Incorectness. Our currency is Canadian Tire money. Timbits have been benchmarked to the US dollar standard ever since their take-over by wendy’s and subsequent sale to whatever megaglomerate currently owns them. Timmies is as Canadian, as Beijing is Chilean.
They absolutely hate it if you call their currency Canadian Pounds.
I mean, they’ll still behave just as politely to you as they always do – after all, they’re Canadian. But there’ll be much polite screaming going on internally.
I don’t think you want to do that. They’re *Canadian*. Sure, it’s possible to get some of them to shout. But for others, before they start screaming, you become chunky salsa. They will, of course, apologize about that. But the fact remains, you’re chunky salsa.
To be clear, I’m not trying to say that Canadians are any more likely than other races to make salsa out of sentient raw materials. In my experience, they’re actually less likely than most. It’s just, for some, the politeness goes considerably above that point, even as that point is considerably above what anyone else can endure.
Do not poke them like that, because there’s no warning like there is with other creatures. There’s no flashing of eyes or show of teeth. It’s, “I’m very sorry, but that’s not what our currency is called.” one moment and “I’m very sorry, but I was low on salsa.” the next. That first apology was your first warning, and you went through so many others. How many doesn’t matter. The first should have been enough.
She has a butler, and her parents are dead. That’s two-thirds of the way there, all she needs now is another younger orphan to endanger on her adventures. Becky, you’re up
Remember that Shortpacked comic where Batman is obsessed with all the Robins being like clones of himself, with black hair and blue eyes, and that’s why he doesn’t like Stephanie Brown?
Becky is a fellow freckled ginger, so she makes a perfect Robin for Ruth.
It really is a Galasso strip on Bat Acid, that one. But an excellent Galasso strip all the same. And as that Tumblr post linked in the description points out, it really did seem like they were calling attention to the Black Hair Blue Eyes Nesting Doll that was the canonical Robins in 2011. Man the New 52 was weird.
As an aside, Webtoons’ Wayne Family Adventures (which is an official DC Comics series, if not in their current mainline canon) recently featured several strips in which Steph Brown being Robin is that-series canon and then Bruce is genuinely and openly supportive of her as a hero.
Oh it is very blatantly obvious that Jason is just not cut out to be an educator. Tending a bar is a much better fit for him at the end of the day, honestly.
He did mention his father is a ‘cruel captain of industry’ and their address was apparently per British commenters of the ‘truly obscene wealth required to get here’ variety.
So it doesn’t shock me. It could take a while to unlearn that much classism from a truly Fuck You Wealthy upbringing.
The good news is, he’s a mathematics major studying here in the US and trying to avoid his dad so he’s going to learn JUST how much things suck when you DON’T have fuckoff wealth to fall back on! *Fiendish grin*
Which hints at a fascinating origin story for Jason, because he’s attending a public university in the American Midwest, and had to TA and now tends bar to make ends meet.
We’ve yet to meet this universe’s Dargon Chesterfield (if that indeed is his name) but methinks his relationship with Jason is no better than in that other reality.
He is also, as Jason put it, ‘essentially a supervillain,’ so I suspect the relationship isn’t much improved. (Though I guess ‘essentially a supervillain’s a step up from ‘literally a supervillain,’ at least. Marginally less evil, at least. If only for lack of opportunity to doom an entire universe out of spite.) https://www.dumbingofage.com/2021/comic/book-11/04-hompk/immigrant/
It’s kind of an unavoidable side effect of amassing that much money, that your negative impact reaches supervillain status. Having a big footprint means a lot of people get squashed.
Indeed, it would only be fitting for a bartender of all people to eventually face with sober senses, the reality of their condition, of their relationship with other humans.
What level of fuck off wealth we talking here? Is it Carla’s “My family essentially owns this universe’s version of Tesla” (They probably just bought twitter) kind of fuck off money? The Billingsworth’s “We’re probably not billionaires, just really well connected high end millionaires with political sway which could arguably be better.” fuck off money? Then there’s Asher’s “Maybe we’re not super rich but we definitely own cops and can have yoj killed” mob level fuck off? He is supposedly a supervillian somenow.
I’d assume Carla’s end of the scale, with the possibility Dargon might win out over the Ruttens but we obviously don’t have numbers or definitive comparisons for him. Quoting Wikipedia, “Knightsbridge is home to many of the world’s richest people and has some of the highest property prices in the world. In 2014 a terrace of 427m2 sold for £15,950,000, a home in Montpelier Square. The average asking price for all the properties in slightly wider SW7 was £4,348,911 (as at Autumn 2014). On-street parking spaces have sold for as much as £300,000 for a 94-year lease. Fourteen of Britain’s two hundred most expensive streets are in the neighbourhood, as defined by The Times.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knightsbridge#Economy
Phrased like that, Becky and Dina’s request does sound kind of like a request two kids might make of their teacher on the playground (minus the sex part obviously).
So, where I live these comics go up at 6 am. I usually read the new strip and comments before getting up around 9. This morning, I woke up very early and can’t fall asleep again. Thought to myself I’ll check out DoA for some distraction.
Well, it kept me occupied for much shorter than usual… Turns out there are a lot fewer comments at time of upload 😀 (dunno what I expected tbh)
I’ll throw a few comments in around 3 hours after the comic goes live, then check back on just those threads later in the day. Catching up on the comments for some strips, especially when things get heated and there’s over 400 of them, is a lot.
Is it very wrong of me that I read panel 3 of the first one as Walky suddenly leaping to his feet with a triumphant roar, and flipping Jennifer upside down as he does so?
British classism confuses me as an American because I’m so used to living in a society that pretends to have unlimited movement along the social hierarchy so that its people can be easily fooled into ignoring the issue of wealth disparity. Whereas Britain just… openly has them? And they’ve got, like, names and shit? And your class is still your class no matter how much your wealth actually changes, I guess? What the hell even is Britain
To be fair, wealth DOES matter. The Weasleys are pure blooded wizards and due to their relative poverty that they are looked down upon by the Malfoys no matter what their wealth.
Growing up is realizing that the stuff about “blood purity” in those books that you always thought was about racism is actually about classism, because no way in hell would the woman who bent over backwards justifying the house elves’ enslavement ever write something anti-racist deliberately.
I used to give Rowling the benefit of the doubt regarding House Elves because “I am stating this is not a stand-in for an actual thing but dealing with magical creatures. Because as an author you should not always be dealing with metaphor 24/7.” However, I’m now much-much less inclined to cut rowling slack.
The House Elf stuff was just all over the place. Hermione trying to organize for them was played as a joke and reads like an anti-woke screed, but the individual house elves that get more focus clearly show how much something like that is needed.
The basic concept is interesting, drawing from old folk tales and trying to fit them into a modern magical world. A better writer could do something with it.
I kinda figured that the wealth probably started the same but whereas the Weasley’s had 7 kids, the Malfoy’s had 1. So they had more extra money where the Weasleys had to spend their money. I never really thought of it as a class thing until you pointed it out.
Hell, the 7 kids thing is probably classism, too. Rich people, higher class people, can afford birth control and don’t breed like rabbits. Poor people do and therefore it’s clearly their own fault they’re poor.
Yeah, that makes sense too. But there’s gotta be a magic equivalent to the pill, too.
Granted I’m pretty sure modern plumbing didn’t exist in the magical world as a whole, since I heard someone (Maybe Rowling? I don’t remember) say that they just apperated their waste away.
There might be some truth to the Horcrux’s canard that Molly didn’t love Ron because she wanted a daughter. Not true about the love, but maybe she really wanted a daughter and kept trying until she got one.
When you apparate something, you are causing something to go from point ‘A’ to point ‘B’. So if they DID use magic to eliminate their wastes, where would it go?
Modern plumbing exists in the wizarding world. Moaning Myrtle haunts the girl’s lavatory, and Hermione was cornered in the restroom, complete with toilet stools and stalls, when she confronted the troll. Just because we never see or read of them being used as part of the story/books doesn’t mean they’re not there. We never saw any indication that the adolescent girls had to deal with menses, either, but I’m sure they did.
No, the 7 kids thing is actually sort-of-racism. The Weasleys have 7 kids because they’re the IRISH stand-ins, and therefore Catholic, and therefore contraception is bad.
It kind of does though. Obviously, they’re stand ins, not actually Irish (or Catholic for that matter), but the tropes are definitely there. They’re coded as Irish.
In Britain (or England at least, don’t know about the other parts) class is not just about wealth but about manners, way of talking, attitude etc. I have a friend who is from a solid working class background, not particularly well off, but he’s super smart and went to a private school on a stipend so he has the ability to come across just as posh as the “rich kids” cause he knows how to speak fancy and stuff
True class IS manners and how one conducts one’s self in their dealings with others. I present the former Liar-in-Chief as Exhibit ‘A’ as proof that money doesn’t confer class.
Sure, but different classes have different ideas about manners and how to conduct yourself with others. The higher up you go, the stricter and sometimes more arbitrary the rules are.
Yeah but we have the freedom to believe in the false hope that one day we, too, could be the next J.D. Carnegie-Bezos. All we have to do is keep giving the rich more money, then somehow it will come back to us. That’s why we need to give the rich all the breaks, so we can take advantage of them one day when we’re rich!
Well, according to Sal he also has one hell of a dingus. I believe she compared it in size to a pint glass she was holding up at the time. Might be she’s a bit of a size queen when it comes to men.
(Well, if either of her parents were, but Sir Clint is her maternal grandfather and he apparently lives within reasonable driving distance of Bloomington.)
Because Becky is allowed to be as rude/insensitive/thoughtless/cruel (pick whichever applies to whichever situation) as she wants and everyone who gets annoyed by it is clearly being some flavor of jerk.
But she said it with smile while Jason said it with saaaad face.
Besides i dont get it he was not punk/skinhead and not become punk/skinhead why he should said oi?
I feel like his “classism” here is more exasperation at how Americans tend to just go “ooh, do your British accent” without appreciating “Britain” isn’t just “wotcher guvna, give us two an’ six for the meter” or whatever they’ve gleaned from TV. Jason, with his background, is very obviously (to anyone with any kind of knowledge, and admittedly expecting this of American university students who don’t really care either way isn’t exactly fair) not the right category of British to say “oi” (in the sense Becky seems to be angling for), so exasperation seems to fit. At the end of the day, as he observes, he IS a bartender; were he so uppity he wouldn’t condescend to work in a bar even in direst need.
Nah he’s still being trashy. He could of ignored Becky, pointed out its gross to ask foreigners to perform for you or simply said that’s not how he talks. But he had to bring back to class sigh…
Eh, it’s not like I can’t see what you’re saying, but I don’t personally read that. Jason’s always a tetchy, easily-irked sort of character, so this seems more-or-less in line with that, for me. Of course, if in the next strip Willis were to have Jason excoriate Becky for daring to consider him- gasp!- a member of the proletariat, I’d say that’s pretty cut-and-dry.
I…don’t think you quite understand how deep British classism runs. To put it in American terms, that’s as if he hauled off with minimal provocation and started dropping Trump talking points. Becky is super being annoying there, it’s true, but that offhanded comment–not even about anyone present!–revealed a LOT about Jason’s character.
“Britain” who? The aristocratic/ extremely rich people who took advantage of slaves, or the average working people whose ancestors were never anything more than malnourished, mud-soaked peasants tilling fields and who never laid eyes on a black person until Windrush generation turned up? Sure, just raise taxes so people who’ve been working class since the year 1400 have to cover the sins of the rich who profited from slavery. THAT’S nuanced thinking. Hopefully the African aristocracy who sold THEIR OWN PEOPLE for profit will similarly have to address their sins.
Depends where you’re standing, I’m sure. In addition to which consideration, he works as a bartender, as he mentioned; were he sufficiently snobby as to find countenancing this unbearable, he’d have packed up and gone back to Knightsbridge. That he hasn’t indicates otherwise.
I think we as a people really ought to move past whataboutism and try to keep in mind that many things can be annoying at the same time. and by “I think” I mean “please I am begging”
Here I was thinking that if Becky gets some security she’ll be less obnoxious, when she gets a job she’ll be less obnoxious, when she starts studying she’ll be less obnoxious, when she gets into a healthy relationship she’ll be less obnoxious, when she gets laid she’ll be less obnoxious…
Lol, no. People who are obnoxious don’t get LESS obnoxious the safer and more comfortable they are, they get MORE obnoxious.
Much like Ruth’s violent bullying wasn’t a function of her depression, Becky’s all-around assholery wasn’t a function of her unsafety. They’re just like that.
I mean, Ruth’s violent bullying was a function of her depression and vengeful attitude against Billie for being an alcoholic. Becky is also an asshole because her life was spent trying to pretend to be Ross’ godly daughter and then it got absurdly nightmarish with near death experiences and the loss of her last remaining parent so she’s cripplingly dependent on unconditional love and safety to function.
It’s just, y’know, still wrong. Hell it’s worse than wrong; they know what the effects of their trauma have done to them and they started actively weaponizing it to justify how they act.
Ruth is getting treatment for her depression and she’s STILL a violent bully. Ross is no longer in the picture and Becky’s STILL an asshole. These things don’t need to be functions of each other, they can exist independently.
It’s more complex than that, even if whether or not they’re doing wrong is simple and binary.
Ruth is in a scenario where she has power and the ability to exact it as she sees fit over some outrageous grudge in Billie’s direction, much like her granddad. Ruth can do whatever she wants to Billie even when she knows it’s wrong, and she pushes and pulls until eventually she self-destructs, Billie intervenes and… well they start self-destructing even harder. She’s woefully incompetent and undeserving of her power, but she’s surrounded by an apathetic staff and the only person who’s gonna hold her back is her, not unless she messes with the Pod People again and the RA with the incredibly cool name kicks the hell out of her, which; I’d pay for that.
Becky freely emotionally manipulates the people around her because “position myself in as the agreeable one” is how she survived a home life that would kill her, probably killed her mom, and almost succeeded with her. Becky wakes up and has all these survival instincts and trauma responses in her even if the necessity of them is gone, which is driving her to make Joyce suffer and make everyone around her pick up the emotional baggage; there is no way for me to believe that Becky having Dorothy and Leslie coddling her all the time isn’t an entirely textual element.
The both of them are doing the wrong thing, just because they have comedic and humanizing moments doesn’t make it Fine Because Becky Does It, it means we’re reading a story where two of the main cast members went through nightmarish circumstance and came out of it in a way that’s making them inflict pain onto their loved ones.
And it is wrong, but there’s a difference between Rachel being completely, objectively, factually right about Ruth (she is) and whether or not Ruth deserves to wake up in the morning and decide she can have value. Ruth’s done wrong and maybe X amount of characters won’t forgive her, but Ruth’s still a focus character in a way that Rachel isn’t. Becky and Joyce are gonna reconcile even if Becky’s being an absurd monster at her literal saviour who’s why she’s alive enough right now to try and brainwash her back, but that’s because Becky’s not just her worst, most loathsome behaviours, it means she’s got shit she has a responsibility to sort out and, as a reader, I can make a reasonable guess that she’ll sort them out in a way where she gets to keep being a main character.
Yes, but once actions become personality traits in response to a social setting, removing yourself more or less permanently from the setting doesn’t cause your personality to reset back to what it was pre-trauma.
I feel like in some way “being british” became an identity for Jason and now he has to keep up the stereotype to feel like he is recognized as a person, even though he doesn’t really talk like this.
An Australian friend of mine says this is a real life phenomenon that when you’re in another culture, you can often become “More Australian than you ever were before” as a way of compensating for your new environment.
I choose to believe Jason is just a snobby know it all in Britain but in America acts like he’s a stereotype.
There’s definitely an underlying layer of “pip-pip, tally-ho” “steady the Buffs”-esque Biggles-like antiquated performative Britishness going on; as others suggest, in Watsonian terms, it’s his THING, and he doesn’t want to drop it (although wasn’t there some suggestion he was trying to cover his accent when Ruth called him on how bad a job he was doing with it?); in Doylist terms, Willis probably doesn’t spend much of his time poring over present-day upper-middle-class British language usage.
Wait a second. Jason isn’t really British, is he. He’s cosplaying as a British tv character and he’s gone too far. The cast doesn’t know ’cause they’ve never seen a British tv show.
Yeah, Carla’s bit about not knowing who Joyce was clearly her way of justifying not telling her, while still keeping her asshole role. Push her too hard and she’ll have to decide between the two.
even if it’s info they volunteered to being with, i’d think going up to a random person you don’t know and being like “oh two of your friends had sex” would be a form of harassment or so
It’s interesting, based on the Becky and the Harry Potter comments in this thread, how many of the fans of this comedic webcomic don’t have much of a sense of humor.
Becky isn’t being funny, she’s being an asshole, repeatedly, and just because she laughs as she’s being an asshole doesn’t change that. It’s perfectly possible to be funny WHILE being an asshole, but that requires you to admit that you’re being an asshole and to not respond to people who call you out on your assholery with “how dare you tell me that, I’m an orphaned lesbian, can’t you take a joke from an orphaned lesbian”.
I don’t think Harry Potter was trying to be funny. If it was, it certainly failed spectacularly, because it wasn’t funny (or, y’know, actually good).
Becky the character is intended to be funny, and I find her funny. Your mileage may vary as an individual reader, of course. You just may be taking her a little too seriously. Unlax a little is all I’m saying.
I feel like Becky the Character is intended to be a lot of things, including funny.
Like I don’t think her sole purpose in the series is to be funny, invariably, and even the strips where she’s being funny (like this one!) still exist in a wider context of stuff that isn’t, specifically, meant to display her as funny and charming.
I only started liking Becky come the Faith-Off where she’s real chapped that the terminal collapse of her best friend’s faith is inconveniencing her and every single person around her is extremely concerned about how she feels about it, so I’m probably not the person to ask.
She’s charming to me in the same way a big pile of garbage becomes more charming as I await the match to get thrown atop.
There comes a point in a lot of alleged/attempted comedy where a character is just too obnoxious/cringe/stereotypical/etc etc to be entertaining to me. Their behavior becomes something that lessens my enjoyment and engagement. Usually I stop reading or watching then.
British gentlemen don’t wear suspenders. Suspenders are what Yanks call “garters.” Gentlemen hold up their trousers with braces—like the ones Jason’s sporting.
American English likes to mug the natives in dark alleys and then loot the bodies for random vocabulary. British English the same except substitute jungles for alleys.
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The conversion rate of femurs to Canadian currency (Timbits) is a factor in all Ruth related transactions.
and if you have inflated femurs that’s more than one problem
Incorectness. Our currency is Canadian Tire money. Timbits have been benchmarked to the US dollar standard ever since their take-over by wendy’s and subsequent sale to whatever megaglomerate currently owns them. Timmies is as Canadian, as Beijing is Chilean.
This guy Canadas.
welp, new top fav comment of all time
They absolutely hate it if you call their currency Canadian Pounds.
I mean, they’ll still behave just as politely to you as they always do – after all, they’re Canadian. But there’ll be much polite screaming going on internally.
So how much do you have to call “Canandian Pounds” Canandian Pounds in order to move that screaming external?
Canandian Pounds
I don’t think you want to do that. They’re *Canadian*. Sure, it’s possible to get some of them to shout. But for others, before they start screaming, you become chunky salsa. They will, of course, apologize about that. But the fact remains, you’re chunky salsa.
To be clear, I’m not trying to say that Canadians are any more likely than other races to make salsa out of sentient raw materials. In my experience, they’re actually less likely than most. It’s just, for some, the politeness goes considerably above that point, even as that point is considerably above what anyone else can endure.
Do not poke them like that, because there’s no warning like there is with other creatures. There’s no flashing of eyes or show of teeth. It’s, “I’m very sorry, but that’s not what our currency is called.” one moment and “I’m very sorry, but I was low on salsa.” the next. That first apology was your first warning, and you went through so many others. How many doesn’t matter. The first should have been enough.
Jason moonlighting as Ruth’s butler, ok
At least we know how he’s being compensated.
She has a butler, and her parents are dead. That’s two-thirds of the way there, all she needs now is another younger orphan to endanger on her adventures. Becky, you’re up
Remember that Shortpacked comic where Batman is obsessed with all the Robins being like clones of himself, with black hair and blue eyes, and that’s why he doesn’t like Stephanie Brown?
Becky is a fellow freckled ginger, so she makes a perfect Robin for Ruth.
“I will put all of you inside me, in order of largest to smallest.” o.O
It really is a Galasso strip on Bat Acid, that one. But an excellent Galasso strip all the same. And as that Tumblr post linked in the description points out, it really did seem like they were calling attention to the Black Hair Blue Eyes Nesting Doll that was the canonical Robins in 2011. Man the New 52 was weird.
As an aside, Webtoons’ Wayne Family Adventures (which is an official DC Comics series, if not in their current mainline canon) recently featured several strips in which Steph Brown being Robin is that-series canon and then Bruce is genuinely and openly supportive of her as a hero.
Glad to see you getting your spoons back Regalli! 🧠🥹
Howard
She’s paid in exposure.
Exposure to dumbing, mostly
This is an accurate description of college tuition.
Nah, she’s paid in warm femurs. ;P
Jason’s always had a classist side, but he has ever laid his cards on the table this openly before?
The more I see of him the more it makes sense why he didn’t succeed as a TA.
Oh it is very blatantly obvious that Jason is just not cut out to be an educator. Tending a bar is a much better fit for him at the end of the day, honestly.
He did mention his father is a ‘cruel captain of industry’ and their address was apparently per British commenters of the ‘truly obscene wealth required to get here’ variety.
So it doesn’t shock me. It could take a while to unlearn that much classism from a truly Fuck You Wealthy upbringing.
The good news is, he’s a mathematics major studying here in the US and trying to avoid his dad so he’s going to learn JUST how much things suck when you DON’T have fuckoff wealth to fall back on! *Fiendish grin*
Which hints at a fascinating origin story for Jason, because he’s attending a public university in the American Midwest, and had to TA and now tends bar to make ends meet.
We’ve yet to meet this universe’s Dargon Chesterfield (if that indeed is his name) but methinks his relationship with Jason is no better than in that other reality.
His name is still Dargon Chesterfield, and he does still have an eyepatch!
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2018/comic/book-8/03-faz-is-great/knob/
He is also, as Jason put it, ‘essentially a supervillain,’ so I suspect the relationship isn’t much improved. (Though I guess ‘essentially a supervillain’s a step up from ‘literally a supervillain,’ at least. Marginally less evil, at least. If only for lack of opportunity to doom an entire universe out of spite.)
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2021/comic/book-11/04-hompk/immigrant/
Oh yeah, I forgot that he’s been mentioned a few times.
Most Very Rich people are essentially supervillains.
It’s kind of an unavoidable side effect of amassing that much money, that your negative impact reaches supervillain status. Having a big footprint means a lot of people get squashed.
More like all very rich people, but yes. It’s pretty much impossible to become very rich without becoming evil.
That second strip does point out this comic has a Disneyish problem with evil dads.
Indeed, it would only be fitting for a bartender of all people to eventually face with sober senses, the reality of their condition, of their relationship with other humans.
🔥👿🔥
*plays “Propoganda” by Taku Iwasaki on hacked muzak*
What level of fuck off wealth we talking here? Is it Carla’s “My family essentially owns this universe’s version of Tesla” (They probably just bought twitter) kind of fuck off money? The Billingsworth’s “We’re probably not billionaires, just really well connected high end millionaires with political sway which could arguably be better.” fuck off money? Then there’s Asher’s “Maybe we’re not super rich but we definitely own cops and can have yoj killed” mob level fuck off? He is supposedly a supervillian somenow.
I’d assume Carla’s end of the scale, with the possibility Dargon might win out over the Ruttens but we obviously don’t have numbers or definitive comparisons for him. Quoting Wikipedia, “Knightsbridge is home to many of the world’s richest people and has some of the highest property prices in the world. In 2014 a terrace of 427m2 sold for £15,950,000, a home in Montpelier Square. The average asking price for all the properties in slightly wider SW7 was £4,348,911 (as at Autumn 2014). On-street parking spaces have sold for as much as £300,000 for a 94-year lease. Fourteen of Britain’s two hundred most expensive streets are in the neighbourhood, as defined by The Times.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knightsbridge#Economy
Don’t tell me Jason’s classist. That’s pretty lame of him.
Given his upbringing I’m surprised he’s not worse.
he. always wears. a bowtie.
I have a feeling he’s both genuinely classist AND exaggerating for comic effect.
Her ample compensation moved to a different dorm.
Phrased like that, Becky and Dina’s request does sound kind of like a request two kids might make of their teacher on the playground (minus the sex part obviously).
In my language “Oi!” means “Hi!”.
mas tem br em todo canto mesmo né, rs
(no one panic, I am not reciting an ancient curse but merely saluting Kravis in the Language of Our People)
why not both
(vish maria, tem mesmo)
So, where I live these comics go up at 6 am. I usually read the new strip and comments before getting up around 9. This morning, I woke up very early and can’t fall asleep again. Thought to myself I’ll check out DoA for some distraction.
Well, it kept me occupied for much shorter than usual… Turns out there are a lot fewer comments at time of upload 😀 (dunno what I expected tbh)
I find the comments easier to digest when the strip first goes up. I tend to get really overwhelmed when there are too many.
Yeah, good point… It just feels unusual to me to see them all trickling in on reloading the page.
I’ll throw a few comments in around 3 hours after the comic goes live, then check back on just those threads later in the day. Catching up on the comments for some strips, especially when things get heated and there’s over 400 of them, is a lot.
Welcome to the U.S timezone, I assume your in a different country that is.
https://i.imgur.com/zdZYJ2i.png (NSFW)
https://i.imgur.com/bfokEoK.png (NSFW)
Who here is ready for
FEEEEEEEELINGS?
Story so far…
https://imgur.com/a/9Ob1cy3
titillation (hahaha, tit) with a side of FEELS. Love it!!
Ya really nailed Jennifer’s character here!
Famtastic!!! 😆
Not gonna lie, in panel 3 my first thought was “Why is Walky holding her upside down by her ankles and when did he get strong enough for that?”
Is it very wrong of me that I read panel 3 of the first one as Walky suddenly leaping to his feet with a triumphant roar, and flipping Jennifer upside down as he does so?
Post orgasm feels are best feels.
^^
oh no ! feels /o\
Great stuff. Imgur warned me that the last (and only last) link had mature content.
I am now trying to figure out if that’s emotional maturity.
Billy won at sex which is a normal thing to win that you can win
Should i be reading this in the psychiatrists waiting room? Probably not.
Will that stop me? Probably not.
I hope the session (and the overall care) goes well.
British classism confuses me as an American because I’m so used to living in a society that pretends to have unlimited movement along the social hierarchy so that its people can be easily fooled into ignoring the issue of wealth disparity. Whereas Britain just… openly has them? And they’ve got, like, names and shit? And your class is still your class no matter how much your wealth actually changes, I guess? What the hell even is Britain
To be fair, wealth DOES matter. The Weasleys are pure blooded wizards and due to their relative poverty that they are looked down upon by the Malfoys no matter what their wealth.
…
Wait, Potter isn’t the best guide for this?
Growing up is realizing that the stuff about “blood purity” in those books that you always thought was about racism is actually about classism, because no way in hell would the woman who bent over backwards justifying the house elves’ enslavement ever write something anti-racist deliberately.
I used to give Rowling the benefit of the doubt regarding House Elves because “I am stating this is not a stand-in for an actual thing but dealing with magical creatures. Because as an author you should not always be dealing with metaphor 24/7.” However, I’m now much-much less inclined to cut rowling slack.
The House Elf stuff was just all over the place. Hermione trying to organize for them was played as a joke and reads like an anti-woke screed, but the individual house elves that get more focus clearly show how much something like that is needed.
The basic concept is interesting, drawing from old folk tales and trying to fit them into a modern magical world. A better writer could do something with it.
I kinda figured that the wealth probably started the same but whereas the Weasley’s had 7 kids, the Malfoy’s had 1. So they had more extra money where the Weasleys had to spend their money. I never really thought of it as a class thing until you pointed it out.
Hell, the 7 kids thing is probably classism, too. Rich people, higher class people, can afford birth control and don’t breed like rabbits. Poor people do and therefore it’s clearly their own fault they’re poor.
Yeah, that makes sense too. But there’s gotta be a magic equivalent to the pill, too.
Granted I’m pretty sure modern plumbing didn’t exist in the magical world as a whole, since I heard someone (Maybe Rowling? I don’t remember) say that they just apperated their waste away.
I mean, some people like large families.
Weird people.
🙂
There might be some truth to the Horcrux’s canard that Molly didn’t love Ron because she wanted a daughter. Not true about the love, but maybe she really wanted a daughter and kept trying until she got one.
She said they did that before modern plumbing existed, as opposed to throwing shit into the streets.
When you apparate something, you are causing something to go from point ‘A’ to point ‘B’. So if they DID use magic to eliminate their wastes, where would it go?
“Away”. You know, where tHoSe PeOpLe live.
Some wizard or something says “vanishus mepoopum“, then next thing you know a turd just drops out of the sky in front of a tenement building.
/s
(Just in case I wasn’t dismissively satirical enough to convey this as sarcasm… I never read the books.)
To be fair, that’s what early plumbing did with waste as well. It’s got to go somewhere.
Generally into the water supply. 🙁
What’s a little cholera between social classes?
Well it turns out some things actually DO trickle down!
They certainly do:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DV9eCbxU8AEy737.jpg
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ELWsj7cWwAApI5F.jpg
Modern plumbing exists in the wizarding world. Moaning Myrtle haunts the girl’s lavatory, and Hermione was cornered in the restroom, complete with toilet stools and stalls, when she confronted the troll. Just because we never see or read of them being used as part of the story/books doesn’t mean they’re not there. We never saw any indication that the adolescent girls had to deal with menses, either, but I’m sure they did.
No, the 7 kids thing is actually sort-of-racism. The Weasleys have 7 kids because they’re the IRISH stand-ins, and therefore Catholic, and therefore contraception is bad.
I feel like that doesn’t roll with what we know of the Weasleys.
It kind of does though. Obviously, they’re stand ins, not actually Irish (or Catholic for that matter), but the tropes are definitely there. They’re coded as Irish.
Just think of it as the economic/cultural version of racism. You’re always black, you’re always lower class.
In Britain (or England at least, don’t know about the other parts) class is not just about wealth but about manners, way of talking, attitude etc. I have a friend who is from a solid working class background, not particularly well off, but he’s super smart and went to a private school on a stipend so he has the ability to come across just as posh as the “rich kids” cause he knows how to speak fancy and stuff
True class IS manners and how one conducts one’s self in their dealings with others. I present the former Liar-in-Chief as Exhibit ‘A’ as proof that money doesn’t confer class.
Sure, but different classes have different ideas about manners and how to conduct yourself with others. The higher up you go, the stricter and sometimes more arbitrary the rules are.
Reminds me of this classic bit from M*A*S*H:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGCviPIXKJA
Apologies for the Camera-Pointed-At-The-Screen-O-Vision, it’s the only copy I could find on YouTube.
(As an aside, that actor has some serious Tim Curry energy.)
To be honest, it’s the same way in the US. Just a bit less open about it. Our social status clues are a bit subtler, but they’re still there.
It’s just that by British standards, anyone in the US is at best “new money”.
US money has been old enough to marry since at least the 1870s.
Even earlier in Tenessee.
Yeah but we have the freedom to believe in the false hope that one day we, too, could be the next J.D. Carnegie-Bezos. All we have to do is keep giving the rich more money, then somehow it will come back to us. That’s why we need to give the rich all the breaks, so we can take advantage of them one day when we’re rich!
/S
“Ample compensation” was one of Ruth’s pet names for Billie.
so Ruth is totally hateboinking Jason, isn’t she? because otherwise I don’t get what she sees in this pompous classist.
Well, according to Sal he also has one hell of a dingus. I believe she compared it in size to a pint glass she was holding up at the time. Might be she’s a bit of a size queen when it comes to men.
they’re both foreigners in a stupid land
(and by that I mean the uni, not the country. Probably)
If her mother was American, she’d have dual citizenship by birthright (as far as I know).
(Well, if either of her parents were, but Sir Clint is her maternal grandfather and he apparently lives within reasonable driving distance of Bloomington.)
They’re both stuck-up jackasses with control issues given authority they were absolutely unequipped to handle.
Ruth seducing him by handcuffing him to the door is the most normal part of their relationship.
They make fun of Americans together.
I can’t see his wrists. I bet he’s handcuffed again.
If so then only on his right wrist. Left wrist is visibly non-cuffed in panel 5 of yesterday’s strip.
Oh yeah. Still possible, though! lol
Seems like a totally reasonable assumption. I’m headcannoning that he’s always handcuffed every time he opens the door like this.
Absolutely nothing can possibly go wrong with this plan, and I unreservedly endorse it.
Everyone over here snipping at Jason for being “classist” and ignoring Becky’s “SAY SOMETHING FOR ME IN YOUR FUNNY BRITISH LANGUAGE” nonsense…
Another reminder that Becky and Walky are (horrible, horrible) siblings under the skin, and not just with fart jokes.
Because Becky is allowed to be as rude/insensitive/thoughtless/cruel (pick whichever applies to whichever situation) as she wants and everyone who gets annoyed by it is clearly being some flavor of jerk.
Not too dissimilar to South Parks “City Wok’ running gag
Oh please, as if there was much comparison
But she said it with smile while Jason said it with saaaad face.
Besides i dont get it he was not punk/skinhead and not become punk/skinhead why he should said oi?
Maybe hes secretly Australian: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvHtKcS1POk
I feel like his “classism” here is more exasperation at how Americans tend to just go “ooh, do your British accent” without appreciating “Britain” isn’t just “wotcher guvna, give us two an’ six for the meter” or whatever they’ve gleaned from TV. Jason, with his background, is very obviously (to anyone with any kind of knowledge, and admittedly expecting this of American university students who don’t really care either way isn’t exactly fair) not the right category of British to say “oi” (in the sense Becky seems to be angling for), so exasperation seems to fit. At the end of the day, as he observes, he IS a bartender; were he so uppity he wouldn’t condescend to work in a bar even in direst need.
Nah he’s still being trashy. He could of ignored Becky, pointed out its gross to ask foreigners to perform for you or simply said that’s not how he talks. But he had to bring back to class sigh…
Eh, it’s not like I can’t see what you’re saying, but I don’t personally read that. Jason’s always a tetchy, easily-irked sort of character, so this seems more-or-less in line with that, for me. Of course, if in the next strip Willis were to have Jason excoriate Becky for daring to consider him- gasp!- a member of the proletariat, I’d say that’s pretty cut-and-dry.
I…don’t think you quite understand how deep British classism runs. To put it in American terms, that’s as if he hauled off with minimal provocation and started dropping Trump talking points. Becky is super being annoying there, it’s true, but that offhanded comment–not even about anyone present!–revealed a LOT about Jason’s character.
Yes, because making fun of British people is always correct
I will continue making oibruv jokes as reparations until Britain pays actual reparations to Jamaica. It’s only fair.
That line is long, and full of horrors.
“Britain” who? The aristocratic/ extremely rich people who took advantage of slaves, or the average working people whose ancestors were never anything more than malnourished, mud-soaked peasants tilling fields and who never laid eyes on a black person until Windrush generation turned up? Sure, just raise taxes so people who’ve been working class since the year 1400 have to cover the sins of the rich who profited from slavery. THAT’S nuanced thinking. Hopefully the African aristocracy who sold THEIR OWN PEOPLE for profit will similarly have to address their sins.
Yikes. This doesn’t sound any better than the usual American equivalent.
Yeah no this oibruv can fuck off lol. Brits/Europeans like to act like America is uniquely racist then turn around and say this shit.
Oi bruv it’s chewsday innit? Simpow as. Wa’ah bo’le
Are you an habitual simpleton, or are you making a particular concerted effort on this occasion? It’s distinctly unbecoming, I regret to tell you.
Jason being classist is way worse than someone making dumb jokes about his British accent.
Depends where you’re standing, I’m sure. In addition to which consideration, he works as a bartender, as he mentioned; were he sufficiently snobby as to find countenancing this unbearable, he’d have packed up and gone back to Knightsbridge. That he hasn’t indicates otherwise.
I think we as a people really ought to move past whataboutism and try to keep in mind that many things can be annoying at the same time. and by “I think” I mean “please I am begging”
other than physically stopping her i don’t think carla would listen to ruth lol
Here I was thinking that if Becky gets some security she’ll be less obnoxious, when she gets a job she’ll be less obnoxious, when she starts studying she’ll be less obnoxious, when she gets into a healthy relationship she’ll be less obnoxious, when she gets laid she’ll be less obnoxious…
nope.
What if I made her the co-star of a video game?
Lol, no. People who are obnoxious don’t get LESS obnoxious the safer and more comfortable they are, they get MORE obnoxious.
Much like Ruth’s violent bullying wasn’t a function of her depression, Becky’s all-around assholery wasn’t a function of her unsafety. They’re just like that.
I mean, Ruth’s violent bullying was a function of her depression and vengeful attitude against Billie for being an alcoholic. Becky is also an asshole because her life was spent trying to pretend to be Ross’ godly daughter and then it got absurdly nightmarish with near death experiences and the loss of her last remaining parent so she’s cripplingly dependent on unconditional love and safety to function.
It’s just, y’know, still wrong. Hell it’s worse than wrong; they know what the effects of their trauma have done to them and they started actively weaponizing it to justify how they act.
Ruth is getting treatment for her depression and she’s STILL a violent bully. Ross is no longer in the picture and Becky’s STILL an asshole. These things don’t need to be functions of each other, they can exist independently.
It’s more complex than that, even if whether or not they’re doing wrong is simple and binary.
Ruth is in a scenario where she has power and the ability to exact it as she sees fit over some outrageous grudge in Billie’s direction, much like her granddad. Ruth can do whatever she wants to Billie even when she knows it’s wrong, and she pushes and pulls until eventually she self-destructs, Billie intervenes and… well they start self-destructing even harder. She’s woefully incompetent and undeserving of her power, but she’s surrounded by an apathetic staff and the only person who’s gonna hold her back is her, not unless she messes with the Pod People again and the RA with the incredibly cool name kicks the hell out of her, which; I’d pay for that.
Becky freely emotionally manipulates the people around her because “position myself in as the agreeable one” is how she survived a home life that would kill her, probably killed her mom, and almost succeeded with her. Becky wakes up and has all these survival instincts and trauma responses in her even if the necessity of them is gone, which is driving her to make Joyce suffer and make everyone around her pick up the emotional baggage; there is no way for me to believe that Becky having Dorothy and Leslie coddling her all the time isn’t an entirely textual element.
The both of them are doing the wrong thing, just because they have comedic and humanizing moments doesn’t make it Fine Because Becky Does It, it means we’re reading a story where two of the main cast members went through nightmarish circumstance and came out of it in a way that’s making them inflict pain onto their loved ones.
And it is wrong, but there’s a difference between Rachel being completely, objectively, factually right about Ruth (she is) and whether or not Ruth deserves to wake up in the morning and decide she can have value. Ruth’s done wrong and maybe X amount of characters won’t forgive her, but Ruth’s still a focus character in a way that Rachel isn’t. Becky and Joyce are gonna reconcile even if Becky’s being an absurd monster at her literal saviour who’s why she’s alive enough right now to try and brainwash her back, but that’s because Becky’s not just her worst, most loathsome behaviours, it means she’s got shit she has a responsibility to sort out and, as a reader, I can make a reasonable guess that she’ll sort them out in a way where she gets to keep being a main character.
Yes, but once actions become personality traits in response to a social setting, removing yourself more or less permanently from the setting doesn’t cause your personality to reset back to what it was pre-trauma.
Ughhhhhh why does Jason exist, he’s so cringe that I don’t want to accept him as British because we don’t actually talk like this
D.Y. Willis seems to have got his impressions of British speech from English characters in 1930s Hollywood movies.
I find him hilarious, although only because I see him as the one fantasy element in DoA.
Wait, not Amazi-Girl’s superhero’s shenanigans?
Well, not if you’re working class.
I feel like in some way “being british” became an identity for Jason and now he has to keep up the stereotype to feel like he is recognized as a person, even though he doesn’t really talk like this.
An Australian friend of mine says this is a real life phenomenon that when you’re in another culture, you can often become “More Australian than you ever were before” as a way of compensating for your new environment.
I choose to believe Jason is just a snobby know it all in Britain but in America acts like he’s a stereotype.
There’s definitely an underlying layer of “pip-pip, tally-ho” “steady the Buffs”-esque Biggles-like antiquated performative Britishness going on; as others suggest, in Watsonian terms, it’s his THING, and he doesn’t want to drop it (although wasn’t there some suggestion he was trying to cover his accent when Ruth called him on how bad a job he was doing with it?); in Doylist terms, Willis probably doesn’t spend much of his time poring over present-day upper-middle-class British language usage.
You know what would be the greatest plot twist of all time, if it turned out that Jason was secretly a time traveler from the 1800s.
There are a wide variety of Brits available though, with various modes of speeches.
I mean, there are still people that use Cockney rhyming slang…
Haha, no, RAs do not get ample compensation.
At least, my friend didn’t.
Oi… I wonder how would Dina feel about Ork Squiggoths…
Exactly, Why that would be the RA doing that? Just run after Carla and block her!!!
First I thought, “Carla vs Jason, yay!!”. Now I cannot stop thinking about the Curb-Stomp Battle page at TV Tropes.
Wait a second. Jason isn’t really British, is he. He’s cosplaying as a British tv character and he’s gone too far. The cast doesn’t know ’cause they’ve never seen a British tv show.
God that would be amazing.
Like he’s evilly smirking and goes “Ah, I suppose my clever ruse has finally been penetrated… but I’m afraid it’s too late, y’all.”
I feel like someone trying to use their authority to stop Carla from doing something will only make Carla more likely to do the thing
Yeah, Carla’s bit about not knowing who Joyce was clearly her way of justifying not telling her, while still keeping her asshole role. Push her too hard and she’ll have to decide between the two.
I agree. Carla knows better than to out someone like this. She’s an agent of chaos, sure, but not malice.
even if it’s info they volunteered to being with, i’d think going up to a random person you don’t know and being like “oh two of your friends had sex” would be a form of harassment or so
It’s interesting, based on the Becky and the Harry Potter comments in this thread, how many of the fans of this comedic webcomic don’t have much of a sense of humor.
Becky isn’t being funny, she’s being an asshole, repeatedly, and just because she laughs as she’s being an asshole doesn’t change that. It’s perfectly possible to be funny WHILE being an asshole, but that requires you to admit that you’re being an asshole and to not respond to people who call you out on your assholery with “how dare you tell me that, I’m an orphaned lesbian, can’t you take a joke from an orphaned lesbian”.
I don’t think Harry Potter was trying to be funny. If it was, it certainly failed spectacularly, because it wasn’t funny (or, y’know, actually good).
Becky the character is intended to be funny, and I find her funny. Your mileage may vary as an individual reader, of course. You just may be taking her a little too seriously. Unlax a little is all I’m saying.
Points to whoever gets the reference.
I feel like Becky the Character is intended to be a lot of things, including funny.
Like I don’t think her sole purpose in the series is to be funny, invariably, and even the strips where she’s being funny (like this one!) still exist in a wider context of stuff that isn’t, specifically, meant to display her as funny and charming.
I find Becky mostly funny, but does anyone really find her charming?
I only started liking Becky come the Faith-Off where she’s real chapped that the terminal collapse of her best friend’s faith is inconveniencing her and every single person around her is extremely concerned about how she feels about it, so I’m probably not the person to ask.
She’s charming to me in the same way a big pile of garbage becomes more charming as I await the match to get thrown atop.
There comes a point in a lot of alleged/attempted comedy where a character is just too obnoxious/cringe/stereotypical/etc etc to be entertaining to me. Their behavior becomes something that lessens my enjoyment and engagement. Usually I stop reading or watching then.
Becky hasn’t hit that point for me… yet.
OK, I’ve said it twice already in different situations I’ll just go ahead and make this my catchphrase
Literary criticism is about assigning blame, and the more blame you assign the more criticismer it is
Addendum: It’s about blame in the immediate moment regardless of any context, and also ‘blame’ is for whoever’s raising more of a fuss.
Welcome to the doa comment section, it’s a paradox
Yeah mr classicist. You’re a bartender. Used to be a teacher though. And lets not forget why.
No, no, he wasn’t a classicist, he was a mathematician!
Until he started doinking his students.
Hmm, narrative causality would suggest that the attempt to stop Carla from telling Joyce is exactly what will lead to Joyce finding out.
British gentlemen don’t wear suspenders. Suspenders are what Yanks call “garters.” Gentlemen hold up their trousers with braces—like the ones Jason’s sporting.
Yet again proof that Americans and British are two peoples separated by a common language.
American English likes to mug the natives in dark alleys and then loot the bodies for random vocabulary. British English the same except substitute jungles for alleys.
The fourth panel might the the most stupid thing Jason ever said.
and I’m aware of what an astronomically high bar that is
eyebrows…
Post-Skip Jason looks like the lovechild of Pre-Skip Jason and Mike.
As one wise tumblrite put it, his new design fucks harder than he did in his own Slipshine.
They’re not actually eyebrows, they’re two
strips of norivery burnt sausage links.OK stop making me hungry bruh.
I assuming RAs get some money for what they do, right? Probably not much though.
I haven’t been in a college since 1989, or a dorm since 1979, but as I understand it RAs get room and board free and that’s about it.
That’s worth at least a grand a month at today’s rates!
Looks like about 12 grand for the year at IU – which is about 8 months on campus, probably a little less.
That’s worth about $1500 a month at today’s rates!
They’re compensated with room and board, and sometimes less tuition.
Not necessarily the most fair, but Jason’s last line is definitely amongst the most fair comments he has made in any universe.