Even if it does suck by some metrics, I think Monopoly could still be rather useful, particularly as a surrogate for identifying the most toxic players.
I definitely don’t want to meet any toxic players in order to test that, at least not for a long time. But what do you think makes it a better surrogate? Does it have more opportunities for negotiation or chance events or what?
In Diplomacy, there is no chance at all. Players give orders secretly and they are resolved simultaneously. So the game rewards cooperation, then a well-timed backstab. TLDR; don’t play with your friends if you want them to remain your friends.
Based on the last part you told me, it is as effective for identifying the most toxic players as a children’s arithmetic test is effective at identifying high school students with the highest mathematical attitude.
The game is 5% mechanical and 95% psychological. You can completely convince two people who are cooperating that both of them are getting the short end of the stick and should fight each other for your ultimate benefit without it being at all toxic. But I stand by my claim that it’s very effective at identifying toxic personalities.
Damn, typos are the like the papercuts of the internet; not the worst, but still really annoying (especially with faulty autocorrect — I’m looking at YOU, Apple!)
Anyway I meant to say “mathatical aptitude”. My point is that a game can’t really be effective as a surrogate for toxic players if you HAVE to be toxic in order to play well. The trick is to make it so that all can clearly see both the toxic and non-toxic routes to success, and then from there we can see which ones players are more willing to take. Also, their reaction to loss in such a situation (more or less proportionate to the length of sessions) could also be a rather useful indicator of toxicity.
Can you think of any other games besides Diplomacy which meet those requirements?
If that, she was rather unhappy about those who thought laissez-faire capitalism denied the need for laws and their enforcement, especially in regard to renters and their behavior. The latter was exactly what Monopoly was invented to address.
Once I was on a city bus and we rolled by a McDonald’s that had a huge “MONOPOLY is Here!” sign in the window. (For the Monopoly-themed promo that McD’s does.) On the bus were a mom and her like 5-ish-year-old. Kid goes, “Mon-op-o-ly. What’s that, Mommy?” Mom goes, “It’s a game to teach people that capitalism is bad.”
On top of that, Monopoly (or The Landlord’s Game, as it was then) originally had a second half, kicking in when the first player was out of resources, that was more socialist in outlook, where when one landlord gets paid, everyone takes a cut (from what I’ve heard of it). More or less a Universal Basic Income, funded by taxes on property owners, to effectively make all land still be held in common by the community.
The idea was that Monopoly demonstrates to you that under Capitalism there really can only be one winner, and everyone else loses. But with a more cooperative society, we all get to win.
Unfortunately Parker Bros were only interested in Monopoly, and not the second half of the game, Prosperity. :/
The best part is, Universal Basic Income and/or social democracy may very well allow us to achieve the goals of the socialist programme without having to adopt the whole socialist package.
Not many people know or may believe this, but libertarian economist Milton Freedman actually supported UBI.
Until the singularity, I think that social democracy is still worth looking into; it’s really impressive what places like Norway and Denmark were able to do with the Nordic Model.
I think may just be for the best that we start to replace Welfare Programs with UBI and/or job retraining and education programs as safely and effectively as possible.
Monopoly is usually a better game without house rules. Most house rules just keep putting money back into the game which prolongs it. Forced auctions, three turns in jail, no pot on free parking. It keeps the rage confined to a manageable duration instead of a marathon of suffering.
Oh wow, thank you so much for reminding me Ozy and Millie exists. I must have lost my bookmark to it in “the great computer burning of 2013”, along with so many other webcomics I had finished reading and couldn’t remember.
Carl was in yesterday’s comic, but he wandered off and was replaced by Carld who is a completely different person in spite of being superficially similar in appearance.
I don’t trust this whole group… it’s like the McAwesome for characters we haven’t grown attached to… it’s a bizarro Dumbing of Age world where Billie is desperately trying to be ‘normal’…
It’s an important distinction considering how often regular Billie was not ‘normal’ (i.e. standing perpendicular to a surface). But now we must consider if Ms. Billingsworth is spending any appreciable amount of time normal to the walls around Asher. Despite my general misgivings about them as a pair, that could be hot. Then again maybe Jennifer is also more modest as part of this new image.
I don’t trust any of this group of people Jennifer is hanging around with, though my distrust of Carl is mainly because he’s only appeared in about 3 or 4 strips so far.
I doubt they’re up to anything untrustworthy so much as Toxic + Flaky + There to make ‘Toxic’ less of a singular entity + Recovering Alcoholic during a ‘I’m a Whole New Me’ phase is not a group you should trust, unless your name’s Cheryl Tunt and you’ve been really bored lately, on the grounds that together they’re just enough gunpowder to make a small keg. Flames and sparks will show up when everyone least expects it. Sal’s drawn to flames enough as it is…
eh. not fake, but i think (and i’m probably projecting) she just had a weird statement sprung on her that she wasn’t prepared to contradict. a few people have stated in the comments here how roller derby does encourage individuality within the team, but that’s a weirdly specific thing to explain on the spot like that if you haven’t thought about it that way, and plus they’re creating a strange interpretation of sal’s involvement anyway.
sal’s not making a good stand, but she’s not being fake, from what i can see. just having a lot of weird statements thrown at her from strange, fake versions of once-familiar people she wasn’t entirely prepared to deal with.
I like your read. It always feels really weird when people who are clinging desperately to society’s rulebook (here: Billiefer trying to reinvent herself) level assumptions at you that… aren’t even true…?
It’s very off-putting and almost impossible to refute in the moment. :C So I don’t think Sal’s necessarily being fake by fumbling her response.
Is it okay to just mention to people they don’t know how your friend committed crimes? I feel like I busted the Walkman’s chops for doing what Jen just did. I don’t know if that’s okay or not I just know if I had a criminal past I’d like to decide when to let people know. Seems kinda personal to just throw out there. Like someone revealing your sexual history when introducing you.
No, I think you were right the first time. This is information about Sal that Jennifer is thowing out there without wondering if Sal wants this to be the first thing these people know about her. The fact it also involves Asher is basically irrelevent.
a) Asher revealed his criminal past, but he downplayed it. “Knocking off stores” seems to imply shoplifting rather than robbery-at-knifepoint.
b) Asher implied this was a thing Sal & he did “together”, instead of a thing Asher did on the regular, got Sal involved in just once & promptly turned on her by ratting her out.
c) Asher assured Jennifer that all of this belongs to the past now.
d) On the other hand, Jennifer must have known the story about the robbery. So she either downplays it herself or has a selective memory.
What, you don’t introduce former friends to strangers by revealing their biggest mistakes or other points of trauma in their lives? I get the impression you’re considerate and not trying to score points. Good job.
Red Flag in favor of Sal’s ‘The signs say Fedex Office, but she’s *still* a dang Kinko’s’ theory, perhaps?
Frankly, she’s going overboard by trying to turn into Reverse Jennifer Billingsworth like this. Right down to going by her first name when the nickname ‘Billie’ was just as appropriate for the nice places in the adult world to begin with. It’s like it’s less about actually settling down and growing up and more about trying to escape who she’s been and what she did on a mere self-image level. Another red flag toward Sal’s theory, to be honest…
Who wrote “Still the Same” again? Oh, that’s right…Ms. Billingsworth should avoid anything playing Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band, just in case…
Honestly, I’d believe it from a homebody senior in high school who’s dated the same person since Sophomore year over a college freshman who nearly drank herself to oblivion the previous semester.
Yeah it seems pretty silly to be saying that you’re “settling down” when you’re still in your freshman year of college to me as well. I’m in my early 30s and I’m still not sure if I could accurately say that I’ve “settled down”.
That’s the thing, though. 18-year-olds never realize they’re really still kids. I know I sure as hell didn’t at that age. So they go through these motions of adulthood, never realizing how immature and silly they actually are until they get older and look back.
Some. Other’s are working full time, paying taxes and raising their siblings or their own kids.
It’s the lucky few who manage to hold onto being a kid till they’re 25 or older. (And I don’t mean hold onto being brats, but hold onto being able to see wonder and fun in the world around them.)
Gotta warm up some popcorn for the ensuing discussion/competition in which a group of 20 year olds with various unresolved issues talk about “how mature they are now”
They won’t be feeling so mature when they all likely move back in with their parents after graduating. But hey that’s so long from now the economy might be fixed by then or we will all be killing each other for a tank of gas in the post apocalyptic climate disaster hellscape.
meh. I’m mid 40’s and so ‘mature and settled’ that I’ve trashed the first 20 years of my adult effort and am currently dependent on family and social support while I figure out … something, but I don’t even know what other than “don’t pass on generational trauma.”
Maturity is a way of carrying yourself imo. If you’re doing your best not to be a dick to people and try to accept yourself and others as you are (within reasonable limits – obvious note on self-destructive, hurting others), you can be mature even if your life is a mess.
Generally I find myself very conflicted about not being a dick to people. More specifically, most people are actually pretty great, they’re easy, pay kindness forward by default. But for those who are dicks as we cross their paths, either due to a low moment, or through fundamental expression of their inner being, I’m drawn towards the prisoner’s dilemma. Not fully an eye-for-an-eye, but… well, a few years back wired ran a story on ai bots competing for highscores in a competition game of the prisoners dilemma, and the bot that came out on top was actually one of the simplest. It was called tit-for-tat. By default it would assume that it’s opponent would cooperate. But if betrayed, then next time they met up tft would choose the negative option. Then it would return to a positive cooperation state with that opponent. With other cooperative ai it would always cooperate, but once wronged, it always got revenge, even if it cost both of them. But then it forgave and resumed a positive approach. While a simple ai competition can’t provide the answer to life, maybe there’s still something to this tit-for-tat business which is worth carrying with us. Certainly I’ve crossed paths with those who plough throw life hurting others, and it never seems to catch up to them, and most people say, “don’t worry, they’ll get theirs.” Well, maybe I’m no longer content to wait passively for fantasy karma to deliver. So, no to self-destruction I guess, and certainly no to arbitrary dick-holery. However, when confronted by a dick that walks like a dick, and talks like a dick, maybe it’s worth following Team America’s lead, bending that dick over, and fucking its asshole so it can’t shit all over everyone. Which is not to say that this can’t be done in a mature fashion. It just may require finesse. My bitterness stems from standing in some great heaping piles of shit, and failing to figure out how to get those assholes to fuck off. The worst offender being an internalized voice ingrained through years of super negative influences.
Okay, fair enough, I am not actually in favour of being respectful or kind to people who go around being an asshole to everyone all the time. What I meant was ‘Not intentionally going around being a dick to people for no reason’.
Yeah, it’s kind of silly from an older perspective, but it’s also a thing that people do at almost any age. It’s always easier to look back and see how immature you used to be than to realize that future you will be saying the same about current you.
Hell, in some ways it can even be true. If Billie’s not going out every weekend partying and getting loaded, she has indeed settled down (note, that’s not necessarily the same as maturing).
Honestly, if it is what I think it is, this makes a lot of sense from Jennifer. She had a very tumultuous few years, she hated herself as a teenager and made a bunch of bad choices that screwed up her life and her girlfriend’s life, made more bad choices in college that led to a toxic relationship, and unhealthily fixated so much on a high school ideal of herself.
It makes a lot of sense she’d want to create a new identity around moving on and moving forward and just growing up, and putting all that teenage shit behind her as much as she can. And honestly sometimes that’s the healthiest thing you can do?
She’s trying way too hard to sell it though, and as a result she comes off fake to the people who knew her before. She’s acting like she’s not in the middle of the process of moving on and that it’s all done and all is good and well…
Maybe this is why it all comes off so poorly? Because yeah, in principle, all of this stuff she’s talking about is good. but if she’s just using it to become one of the cool kids (for a new/different variety of cool kids who think they’re better than everybody for new/different reasons) that’s…er…not cool.
The sad thing is that I really agree with the spirit of what Jennifer is doing. Trying to reinvent yourself, and be a better person, even distancing yourself a bit from past friends just to be healthier is all nobe and admirable goals. It’s just this really less than impressive group of chumps she’s now associating with don’t give me much confidence. Not that any of them are truly awful people but past track records don’t inspire. Raidah’s proven to be pretty shallow at best, Asher can’t be trusted, and Carl is……a guy. Fun fact: Sarah has seen his naked ass. Not a stellar bunch.
Even leaving these other jerks aside, all Jennifer has done (even before the kidnapping, when she promised Ruth she’d quit booze) is show she knows the steps but she’s not willing to do the dance. Nope. Instant “Better Person” Switch, cold turkey, look how enlightened I am now I’ve been to a therapy sesh or two.
Except Ms. Billingsworth just drudged up what /she/ knows as the worst of Asher and Sal’s past and tossed it out for the consumption of others. If you truly want a restart for yourself, you shouldn’t be going around airing other people’s past.
“I play by my own rules — which happen to be everyone’s.”
The fact that she is only following rules of her choice for the sake of fun is really what captures her spirit as a kind of rebel — being which does not necessarily exclude following rules of ANY kind.
In regard to her participation in the roller derby, I just cannot help but be reminded of this article I read on the definition and value of play — particularly the part where “play is always self-chosen and self-directed…. where all only participate if they all agree on the rules…” In this regard, freedom to quit is perhaps one of the most important parts to defining play as opposed to what ISN’T play.
By the way, for those curious, the article is The Value of Play I, by Peter Grey.
This is great analysis, actually! It’s what defines Sal’s rebellion as real instead of being performative. The things she does are her choice, even though they can be influenced by her past, or not be the best at the moment.
I think the only moment when she truly sacrificed this to tone herself down was in Parent’s Visit Weekend, and that was because she was starved for approval after many years of neglect. And then, she said hi, realized it was never going to work, and went back to being herself.
That was very good of Sal. Be it bargaining for approval, not being true to yourself, or bluffing, they all stem from the same basic mistake. All of those show that one values their approval too much, and thereby give their folks a hold over them. When the focus turns to one’s own self respect, there is often a natural, well needed shift.
Eh, given she’s fictional and it’s just dropping a nickname and not like, a dead name or an alt like amazigirl, it’s not super problematic if you don’t call her Jenifer
The Stepford Youths. There’s so much fakeness coming off this strip I don’t know how the fuck Malaya hasn’t just Apparated there to point it out o_o There’s even a Sal to dunk on, come on.
Jennifer has absorbed a lot of what therapy’s about without actually learning shit – Just enough to broadcast how Grown Up she is (this time for real). It’s impressive.
Socrates once said thousands of years ago that the only thing worse than ignorance is the illusion on knowledge. The very same thing can be said about personal improvement. Hence, the only thing worse than lack of personal improvement is the illusion of it.
The illusion is made even worse if it’s willing. Jennifer gathered enough Therapy Sockpuppets & Scripts to perform with, and locked herself right back into the cave where the inflammable stuff is.
The most painful part of this for Sal will be realisation that, on a certain level, Malaya was right: She is just playing the role of the cool rebel because dealing with her past and growing up is hard.
Naaaah. I was never one for the “Mike is a force of nature that trolls you for your own good” headcanons. Won’t give Malaya that benefit either, and specially when so much of it is projection.
Sal has a lot of legitimate reasons to be a rebel. She’s seen poverty from up close, has been a victim of systemic and domestic racism, and she’s got her heart in the right place. The only facade I’d call out is that she’s been lonely for so long she’s still acting like she doesn’t have attachments (the “coolness” factor?), but we’ve seen her grow up, not unlike Joyce has, and the rebellion is actually a good trait in her that needs to be nurtured in the right direction.
It’s because it’s an optimistic and hopeful kind of phrase, likely deservedly an expression to be popularized. But it makes me want to cuss you both for the momentary light that flickered briefly in the black cavity behind my ribs.
Hey, are you aware of the podcast Philosophize This? The latest episode is on Emil Cioran, I think you might like it. Its a 30min, non-jargony introduction to his philosophy.
Or maybe you know about Cioran already, which I didn’t, I might go and read some of his stuff now, he sounds awesome
His books are better than his philosophy, or some of them anyway, but then I’m biased against nihilism that takes itself seriously. Avoid his early pro-fascist stuff though. If you can find a descent translation, I recommend The Trouble with Being Born which oddly reminds me in places of Heinlein. Or maybe you read French to begin with. My foreign language due to a temporary loophole in the requirements back in the day.
My foreign language was FORTRAN due to a temporary loophole in the requirements back in the day.
Lol for real?
Anyway I don’t understand why (I mean I know why but most reasons suck) so many people around the world learn French as a foreign language. Its a fine language, but so are all the others.
Ugh he dabbled in fascism? Why am I not surprised. I’m curious of nihilism because I find “meaning of life” quests tedious. But sure, nihilism isn’t the only place from which to snipe at that delusion.
Anyway thanks for the tips! Never heard of Heinlein either.
Dissatisfied with Camus’ path to being happy in labour because of the absurdity of existence I’m definitely going to check this Cioran. His early naive fascism is concerning, but some of what Mr. That has to say is certainly intriguing. Thanks for sharing milu. I’ll have to give that another couple of listen throughs.
Yeah I think I’ll listen to it again, it was dense. Some ideas struck a chord, like the idea that maybe embracing the fuckedness of existence can actually lead to feeling less alone, or asking why we feel like failure and depression are bugs to be overcome not features to be embraced. 👏YOUR👏EMO👏BROODING👏IS👏VALID👏
According to the wikis-pedia: later in life Mr. Cioran himself rejected his earlier zeal for fascism that he adopted during his time in Berlin and had propounded on his return to Romania (as part of the Iron Guard). Spending the 40’s and post-war years in Paris, “”he condemned [his emotional implication in it] as “a complex of movements; more than this, a demented sect and a party”, saying, “I found out then […] what it means to be carried by the wave without the faintest trace of conviction.””
What Malaya thinks is Sal has structured her life around performative rebellion “because she wants other people to think she’s cool”. That’s definitely wrong, and Malaya is still he worst.
Yep. And, well, gravitar says it all, even if Mike was wrong in his approach, he thought he was trying to help. He at least, was able to learn from his mistakes.
He did learn a thing, but we never got to see him grapple with the consequences, which I regret.
Instead, those around him need to grapple with his death and their feelings about that. Which is kind of the ultimate Mike move, really.
Well blue mike and colour mike definitely act like two different people, and blue mike learned something to become coloured mike. The moment that I chose for this gravatar was pivotal in his disillusionment at the world. So while we saw very little of coloured mike evolve, we did get to see who blue mike was before he watched the world’s assholes piss in good people’s cornflakes. There were a few more incidents (see interaction with Blaine) that cemented things and then all we get is coloured mike. So there was definitely character growth (i.e. development). Did it make him a better person overall? Was he trying to help people, even if horribly misguided in some of his efforts? These are the questions of past discussions. But did he grow as a character, yes definitely.
Most certainly. I came back to clarify I actually liked Mike. I always knew that, since he wouldn’t have Walkyverse!Mike’s past nor sci-fi setting, there had to be a reason he was Like That. He intrigued me and I felt for him during Of Mike and Men, and… I did like the Ethan/Mike ship afsldkj.
But he wasn’t a force of nature nor omniscient. He was a fucked up, too smart kid who buried his empathy and tried to do good through the worst methods, coming to enjoy them in the end. And then realizing it! … And then he died. Before the epiphany could lead to growth. I’m still upset at his death ngl T_T
Yeah Malaya’s wrong about the specific reasons (Sal wasn’t doing it so people would think she’s cool because Sal stopped caring about how other people think of her a long time ago) but Sal absolutely played up a persona of flippant badass loner and refused to grow out of it.
Yo! Alt text DyW: Remember, “good artists copy, great artists steal (from themselves)!”
But caution: rich, lucky artists repeatedly change what they’ve made after releasing it and alienate their fan-base before retiring into obscurity, walking around their sky-covered ranch, crying over the meaningless futility of their efforts, sobbing into their moutains of cash.
There’s something really unlikeable here… they are all so nice and friendly… too much. There’s something fake. RUN SAL, RUN!!!! That group seems able to chew you, destroy your personality… GO AWAY!!!
*sigh* Of COURSE Raidah would become pals with Asher. I am curious to see if Carl is also a terrible person, or if he just has poor taste. My guess? Carl’s alright, if a little basic. Betcha he has money, can’t imagine Raidah hanging out with him otherwise.
The same Carl who ignored the warning signs from Sarah that one of his friends was suffering from depression and heavy drug use? The same carl who was part of the group criticizing Sarah because the situation was harming ger grades?
Maybe he has gotten better since those events, But the fact he is chosing to still hang around Riadah suggests he has not.
They didn’t ignore the warning signs, they had no idea the warning signs were there because Dana kept putting on a front that she was okay while having emotional breakdowns in her room.
Not just one of his friends, his girlfriend. Also something irked me about one of his strips. Sarah suggested getting Dana a therapist and Carl said she’s just grieving. All the more reason to get a therapist then??? Grief is hard a d confusing, therapy can help
Oh, good. All the morally-grey characters are hanging out in a group now! Well, that makes it easier to organise the student community onto the alignment chart, I suppose…
Sal’s fall from grace. She used to be cool, but now look at her. On her way to recovering from past trauma and being as lame as everyone else. Shameful
Not bad Jennifer, took me the best part of thirty years before I got my shit together, well more together than it was anyway and I needed to find a good women as well
Oh this is not good. Between Billie thinking she’s “grown-up and settling down” and has the situation locked down while having recently joined the ‘crime is cool’ friend group. This could be the start of Billie falling in with a bad crowd and getting into a ton of trouble which she’s not remotely prepared for.
Hopefully this will prove to be overly paranoid, but Asher I know is dangerous, Raidah was watching one of her friends deteriorate rather than confront a difficult truth, and I don’t know Carl but I don’t trust him.
Well Carl was Dana’s boyfriend so, same boat as Raidah i guess. Idk if this is the crime is cool friend group, more like crime is cool sometimes boyfriend and law school friends who aren’t against smoking weed, but also refuse to see when someone in their life is suffering
Ah your memory is better than mine, thank you. I was more concerned about them hanging with Asher who they know does crime but that was a assumption on my part. They know he _used_ to do crime. Maybe he’s cool and edgy and validates their refusal to narc so that’s part of why they want to hang out?
But yeah you’re right, I really did just assume they were on team ‘crime is cool’. (And I don’t mean using weed, I mean shop-lifting and on.)
That’s it. Jennifer is a fake persona. I’m calling her Billie again. She’s 18 or 19 pretending she’s in her mid-thirties and that her last semester didn’t happen, and if I rolled my eyes the appropriate amount they might fall out of my head.
A broken wheel with a paint job is still a broken wheel.
At least if she went back to being “Billie” again she’d be honest.
And even if she was still a complete wreck, she’d be of at least some kind of entertainment value for others, like those square wheels on Canadian cars in South Park, or those crazy asses who used to beat each other with trash cans and chairs in WWE.
I generally dislike Jennifer’s attempts to throw away her friends and family, but the one time she is accepting of a friend/family she immediately makes an ass of herself by telling her New Friends that Sal has Background without getting permission FROM Sal to share said Background.
That’s like a level 5 Friendship Rank Backstory, Jennifer, you can’t go telling strangers about that.
Of course she might think it’s ~okay~ because it’s also part of Asher’s Friendship Rank Backstory, but still. If you’re trying to introduce someone as a GOOD impression, Jennifer has just shown you how NOT to do it.
Yeah, it’s somewhere between ‘hilarious’ and ‘deeply sad’ given how well Jennifer’s last dozen attempts at reinvention have gone, and how this is clearly the same but under the guise of I’ve Had Therapy Now. I’m echoing the ‘she’s learned just enough from therapy to mimic Mentally Healthy Adult and that’s probably worse because she seems to think you can win at therapy and never need it again, and that pretty much guarantees another downturn.’ Plus that whole bit where she was ALREADY better at masking her depression than Ruth.
Plus the… maybe not irony, but SOMETHING of Raidah ‘I’m a college sophomore and so much better than lowly freshman Joyce’ ‘yeah but your boyfriend is ALSO a freshman’ being in this. Makes sense – they’re both in serious denial about relative maturity or lack thereof (19/20-year-olds haven’t finished developing a frontal lobe, either,) and there’s a definite Cool Girl Cliqueiness vibe to Raidah that I suspect Jennifer still wants in on because it’s what she had in high school before her public breakdown THERE.
In conclusion: lol, college freshmen and sophomores, or in fact college kids in general, thinking they are 100% Grown Up.
My mother used to say that ‘old’ was ‘however old (my great-grandparents) were, plus five years’ or something. I think the timing did shrink over time since my great-grandfather lived to be 93 or so, but point stood.
It’s not like there’s a specific cutoff point at which you suddenly have your shit together automatically, or that you’ve learned everything you ever will and have a perfectly-formed life philosophy. (And thank God for that, because I’d rather not be writing op-eds in a decade or so about the Youths These Days that are hilariously out of touch with said youths’ actual circumstances.)
Why does everyone tell anyone about Sal’s past? Hear me out here: maybe she doesn’t want every random person to know about the criminal stuff she did as a literal child.
I’m wondering why Raidah is in the same group as Jennifer and Asher. Are they gonna get involved with a future revenge story against Joyce? Or did that already happen last semester after Halloween?
I would assume Raidah IS going to have a role later, just because she was swearing vengeance in one of the last ‘normal’ storylines before the time skip and we know from her treatment of Sarah that she can hold a grudge QUITE a while. Also, because Jacob seems to be in reserve post-skip much like Ethan, and strikes me as likely to show up again eventually.
However, why show up with Jennifer and Asher? And why Carl? I honestly don’t think it’s that sinister. Raidah and Jennifer both like to position themselves as Very Mature and Super Cool, so it’d make sense for the two of them to get along given All New All Different Jennifer here. We also didn’t know anything about where Asher lived until about three strips ago. If Raidah and/or Carl live in McNutt, they probably formed a friend group out of proximity. (Asher isn’t so much ‘I’m a Totally Respectable Adult,’ but we HAVE seen from his interactions with Sal that he sets himself up as super cool and may have told Jennifer – and the others – a sanitized version of his rough past. I doubt he’d have brought up ‘and my family are high-level mobsters’ if he can avoid it, it’s the kind of thing Raidah would probably consider reputation poison.)
I’m looking forward to more Raidah strips because I don’t think her character is going to boil down to “an asshole nobody likes, so it was fine that Joyce mucked with her relationship with Jacob.”
I think the point of that arc was that Raidah’s an asshole that nobody should like, but it was still wrong for Joyce to mess with her relationship with Jacob.
Which is more complicated and interesting than either the traditional “so it’s fine” version or even the “shouldn’t have because she really is nice” version.
That was very much my takeaway. I feel like there were pretty decent odds that, even if Raidah had shown up to the Harrison lunch and Joyce HADN’T played Fake Girlfriend there, the relationship would have fallen apart during that lunch, or at least started to. Either Raidah wouldn’t have been able to hide her nastier aspects (I don’t take her as someone who’s nice to the wait staff, and she was definitely interested in Jacob in part because his brother is successful and, as she put it, ‘glamorous,’) or it would’ve been painfully obvious to Harrison that there wasn’t much spark there – they’re both good-looking, hardworking future lawyers, likely both from lawyerly families, but we don’t actually see affection or any real playing off each other the way more successful relationships in the strip do. Hell, maybe Jacob would’ve brought up Joyce a few too many times platonically (or at least platonic to his knowledge,) and that would’ve prompted some realizations. But because Joyce did the Fake Girlfriend Thing, the relationship didn’t run its course as it very possibly could have, and Joyce torpedoed her chances with Jacob pretty definitively.
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prefers DISorganised sports? like Calvinball? or House Rules Parcheesi?
Sal goes for blood: House Rules Monopoly.
Every corner is Free Parking
Does anyone play Monopoly without House Rules? I’ve seen at least a dozen different uses for Free Parking.
My personal House Rule for Monopoly is finding another game that isn’t Monopoly. That game just sucks.
Even if it does suck by some metrics, I think Monopoly could still be rather useful, particularly as a surrogate for identifying the most toxic players.
Risk is better for that.
Interesting suggestion for a better surrogate…. could you please elaborate?
Risk is a poor man’s Diplomacy.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplomacy_(game)
OK…. but what makes it better than monopoly as a toxicity surrogate?
From which question I deduce you have not played Diplomacy.
I definitely don’t want to meet any toxic players in order to test that, at least not for a long time. But what do you think makes it a better surrogate? Does it have more opportunities for negotiation or chance events or what?
In Diplomacy, there is no chance at all. Players give orders secretly and they are resolved simultaneously. So the game rewards cooperation, then a well-timed backstab. TLDR; don’t play with your friends if you want them to remain your friends.
Based on the last part you told me, it is as effective for identifying the most toxic players as a children’s arithmetic test is effective at identifying high school students with the highest mathematical attitude.
Attitude or aptitude?
The game is 5% mechanical and 95% psychological. You can completely convince two people who are cooperating that both of them are getting the short end of the stick and should fight each other for your ultimate benefit without it being at all toxic. But I stand by my claim that it’s very effective at identifying toxic personalities.
Damn, typos are the like the papercuts of the internet; not the worst, but still really annoying (especially with faulty autocorrect — I’m looking at YOU, Apple!)
Anyway I meant to say “mathatical aptitude”. My point is that a game can’t really be effective as a surrogate for toxic players if you HAVE to be toxic in order to play well. The trick is to make it so that all can clearly see both the toxic and non-toxic routes to success, and then from there we can see which ones players are more willing to take. Also, their reaction to loss in such a situation (more or less proportionate to the length of sessions) could also be a rather useful indicator of toxicity.
Can you think of any other games besides Diplomacy which meet those requirements?
if you wanna find toxic players or a game to unfriend your friends, a good session of Mario kart will also do. (and sometimes mario party xD )
It’s actually meant to. The inventor wasn’t all that happy about capitalism.
If that, she was rather unhappy about those who thought laissez-faire capitalism denied the need for laws and their enforcement, especially in regard to renters and their behavior. The latter was exactly what Monopoly was invented to address.
Once I was on a city bus and we rolled by a McDonald’s that had a huge “MONOPOLY is Here!” sign in the window. (For the Monopoly-themed promo that McD’s does.) On the bus were a mom and her like 5-ish-year-old. Kid goes, “Mon-op-o-ly. What’s that, Mommy?” Mom goes, “It’s a game to teach people that capitalism is bad.”
On top of that, Monopoly (or The Landlord’s Game, as it was then) originally had a second half, kicking in when the first player was out of resources, that was more socialist in outlook, where when one landlord gets paid, everyone takes a cut (from what I’ve heard of it). More or less a Universal Basic Income, funded by taxes on property owners, to effectively make all land still be held in common by the community.
The idea was that Monopoly demonstrates to you that under Capitalism there really can only be one winner, and everyone else loses. But with a more cooperative society, we all get to win.
Unfortunately Parker Bros were only interested in Monopoly, and not the second half of the game, Prosperity. :/
The best part is, Universal Basic Income and/or social democracy may very well allow us to achieve the goals of the socialist programme without having to adopt the whole socialist package.
Not many people know or may believe this, but libertarian economist Milton Freedman actually supported UBI.
UBI should carry us well into the rapidly approaching erosion of the value of labor and perhaps into the coming ‘singularity’ itself.
Until the singularity, I think that social democracy is still worth looking into; it’s really impressive what places like Norway and Denmark were able to do with the Nordic Model.
I think may just be for the best that we start to replace Welfare Programs with UBI and/or job retraining and education programs as safely and effectively as possible.
Of course it sucks, it is supposed to suck, it was designed to teach a lesson, not be a fun game.
Monopoly is usually a better game without house rules. Most house rules just keep putting money back into the game which prolongs it. Forced auctions, three turns in jail, no pot on free parking. It keeps the rage confined to a manageable duration instead of a marathon of suffering.
House Rules Monopoly is both less vicious and less fun than Actual Rules Monopoly.
All the more reason to just never play any version of it ever again.
Not even the online version, with CPU players?
The arcade game Monopoly that they have at places like Dave & Buster’s is fun. It’s very different than actual Monopoly, but it has the aesthetic.
Wait until you’re playing and someone whips out one of the expansion mini-game sets that are supposed to work with Free Parking and Jail.
Don’t Go to Jail was kind of fun, at least.
Oh wow, thank you so much for reminding me Ozy and Millie exists. I must have lost my bookmark to it in “the great computer burning of 2013”, along with so many other webcomics I had finished reading and couldn’t remember.
I was about to be sad the comments got THIS far and no acknowledgement of O&M D=
There are now TWO dead tree books, too!
(or rather, two printed by a big name publisher and sold in brick and mortar stores)
OK, so I have now started reading “Ozy and Millie” for the first time….
Mornington Crescent anyone?
Sal doesn’t color inside the lines – she draws NEW lines a millimeter outside the old lines, and then colors within THEM!
Then she purposefully colours outside of those lines.
Sal REJECTS your rules and replaces them with… slightly different ones she got from someone else.
If Asher is gonna feature heavily in this scene and chapter it’s gonna get stale how often I mention I don’t trust him….Which I don’t. That is all.
Personally I don’t trust this carld guy.
Is is Carl or carld??? Make up your mind!
Carl was in yesterday’s comic, but he wandered off and was replaced by Carld who is a completely different person in spite of being superficially similar in appearance.
Took a screenshot to preserve the moment that Damn you Willis carld’ the tags.
Carl now has his own dimension
I don’t trust this whole group… it’s like the McAwesome for characters we haven’t grown attached to… it’s a bizarro Dumbing of Age world where Billie is desperately trying to be ‘normal’…
No that’s regular Billie.
Not to be confused with ‘normal’ Billie.
It’s an important distinction considering how often regular Billie was not ‘normal’ (i.e. standing perpendicular to a surface). But now we must consider if Ms. Billingsworth is spending any appreciable amount of time normal to the walls around Asher. Despite my general misgivings about them as a pair, that could be hot. Then again maybe Jennifer is also more modest as part of this new image.
Gotta admit I’m not even intrigued by what his actual deal is anymore. I just groan when I see him by default /)_-
I don’t trust any of this group of people Jennifer is hanging around with, though my distrust of Carl is mainly because he’s only appeared in about 3 or 4 strips so far.
I doubt they’re up to anything untrustworthy so much as Toxic + Flaky + There to make ‘Toxic’ less of a singular entity + Recovering Alcoholic during a ‘I’m a Whole New Me’ phase is not a group you should trust, unless your name’s Cheryl Tunt and you’ve been really bored lately, on the grounds that together they’re just enough gunpowder to make a small keg. Flames and sparks will show up when everyone least expects it. Sal’s drawn to flames enough as it is…
Well, that seems to answer the question asked yesterday about whether Jennifer and Asher knew each other growing up.
Now I keep wondering what Asher’s reputation was like in high school.
Sal Walkerton: Rebel Without a… Rebellion?
Okay, now she is being pretty fake.
As much as I hate for Malaya to be right about anything.
What do you mean fake. That’s genuine Sal all over.
eh. not fake, but i think (and i’m probably projecting) she just had a weird statement sprung on her that she wasn’t prepared to contradict. a few people have stated in the comments here how roller derby does encourage individuality within the team, but that’s a weirdly specific thing to explain on the spot like that if you haven’t thought about it that way, and plus they’re creating a strange interpretation of sal’s involvement anyway.
sal’s not making a good stand, but she’s not being fake, from what i can see. just having a lot of weird statements thrown at her from strange, fake versions of once-familiar people she wasn’t entirely prepared to deal with.
I like your read. It always feels really weird when people who are clinging desperately to society’s rulebook (here: Billiefer trying to reinvent herself) level assumptions at you that… aren’t even true…?
It’s very off-putting and almost impossible to refute in the moment. :C So I don’t think Sal’s necessarily being fake by fumbling her response.
Raidah is still alive?
Apparently. Though it is hard to understand.
Is it okay to just mention to people they don’t know how your friend committed crimes? I feel like I busted the Walkman’s chops for doing what Jen just did. I don’t know if that’s okay or not I just know if I had a criminal past I’d like to decide when to let people know. Seems kinda personal to just throw out there. Like someone revealing your sexual history when introducing you.
I feel like it’s NOT ok but most people would probably take that as a joke so…..less bad than it could be?
To me it just reads as a way to get quick clout. Even Walky talks about it cause it’s a cool story
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2020/comic/book-11/01-this-bright-millennium/otherside/
But it’s not really their cool story. But maybe it’s okay cause Asher is there so Jen is kinda given a pass cause he was involved and they are dating.
No, I think you were right the first time. This is information about Sal that Jennifer is thowing out there without wondering if Sal wants this to be the first thing these people know about her. The fact it also involves Asher is basically irrelevent.
Maybe Asher already revealed his criminal past? But yeah, it’s totally not cool.
Let’s unpack Jennifer’s statement, shall we?
a) Asher revealed his criminal past, but he downplayed it. “Knocking off stores” seems to imply shoplifting rather than robbery-at-knifepoint.
b) Asher implied this was a thing Sal & he did “together”, instead of a thing Asher did on the regular, got Sal involved in just once & promptly turned on her by ratting her out.
c) Asher assured Jennifer that all of this belongs to the past now.
d) On the other hand, Jennifer must have known the story about the robbery. So she either downplays it herself or has a selective memory.
I dunno. “Tell me all about your sexual history so that I can introduce you,” sounds like it might be an icebreaker.
An icebreaker, and a deal breaker even!
If I had a criminal past like Sal does, I don’t think I’d want that to be the first thing new people I meet hear about me.
Why does no none ever want to hear about my criminal past?
We prefer to fantasize about it uninhibited by information.
Did it involve costumes and uniformed henchmen?
What, you don’t introduce former friends to strangers by revealing their biggest mistakes or other points of trauma in their lives? I get the impression you’re considerate and not trying to score points. Good job.
I do know that a lot of us (justifiably) torched Rebecca to a crisp when she did this to Jennifer & Ruth.
Actually, considering how she reacted when it was done to her, Jennie should really keep her mouth shut here.
Red Flag in favor of Sal’s ‘The signs say Fedex Office, but she’s *still* a dang Kinko’s’ theory, perhaps?
Frankly, she’s going overboard by trying to turn into Reverse Jennifer Billingsworth like this. Right down to going by her first name when the nickname ‘Billie’ was just as appropriate for the nice places in the adult world to begin with. It’s like it’s less about actually settling down and growing up and more about trying to escape who she’s been and what she did on a mere self-image level. Another red flag toward Sal’s theory, to be honest…
Who wrote “Still the Same” again? Oh, that’s right…Ms. Billingsworth should avoid anything playing Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band, just in case…
*plays Weird Al’s “Sports Song” on the P.A. speaker*
*Plays Garfunkel and Oath’s “Sports go Sports” on the hacked muzzak.*
*Plays Chopsticks on the Kazoo.
Why isn’t the P.A. speaker hacked like the muzak?
Chances are that P.A. speaker was also made by the Muzak company or uses their technology.
Is there anything *less* mature than saying you’re settled down and grown up when you’re a freshman in college?
Saying the same thing when you are in high school, maybe?
A year ago she was a high school drama queen cheerleader and alcoholic about to have a drunken auto accident. So, yeah, I’ll give her more mature.
Honestly, I’d believe it from a homebody senior in high school who’s dated the same person since Sophomore year over a college freshman who nearly drank herself to oblivion the previous semester.
you say that, but as someone who was exactly that, i definitely still had a ton of growing up to do at that age.
and i’ll probably say the same thing when i’m years away from this age, too
If you have to wait until you’re done growing to be mature, then NOBODY is mature. You never stop growing (hopefully).
Well, your nose and ears don’t, at least.
i know, right
In some ways it can be true. You might have gotten your ‘intentionally going wild’ phase over with and have chilled out.
Overall though, yeah, you’re still like 18 or 19, you’re a newbie adult who’s still learning what kind of adult you’re gonna be.
Next thing you know she’s gotta be married to Asher and ready to have a kid and move in together in a house before even finishing college…
Saying it when you first move out ‘on your own’ at 35?
Dredging out someones dirty laundry infront of strangers without their consent as they are trying to improve their lives in their own way.
Yeah it seems pretty silly to be saying that you’re “settling down” when you’re still in your freshman year of college to me as well. I’m in my early 30s and I’m still not sure if I could accurately say that I’ve “settled down”.
That’s the thing, though. 18-year-olds never realize they’re really still kids. I know I sure as hell didn’t at that age. So they go through these motions of adulthood, never realizing how immature and silly they actually are until they get older and look back.
Some. Other’s are working full time, paying taxes and raising their siblings or their own kids.
It’s the lucky few who manage to hold onto being a kid till they’re 25 or older. (And I don’t mean hold onto being brats, but hold onto being able to see wonder and fun in the world around them.)
Some are busy being deployed overseas to combat zones. (Not me, my sons)
jesus christ billie this is untenable you
are fucked in the head
I think she got traumatized by the previous year.
thats fair but this is just frightening
Jennifer… you’re like 18 or 19… calm down.
Right “we’re settling down” makes it sound like they’re getting hitched.
Gotta warm up some popcorn for the ensuing discussion/competition in which a group of 20 year olds with various unresolved issues talk about “how mature they are now”
They won’t be feeling so mature when they all likely move back in with their parents after graduating. But hey that’s so long from now the economy might be fixed by then or we will all be killing each other for a tank of gas in the post apocalyptic climate disaster hellscape.
The way things are going, I’m really worried that we’re gonna be in that apocalyptic climate disaster hellscape frighteningly soon.
I’d cackle but this hurt me right in the 2013, fam.
meh. I’m mid 40’s and so ‘mature and settled’ that I’ve trashed the first 20 years of my adult effort and am currently dependent on family and social support while I figure out … something, but I don’t even know what other than “don’t pass on generational trauma.”
Maturity is a way of carrying yourself imo. If you’re doing your best not to be a dick to people and try to accept yourself and others as you are (within reasonable limits – obvious note on self-destructive, hurting others), you can be mature even if your life is a mess.
Generally I find myself very conflicted about not being a dick to people. More specifically, most people are actually pretty great, they’re easy, pay kindness forward by default. But for those who are dicks as we cross their paths, either due to a low moment, or through fundamental expression of their inner being, I’m drawn towards the prisoner’s dilemma. Not fully an eye-for-an-eye, but… well, a few years back wired ran a story on ai bots competing for highscores in a competition game of the prisoners dilemma, and the bot that came out on top was actually one of the simplest. It was called tit-for-tat. By default it would assume that it’s opponent would cooperate. But if betrayed, then next time they met up tft would choose the negative option. Then it would return to a positive cooperation state with that opponent. With other cooperative ai it would always cooperate, but once wronged, it always got revenge, even if it cost both of them. But then it forgave and resumed a positive approach. While a simple ai competition can’t provide the answer to life, maybe there’s still something to this tit-for-tat business which is worth carrying with us. Certainly I’ve crossed paths with those who plough throw life hurting others, and it never seems to catch up to them, and most people say, “don’t worry, they’ll get theirs.” Well, maybe I’m no longer content to wait passively for fantasy karma to deliver. So, no to self-destruction I guess, and certainly no to arbitrary dick-holery. However, when confronted by a dick that walks like a dick, and talks like a dick, maybe it’s worth following Team America’s lead, bending that dick over, and fucking its asshole so it can’t shit all over everyone. Which is not to say that this can’t be done in a mature fashion. It just may require finesse. My bitterness stems from standing in some great heaping piles of shit, and failing to figure out how to get those assholes to fuck off. The worst offender being an internalized voice ingrained through years of super negative influences.
Okay, fair enough, I am not actually in favour of being respectful or kind to people who go around being an asshole to everyone all the time. What I meant was ‘Not intentionally going around being a dick to people for no reason’.
That I can back 100%.
Yeah, it’s kind of silly from an older perspective, but it’s also a thing that people do at almost any age. It’s always easier to look back and see how immature you used to be than to realize that future you will be saying the same about current you.
One day my past self will appreciate the helpful notes I keep sending.
Hell, in some ways it can even be true. If Billie’s not going out every weekend partying and getting loaded, she has indeed settled down (note, that’s not necessarily the same as maturing).
Can’t wait to see where this goes.
Honestly, if it is what I think it is, this makes a lot of sense from Jennifer. She had a very tumultuous few years, she hated herself as a teenager and made a bunch of bad choices that screwed up her life and her girlfriend’s life, made more bad choices in college that led to a toxic relationship, and unhealthily fixated so much on a high school ideal of herself.
It makes a lot of sense she’d want to create a new identity around moving on and moving forward and just growing up, and putting all that teenage shit behind her as much as she can. And honestly sometimes that’s the healthiest thing you can do?
She’s trying way too hard to sell it though, and as a result she comes off fake to the people who knew her before. She’s acting like she’s not in the middle of the process of moving on and that it’s all done and all is good and well…
Maybe this is why it all comes off so poorly? Because yeah, in principle, all of this stuff she’s talking about is good. but if she’s just using it to become one of the cool kids (for a new/different variety of cool kids who think they’re better than everybody for new/different reasons) that’s…er…not cool.
John Hammond: “Don’t worry, I’m not making the same mistakes again.”
Ian Malcolm: “No, you’re making all new ones.”
I got that reference.
It would fly even without the names.
The sad thing is that I really agree with the spirit of what Jennifer is doing. Trying to reinvent yourself, and be a better person, even distancing yourself a bit from past friends just to be healthier is all nobe and admirable goals. It’s just this really less than impressive group of chumps she’s now associating with don’t give me much confidence. Not that any of them are truly awful people but past track records don’t inspire. Raidah’s proven to be pretty shallow at best, Asher can’t be trusted, and Carl is……a guy. Fun fact: Sarah has seen his naked ass. Not a stellar bunch.
Even leaving these other jerks aside, all Jennifer has done (even before the kidnapping, when she promised Ruth she’d quit booze) is show she knows the steps but she’s not willing to do the dance. Nope. Instant “Better Person” Switch, cold turkey, look how enlightened I am now I’ve been to a therapy sesh or two.
Don’t we all wish it worked that easy.
Except Ms. Billingsworth just drudged up what /she/ knows as the worst of Asher and Sal’s past and tossed it out for the consumption of others. If you truly want a restart for yourself, you shouldn’t be going around airing other people’s past.
“I play by my own rules — which happen to be everyone’s.”
The fact that she is only following rules of her choice for the sake of fun is really what captures her spirit as a kind of rebel — being which does not necessarily exclude following rules of ANY kind.
In regard to her participation in the roller derby, I just cannot help but be reminded of this article I read on the definition and value of play — particularly the part where “play is always self-chosen and self-directed…. where all only participate if they all agree on the rules…” In this regard, freedom to quit is perhaps one of the most important parts to defining play as opposed to what ISN’T play.
By the way, for those curious, the article is The Value of Play I, by Peter Grey.
This is great analysis, actually! It’s what defines Sal’s rebellion as real instead of being performative. The things she does are her choice, even though they can be influenced by her past, or not be the best at the moment.
I think the only moment when she truly sacrificed this to tone herself down was in Parent’s Visit Weekend, and that was because she was starved for approval after many years of neglect. And then, she said hi, realized it was never going to work, and went back to being herself.
That was very good of Sal. Be it bargaining for approval, not being true to yourself, or bluffing, they all stem from the same basic mistake. All of those show that one values their approval too much, and thereby give their folks a hold over them. When the focus turns to one’s own self respect, there is often a natural, well needed shift.
God she is just….I can’t describe how off and condescending she sounds. This act is weirding me out. Jennifer/Billie needs some explaining tbh.
I know, I’m just fascinated at how a simple conversation can sound so not-quite-right. D: I’m impressed at this dialogue. and a bit horrified.
sigh, I guess we should call her Jennifer because that’s the right thing to do in general, even if her current behavior is grating >.>
This strip convinced me that Jennifer doesn’t exist. She’s Billie in disguise.
Eh, given she’s fictional and it’s just dropping a nickname and not like, a dead name or an alt like amazigirl, it’s not super problematic if you don’t call her Jenifer
Jennifer is using the robberies to impress people, and Raidah is taking that in stride? I did not see that coming.
She’s planning on being a lawyer. Knocking off convenience stores is small potatoes.
Raidah was not worried about her pot smoking friend, who would face more jail in Indiana than Sal and the other person.
DOA 11: Settlin Down
DoA Book 11: Ah Play By My Own Rules! Which Happen To Be Everyone’s
I can hear the toxicity bomb ticking…
Toxicity Bomb Ticking = great band name.
Also, great covering for upholstery or a pillow.
that conversation where everybody is all fake-cheerful and into everything and everybody, and it’s horrible and weird
The Stepford Youths. There’s so much fakeness coming off this strip I don’t know how the fuck Malaya hasn’t just Apparated there to point it out o_o There’s even a Sal to dunk on, come on.
Jennifer has absorbed a lot of what therapy’s about without actually learning shit – Just enough to broadcast how Grown Up she is (this time for real). It’s impressive.
Yeah, this is borderline she was better off being a teenage female Homer Simpson.
Was she a worse person? Yes. But by heckin’ Jove, I enjoyed her presence. Now she just gives me the creeps.
This whole act will explode on her face, we all know it, and every onscreen moment until she slips is pure tension.
Socrates once said thousands of years ago that the only thing worse than ignorance is the illusion on knowledge. The very same thing can be said about personal improvement. Hence, the only thing worse than lack of personal improvement is the illusion of it.
I’ll go get the umbrella….
The illusion is made even worse if it’s willing. Jennifer gathered enough Therapy Sockpuppets & Scripts to perform with, and locked herself right back into the cave where the inflammable stuff is.
We’ve got front row seats so, yeah. Umbrella pls.
If “inflammable stuff” and Asher are involved, I may as well get us a couple of blast shields too.
If she’s in the cave, she must be looking at the floor, because she’s not even seeing the shadows cast upon the wall.
Good thing I have my fair share of experience “spelunking“, or else this routine expedition would be a lot more difficult.
The most painful part of this for Sal will be realisation that, on a certain level, Malaya was right: She is just playing the role of the cool rebel because dealing with her past and growing up is hard.
Naaaah. I was never one for the “Mike is a force of nature that trolls you for your own good” headcanons. Won’t give Malaya that benefit either, and specially when so much of it is projection.
Sal has a lot of legitimate reasons to be a rebel. She’s seen poverty from up close, has been a victim of systemic and domestic racism, and she’s got her heart in the right place. The only facade I’d call out is that she’s been lonely for so long she’s still acting like she doesn’t have attachments (the “coolness” factor?), but we’ve seen her grow up, not unlike Joyce has, and the rebellion is actually a good trait in her that needs to be nurtured in the right direction.
It’s just, you don’t need to be a rebel alone.
“It’s just, you don’t need to be a rebel alone.”
Why am I suddenly feeling elated and hearing The Boondocks theme in my head after reading that?
It’s because it’s an optimistic and hopeful kind of phrase, likely deservedly an expression to be popularized. But it makes me want to cuss you both for the momentary light that flickered briefly in the black cavity behind my ribs.
Hey, are you aware of the podcast Philosophize This? The latest episode is on Emil Cioran, I think you might like it. Its a 30min, non-jargony introduction to his philosophy.
Or maybe you know about Cioran already, which I didn’t, I might go and read some of his stuff now, he sounds awesome
His books are better than his philosophy, or some of them anyway, but then I’m biased against nihilism that takes itself seriously. Avoid his early pro-fascist stuff though. If you can find a descent translation, I recommend The Trouble with Being Born which oddly reminds me in places of Heinlein. Or maybe you read French to begin with. My foreign language due to a temporary loophole in the requirements back in the day.
*My foreign language was FORTRAN due to a temporary loophole in the requirements back in the day.
It’s not that we rush towards death, it’s that we flee the catastrophe of birth, survivors struggling to forget it. – Emil Cioran
My foreign language was FORTRAN due to a temporary loophole in the requirements back in the day.
Lol for real?
Anyway I don’t understand why (I mean I know why but most reasons suck) so many people around the world learn French as a foreign language. Its a fine language, but so are all the others.
Ugh he dabbled in fascism? Why am I not surprised. I’m curious of nihilism because I find “meaning of life” quests tedious. But sure, nihilism isn’t the only place from which to snipe at that delusion.
Anyway thanks for the tips! Never heard of Heinlein either.
Dissatisfied with Camus’ path to being happy in labour because of the absurdity of existence I’m definitely going to check this Cioran. His early naive fascism is concerning, but some of what Mr. That has to say is certainly intriguing. Thanks for sharing milu. I’ll have to give that another couple of listen throughs.
Yeah I think I’ll listen to it again, it was dense. Some ideas struck a chord, like the idea that maybe embracing the fuckedness of existence can actually lead to feeling less alone, or asking why we feel like failure and depression are bugs to be overcome not features to be embraced. 👏YOUR👏EMO👏BROODING👏IS👏VALID👏
What do you mean by “naive fascism”? Care to point to some surrogates that show this in him? Is it like those hypnotic suggestions on Metapedia?
According to the wikis-pedia: later in life Mr. Cioran himself rejected his earlier zeal for fascism that he adopted during his time in Berlin and had propounded on his return to Romania (as part of the Iron Guard). Spending the 40’s and post-war years in Paris, “”he condemned [his emotional implication in it] as “a complex of movements; more than this, a demented sect and a party”, saying, “I found out then […] what it means to be carried by the wave without the faintest trace of conviction.””
What Malaya thinks is Sal has structured her life around performative rebellion “because she wants other people to think she’s cool”. That’s definitely wrong, and Malaya is still he worst.
Yep. And, well, gravitar says it all, even if Mike was wrong in his approach, he thought he was trying to help. He at least, was able to learn from his mistakes.
Mike didn’t learn anything. He had a “redemption moment” and died. He was a horrible character and the comic is better without him.
He did learn a thing, but we never got to see him grapple with the consequences, which I regret.
Instead, those around him need to grapple with his death and their feelings about that. Which is kind of the ultimate Mike move, really.
He really never learned shit, to the extent that I now headcanon that Rick Sanchez was loosely based off of Mike.
Well blue mike and colour mike definitely act like two different people, and blue mike learned something to become coloured mike. The moment that I chose for this gravatar was pivotal in his disillusionment at the world. So while we saw very little of coloured mike evolve, we did get to see who blue mike was before he watched the world’s assholes piss in good people’s cornflakes. There were a few more incidents (see interaction with Blaine) that cemented things and then all we get is coloured mike. So there was definitely character growth (i.e. development). Did it make him a better person overall? Was he trying to help people, even if horribly misguided in some of his efforts? These are the questions of past discussions. But did he grow as a character, yes definitely.
Mike was doing the Lord’s work and managed to enjoy it at the same time.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/02-threes-a-crowd/answer-2/
The Discourse around Mike is kinda cursed but he sure as hell was entertaining^^
Most certainly. I came back to clarify I actually liked Mike. I always knew that, since he wouldn’t have Walkyverse!Mike’s past nor sci-fi setting, there had to be a reason he was Like That. He intrigued me and I felt for him during Of Mike and Men, and… I did like the Ethan/Mike ship afsldkj.
But he wasn’t a force of nature nor omniscient. He was a fucked up, too smart kid who buried his empathy and tried to do good through the worst methods, coming to enjoy them in the end. And then realizing it! … And then he died. Before the epiphany could lead to growth. I’m still upset at his death ngl T_T
Yeah Malaya’s wrong about the specific reasons (Sal wasn’t doing it so people would think she’s cool because Sal stopped caring about how other people think of her a long time ago) but Sal absolutely played up a persona of flippant badass loner and refused to grow out of it.
the Sal content I crave
I read this as sal-content, as in: “this is the hour of my sal-content.” (malcontent)
Yo! Alt text DyW: Remember, “good artists copy, great artists steal (from themselves)!”
But caution: rich, lucky artists repeatedly change what they’ve made after releasing it and alienate their fan-base before retiring into obscurity, walking around their sky-covered ranch, crying over the meaningless futility of their efforts, sobbing into their moutains of cash.
There’s something really unlikeable here… they are all so nice and friendly… too much. There’s something fake. RUN SAL, RUN!!!! That group seems able to chew you, destroy your personality… GO AWAY!!!
Poor Asher. He killed someone and you can’t put that behind you, especially since it requires you to get pulled back into the world of the mob.
Just like Billie’s DUI.
They both wish to escape their past but are forever marked by it.
*sigh* Of COURSE Raidah would become pals with Asher. I am curious to see if Carl is also a terrible person, or if he just has poor taste. My guess? Carl’s alright, if a little basic. Betcha he has money, can’t imagine Raidah hanging out with him otherwise.
Carl? An alright person?
The same Carl who ignored the warning signs from Sarah that one of his friends was suffering from depression and heavy drug use? The same carl who was part of the group criticizing Sarah because the situation was harming ger grades?
Maybe he has gotten better since those events, But the fact he is chosing to still hang around Riadah suggests he has not.
They didn’t ignore the warning signs, they had no idea the warning signs were there because Dana kept putting on a front that she was okay while having emotional breakdowns in her room.
Not just one of his friends, his girlfriend. Also something irked me about one of his strips. Sarah suggested getting Dana a therapist and Carl said she’s just grieving. All the more reason to get a therapist then??? Grief is hard a d confusing, therapy can help
Carl has great potential and a bright future.
Billie’s so hardcore in denial it’s making my brain scream.
Sorry, Jennifer is hardcore in denial. Still getting used to that.
Just because she makes me angry doesn’t mean I shouldn’t use her preferred name.
oh, hi Raidah.
Oh, good. All the morally-grey characters are hanging out in a group now! Well, that makes it easier to organise the student community onto the alignment chart, I suppose…
Settling Down with Asher and Raidah (and Carl): The Sitcom.
Sal’s fall from grace. She used to be cool, but now look at her. On her way to recovering from past trauma and being as lame as everyone else. Shameful
How dare she!
The malaya grav is perfect
God, Jennifer is so full of shit
Not bad Jennifer, took me the best part of thirty years before I got my shit together, well more together than it was anyway and I needed to find a good women as well
So yeah 19 years is not bad going
Oh this is not good. Between Billie thinking she’s “grown-up and settling down” and has the situation locked down while having recently joined the ‘crime is cool’ friend group. This could be the start of Billie falling in with a bad crowd and getting into a ton of trouble which she’s not remotely prepared for.
Hopefully this will prove to be overly paranoid, but Asher I know is dangerous, Raidah was watching one of her friends deteriorate rather than confront a difficult truth, and I don’t know Carl but I don’t trust him.
Well Carl was Dana’s boyfriend so, same boat as Raidah i guess. Idk if this is the crime is cool friend group, more like crime is cool sometimes boyfriend and law school friends who aren’t against smoking weed, but also refuse to see when someone in their life is suffering
Ah your memory is better than mine, thank you. I was more concerned about them hanging with Asher who they know does crime but that was a assumption on my part. They know he _used_ to do crime. Maybe he’s cool and edgy and validates their refusal to narc so that’s part of why they want to hang out?
But yeah you’re right, I really did just assume they were on team ‘crime is cool’. (And I don’t mean using weed, I mean shop-lifting and on.)
That’s it. Jennifer is a fake persona. I’m calling her Billie again. She’s 18 or 19 pretending she’s in her mid-thirties and that her last semester didn’t happen, and if I rolled my eyes the appropriate amount they might fall out of my head.
A broken wheel with a paint job is still a broken wheel.
At least if she went back to being “Billie” again she’d be honest.
And even if she was still a complete wreck, she’d be of at least some kind of entertainment value for others, like those square wheels on Canadian cars in South Park, or those crazy asses who used to beat each other with trash cans and chairs in WWE.
I generally dislike Jennifer’s attempts to throw away her friends and family, but the one time she is accepting of a friend/family she immediately makes an ass of herself by telling her New Friends that Sal has Background without getting permission FROM Sal to share said Background.
That’s like a level 5 Friendship Rank Backstory, Jennifer, you can’t go telling strangers about that.
Of course she might think it’s ~okay~ because it’s also part of Asher’s Friendship Rank Backstory, but still. If you’re trying to introduce someone as a GOOD impression, Jennifer has just shown you how NOT to do it.
Called it – they’re the “Mature Adults” clique
Yeah, Raidah would fit right in there, wouldn’t she?
College First-Years talking about how they’re “growing up” or “settling down”?
Oh… oh my sweet summer child.
Yeah, it’s somewhere between ‘hilarious’ and ‘deeply sad’ given how well Jennifer’s last dozen attempts at reinvention have gone, and how this is clearly the same but under the guise of I’ve Had Therapy Now. I’m echoing the ‘she’s learned just enough from therapy to mimic Mentally Healthy Adult and that’s probably worse because she seems to think you can win at therapy and never need it again, and that pretty much guarantees another downturn.’ Plus that whole bit where she was ALREADY better at masking her depression than Ruth.
Plus the… maybe not irony, but SOMETHING of Raidah ‘I’m a college sophomore and so much better than lowly freshman Joyce’ ‘yeah but your boyfriend is ALSO a freshman’ being in this. Makes sense – they’re both in serious denial about relative maturity or lack thereof (19/20-year-olds haven’t finished developing a frontal lobe, either,) and there’s a definite Cool Girl Cliqueiness vibe to Raidah that I suspect Jennifer still wants in on because it’s what she had in high school before her public breakdown THERE.
In conclusion: lol, college freshmen and sophomores, or in fact college kids in general, thinking they are 100% Grown Up.
It’s almost as bad as those fifty year olds thinking they are 100% Grown Up, when everybody knows you aren’t really grown up until you hit 73.
I’m 72; why do you ask?
My mother used to say that ‘old’ was ‘however old (my great-grandparents) were, plus five years’ or something. I think the timing did shrink over time since my great-grandfather lived to be 93 or so, but point stood.
It’s not like there’s a specific cutoff point at which you suddenly have your shit together automatically, or that you’ve learned everything you ever will and have a perfectly-formed life philosophy. (And thank God for that, because I’d rather not be writing op-eds in a decade or so about the Youths These Days that are hilariously out of touch with said youths’ actual circumstances.)
Right?? Jennifer. Honey.
Sweet baby.
You are fucking eighteen.
Why does everyone tell anyone about Sal’s past? Hear me out here: maybe she doesn’t want every random person to know about the criminal stuff she did as a literal child.
Well they all know that Walky would blab anyway, so they might as well.
I’m wondering why Raidah is in the same group as Jennifer and Asher. Are they gonna get involved with a future revenge story against Joyce? Or did that already happen last semester after Halloween?
I would assume Raidah IS going to have a role later, just because she was swearing vengeance in one of the last ‘normal’ storylines before the time skip and we know from her treatment of Sarah that she can hold a grudge QUITE a while. Also, because Jacob seems to be in reserve post-skip much like Ethan, and strikes me as likely to show up again eventually.
However, why show up with Jennifer and Asher? And why Carl? I honestly don’t think it’s that sinister. Raidah and Jennifer both like to position themselves as Very Mature and Super Cool, so it’d make sense for the two of them to get along given All New All Different Jennifer here. We also didn’t know anything about where Asher lived until about three strips ago. If Raidah and/or Carl live in McNutt, they probably formed a friend group out of proximity. (Asher isn’t so much ‘I’m a Totally Respectable Adult,’ but we HAVE seen from his interactions with Sal that he sets himself up as super cool and may have told Jennifer – and the others – a sanitized version of his rough past. I doubt he’d have brought up ‘and my family are high-level mobsters’ if he can avoid it, it’s the kind of thing Raidah would probably consider reputation poison.)
I’m looking forward to more Raidah strips because I don’t think her character is going to boil down to “an asshole nobody likes, so it was fine that Joyce mucked with her relationship with Jacob.”
Me too, I wish more of her in DoA.
I think the point of that arc was that Raidah’s an asshole that nobody should like, but it was still wrong for Joyce to mess with her relationship with Jacob.
Which is more complicated and interesting than either the traditional “so it’s fine” version or even the “shouldn’t have because she really is nice” version.
That was very much my takeaway. I feel like there were pretty decent odds that, even if Raidah had shown up to the Harrison lunch and Joyce HADN’T played Fake Girlfriend there, the relationship would have fallen apart during that lunch, or at least started to. Either Raidah wouldn’t have been able to hide her nastier aspects (I don’t take her as someone who’s nice to the wait staff, and she was definitely interested in Jacob in part because his brother is successful and, as she put it, ‘glamorous,’) or it would’ve been painfully obvious to Harrison that there wasn’t much spark there – they’re both good-looking, hardworking future lawyers, likely both from lawyerly families, but we don’t actually see affection or any real playing off each other the way more successful relationships in the strip do. Hell, maybe Jacob would’ve brought up Joyce a few too many times platonically (or at least platonic to his knowledge,) and that would’ve prompted some realizations. But because Joyce did the Fake Girlfriend Thing, the relationship didn’t run its course as it very possibly could have, and Joyce torpedoed her chances with Jacob pretty definitively.