities.
Does anyone else feel like Blaine and Toe Dad are prime material for being upstaged by a much more dangerous and competent villain? The only issue is I can’t see why anyone more dangerous would want to go after a bunch of 18 year olds.
Except he’s not. Blaine is actually manipulative and Ross has that drive that comes only from being a complete moron incapable of forming an autonomous thought, but Clint’s only advantage is his leverage over Ruth. Going up against anyone else gets him steamrolled.
We haven’t seen him get steamrolled. We have seen him play Chloe very nicely (admittedly, not a difficult challenge) and we know he had the money/influence to get the university administration to reinstate Ruth.
But those weren’t cases in which they were working at cross purposes – Clint wanted Ruth to keep her position and Chloe ALSO wanted Ruth to keep her position, because that meant she didn’t have to be bothered to get a replacement and Ruth was the RA that best kept the problems from escalating hierarchically. Chloe wasn’t played, she was playing to the same endgame of her own volition.
Somewhat – his manipulation of the scene in Chloe’s office was very well done. He’d clearly set her up to dismiss any objections Ruth would make beforehand. “See, she just closes up, withdraws.”
Chloe did want Ruth to keep her position, which certainly made it easier, but he still had to tread carefully. I’m not sure Blaine could have been that subtle.
And he still had the money and influence to go over Chloe’s head, which neither Blaine or Ross would have had.
Blaine may be a huge asshole but at least he has good taste in movies. Unless his favorite Bond is Timothy Dalton or George Lazenby, in which case I rescind my statement about his taste in movies.
Oh, he did a good job. And like I said, good action movies for the time. Just that, they forgot (or “forgot”) to put in a whole bunch of standard Bond tropes, particularly in “Licence to Kill”.
Of course, I’m not that much of a fan of most of those tropes, so that is probably why I liked it.
Hmmm, how old is Blaine anyway? Which Bond would have been his teenage/youg adult Bond?
If he’s in his early 40s, probably Brosnan. Maybe Dalton, but there’s a big gap there, so the last Dalton film was 30 years ago and the first Brosnan one only 24. One of those was likely his first theater Bond.
As an Australian this update brings on a non-specific feeling of guilt. I wonder what brighter future would have resulted if Sir Keith Murdoch died prior to 1914. No poisonous Murdoch media empire, no deification of the Galipoli tragedy, no corruption of Australian, British, and American media.
And the Name Murdoch would be unknown as a media demagogue outside of Australia, and there only known to those who study history.
They do it to drive prey out of the woods – they also hunt around wildfires set by accident, but they’re proactive when the weather’s not obliging them.
To be fair, it’s not hard to start a fire in Australia. Like, eucalyptus pretty much combust if you stare at them hard enough, because “burning” is what’s they evolved to do.
What has a botched action of the British army in WW1 to do with the media empire from hell?
(As a non-British European, i only know what Gallipoli is because Elizabeth Peters mentions it in her Amelia Peabody series and i looked it up. )
Puts the Pogues version of “The Band Played Waltzing Matilda” on the hacked Muzac.
It was a basically British campaign, but it was also the first major overseas war that Australia (and New Zealand) took part in and it played a big role in forming their national identity.
I wasn’t aware of the Murdoch connection, but apparently Rupert’s father Keith got his start with a report on the Gallipoli disaster
I want to say Toedad’s obsession is hyperbole, buuuuuuuuuuuuuut… I have family that tell me the folks who call in on talk radio are the only ones actually speaking truth, so now I’m just sadder because of the reminder. Not less vigilant, just sadder.
Congratulations, Willis! You made me pity both of them for their own unique reasons. Ross due to his obviously stunted intelligence and Blaine because he is stuck in close proximity with Ross!
This character is not only an evil religious nut, a murderous bastard, a lunatic, a bigot, and into fox news, but a moron…
So he is just a caricature of the extream right at this point.
I know he is a villain but is lazy to resort to stereotypes like this.
I know it the politically approved thing to do… And I agree with opposing bigoted extremists.
.i just find it lazy as a Narrative tool.
My aunt and uncle are indistinguishable from Ross except they’re slightly more pleasant and haven’t yet kidnapped anyone to take them to conversion therapy, but it didn’t stop them from misgendering my little sister to her face or telling her to her face she’s going to hell for being trans!
I’m gonna stop myself here before I tell you everything you deserve to be told.
What did I say, that was wrong?
Yes, there are ridiculous people like that in real life.
But going for characters like this is lazy storytelling, and has been overused in entertainment media as of late, making people dull to real events.
So what’s the alternative? Make it out to have an arc where we are shown that the character already demonstrated time and time again to be a murderously-bigoted religious extremist is really, if we get to know him, Not So Bad After All?®
You’ve got a lot of silly ideas rolling around in that head of yours. They’re sorta like points, except they’re the kind of points a character in a YouTube Poop would make.
Because you disagree with them?
Its lazy storytelling and character writing and brings down many of the quality work this comic has and keeps doing.
Any time you use a caricature instead of a character you reduce the quality of the overall product.
As i said i pose all forms of bigotry and don’t care about how heavily political is the USA right now. I’m Mexican, the kind of person the kind of people been satirized here, Hate.
And i believe that making fun of that sort of people making fun of them just makes your arguments lesser, and reinforces their ideas about you.
You: Ross is a lazy caricature.
Other commenters: There are people like this in real life and I have dealt with them.
You: I haven’t had that experience but I still think it’s lazy writing to include said people in this comic.
I honestly want to know what you expected to see from Ross or his arc. How is him watching Fox News the thing that pushed him into “lazy caricature” territory?
I’m not sure what you expect. Yeah, that’s what Ross is. That’s what he’s always been from the start. We’ve known from day one that he’s religious and bigoted. Fox News isn’t a big surprise, since that’s their target demographic.
We’ve known since the kidnapping that he’s potentially murderous (and potentially suicidal as well – dying in a hail of police bullets seemed to be an acceptable end.)
He’s never seemed particularly bright, but “moron” is probably too far. He’s easily manipulated by Blaine – which is the only real new evidence of his intelligence we’ve seen.
He’s not really a caricature of the extreme right, I suspect, as of religious people Willis grew up with. Less of a “politically approved thing to do” and more of “personal experience”.
The venn diagram of “the extreme right” and “extremely religious American Christians” isn’t exactly a circle, but there are only a couple slivers outside the overlap.
To the point that the only reason Ross is identified as “the extreme right” is that he’s a religious bigot. We assume (correctly) that’s it’s Fox News, but that’s not explicit either.
It’s not like he has any other overtly political affiliations. He’s not wearing a MAGA hat. He’s not talking up Trump or attacking Democrats. Or, for other factions of extreme right, he’s not wearing Nazi symbols or the Confederate Flag. He’s really just a Christian misogynist homophobe and that’s not really anything but “right” in the US.
I understand what you are saying.
And i may not have experienced USA extreme religious people first hand. ( i come from Mexico)
Im just calling it lazy writing at this point.
Between Ross and Blaine, we are marching into Mustache twirling villainy
Everyone has different backgrounds, not everyone comes from the USA hypercharged political mess of an environment.
I just wanted to mention that something a webcomic series i been following since finished reading Shortstaked did was Lazy in my opinion.
If it’s something that happens in IRL, it’s not lazy writing to include it, especially since it feeds into the culture Joyce is from, based on the writer’s own lived experience. Just because that experience isn’t one you’re familiar with doesn’t mean you should shit on it and call it lazy.
I can confirm knowing multiple people per state, across multiple states, with that exact mentality. They weren’t all necessarily anti-entertainment, persay, but even the ones that weren’t didn’t spend time on entertainment (because they didn’t see value in it). So the “I only watch Fox News and nothing else” mentality is most definitely a real thing.
The thing about Toedad is that while he is not himself a complex or interesting character in isolation, where he becomes interesting is [i]what effects he has on other, more interesting characters[/i]. What psychological impacts does he have on Becky and Joyce, who’ve known and trusted him for most of their lives? How will he get along with Blaine, who is clearly full of contempt and occasional resentment for him but is willing to manipulate him however he can in order to achieve his goals – and how will they react when those goals diverge in a way that Blaine can’t cover up? What do Joyce’s parents make of him, their concern with his actions contrasting with the fact that fundamentally they agree with his motives?
He’s like a star system without any planets crossing the path of another star filled with planets. The lone star isn’t terribly interesting on its own, but what it’ll do to the orbits of the more interesting star system will be fascinating. Not every character needs to be deep and complex to be an integral part of a well-written story. Sometimes all you need is a plain steel girder to act as a foundation for other things.
He probably has what’s called the mesomorph body type; they’re usually shorter, but stockier. Mesomorph men tend towards the “barrel-chest” shape, and they tend to have a higher muscle-fat ratio than taller/more slender body shapes.
When Becky, Joyce, and Jocelyn broke into Becky’s house, there was a weightlifting bench in Ross’s forbidden room. I’m assuming he used it at least once.
Well, of course he does. If he exercises his legs, they might look nice. And you know who has nice legs? Cyclists and The Gays, and if he were Like Them, he’d be a sinner, wouldn’t he?
Ross is a man that has been clearly brainwashed by his upbringing to the extent I’m not sure how much he’s making his own decisions. I actually feel a measure of pity for him because he clearly can’t decide on anything outside of the horribly abusive framework he lives in.
Then I lose that pity in that he did make at least one choice and that was to reject Becky offering him a chance at redemption in the hospital. What a sad wreck of a human being.
What I don’t get is why Blaine didn’t spring for separate rooms? Obviously we wouldn’t have any character interaction but I can’t stretch my disbelief far enough to accept Blaine wanting to spend any more time with Ross than absolutely necessary. Plus, he’d get to watch Bond, James Bond; I hope he’s missing a his favorite.
Yeah, I’m thinking it’s to keep Ross under some degree of control too. The guy’s basically a living keg of gundpowder, and if Blaine isn’t there to snuff out the sparks before he’s ready for the explosion, well…
I feel like Blaine is realizing just how crazy Toedad is. (Not for having differing ideas, but for being so zealously attached to them.) They truly deserve each other.
Sidenote idea. Their evil plot never comes to fruition, and instead, Dave Willis makes a spinoff comic about two terrible boomer dads sitting on a couch watching TV, forgetting about their children forever and ever. “Toedad and Blaine”. Just don’t ship them please.
He’s probably watching FOX, but there are also smaller tinfoil hat right-wing “news” services like Pat Robertson’s “Christian Broadcasting Network” that he might be ingesting instead.
Wishing he could watch James Bond instead of FOX News or CBN or that English-language Russian news service that Toedad seems to be mainlining.
I have a momentary twinge of sympathy for Blaine, which will of course flicker out as soon as he interacts with someone who isn’t as complete a waste of oxygen as he is again.
Extreme dogmatism makes you miss cool stuff, like anime, fantasy movies, pop music, comic books, modern art, Netflix series, “ethnic” stuff, good education, movies, etc.
Also, has someone ever gave Brainiac and Solomon pants?
That Days Inn is distressingly close to campus, and I’m pretty sure Becky’s apartment isn’t even ON campus so she technically isn’t even protected by that ban. Yikes
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I’d torture Blaine some more by sending him this thread but I bet he doesn’t know how to Twit
Seeing that reminds me that James Bond movies suffer from a shitty image of women.
There was a compilation film “chlichees, lesbians in film’ made in the middle to late eighties which made me realize that James Bond movies were part of what taught me to know that being a lesbian was not ok.
Chlichees?
‘Stereotype’ gets much less in trouble with my autocorrect that doesn’t deal well with me being multilingual and not often bothering to switch the language setting.😉
Ironically, “cliché” itself is a French word.
I’m assuming you avoided the books then! I’m not anywhere in your “alphabet,” and I found myself getting creeped out by Fleming’s take on lesbians! “Goldfinger” was the last one I read after becoming an adult. (I’d read all the books in my late teens, but the sociological aspects of Fleming’s writing went over my head!
James Bond’s image of men is pretty shitty, too. Amoral, violent, ends justify the means, use women, dispose of women, kill without qualm. I never did like James Bond. He’s be right up Blaine’s alley, though.
Plot twist: Ross is watching this.
I clicked expecting a RickRoll. Still glad I clicked it.
Ross thinks Sam the American Eagle is the Hero.
I was expecting one of these.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54zEDJl0Rss
I gotta admit, I like seeing Blaine suffer even if it’s in this small way.
me too
I’m sure his suffering from Ross is just beginning.
I’m kind of hoping these two never get anywhere near the rest of the cast and they just end up snapping and taking each other out.
You just know Blaine can only go so long before he snaps and openly condescends at Ross. And Ross is going to go berserk when he finds out he’s being used.
I still think Ross is going to be mad when he figures out that Blaine wrks for the Korean mob. And that will be the end of Blaine.
Do not ruin my headcanon.
Willis said nobody dies, but… “alive” is a broad category
“You’d be surprised what you can live through.”
Nobody dies because the comic would be stuck dealing with it basically forever. Two assholes everyone hates kill each other where the cast never finds out? Totally doable.
As long as they never find out. Otherwise the celebrations will last for years of real time.
Wouldn’t both Amber and Becky have to be informed if their fathers turned up dead?
Full Disclosure: I used to work for a hotel that used to be a Days Inn. Luckily the television situation was the least problematic side of the job.
Used to be a Day’s Inn?!?
Ominous foreshadowing.
Someone always playing
Corporation games
Who cares? They’re always changing
Corporation names…
Would you mind sharing with the class what the hell happened at that Days Inn? (unless you don’t feel like it which is cool)
TFW you’re a shitty person because you’re a nihilist who only wants power and you don’t know how to deal with someone who’s shitty because they believe strongly in something repulsive
He knows, I think. It’s just Ross requires a LOT of management in that department.
How many times is Blaine gonna mutter things under his breath until Ross asks him “What was that?”
He has mild hearing loss; hearing aids are a liberal conspiracy to convince you that the loudest news arguments aren’t the most valid.
I mean, Ross owns/owned a gun. Guns are loud.
Responsible gun owners use ear protection for that reason. Of course, a responsible gun owner would never try to abduct someone with it anyways, so it would not surprise me if Ross never used ear protection.
Surely Ross sees himself as a responsible gun owner.
All gun owners are responsible gun owners. It’s an article of faith.
Until they get caught doing something to egregious to deny, like an accidental discharge that wounds or kills someone.
Then they never were and their failure can’t be used to say anything about responsible gun owners.
Even beyond that, there’s often a conflation between “responsible” in the sense of following gun safety rules and “responsible” as in “not deliberately committing violent crimes with your gun”. I’m not at all convinced there’s any connection there.
Ross could quite well have been fully conscientious about gun safety – worn ear protection, kept his gun safely locked away, etc and still decide that his attempt to abduct his daughter was justified.
There was one article going around a while ago about a woman who was a member of the NRA who said that almost everyone she knew who said they were a responsible gun owner was going against at least one safety rule (like pointing it at things they did not intend to shoot, not keeping the gun, the clip, and ammo stored in separate locked areas, etc.)
Annnd and legit family patriarch….Annnnd someone who’s on the mental and emotional level of a normal man his age….Have fun playing along with him, Blaine…
This is… Frighteningly close to some people I’ve met.
(The “TV/Movies are lies and therefore evil” thing.)
This is frighteningly close to some people I’m related to.
My ex-neighbors never let their kids watch TV outside of the news because acting violated the fourth commandment,
I am not entirely sure what acting has to do with keeping the sabbath.
I think They meant “Thou shalt not lie” which just makes my head hurts.
The fourth commandment is the “no images” one.
Wait. No, it isn’t. But that would be the only one to make sense.
It’s either keep the Sabbath or honour your parents … So don’t watch Saturday morning cartoons when your parents have fotbidden it ??
I think different denominations have slight variations in the Ten Commandments.
The Catholic numbering is different from the Protestant. The Catholics compress the worship commandments into 3 instead of 4, and split the coveting commandment into 2.
There are a couple of other variants I think, but none of them make the 4th relevant to acting, unless I’m missing something.
There’s a table in Wikipedia setting out the eight different systems for dividing the fourteen commandments into Ten. I have to say that the difference between the Septuagint ordering and the Reformed Christian ordering is not very substantial.
(Also, the best TV series of all time, IMO… even if it IS pre-Google.
I hate Ross so fucking much.
#gravatarappropriatecomments
There’ve been a few times when I was getting particularly heated where I’ve debated a name switch to “Wrath” and using Joyce’s red-eyed “BECAUSE I AM” face.
Where is your gravatar from? I thought it was in that scene in the restaurant with John, Jocelyne, and Becky, but no luck.
It’s from when Dina offers Joyce money for swearing.
Ahh. Thanx.
Sorry, I fibbed slightly. It was probably Sarah, not Dina. Or maybe I’m wrong entirely and no money is being offered.
Joe offered the money. Sarah just got a kick out of it.
Nah, no prob. This is about the best indexed webcomic around, and I searched it up easily.
Sarah offered Joyce $20 after Becky was kidnapped and recovered.
Okay. I was thinking of the bit in the cafeteria.
The thing we need to keep in mind is that every abhorent act we saw him perform and every hurtful word he said during that whole stalking-and-threatening-and-gun-wielding-and-kidnapping-and-almost-getting-daugther&friend-killed thing were seen out out context.
Because when we read that we didn’t know that Becky’s mother was dead, that she died of suicide, that it would be a VERY long stretch to assume that her suicide wasn’t at least in part caused by a life with ToeDad, that when Becky talked about ‘the extent of her danged aspirations’ that was what she was talking about, that the hints of ToeDad building up to suicide by cop were not lost on Becky at all and that the last thing – the VERY last thing he did to his daughter was to blame her for ‘destroying their family’, i.e. blaming her for her mothers death.
We have been way too soft on the fucker all this time. He is a way worse piece of shit than we realised.
We did know Becky’s mom died. He mentioned it to Dina.
True. But we were missing some rather important nuances.
I dunno, I don’t know that context adds much to the picture of someone’s waving a loaded gun at kids and kidnapping a child to force them into “conversion therapy,” more accurately called torture.
Blaine might be an unmitigated pr1ck but Ross is worse. I hate people like Ross with the heat of a thousand suns, nuance or no nuance.
I think that is a perfectly reasonable response, and I fully share it.
all I’m saying is that we have even MORE reasons to despise the asshole than we first realised.
From what we saw, Becky’s mom wasn’t driven to suicide. She was suffering from untreated depression. I think it’s probably more accurate it was medical rather than mental abuse. Indeed, that seems to have helped drive Ross into his current state of insanity.
Not that he wasn’t a bigoted nutjob ala Carol before.
Who abused her and prohibited her from getting treatment for the depression, thus making it worse, though?
Its an interesting question as to what their homelife is as he’s an unflinching religious fanatic but its possible that she was “happy” in it (as we see Becky and Joyce in similar nutty homes) until her condition killed her.
Did we know Ross was involved in her not being able to get treated? I ask because of the oddity that plenty of fundamentalist households don’t prohibit psychological medicine and in fact encourage it.
There is no definate proof in this comic that it was Ross’s fault and unless Willis actually decided that and wants to drive the point home I’m guessing there will never be. But the thing about depression is while its not always anyone’s fault it can be the result of abuse. The man religiously believes a man is above his wife and went after his daughter with a shot gun for being herself.
Authoritarian Christians are all about power. Ross lost power over his wife, and now he lives to reassert power over Becky. He’ll do well in prison, because he also knows how to bow to those who have more power than he.
What state of insanity? He drove all the way there with a gun. That’s premeditated. He believed in bigoted shit his entire life, and I think it’s safe to assume that it includes some very worrying ideas about women’s place in society.
He thinks his daughter BELONGS to him. That’s not insanity. That’s abuse.
Actually, it’s both.
Ross is indoctrinated to a cult and clearly doesn’t understand any other value. I actually question how much he is able to make decisions as well since his reactions are not of a particularly functioning adult. These are not defenses, FYI. Ross is clearly a danger to himself and others.
First of all, people in cults are still culpable for their choices and behaviour. Second of all, whether or not Joyce’s church is a cult os highly, highly debatable.
We all know Ross isn’t above physical abuse and coercion, so I’m not sure why we’d believe that never came into play with Bonnie.
Mostly because Becky implies Ross’ nuttery came in part from his wife dying in such a horrifying way. That, at some point, he wasn’t as bad as he was because she wants to have a relationship with him.
I don’t think that’d be the case if he abused her mom.
That requires Becky to know about it. Hank says he’s always been an asshole, whereas Bonny was ‘nice enough’.
It also requires a good definition of abuse. Especially in a culture like that, relatively mild abuse could easily be seen as just normal behavior.
And even without that, kids wanting a relationship with their surviving parent is certainly not proof of a lack of abuse.
A slightly more sympathetic view of that is that much of Ross’s approach there was driven by his reaction to Bonnie’s suicide. It’s still shit of course, especially blaming Becky for ‘destroying their family’, but the suicide by cop aspect of the whole scenario could be seen as a way to join her. And while he’s certainly at least partly responsible for Bonnie’s death, he’s not capable of seeing that, since it’s not just him but their entire little subculture.
The way you draw Toedad is messing me up because he looks like the human version of my scruffy black cat
Blaine deserves every moment of Ross.
YES. Every little annoyance Ross can throw at him is so very well deserved.
Fuck for once I’m on Blaines side. I fucking love James Bond
But I still hate Blaine, so I hope it’s one of the really good Bonds… AND HE’S MISSING IT!
I hope he’s missing daniel craigs casino royale
God, Casino Royale is so good.
On an unrelated note, I love your Ava avatar! Did Michelle draw that or is it fanart?
It’s actually ripped straight out of one of her Panels during Avas rampage i cant quite remember which one tho
I just screenshot snipped and adjusted it lol
I actually cant find it now lol I’ve had the pic for awhile now. Damm
Ross’ favorite bond is probably Moore. Which is why he’s EVIL.
Brosnan, I feel. Goldeneye is not enough to balance out the abominations that are the rest of his time as Bond, ergo anyone who likes the entirety of the Brosnan-era films is evil.
Meant Blaine anyway. Oops.
If it makes you feel better, Blaine really wants to watch whichever Bond movie is your least favorite.
Catching up on Faux News, eh?
Faux Pa needs his Faux News.
Nice! 😁
I’m assuming that’s the channel a fundie Christian like Ross would think has “the only programs that tell us the truth”.
I was thinking Fox News.
I prefer to think that he watches CBN news from the christian news channel. Yes it’s a thing. There’s also TBN which isn’t all news but does have news programs daily. And I wish both of them would vanish in a white-hot ball of plasma, preferably 24 hours apart so the survivor had a full day to speculate why their “competition” would be destroyed in a disaster of Biblical proportions. Now maybe they have changed since I last checked them out, but leopards and spots.
TBN?
The Bullshit Network.
So, Fox?
Trinity Broadcasting Network.
They’re starting to reject Faux as it is apparently at the heart of the deep state with only Hannity and the Morning Couch Tumors keeping it from going full socializticks-squad-tifa. Toedad is definitely an OANN man, or maybe Tami Larman, whatever in fuck her name is.
I don’t even understand most of the words you write there.
I suspect I don’t know enough about US media landscape to understand the references but it sounds terrible.
It’s like if the bottom of the barrel dripped into an ocean of diseased rats.
Sure you can Toedad.
I’m assuming there must be a horrible Willis anecdote about Days Inn. Why else would he make that chain the accommodation of choice for the Axis of Evil Dads?
It’s probably location. There’s a Days Inn near IU campus
Willis’ Twitter has what must be a reference photo.
https://twitter.com/damnyouwillis/status/1193032779757490177
My fondest wish is for the realization “My worldview and actions are and always have been bad, and I should feel bad” to somehow creep through the slimey oil they call a psyche. I don’t realistically think that can happen.
A very likely outcome is people they care about are harmed and distance themselves from them, maybe forever, but they seem heavily invested in that being the fault of external forces arrayed unfairly against them.
Maybe he’ll see something on Fox so inherently wrong that even his warped views realize it’s far from the truth, and a paradigm shift will occur.
Damn, I didn’t bookmark the comic about Joyce processing new information.
Can anyone help me out? It appeared around the time Dina talked about dinosaurs first. Or maybe the first gender studies class?
They were at Galasso’s, I think.
Reminiscing on it, it’s very surprising that Joyce is one of my favorite characters, because wow it’s a contemptible moment on Joyce’s part.
It was Galasso’s and the feathered dinosaurs discussion.
Feathers at Galasso’s, and Devourin, and Parasaurolophus come to mind
The page after Feathers: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/02-guess-whos-coming-to-galassos/proven/
Thanks.
No. It’s on his favorite news outlet, therefore it cannot be wrong.
Honestly I’m not sure Blaine genuinely cares about anyone other than himself. (I also don’t believe for a second that Blaine’s NOT actively abusing Yuri and Faz. Especially given the strong hints he groomed Yuri and the fact that she doesn’t think they have money but Blaine managed to make bail for Toedad.) I suspect them getting free would only make him angry he didn’t have someone to control anymore.
Ross, meanwhile? That bridge is so fucking burned. He has had numerous chances to reassess his worldview and chose each time to double down. Becky isn’t going to willingly spend time with him again. If her final scene with him in the hospital didn’t clue him into the fact that she’s a real person with real wants and she will never be happy in the life he demands of her, I doubt anything will.
Fuck em both with a cactus.
He has a whole support structure helping him double down, including Carol.
People can and do change. Even horrible people. It’s possible.
Let’s check back in on Ross after a decade or so in prison.
Possible. (Though even if he does change, I find it extremely unlikely Becky would be able to really trust him again. Pretty damn hard to come back from kidnapping someone by threatening them and their friends with a gun.)
Prison in the US isn’t really noted for it’s outstanding commitment to rehabilitation.
Worse than that, the jail system would look at Ross’ fundamentalism
as proof they do not have to directly rehabilitate him all that strongly.
So he’d probably come out mostly the same.
Sounds like a job for the Lord of Dreams. In Gaiman’s Sandman, Dream of the Endless visits a pedophile gathering. He sends them dreams of the reality of what they do. Most kill themselves.
Ok. Research before posting. Serial killers and pedos. Issue 14. A Doll’s House. Righteous and evil men get what’s coming to them. Worked for me.
Blaine’s gotta go look in a mirror and ask himself, is destroying Amber really worth all this?
and because he is the vile, toxic creature he is, his answer is “yes”.
If Blaine were even capable of asking that he’d probably be a far less terrible person.
Man, this just catalyzed all my feelings for Ross into pity.
Oh god I hope they just end up tearing each other to pieces and we’re done with the Extreme Shit Tier Dads once and for all.
This DOES feel like the seed of whatever will hopefully rend this unholy, yet stupid, alliance.
Brainiac: All I want is some pants! Just a decent! Pair! Of! Pants!
I’m glad I’m not the only one that got that reference. I wonder how many people that comment here wern’t born yet when that promo was used?
I’m just waiting for Blaine to snap because Toedad won’t let him watch Casino Royale or something.
It’s not too late Blaine. A good evil fuckwad needs a competent shitstain as his number two.
So… I’m not saying I have sympathy for Ross. I don’t.
I just have a little less antipathy for him compared to Blaine. Or maybe a few grams of pity.
See, the thing about Blaine is, he pretty much knows what he is: A complete and utter bastard. He even delights in it. He couldn’t care less about anyone or anything that doesn’t ultimately serve him and his own self interests. And I’m not even sure there’s much of him that would be very different no matter how he was raised. Possible, but unlikely. Some people really are like that despite everyone’s best efforts.
Ross, on the other hand, is trapped.
See, I think that with the right guidance and the right environment, Ross could actually have been at least half-decent. But instead he grew up in a place that said that a Man does This and a Woman does That; and that’s the Bottom Line, because God Said So.
It’s fucked him over so damn hard.
And he in turn would then of course fuck over his wife and his only child even harder. And let’s not forget that. Let us not forget how he is an abuser. Never!
But unlike Blaine, he truly thinks that he is doing what he needs to do. He truly believes that if only he devotes his life to SkyDaddy even more and make sure to let SkyDaddy guide his steps, then everything will be all right.
And because of that, Ross is not only abusing others, he is also abusing himself. He will never actually succeed in his task; only gaining a few short-term victories. And every new failure, he will beat himself up even more for not being good enough for SkyDaddy.
He will never find happiness on his path. He will never be content on his path. He will continue to abuse himself as he abuses others that fails to live up to his Ideal Life.
And that is the part I can pity.
Mind you, I’ve never been on the receiving end of someone like Ross.
So those of you who have, you’re obviously still free to hate the shit out of him without any pity whatsoever.
I guess it’s like they say, a villain is the hero of his own story. Ross is under the impression that doing whatever horrible thing he’s planning is the best thing for his daughter (“You will be tortured forever in the afterlife if you don’t follow the rules in this one” is a belief that means you can justify a lot of shit if you think it means the person is spared an infinity more shit in the long run). Blaine might think of himself as being in the right, but knows he’s ultimately screwing over his daughter if he does what he’s planning to do.
Ross is a sh1tty Christian because he’s a sh1tty person.
Good people hear what churches like his say and recoil. Not so good people, these churches bring out the worst in them.
Ross might not have started out this bad, but he heard something he liked in their message so he stayed. And it nourished and encouraged his initial spark of hatefulness and bigotry, until it grew into the current monster.
Ross is in this particular flavor of Christianity because he just so happens to agree with this particular SkyDaddy. What a coincidence, right?
So sure, Ross believes he’s doing what is right. Because he found a God that agrees with him that a man should be authoritarian and abusive.
Unlike Carol, who chooses her belief of being right over all the things she knows, I don’t think Ross is mentally competent enough to realized he was taught bullshit about religion
This makes him dangerous in ways Carol isn’t because he actually is willing to die for his beliefs and you don’t really have a chance to talk him down with anything remotely sensible (God told me he doesn’t want you to die being the only thing that comes to mind that might reach him).
While Carol is more dangerous in other ways because she is a planer, a sneak and conspiratress.
There are good reasons to hate them both.
When has she planned or been sneaky, on-panel? She’s been very upfront about her bigotry, as far as I remember. I’m not sure what a “conspiratress” is, though.
Some people complain that they are only asked to gender in positive contexts.
The group who gathered to free Ross seemed rather conspiratory to me and I don’t Elke ever for a minute that Hank knew about it before the fact.
I think I have to reset my autocorrect: Elke => believe
Though most people don’t actually pick churches, they’re raised in them and stay there. They don’t choose a church that matches their worldview, their worldview is shaped by the church from childhood. You can blame their parents, but that just pushes it back a generation.
Some break out of the indoctrination of course – glances at Joyce, but it’s not quite as simple as “is in this particular flavor of Christianity because he just so happens to agree with this particular SkyDaddy”.
That is sort of true but even in a church you choose whether you side with the members who believe in thing like charity and not judging and mercy, or if you want to side with those who believe in hating the right minorities.
I know it’s probably Fox News… but I kinda hope it’s the Hope Shopping Network. He’s just watching it as if it’s a news channel.
Hope Shopping Network?
Now I’m thinking of a televangelist.
As for Blaine, this is how evil he is:
He is upset about missing “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service”.
Enough said.
I see nothing wrong with being upset about missing Diana Rigg.
I see your “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service”, and raise you one “Die Another Day”.
Checkmate, your Emperorness.
Foooooools! I raise you the Casino Royale with Woody Allen.
•pulls up chair• Go on?
Does anyone else feel like Blaine and Toe Dad are prime material for being upstaged by a much more dangerous and competent villain? The only issue is I can’t see why anyone more dangerous would want to go after a bunch of 18 year olds.
*cough Head Alien cough*
Clint (Ruth’s evil patriarch) comes to mind, for that. He’s WAY more adept than these two dopes.
It’d be like when the Kingpin threw out the Red Skull for stinking up the place.
Except he’s not. Blaine is actually manipulative and Ross has that drive that comes only from being a complete moron incapable of forming an autonomous thought, but Clint’s only advantage is his leverage over Ruth. Going up against anyone else gets him steamrolled.
We haven’t seen him get steamrolled. We have seen him play Chloe very nicely (admittedly, not a difficult challenge) and we know he had the money/influence to get the university administration to reinstate Ruth.
But those weren’t cases in which they were working at cross purposes – Clint wanted Ruth to keep her position and Chloe ALSO wanted Ruth to keep her position, because that meant she didn’t have to be bothered to get a replacement and Ruth was the RA that best kept the problems from escalating hierarchically. Chloe wasn’t played, she was playing to the same endgame of her own volition.
Somewhat – his manipulation of the scene in Chloe’s office was very well done. He’d clearly set her up to dismiss any objections Ruth would make beforehand. “See, she just closes up, withdraws.”
Chloe did want Ruth to keep her position, which certainly made it easier, but he still had to tread carefully. I’m not sure Blaine could have been that subtle.
And he still had the money and influence to go over Chloe’s head, which neither Blaine or Ross would have had.
I am gonna be in the super minority on this, but I really want to see Mary and Ross interact.
They bond over Ronald Reagan and Ryan Paul weightlifting photos.
Goddamn it, you reminded me of Anthro Skunk Ronald Reagan, and now I’m upset.
awwww, motel date.
Danny was right. It was the two terrible parent that found each other.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-8/02-this-is-the-way-that-we-love/stepsister/
Blaine may be a huge asshole but at least he has good taste in movies. Unless his favorite Bond is Timothy Dalton or George Lazenby, in which case I rescind my statement about his taste in movies.
“License to Kill” was a bad Bond movie, but it was a good* action movie.
*Mind you, it’s been about 28 years since last I saw it
Dalton was an amazing Bond! He acted the hell out of those films.
Oh, he did a good job. And like I said, good action movies for the time. Just that, they forgot (or “forgot”) to put in a whole bunch of standard Bond tropes, particularly in “Licence to Kill”.
Of course, I’m not that much of a fan of most of those tropes, so that is probably why I liked it.
Lazenby was better that given credit for, and given some direction might have been a really good several-films Bond. OHMSS was Top 5. Fight me.
Hmmm, how old is Blaine anyway? Which Bond would have been his teenage/youg adult Bond?
If he’s in his early 40s, probably Brosnan. Maybe Dalton, but there’s a big gap there, so the last Dalton film was 30 years ago and the first Brosnan one only 24. One of those was likely his first theater Bond.
Could have seen older ones on cable of course.
As an Australian this update brings on a non-specific feeling of guilt. I wonder what brighter future would have resulted if Sir Keith Murdoch died prior to 1914. No poisonous Murdoch media empire, no deification of the Galipoli tragedy, no corruption of Australian, British, and American media.
And the Name Murdoch would be unknown as a media demagogue outside of Australia, and there only known to those who study history.
NO. FOX. NEWS.
Sorry.
Australia, home of the most lethal animals on the planet.
What truly snapped my mind when it comes to australian animals was the firehawk that lights bush fires to scare animals out in the open.
“ah, nature, so majestic in it’s glory… WHAT IN THE NAME OF DARWIN’S BEARD ARE YOU DOING, YOU PYROMANIC, MANIC BIRD!!!!”
It’s sort of an analogy for Becky burning down the closet to bring all the gayness out in the open, isn’t it.
I mean, do -you- think it’s a coincidence that Willis gave Becky red hair when he first created her?
The one animal that Climate Change Australia needs extinct
I’m sorry, the what? Is this like the Drop Bear?
Firehawks are a real thing. There are at least 3 species that do it.
I’d post a link, but the power went out and I lost the one I had c&p’d, and I’m too pissed off by that to look for it again.
They do it to drive prey out of the woods – they also hunt around wildfires set by accident, but they’re proactive when the weather’s not obliging them.
To be fair, it’s not hard to start a fire in Australia. Like, eucalyptus pretty much combust if you stare at them hard enough, because “burning” is what’s they evolved to do.
Jesus Christ, seriously?
No wonder the British sent their prisoners there.
I assure you something similar would have sprung up in its place by someone else.
What has a botched action of the British army in WW1 to do with the media empire from hell?
(As a non-British European, i only know what Gallipoli is because Elizabeth Peters mentions it in her Amelia Peabody series and i looked it up. )
Good shout-out to Peabody. Great series.
Puts the Pogues version of “The Band Played Waltzing Matilda” on the hacked Muzac.
It was a basically British campaign, but it was also the first major overseas war that Australia (and New Zealand) took part in and it played a big role in forming their national identity.
I wasn’t aware of the Murdoch connection, but apparently Rupert’s father Keith got his start with a report on the Gallipoli disaster
I want to say Toedad’s obsession is hyperbole, buuuuuuuuuuuuuut… I have family that tell me the folks who call in on talk radio are the only ones actually speaking truth, so now I’m just sadder because of the reminder. Not less vigilant, just sadder.
Congratulations, Willis! You made me pity both of them for their own unique reasons. Ross due to his obviously stunted intelligence and Blaine because he is stuck in close proximity with Ross!
This character is not only an evil religious nut, a murderous bastard, a lunatic, a bigot, and into fox news, but a moron…
So he is just a caricature of the extream right at this point.
I know he is a villain but is lazy to resort to stereotypes like this.
I know it the politically approved thing to do… And I agree with opposing bigoted extremists.
.i just find it lazy as a Narrative tool.
My aunt and uncle are indistinguishable from Ross except they’re slightly more pleasant and haven’t yet kidnapped anyone to take them to conversion therapy, but it didn’t stop them from misgendering my little sister to her face or telling her to her face she’s going to hell for being trans!
I’m gonna stop myself here before I tell you everything you deserve to be told.
I’m so very sorry.
What did I say, that was wrong?
Yes, there are ridiculous people like that in real life.
But going for characters like this is lazy storytelling, and has been overused in entertainment media as of late, making people dull to real events.
Still sorry they were like that to your sister.
So what’s the alternative? Make it out to have an arc where we are shown that the character already demonstrated time and time again to be a murderously-bigoted religious extremist is really, if we get to know him, Not So Bad After All?®
Pass.
You’ve got a lot of silly ideas rolling around in that head of yours. They’re sorta like points, except they’re the kind of points a character in a YouTube Poop would make.
Because you disagree with them?
Its lazy storytelling and character writing and brings down many of the quality work this comic has and keeps doing.
Any time you use a caricature instead of a character you reduce the quality of the overall product.
As i said i pose all forms of bigotry and don’t care about how heavily political is the USA right now. I’m Mexican, the kind of person the kind of people been satirized here, Hate.
And i believe that making fun of that sort of people making fun of them just makes your arguments lesser, and reinforces their ideas about you.
You: Ross is a lazy caricature.
Other commenters: There are people like this in real life and I have dealt with them.
You: I haven’t had that experience but I still think it’s lazy writing to include said people in this comic.
I honestly want to know what you expected to see from Ross or his arc. How is him watching Fox News the thing that pushed him into “lazy caricature” territory?
I’m not sure what you expect. Yeah, that’s what Ross is. That’s what he’s always been from the start. We’ve known from day one that he’s religious and bigoted. Fox News isn’t a big surprise, since that’s their target demographic.
We’ve known since the kidnapping that he’s potentially murderous (and potentially suicidal as well – dying in a hail of police bullets seemed to be an acceptable end.)
He’s never seemed particularly bright, but “moron” is probably too far. He’s easily manipulated by Blaine – which is the only real new evidence of his intelligence we’ve seen.
He’s not really a caricature of the extreme right, I suspect, as of religious people Willis grew up with. Less of a “politically approved thing to do” and more of “personal experience”.
The venn diagram of “the extreme right” and “extremely religious American Christians” isn’t exactly a circle, but there are only a couple slivers outside the overlap.
To the point that the only reason Ross is identified as “the extreme right” is that he’s a religious bigot. We assume (correctly) that’s it’s Fox News, but that’s not explicit either.
It’s not like he has any other overtly political affiliations. He’s not wearing a MAGA hat. He’s not talking up Trump or attacking Democrats. Or, for other factions of extreme right, he’s not wearing Nazi symbols or the Confederate Flag. He’s really just a Christian misogynist homophobe and that’s not really anything but “right” in the US.
I understand what you are saying.
And i may not have experienced USA extreme religious people first hand. ( i come from Mexico)
Im just calling it lazy writing at this point.
Between Ross and Blaine, we are marching into Mustache twirling villainy
It’s always interesting to see comments like this inevitably contrast with “oh god this is exactly like someone I know” comments from other readers.
Everyone has different backgrounds, not everyone comes from the USA hypercharged political mess of an environment.
I just wanted to mention that something a webcomic series i been following since finished reading Shortstaked did was Lazy in my opinion.
If it’s something that happens in IRL, it’s not lazy writing to include it, especially since it feeds into the culture Joyce is from, based on the writer’s own lived experience. Just because that experience isn’t one you’re familiar with doesn’t mean you should shit on it and call it lazy.
I can confirm knowing multiple people per state, across multiple states, with that exact mentality. They weren’t all necessarily anti-entertainment, persay, but even the ones that weren’t didn’t spend time on entertainment (because they didn’t see value in it). So the “I only watch Fox News and nothing else” mentality is most definitely a real thing.
The thing about Toedad is that while he is not himself a complex or interesting character in isolation, where he becomes interesting is [i]what effects he has on other, more interesting characters[/i]. What psychological impacts does he have on Becky and Joyce, who’ve known and trusted him for most of their lives? How will he get along with Blaine, who is clearly full of contempt and occasional resentment for him but is willing to manipulate him however he can in order to achieve his goals – and how will they react when those goals diverge in a way that Blaine can’t cover up? What do Joyce’s parents make of him, their concern with his actions contrasting with the fact that fundamentally they agree with his motives?
He’s like a star system without any planets crossing the path of another star filled with planets. The lone star isn’t terribly interesting on its own, but what it’ll do to the orbits of the more interesting star system will be fascinating. Not every character needs to be deep and complex to be an integral part of a well-written story. Sometimes all you need is a plain steel girder to act as a foundation for other things.
I just want to know, is Ross a small very muscly guy, or is he fat and is lucky how it is repartitioned?
He probably has what’s called the mesomorph body type; they’re usually shorter, but stockier. Mesomorph men tend towards the “barrel-chest” shape, and they tend to have a higher muscle-fat ratio than taller/more slender body shapes.
When Becky, Joyce, and Jocelyn broke into Becky’s house, there was a weightlifting bench in Ross’s forbidden room. I’m assuming he used it at least once.
He clearly skips leg day though.
Well, of course he does. If he exercises his legs, they might look nice. And you know who has nice legs? Cyclists and The Gays, and if he were Like Them, he’d be a sinner, wouldn’t he?
…nice legs daisy dukes makes a dad go praise god
He’s about Sal’s height, according to Becky, so 5’7. The word she used for him was ‘fleshy’.
Ross is a man that has been clearly brainwashed by his upbringing to the extent I’m not sure how much he’s making his own decisions. I actually feel a measure of pity for him because he clearly can’t decide on anything outside of the horribly abusive framework he lives in.
Then I lose that pity in that he did make at least one choice and that was to reject Becky offering him a chance at redemption in the hospital. What a sad wreck of a human being.
What I don’t get is why Blaine didn’t spring for separate rooms? Obviously we wouldn’t have any character interaction but I can’t stretch my disbelief far enough to accept Blaine wanting to spend any more time with Ross than absolutely necessary. Plus, he’d get to watch Bond, James Bond; I hope he’s missing a his favorite.
He is THAT cheap.
Ross needs a tight leash. Getting separate rooms would risk him going after Becky too soon and ruining everything.
Yeah, I’m thinking it’s to keep Ross under some degree of control too. The guy’s basically a living keg of gundpowder, and if Blaine isn’t there to snuff out the sparks before he’s ready for the explosion, well…
Gunpowder. Not whatever mythical nonsense “Gundpowder” is. Damn it.
Gundpowder is what used in the making of Gundams.
I feel like Blaine is realizing just how crazy Toedad is. (Not for having differing ideas, but for being so zealously attached to them.) They truly deserve each other.
Sidenote idea. Their evil plot never comes to fruition, and instead, Dave Willis makes a spinoff comic about two terrible boomer dads sitting on a couch watching TV, forgetting about their children forever and ever. “Toedad and Blaine”. Just don’t ship them please.
I’m hopping for an Odoyles rule moment for them with Ruth’s grandpa and Yaz’s mom
They’re Toedad and the Blaine,
They’re Toedad and the Blaine,
One thinks he’s a genius, the other’s insane!
This friendships is more and more weird.
It’s not a friendship; one is using the other.
Let’s not beat around it. He’s watching FOX.
Side note: Even casually, Blaine can’t help but gaslight. They didn’t make the decision “together”, he did it for them.
The fact that ToeDad is so open and willing to fall for gaslighting… of course it’s FOX news.
Now I want to see how Ross reacts when Sanders speaks on Fox.
“Jews…still exist? What is this madness about poverty? Surely the poor deserve their fate by God’s decree.”
He’s probably watching FOX, but there are also smaller tinfoil hat right-wing “news” services like Pat Robertson’s “Christian Broadcasting Network” that he might be ingesting instead.
FOX, RT, CBN, Infowars, local news from a Sinclair-owned station, take your pick. They all serve up the same Flavor-Aid.
Wishing he could watch James Bond instead of FOX News or CBN or that English-language Russian news service that Toedad seems to be mainlining.
I have a momentary twinge of sympathy for Blaine, which will of course flicker out as soon as he interacts with someone who isn’t as complete a waste of oxygen as he is again.
I HAVE actually met self professed Christians who refused to watch mainstream movies thinking they were unholy.
Extreme dogmatism makes you miss cool stuff, like anime, fantasy movies, pop music, comic books, modern art, Netflix series, “ethnic” stuff, good education, movies, etc.
Also, has someone ever gave Brainiac and Solomon pants?
Brainiac has managed to get pants since the Superfriends days.
Solomon Grundy… *checks* nope, still torn to heck.
Actually, Grundy wore a nice suit during Brad Meltzer’s run on Justice League of America. He was smart, too.
Yes, it was weird.
so, Fox News eh
abused children abuse children. but that doesn’t mean i wouldn’t bury these two alive in the same coffin.
… Blaine is seriously doing his damnedest to keep that guy contained.
Main I really hope that Blain gets throttled by this guy and then both arrested.
or maybe hit with a car.
Idk.
violence isn’t nice but yep.
these two are not healthy people.
prison or death
They could just go to Blizzard HQ and wrestle with Jeff Kaplan. You know what they say: “Wrestle with Jeff, prepare for death.”
deff
Alt-text: Hello nostalgia my old friend
Question is, is their mutual desire to control their daughters stronger than the forces of varying horribleness that threaten to tear them apart
I doubt it. Those kind of evil alliances always tear apart at some point.
Huh, you didn’t copy and paste panel 3 for panel 6.
By the time their plot comes to whatever end it will, “No Time to Die” will have been what was on TNT.
Hey, product placement
That Days Inn is distressingly close to campus, and I’m pretty sure Becky’s apartment isn’t even ON campus so she technically isn’t even protected by that ban. Yikes