Actually, magical thinking can go ether way, and I’m going to claim i4 could theoretically be neutral as well. Every time I celebrate my birthday the Leafs have a terrible season. So it’s my fault, but I really don’t care either way. I just enjoy making people that didn’t buy me a present feel guilty.
But in any case, there’s a fine line between magical thinking and being genre savvy. You don’t have to believe in ghosts to know not to go down to the celler of the creepy house.
I’d argue there’s a difference in that reality has no genre – it is simultaneously trying to be most of them at once, and that’s why it’s such a mess.
Consider: anything that can happen to reality probably has happened or will happen somewhere in the universe, which is pointlessly vast – and therefore the context of any narrative that it happens to manifest can be said to be only locally consistent.
A person’s proximity to (and involvement in) any of these narratives does not, however, mean that it is following them, per se. It simply means they haven’t taken the correct actions to escape the event horizon of the narrative in question.
Consider video games: side quests are sometimes their own independent narrative, orbiting the larger one of the main plot, like a horribly composed Venn diagram.
I used to believe that my ‘sinful’ act that most teenage males engaged in (Onanism) was the reason my favorite professional American football team lost. I saw that as G-d punishing me for my immoral behavior.
you are unfamiliar with the franchises that sell the God of Abraham? magical thinking,the crux of it infinitely bad outcomes, for almost everybody. And fairly large sales volume for each of them.
Doesn’t Willis exist in-universe? Of course it would be difficult to approach him due to how rich and famous he is, but I’m sure Ruth could get past his bodyguards.
My favourite definition of a personality: a story that we tell ourselves about ourselves.
(Probably not literally what the word means, and has flaws, but it’s fun!)
That’s actually a fairly good definition of consciousness. It’s impossible to be aware of yourself. What we are actually aware of is our model of ourselves, a model which is fairly inaccurate as well as fictional, but serves to explain ourselves to ourselves.
What we’re actually aware of is simply the things that have grabbed our attention recently. Sometimes that can get self-referential: “I’m aware that I’m aware of feeling sad.”
But the definition of “I” is mostly illusory; we don’t realize how fragmented we are and how tenuous is the thread of perceived identity that connects our different modes.
For evidence that we’re fragmented, look at the studies of how men’s morality changes when they’re aroused; or the fact that some people’s personality test results change when they’re at home or at work; or the way we can feel intense emotion when we’re paying attention to a situation but then distract ourselves within a few minutes.
I completely agree. It should be on the banner page on HBO Max to let everyone know they could stream it anytime they want. I mean the Snyder cut is nice, but I will take Duck Amuck over anything else 10 times out of 10.
One Froggy Morning, is so inappropriate on SO many levels: racist, sexist, classism, …etc. But, hey, really it is a Masterful example of “The Willis is out to get me” I think I’ve ever seen. Paranoid to beat the band.
“Its as if I pulled some sorta…dramatic tag that was holding back dramatic events from taking place, and now they’re just spilling out into the world retroactively. And nobody will believe me about the existence of aforementioned tag since that would imply things they experienced in their life prior to meeting me did not take place until I pulled it. You know what I mean?”
I think thinking you’re a fictional character is a common ailment of people who read too many books. Depression just amplifies and warps that narrative.
But the thing is, you don’t have to be a fictional character for your life to have a narrative or even a narrative arc. Or multiple narratives. It’s something that happens automatically unless you are a really really boring person.
Narrative arcs are different from stuff happening, even interesting stuff. Real world events can have drama, but they don’t have dramatic necessity. You can construct arcs retroactively, but you can’t use narrative structure to predict what’s going to happen.
There’s also the problem of the feeling of borrowing everything to genres ofr fiction, including feelings, inculding the feeling of feeling like you borrowed….
I’m not saying I think I’m fictional, but sometimes I will say something about the possibility were living in a TV show before turning my head and winking. Just in case.
Yeah… I was apparently in an emotionally comprimised state when i watched that movie, cause it cause me to just curl up and cry for the last parts of it, and the following, like, hour…
I unno, but I’m avoiding watching it again… that and Stranger Than Fiction…
I had someone writing a porno for my life for a while, which is not as fun as it seems from the catalog. But the person writing before that was doing one of those redemption from disaster stories, and those are no fun at all, there being the disaster to recover from and all. And what is never made explicit in the catalog is the effects of the disaster never go away.
If someone made a porno about my life it’d be really disappointing. Unless people like porn about virgins in their mid 20s who look at porn no less than 10 times a day.
People’s porn history is usually their least weird thing, honestly. One guy had a bunch of taxidermied iguanas and snakes and the like in his detached garage. Like, a couple dozen. Posed on branches, and stuff. Why? He apparently just liked reptiles.
I’m pretty sure that’s the plot of a an existing story. At least it started that way and developed in a Walter-Mitty-with-details direction. I skimmed through it once for the pictures.
Project A-Ko was originally supposed to be Hentai, but the story was deemed “too good” so they left out most of the Yuri and made a straight anime out of it. So it’s not like there isn’t a precedent for it.
Ah, Anxiety, the BFF of Depression, and so many other mental illnesses. I figured it would rear its ugly head with Ruth after the anti-depressants had some time to get her ability to feel other things up and running again.
The only thing worse that realizing you are a fictional character of a cruel writer, is realizing that you are a secondary fictional character of a cruel writer.
I mean, not really. It means whatever I do is more than likely unwritten and I’m free to do what I want so long as I steer clear of the rainbow ore or the bubblegum hair brigade.
Well, maybe. Unless you’re, say, Ophelia, and think you’re a major character in one play when actually you’re a minor character in a completely different one.
I’m thinking I’m really just an extra in someone else’s story, but the author is, like, REALLY obsessive in that he has to exquisitely detail the backstory of EVERY person that appears, no matter how dull and uninteresting it may be.
Read Gwenpool. Henchmen always end up dead. See also: Redshirts. Be a protagonist or live the life of Batroc, showing up every now and then to be trounced.
Another option is taking the Homestuck fandom path of screwing canon and creating your own story to spite the authors who betrayed canon. It’s a dangerous path, but one worth following.
After I finish reading DoA from the beginning, I should read Homestuck again from the beginning. I haven’t read it since it ended, although I once re-read it up to the then-current episode.
You don’t die, but if we let you remember that, there would go the existential dread, all the lovely bittersweet, and the rest of the things that make the experience worthwhile.
That is magical thinking, Ruth. Magical thinking ie the belief that your will and thoughts can alter a result that reason and evidence tell isn’t going to happen. Senku Ishigami would laugh at your ignorance.
The universe is just a space that is mostly void and partially stars, and there’s no gods throwing dice to mock Goblin Slayer, and no former Indiana University student, that is married to Maggie and has twin sons, is controlling the story of people’s lives.
He’s really a quite jolly fellow with lot’s of amusing antidotes. And afterwards, it’s just like being guided back to central casting for a new role, except worse.
Or watching TV in the waiting room. Ignorant bastard wouldn’t even tell me how to change the channel from the “everything in the universe at once” channel.
This strip and the one just before it illustrate one of the speedbumps in the road to recovery: having to let go of the assumptions that trauma teaches.
A person with abusive parents who constantly blame the victim may grow up believing that if they can just find the right combination of things to do and say and things to avoid doing and saying (and being and thinking and existing as and and and….) then they will be able to change the abusers’ behavior. Ofc. the abusers’ behavior has nothing to do with what the victim does; they want an abusee and the victim is available, that’s all. But this kind of thinking can stick tight, and grow the corollary that everything bad that happens to the victim or to people the victim knows is their fault. And letting go of that means facing the ugly truths that our abusers didn’t even see us–that they were always just reacting to their own personal shit in ways that involved using us as Dumpsters for it–and also that bad stuff is gonna happen whether we want it to or not.
It’s also common for victims of prolonged abuse to feel uniquely separated from humanity, which is awful because it means being all alone in the dark, but also empowering in a roundabout way, because if we don’t take part in humanity then we must somehow be immune to human failings…right? So that one can also be hard to let go of.
And of course depression magnifies both assumptions.
I wonder what Ruth and Howie’s parents were like. We know that Ruth misses Canada while Howie doesn’t really see the difference (or claims not to), which suggests he was young enough when the parents died to not really measure what had changed (note: I haven’t got Patreon, so I don’t know what we learned in that one strip about Ruth and Howie waiting to meet Sir). But was Sir a huge sudden change from what Ruth knew with her parents, or more of the same? It’s suggested that her mother fled from Sir, and therefore would have been trying to do better, but on the other hand, Sir still ended up the guardian in the event of the parents’ death. (Unless they foolishly failed to make a will, and the courts decided Sir would be better because he was richer? Not sure what Canadian courts would decide in such a case, since it would involve sending the kids over the border.) And Ruth’s determination to protect Howie does seem to be specifically aimed at Sir, like her insistence on her Canadian-ness and actually remembering the name of her Canadian boyfriend. But she was relatively young when their parents died too — if they had faults, was she old enough to have recognized them, as opposed to Sir’s much more obvious lack of qualifications?
The hints of flashbacks to Ruth and Rachel’s first year suggest that we might get some answers to these, but now I’m curious.
I’d assume, like in many cases, Ruth’s parents didn’t have a will so they were shunted to the first available family member around. Not a lot of people write wills because not a lot of people know when they’re going to die or expect to die in a car accident.
If a guardian is not specifically named by the parents/current guardians in a will that has been notarized, custody of children is normally passed to whoever is the closest surviving family member, regardless of the parents/previous guardians relationship with them while they were living. This also can happen to you if you are in a situation where you cannot make medical/legal decisions, which is why it’s extremely important to have a living will/regular will no matter how old or healthy you are.
Custodial rights can be disputed if there are other living relatives who feel the default one is unsuited, but it has to be taken to court. If Ruth’s father had living parents or siblings who wanted the kids, but did not have the financial resources, Sir could have very easily steamrolled them with a private lawyer, and once he had the children in another country (the US, in this case), the hurdles to get them back to Canada would have been extremely high.
Seriously, no matter how old you are, if you do not want your parents/family members to make decisions for you, inherit your possessions, handle your funeral arrangements, or have custody of your children, make a living will/will, have it witnessed and notarized, and file it. Make sure people know your decisons and it is known you have a will. Otherwise your parents/family members can go as far as banning your unmarried partner/friends from even visiting you in the hospital.
You hit the nail on the head. It can be incredibly difficult to apeak with spouses of abusers when the abuser has gotten themselves into trouble outside of the marital situation, because their abuser has hardwired into them that nothing is ever the abuser’s fault. It’s everyone else’s. “They shouldn’t have pushed him like that, he won’t put up with it.” It’s heartbreaking, because you realize how many times the abuser has hurt the spouse over every single imaginary slight, and warped reality for the partner in such a way that they blame themselves for the abuse.
Children do it too, to a much greater extent, fully believing that there’s something fundamentally wrong and flawed in them, and has been wrong from the start. It’s a helpless feeling too, because no matter how hard you try, you cannot convince these kids that it’s perfectly normal to not do well in a class or to misbehave or to drop something, and their parent/guardian’s reaction is the one that’s wrong. Seeing Ruth here is so hard, because she reacts like how a lot of those kids react. She makes herself harder and tougher and meaner because that’s what she had to do to survive, and any feeling of weakness is bad. The anti-depressants and sobriety will help, but she’s going to need a lot of therapy to help her both unlearn her instincts and learn healthy behavior.
It’s getting disturbing the increasing number of characters in this strip who are displaying mental health symptoms indistinguishable from being aware of the Fourth Wall. I think that I’ll call it “Deadpool Syndrome”!
Rationally, I know that worrying about something doesn’t protect me from it. But emotionally, if I don’t anticipate a bad outcome then I blame myself. If it’s worse than what I anticipated, then it’s my fault for not seeing it coming no matter how unpredictable it was. But if I wasn’t worried about something bad happening at all, then yeah it does feel like the bad thing happened specifically because I was arrogant to think it wouldn’t.
It’s sometimes considered a symptom of anxiety. It’s very common, though, AFAIK. Human brains are wired to look for patterns, even in situations that can have no pattern. I’m told it’s why we “see” faces in things that don’t have faces.
Do NOT engage on us on this terrain. You will lose. We (and maybe historians) recognize patterns. You can only see what’s right in front of your faces. You’re doomed.
(And that assumes you’re a competent journalism student, Ms. I’m-sure-I-know-that-Amazi-Girl-is-my-roommate.)
If this were a real-life scenario, I’d be inclined to side with Billie, but given that this is very definitely a narrative written to make characters sad, I’m gonna hafta ask Ruth to quit leaning on that fourth wall.
If you punch a dude, and there’s a word balloon that pops up saying “KER-POW”, that’s usually a dead giveaway if you’re LITERALLY in a comic.
Your life revolving around twenty-second interesting clips that generally end with some sort of zinger or punchline is also a good one, though that doesn’t really work if you’re in a Mark Trail / Mary Worth / God-forbid Family Circus.
Google searching some of your wittiest and funniest moments to see if they’ve popped up in a comic should let you know if someone’s just copying you IRL.
anyone saying she’s breaking the fourth wall, she’s really really not. I’ve said this exact same thing. Trust me, this is just the way brains work sometimes. Depression has you blaming yourself for things that are impossible to be your fault.
Over time I’ve really developed an appreciation for Ruth and her struggles, and I think this is one of those strips that highlights that. It does sound ridiculous when you say it out loud but it’s still real and valid and true to life. That’s how depression warps your thinking.
I have that a lot – I just assumed that something I posted ages ago got me put on some kinda “review comment in case this guy said a dumb thing” list and accept that sometimes my comments don’t get seen :v
YOURS, yeah, for some reason they always show up unapproved, no matter how many times you comment. I dunno what it is. Happened to Wack’d, too. So when I see ’em I just approve ’em.
Ethan clearly doesn’t know he’s in a comic (if he did, then he would know that being part of a superhero origin story makes it guaranteed that he’d meet up with Sal again, but he didn’t know that until he met her.) So Ruth might be the only one who can break the fourth wall!
The moment when the fictional characters start to question their place in the universe thinking they are just fictional characters… and everyone treats that as crazy… but they are right…
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magical thinking also supposes the outcomes are good, or good-leaning
No it doesn’t. She can totally have magical thinking that the world has granted her most terrible, ill-advised wishes.
Or simply as a malevolent force.
Obviously there’s a god because someone’s out to get me.
Cthulhu is magical thinking!
I would suppose that’s cursed thinking
Actually, magical thinking can go ether way, and I’m going to claim i4 could theoretically be neutral as well. Every time I celebrate my birthday the Leafs have a terrible season. So it’s my fault, but I really don’t care either way. I just enjoy making people that didn’t buy me a present feel guilty.
But in any case, there’s a fine line between magical thinking and being genre savvy. You don’t have to believe in ghosts to know not to go down to the celler of the creepy house.
Honestly, I don’t know if I’m better off with or without tablet spell-correct.
For somethings it’s better not to have autocorrect on because of the butchering I once saw of “raison d’être”.
raisin deter?
I’d argue there’s a difference in that reality has no genre – it is simultaneously trying to be most of them at once, and that’s why it’s such a mess.
Consider: anything that can happen to reality probably has happened or will happen somewhere in the universe, which is pointlessly vast – and therefore the context of any narrative that it happens to manifest can be said to be only locally consistent.
A person’s proximity to (and involvement in) any of these narratives does not, however, mean that it is following them, per se. It simply means they haven’t taken the correct actions to escape the event horizon of the narrative in question.
Consider video games: side quests are sometimes their own independent narrative, orbiting the larger one of the main plot, like a horribly composed Venn diagram.
F in the comments for clif, before Ruth rips their femurs out.
Thank you, I think.
I used to believe that my ‘sinful’ act that most teenage males engaged in (Onanism) was the reason my favorite professional American football team lost. I saw that as G-d punishing me for my immoral behavior.
you are unfamiliar with the franchises that sell the God of Abraham? magical thinking,the crux of it infinitely bad outcomes, for almost everybody. And fairly large sales volume for each of them.
I mean… She’s not wrong in context.
Indeed.
Ruth basically just said “damn you Willis”.
She’s gained sentience.
RUN.
Next thing you know she’ll be taking Willis’ femurs!
Doesn’t Willis exist in-universe? Of course it would be difficult to approach him due to how rich and famous he is, but I’m sure Ruth could get past his bodyguards.
*In universe Willis wakes up to Ruth at the foot of his bed as lightening strikes*
Something strikes to make him lose weight? Has this comic shifted to the EGS universe? Transformation beams are more Dan’s forte.
Ripping out someone’s femurs would lighten them significantly.
Nah, Ruth would be subtler than that. In-universe Willis would wake up to Carla yelling about the cancellation of Ultra-Car.
Watch out Willis. Ruth KNOWS.
She can sense the Meta. Willis had better run before she breaks his femurs.
I don’t believe in magic; I believe I’m a fictional character.
She is creating a narrative for herself… or of herself… IDK, both?
My favourite definition of a personality: a story that we tell ourselves about ourselves.
(Probably not literally what the word means, and has flaws, but it’s fun!)
That’s actually a fairly good definition of consciousness. It’s impossible to be aware of yourself. What we are actually aware of is our model of ourselves, a model which is fairly inaccurate as well as fictional, but serves to explain ourselves to ourselves.
What we’re actually aware of is simply the things that have grabbed our attention recently. Sometimes that can get self-referential: “I’m aware that I’m aware of feeling sad.”
But the definition of “I” is mostly illusory; we don’t realize how fragmented we are and how tenuous is the thread of perceived identity that connects our different modes.
For evidence that we’re fragmented, look at the studies of how men’s morality changes when they’re aroused; or the fact that some people’s personality test results change when they’re at home or at work; or the way we can feel intense emotion when we’re paying attention to a situation but then distract ourselves within a few minutes.
The truth.
“eeeeeh, ain’t I a stinker?”
Also, Duck Amuck is the greatest cartoon short ever made.
Fight me.
I completely agree. It should be on the banner page on HBO Max to let everyone know they could stream it anytime they want. I mean the Snyder cut is nice, but I will take Duck Amuck over anything else 10 times out of 10.
Don’t get me wrong, Duck Amuck is great. It’s just not What’s Opera, Doc.
One Froggy Morning, is so inappropriate on SO many levels: racist, sexist, classism, …etc. But, hey, really it is a Masterful example of “The Willis is out to get me” I think I’ve ever seen. Paranoid to beat the band.
I will not!
Altho What’s Opera, Doc and One Froggy Morning are both amazing.
Also, Willis looks great with the ears. Jus’ sayin’.
Or maybe Ruth is just self aware that she’s in a comic and with her experiences playing part in a thematic through line of multiple characters.
According to DDLC, realizing you’re a fictional character has immediate and permanent consequences.
According to Deadpool, it lets you see the little yellow boxes, as I recall.
So the question becomes, where does DoA fall on that scale?
“Its as if I pulled some sorta…dramatic tag that was holding back dramatic events from taking place, and now they’re just spilling out into the world retroactively. And nobody will believe me about the existence of aforementioned tag since that would imply things they experienced in their life prior to meeting me did not take place until I pulled it. You know what I mean?”
Stupid unsexy Willis.
I wonder what Jason is up to. Or Penny. Or the damned soul of Blaine.
No way Blaine had an intact soul. He sold that on eBay back when it was still legal.
Blaine and Ross are currently sharing a lava jacuzzi to the dulcet sounds of “Rico Suave”.
“You’re ENTIRE ass?Just packed full of red hot coals?”
“Right to the rim, baby”
“*sigh* You lucky bastard.”
A person of culture, I see.
Blaine is probably being experimented on by Tzeentch, or Slaanesh is doing kinky stuff to him.
damn kind of feel bad abt this one gang
I think thinking you’re a fictional character is a common ailment of people who read too many books. Depression just amplifies and warps that narrative.
But the thing is, you don’t have to be a fictional character for your life to have a narrative or even a narrative arc. Or multiple narratives. It’s something that happens automatically unless you are a really really boring person.
Narrative arcs are different from stuff happening, even interesting stuff. Real world events can have drama, but they don’t have dramatic necessity. You can construct arcs retroactively, but you can’t use narrative structure to predict what’s going to happen.
Unless, like Ruth, you live in a fiction.
There’s also the problem of the feeling of borrowing everything to genres ofr fiction, including feelings, inculding the feeling of feeling like you borrowed….
I’m not saying I think I’m fictional, but sometimes I will say something about the possibility were living in a TV show before turning my head and winking. Just in case.
It’s okay.We edit those out.
But why can’t you just make speaches, when your alone, for the benefit of future historians watching on their time viewers, like a normal person?
Wait, weren’t you the one complaining about autocorrect? 0:)
You must be confusing me with my evil identical twin clone.
Somebody watched The Truman Show…
That’s what they tell me. Personally, I’m sceptical. I mean, who would willingly watch a Jim Carrey movie?
Somebody who stuck to their script.
When he’s not doing “comedy”, he’s actually not a bad actor.
Yeah… I was apparently in an emotionally comprimised state when i watched that movie, cause it cause me to just curl up and cry for the last parts of it, and the following, like, hour…
I unno, but I’m avoiding watching it again… that and Stranger Than Fiction…
That one movie made my brain the bad brain for about a decade.
Oh shit, Willis gave Ruth fourth wall awareness.
You ever just hang a lampshade on your own genre savviness?
Ok it’s not quite genre savviness since even for this webcomic, this is a pretty extreme situation, but let me have this?
Self deprecation 101
“listen. my life’s a narrative. some of us have those and mine’s pretty fucked up.”
I had someone writing a porno for my life for a while, which is not as fun as it seems from the catalog. But the person writing before that was doing one of those redemption from disaster stories, and those are no fun at all, there being the disaster to recover from and all. And what is never made explicit in the catalog is the effects of the disaster never go away.
If someone made a porno about my life it’d be really disappointing. Unless people like porn about virgins in their mid 20s who look at porn no less than 10 times a day.
You’d be surprised. I’ve seen some very odd and specific preferences on people’s histories.
There’s only one appropriate follow-up to that comment…
Haha I can imagine
Nobody is allowed to see my porn history.
Wait, I thought you drew all your porn history here. You’re telling me the The Yotomoe-DOA-pornverse is a LIE???
This implies we’ve only seen a small glimpse of the Yotoverse, which must be part of a whole multiverse of smut.
People’s porn history is usually their least weird thing, honestly. One guy had a bunch of taxidermied iguanas and snakes and the like in his detached garage. Like, a couple dozen. Posed on branches, and stuff. Why? He apparently just liked reptiles.
Recursive porno! There is some potential in that concept.
Hrm, writing a porno about the writing of a porno about the writing of a porno…
Pornoception!
I’m pretty sure that’s the plot of a an existing story. At least it started that way and developed in a Walter-Mitty-with-details direction. I skimmed through it once for the pictures.
Project A-Ko was originally supposed to be Hentai, but the story was deemed “too good” so they left out most of the Yuri and made a straight anime out of it. So it’s not like there isn’t a precedent for it.
If someone made porn about my life, no one would have time to watch it. It would run for weeks.
Ah, she’s superstitious. Rather than just regular Stitious.
Definitely more than substitious
Superlatively understitious.
Ultrastitious.
Is this metastitious?
Can we agree that this entire conversation is unstitionable?
She believes in things that she don’t understand, and she suffers.
Her creator has a cruel sense of humour. It’s a fact.
As long as he’s merciful to his readers, it”s all good.
Hey, Ruth! Watch that fourth wall! You’re bruising it and believe you me, you do NOT want our reality infecting yours.
Seriously, you think you have it bad back there in 2010, you do NOT want to see the shitshow that 2020 has devolved into.
It’s still 2020 in DOA, it’s just they live in a better 2020 without COVID.
Don’t try to fool Billie, Ruth, she’s a journalism major.
Dead parent problems? I think Amber has dead parent solutions!
Ok, that got me
Well, he died rather precipitately.
As an ex-chemist, I appreciate the pun.
Ah, Anxiety, the BFF of Depression, and so many other mental illnesses. I figured it would rear its ugly head with Ruth after the anti-depressants had some time to get her ability to feel other things up and running again.
“I’m cynical, therefor I’m smart.”
Not at all. You’re smart, therefor you’re cynical.
No one believes in cynicism any more!
The name of the comic IS Dumbing of Age.
Cynicism doesn’t believe in you either – it doesn’t think you can do it.
In Soviet Russia, Cynicism doesn’t believe in you.
No, it’s actually about bending the universe to teach JOYCE cruel lessons as it helps her grow.
But nice catch on figuring out the universe is bending to affect a single person’s life who lives in your hall.
The only thing worse that realizing you are a fictional character of a cruel writer, is realizing that you are a secondary fictional character of a cruel writer.
I mean, not really. It means whatever I do is more than likely unwritten and I’m free to do what I want so long as I steer clear of the rainbow ore or the bubblegum hair brigade.
Well, maybe. Unless you’re, say, Ophelia, and think you’re a major character in one play when actually you’re a minor character in a completely different one.
I’m thinking I’m really just an extra in someone else’s story, but the author is, like, REALLY obsessive in that he has to exquisitely detail the backstory of EVERY person that appears, no matter how dull and uninteresting it may be.
No one’s gonna wanna read this, unfortunately.
Read Gwenpool. Henchmen always end up dead. See also: Redshirts. Be a protagonist or live the life of Batroc, showing up every now and then to be trounced.
Well, if gwenpool taught me anything, to guarantee your survival, you have to make yourself into the protagonist.
Well, Ruth’s close enough to a main character that she gets her own sub-plots, so it is also bending for her.
Dumbing of Age Book 10: This Is-….
No. No. Too obvious.
Dumbing of Age Book 10: Dead Parent Problems
Be careful Billie, she’ll wish you to the cornfield!
I thought people were sent to the cornfield when they weren’t acting or thinking happy. That is not Ruth.
The trouble with sending people to the cornfield is that you have to be careful of the ones who comeback.
Stephen King should write a movie about that.
It wouldn’t surprise me if Stephen King already has, considering how insanely prolific a writer he seems.
Yes, Ruth, embrace maltheism. It’s the only rational path.
Repeat the mantra after me: DAMN YOU WILLIS
And look on the bright side… at least your malicious narrator hasn’t made you sacrifice your life to save the douchebag with the ukulele.
Another option is taking the Homestuck fandom path of screwing canon and creating your own story to spite the authors who betrayed canon. It’s a dangerous path, but one worth following.
After I finish reading DoA from the beginning, I should read Homestuck again from the beginning. I haven’t read it since it ended, although I once re-read it up to the then-current episode.
Life is a series of revelations that ocure over a period of time. Its not some carefully crafted story. its a mess and were all going to die.
And there’s nothing bad about that.
It’s a Crazy Ex-Girlfriend song.
You don’t die, but if we let you remember that, there would go the existential dread, all the lovely bittersweet, and the rest of the things that make the experience worthwhile.
Velvet Hammer-We Do Not Die
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxYhP8BWig8
Thanks for the link.
I was just thinking that there was a Crazy Ex-Girlfriend song about this exact thing.
i’ve never related to Ruth this much before
That is magical thinking, Ruth. Magical thinking ie the belief that your will and thoughts can alter a result that reason and evidence tell isn’t going to happen. Senku Ishigami would laugh at your ignorance.
The universe is just a space that is mostly void and partially stars, and there’s no gods throwing dice to mock Goblin Slayer, and no former Indiana University student, that is married to Maggie and has twin sons, is controlling the story of people’s lives.
The only think certain is taxes, and a lovable Grim Reaper waiting for us while they are drinking tea.
He’s really a quite jolly fellow with lot’s of amusing antidotes. And afterwards, it’s just like being guided back to central casting for a new role, except worse.
I prefer to think of this version, myself. https://www.thebrightsidecomic.com/
Anecdotes? Though death really IS a cure-all, it’s only amusing in certain cases.
You wouldn’t believe the stuff some people get up to just before they die.
Or watching TV in the waiting room. Ignorant bastard wouldn’t even tell me how to change the channel from the “everything in the universe at once” channel.
Genre-savvy
This strip and the one just before it illustrate one of the speedbumps in the road to recovery: having to let go of the assumptions that trauma teaches.
A person with abusive parents who constantly blame the victim may grow up believing that if they can just find the right combination of things to do and say and things to avoid doing and saying (and being and thinking and existing as and and and….) then they will be able to change the abusers’ behavior. Ofc. the abusers’ behavior has nothing to do with what the victim does; they want an abusee and the victim is available, that’s all. But this kind of thinking can stick tight, and grow the corollary that everything bad that happens to the victim or to people the victim knows is their fault. And letting go of that means facing the ugly truths that our abusers didn’t even see us–that they were always just reacting to their own personal shit in ways that involved using us as Dumpsters for it–and also that bad stuff is gonna happen whether we want it to or not.
It’s also common for victims of prolonged abuse to feel uniquely separated from humanity, which is awful because it means being all alone in the dark, but also empowering in a roundabout way, because if we don’t take part in humanity then we must somehow be immune to human failings…right? So that one can also be hard to let go of.
And of course depression magnifies both assumptions.
Keep going, Ruth. You can get past this.
I wonder what Ruth and Howie’s parents were like. We know that Ruth misses Canada while Howie doesn’t really see the difference (or claims not to), which suggests he was young enough when the parents died to not really measure what had changed (note: I haven’t got Patreon, so I don’t know what we learned in that one strip about Ruth and Howie waiting to meet Sir). But was Sir a huge sudden change from what Ruth knew with her parents, or more of the same? It’s suggested that her mother fled from Sir, and therefore would have been trying to do better, but on the other hand, Sir still ended up the guardian in the event of the parents’ death. (Unless they foolishly failed to make a will, and the courts decided Sir would be better because he was richer? Not sure what Canadian courts would decide in such a case, since it would involve sending the kids over the border.) And Ruth’s determination to protect Howie does seem to be specifically aimed at Sir, like her insistence on her Canadian-ness and actually remembering the name of her Canadian boyfriend. But she was relatively young when their parents died too — if they had faults, was she old enough to have recognized them, as opposed to Sir’s much more obvious lack of qualifications?
The hints of flashbacks to Ruth and Rachel’s first year suggest that we might get some answers to these, but now I’m curious.
I’d assume, like in many cases, Ruth’s parents didn’t have a will so they were shunted to the first available family member around. Not a lot of people write wills because not a lot of people know when they’re going to die or expect to die in a car accident.
If a guardian is not specifically named by the parents/current guardians in a will that has been notarized, custody of children is normally passed to whoever is the closest surviving family member, regardless of the parents/previous guardians relationship with them while they were living. This also can happen to you if you are in a situation where you cannot make medical/legal decisions, which is why it’s extremely important to have a living will/regular will no matter how old or healthy you are.
Custodial rights can be disputed if there are other living relatives who feel the default one is unsuited, but it has to be taken to court. If Ruth’s father had living parents or siblings who wanted the kids, but did not have the financial resources, Sir could have very easily steamrolled them with a private lawyer, and once he had the children in another country (the US, in this case), the hurdles to get them back to Canada would have been extremely high.
Seriously, no matter how old you are, if you do not want your parents/family members to make decisions for you, inherit your possessions, handle your funeral arrangements, or have custody of your children, make a living will/will, have it witnessed and notarized, and file it. Make sure people know your decisons and it is known you have a will. Otherwise your parents/family members can go as far as banning your unmarried partner/friends from even visiting you in the hospital.
You hit the nail on the head. It can be incredibly difficult to apeak with spouses of abusers when the abuser has gotten themselves into trouble outside of the marital situation, because their abuser has hardwired into them that nothing is ever the abuser’s fault. It’s everyone else’s. “They shouldn’t have pushed him like that, he won’t put up with it.” It’s heartbreaking, because you realize how many times the abuser has hurt the spouse over every single imaginary slight, and warped reality for the partner in such a way that they blame themselves for the abuse.
Children do it too, to a much greater extent, fully believing that there’s something fundamentally wrong and flawed in them, and has been wrong from the start. It’s a helpless feeling too, because no matter how hard you try, you cannot convince these kids that it’s perfectly normal to not do well in a class or to misbehave or to drop something, and their parent/guardian’s reaction is the one that’s wrong. Seeing Ruth here is so hard, because she reacts like how a lot of those kids react. She makes herself harder and tougher and meaner because that’s what she had to do to survive, and any feeling of weakness is bad. The anti-depressants and sobriety will help, but she’s going to need a lot of therapy to help her both unlearn her instincts and learn healthy behavior.
It’s getting disturbing the increasing number of characters in this strip who are displaying mental health symptoms indistinguishable from being aware of the Fourth Wall. I think that I’ll call it “Deadpool Syndrome”!
So…I think I might have this problem? Sort of?
Rationally, I know that worrying about something doesn’t protect me from it. But emotionally, if I don’t anticipate a bad outcome then I blame myself. If it’s worse than what I anticipated, then it’s my fault for not seeing it coming no matter how unpredictable it was. But if I wasn’t worried about something bad happening at all, then yeah it does feel like the bad thing happened specifically because I was arrogant to think it wouldn’t.
yea i’m the same way.. you’re not alone, at least! 🙂
It’s sometimes considered a symptom of anxiety. It’s very common, though, AFAIK. Human brains are wired to look for patterns, even in situations that can have no pattern. I’m told it’s why we “see” faces in things that don’t have faces.
And why we’re prone to conspiracy theories.
Shit, Ruth is now aware of the 4th wall! PROTECT YOUR FEMURS!
Careful, Willis, this is how Grant Morrison lost it.
well now, the only thing left to do is become Deadpool
My Depression Brain feels personally targeted and called out by this strip
the Drama tag is hidden under the pillow
Billie. Darling. You’re a journalism major.
Ruth is an English major.
Do NOT engage on us on this terrain. You will lose. We (and maybe historians) recognize patterns. You can only see what’s right in front of your faces. You’re doomed.
(And that assumes you’re a competent journalism student, Ms. I’m-sure-I-know-that-Amazi-Girl-is-my-roommate.)
If this were a real-life scenario, I’d be inclined to side with Billie, but given that this is very definitely a narrative written to make characters sad, I’m gonna hafta ask Ruth to quit leaning on that fourth wall.
This is probably too late and no one will see it
But lets be real here
She lives in a comic so…
She might be on to something maybe a little bit?
I see you.
Y’all, pointing out she’s in a comic. Me, pointing out I feel the same and I’m reasonably certain I’m not.
Reasonably certain. But not… completely certain?
Have you ever… you know… tested it out?
Ruth may also be reasonably certain she is not. But I’m curious. How would you test it out?
If you punch a dude, and there’s a word balloon that pops up saying “KER-POW”, that’s usually a dead giveaway if you’re LITERALLY in a comic.
Your life revolving around twenty-second interesting clips that generally end with some sort of zinger or punchline is also a good one, though that doesn’t really work if you’re in a Mark Trail / Mary Worth / God-forbid Family Circus.
Google searching some of your wittiest and funniest moments to see if they’ve popped up in a comic should let you know if someone’s just copying you IRL.
and the fourth wall was crying silently in a corner…
anyone saying she’s breaking the fourth wall, she’s really really not. I’ve said this exact same thing. Trust me, this is just the way brains work sometimes. Depression has you blaming yourself for things that are impossible to be your fault.
It is a weird thing to address in fiction though, because while in reality it is the depression talking, in fiction it’s actually true.
Yeah, it’s simultaneously relatable and extremely meta.
I identify. I ‘ve known for years that I’m just The Lancer.
Oooh, Ruth calling out Willis.
Over time I’ve really developed an appreciation for Ruth and her struggles, and I think this is one of those strips that highlights that. It does sound ridiculous when you say it out loud but it’s still real and valid and true to life. That’s how depression warps your thinking.
Ok, this is weird – anyone have any idea why my comments are all awaiting moderation (including, I expect, this one)?
I’m not a first-time poster and none of them have any links, which used to be what what needed moderation.
None of your posts are awaiting moderation! They all seem clear to me.
The one I made just above was, but it’s been cleared. Was it a glitch?
Ironically, this one (the one you just responded to) didn’t say it was awaiting moderation.
All the others I’d made said “your post is awaiting moderation” – I don’t know if that was actually true.
I have that a lot – I just assumed that something I posted ages ago got me put on some kinda “review comment in case this guy said a dumb thing” list and accept that sometimes my comments don’t get seen :v
YOURS, yeah, for some reason they always show up unapproved, no matter how many times you comment. I dunno what it is. Happened to Wack’d, too. So when I see ’em I just approve ’em.
That’s an interesting theory. And Billie is really good with Ruth♡.
“I feel like my life is one great narrative written by this being named Willis.”
“Now, that’s just being superstitious.”
“No, it’s a completely rational, logical belief.”
“Do you occasionally have strong opinions on a character named Hot Shot or is that just me?”
Shit, she sees us! Cheese it!
For the record and the sake of my femurs, I *never* shit talked her.
Ethan clearly doesn’t know he’s in a comic (if he did, then he would know that being part of a superhero origin story makes it guaranteed that he’d meet up with Sal again, but he didn’t know that until he met her.) So Ruth might be the only one who can break the fourth wall!
Wait so Ruth is this universe’s Deadpool or Ambush Bug?
Nope. Blaine died entirely as a result of HIS horrible life choices. Sadly, Amber will deal with fallout because Blaine is a selfish asshole.
The moment when the fictional characters start to question their place in the universe thinking they are just fictional characters… and everyone treats that as crazy… but they are right…