i mean, dorothy IS jewish…tho i wonder if anyone’s ever used that as an excuse to discriminate like “oh we know you don’t celebrate christmas so we excluded a christmas bonus”
Generally discrimination for religious minorities around Christmas in America involves insisting that we celebrate your holidays.
The most impactful financially: requirements that we take unpaid time off for no dang reason in December. Getting cranky, refusing, or firing us for wanting time off for our own essential familial holidays (remember: our actually-important holidays aren’t in the winter).
The most impactful emotionally: Christmas and “””holiday””” parties often really suck for a lot of us. (We literally aren’t allowed to say so, or else we hate joy, aren’t team players, etc.)
And anything to do with santa and Jesus or Christmas in public schools is just awful.
Christmas can be your favorite thing, that’s totally fine!
But it probably really isn’t our thing, at all, and that ought to be way more OK.
Yeah, a lot of the people who run businesses and public institutions still have this quaint Victorian notion that the people they work with are their extended family and should cheerfully participate in their personal celebrations. Insisting that you are not related, and have your own life and your own special times, must seem rude, I guess, to those living in such a delusion. I wish they would wake up.
And let me say, being a Christian, that the way in which Santa/Jesus/Christmas are wildly and tastelessly overdone in school, in businesses, and all over the streets just sucks all the joy out of the season and makes me want to get it over with.
The fun thing about my work’s “Christmas party” is that it generally takes place in November because it’s easier to book a venue then. I don’t know if that makes it better to non-Christmas-celebrators, but probably not.
Thankfully, they also don’t care much if you don’t go. (The people high up enough to actually believe “your team is like your family” are also so high up they’ve no idea if you’ve attended the Christmas party or not.)
“Here we’re like a family. I’m going to constantly lord my authority over you and get mad if you think me ever doing anything positive towards you isn’t the most grand act of charity imaginable.”
Remember: The owner of a company explicitly has certain contradictory material interests to its employees! You and your fellow workers may not be family, but that doesn’t mean you can’t find solidarity together along these material interests, even if you are diametrically opposed in other ways! If the boss says unionization is a bad idea (and you should just trust them like a family 🤮), it is their material interests talking, not yours!
“The bourgeoisie is blind to the concerns of the working class.”
-This message brought to you by Labor Union Akko
If by “catalog” you mean, “the little machine in my pocket automatically does all the registering and organizing of the world’s elementally attuned, mystical wild life, while I bully toddlers and the elderly alike, on my quest to take out the regions syndicate of organized crime”, then sure.
Think of it more as, you’re gathering data. The pokedex knows what like…pokemon are but you meeting, battling them and catching them is what allows the pokedex to GAIN that information.
ie. It doesn’t know stuff like their height, weight, footprint or location range until you catch one, so I assume you’re actually assisting with that research in some way.
I mean probably! If the technology exists to create what are essentially pocket dimensions in which to carry your captured monsters, the very concept of the Pokeball, who knows what other kinds of technology can fit in the same space?
Given the Transformers can usually also occupy much less space in their vehicle forms, makes you wonder if Pokemon trainers have been using alien technology all along :p
Technically speaking pokeballs aren’t pocket dimensions, but the bags are. Pokemon are canonically able to convert themselves into an energy form, that energy that makes them up is called “infinity energy”. A pokeball is a device that is able to store that energy and convert it into data (hence why they can be stored in a computer). That’s why there are those beams of light in the anime when they exit and enter the balls. According to Legends Arceus pokemon are also able to use that infinity energy to shrink down to a very small size, so the old precursors to the modern pokeballs *do* physically contain them while they are in their smaller form. This shrinking and growing is also what causes pokemon to seemingly appear and disappear, when they aren’t visible it’s because they are shrunk down so small you can’t see them hiding behind the grass or rocks or whatever.
But the bags *are* fully functional pocket dimensions, made by Sylph Co. to be bigger on the inside. That’s why they can store an endless amount of stuff, even things that physically take up more space than the bag, like bicycles.
I’ve subscribed to the headcanon that you are the one adding information into the Pokedex. Have you seen how batshit insane some of the entries are? They sound like a 10yo wrote them.
All else aside, if the comic continues to move at the same pace it is now, it’d take roughly three and a half centuries real time before we get to Dorothy being age-eligible for the presidency.
it’s a miracle some ppl have survived this long, mental issues aside, with all the garbage food in america and car/other accidents happening, i’m surprised more ppl don’t die off easily, some ppl even survive bullet wounds too
Grad school felt like that for me more than undergrad. Why I didn’t do as well. Having school therapist that could only see you once every 5 months due to high turnover and a lot of students didn’t help either. Some day I would like to finish that degree, but I worry that nothing will transfer.
As a rather younger PhD dropout who spends a lot of time arguing with myself about when might be “too late” to go finish it… while it was reassuring that there were students in my cohort ~10 years older, I also know that the academic job market is uh, pretty ruthless about career tempo. Are you doing a postdoc or angling for a tenure-track position, or do you have different goals? I think I worry most about persevering through the rest of the degree and then finding out I’m only competitive to be an adjunct at the second satellite campus of Nowhere State School of Mines and Haberdashery, because the pool is full of 27-year-olds with five Nature publications.
There is a lot of connections issues too, as no one wants to hire me because I don’t have connections in the area, but then I am over qualified even without my masters degree for other jobs. Makes it hard to get money to finish the degree. I just don’t want the years I put into it to be useless because I didn’t go back in time. The field I am in is invasive weeds (biology/ecology/environmental), but they tell me that they will only hire me for janitorial jobs in state parks because of the lack of connections (doing that would supposedly get me the connections according to them). To be honest, I wouldn’t mind being something like a paralegal for environmental law. I have been in a published paper, but only once, and that seems to more deter jobs out of the field than help me in the field. The whole, you won’t stay here because you have been published so we won’t hire you. The worst limbo.
I do hope Dorothy’s closer to a breakthrough than a breakdown, but I mean, we’ll see how it goes for her. I’m glad she’s talking to Amber, though, she does indeed notice these things.
Recently I have noticed certain positive aspects in Amber (I’m not a big fan of her), but if she is a possible option to help Dorothy…well, let’s see what happens.
amber would be good to talk to, idk if booster would get involved but amber would have a bit more personal experience compared to booster who’s only educationally knowledable about psych stuff tho i’m sure they’ve gone through stuff growing up too
I’m pretty sure she’s being facetious about “keeping the Sabbath” because she isn’t Jewish and has been quite vocal about her atheism in the past, iirc? (Unless I’m mistaking her with another character)
Dorothy is Jewish she mentioned it when talking to Robin about as soon as people find out she is Jewish and a woman on Twitter she is bombarded by hateful, sexist and anti Semitic comments. but she is an atheist but Judaism operates in that sort Grey ethno religious thing where people can declare they are culturally Jewish also she could have a Catholic mom or dad or Jewish mom or dad and still be considered Jewish by the reform and reconstructist Jewish denominations.
Jewishness isn’t so much an identity as an ethnicity with a religious entranceway. If you were born a Jew, you’re stuck that way regardless of your beliefs. Anyone could become a Jew, but then you’ve gotta learn the religion and the practices before its official.
Truth is, most Jews I’ve met aren’t religious people in general, maybe they like some of the holiday traditions but otherwise pretty secular.
I respect your view that Jewishness is primarily seen as an ethnicity with religious ties, but it’s essential to acknowledge that Jewish identity can be quite diverse. While some may connect strongly with the religious aspects, many Jews, like myself, appreciate the cultural and secular traditions without considering it their ethnic identity. It’s a complex tapestry of identity within the Jewish community.
“Religion = faith/belief” is actually an original Christian contribution to religious thought.
Belief is not how Jews define religion. We much more typically define religion as an identity (similar to a tribe), and/or relating to what practices you do.
There are tons of atheist Jews, it’s not a problem for us. You can’t lose your Judaism by changing your mind.
Personally, I don’t really call myself an atheist because I still practice some parts of Judaism and hold it sacred. But I don’t actually put faith in any metaphysical phenomena or believe that biblical law is morally compulsory on anyone, so I suppose an atheist would probably call me an atheist, heh
you’ve said that several times, that a person stops being Christian by changing their mind, and that’s not at all how it happened for me. It’s not just like an identity or practices I decided to stop identifying as or stop doing. It’s a realization that I didn’t have the beliefs anymore.
and you keep saying that Christians invented the idea that religion = faith/belief, and that sounds like Christian propaganda to me. They got it from a Roman mystery religion. And with countless religions existing before that, I doubt it was a unique idea even then.
The idea that a person cannot stop being a member of a religion is abhorrent to me.
” It’s a realization that I didn’t have the beliefs anymore.” I should add that it was also something I absolutely did not want at the time. I was desperate to keep believing. So “just changing your mind” is at a minimum incredibly ignorant and inaccurate. It’s like it came out of a Chick tract.
Changing your mind is the wrong way to put it, since as you say it’s not really a conscious intentional process much of the time.
That said, the concept is basically right. Christianity has a very different approach than Judaism or known religions of antiquity. Might not be unique, but it certainly wasn’t the norm. The whole faith/belief leads to salvation thing wasn’t really part of pre-Christian religions. There were gods, everyone knew that, and they required sacrifices or ritual behaviors or the like to get or keep their favor. Belief wasn’t really relevant, just what you did.
Fair enough. I’ll try to remember and retire that phrase — it doesn’t show respect for how very unwanted and painful that process can be for people. My apologies.
“There were gods, everyone knew that”
Aristophanes and Diogenes must have been time travelers??
The poet who wrote, “The fool said in his heart, ‘There is no God’; they have dealt corruptly; they have committed abominable deeds; no one does good.” only accidentally described disbelief as impiety, probably just doing it phonetically.
No, I think you’re participating in the Christian hegemony. Also, Zoroastrianism is a “religion of antiquity”.
Thank you, Leorale. And to clarify, because it does sound judgmental, the reason I find it abhorrent when apostasy isn’t respected is because of things like the Inquisition, or modern religious courts who claim authority over former adherents.
I agree actually, I guess I was just explaining the traditional way that it’s recognized. There are definitely people I know that wouldn’t fit the precise traditional definitions of Jewishness, but they are still a part of what you could call the Jewish cultural continuum.
And if anyone is confused by how there can be an atheist, religious Jewish person:
Christianity is, in general, an orthodoxic (right thought/belief) religion, concerned that you have the appropriate faith in god.
Judaism is, if I remember right, orthoPRAXIC (right action), more concerned with what you *do* than what you believe.
There are ways to be Jewish and also atheist. But she’s irreligious. Although probably some exposure to actual Judaism through a grandparent. https://www.dumbingofage.com/catholic/
As someone who just coined the lexographic nightmare “non-Christmas-celebrators” upthread, because I wrote “non-Christian”, then remembered that atheists such as myself still celebrate Christmas, the idea that I’m still culturally Church of Scotland makes a lot of sense.
There was a book I read once called The Little Book of Calvin, which was a tongue-in-cheek exploration of why Scots take pride in being miserable, and the author said that one of the most Scottish Calvinist people he knew was his grandfather, who firmly believed God didn’t exist and that was why everything sucked.
Saint Nicholas is a historical person who did live and die. So to a person who doesn’t subscribe to an Abrahamic belief, Santa Claus is technically more real than God.
So I guess even atheists have a justification to celebrate December 25 by way of celebrating Santa.
I mean, I’ve never looked into it that deeply, but I believe there’s some pretty good evidence that Jesus really existed as well. I don’t personally believe he was the Son of God, but I also don’t believe a Turkish bishop who died in the 4th century instead moved to the North Pole, where he gained immortality and a lot of weight.
(Also, there’s not a huge amount of evidence for that. I mean, probably more than that Easter is named after a goddess the Venerable Bede may have completely made up, but still.)
PS. “Changing your mind” was a tongue-in-cheek description of the non-fraught manner in which I stopped believing in God during college, but, it’s too mean/disrespectful towards people who experienced a deeply fraught loss of faith.
Sorry!
Dorothy not read well as mentally fragile, or particularly religious, or both? I think that’s kind of a Walky flaw, and maybe some of the other cast. They really put her on this pedestal of excellence no one could really live up to.
Like ok. I get that Dorothy has a stressful life because of her lifestyle but that feels less like an “existing” flaw. In a weird way it really feels like she brings a lot of this anxiety on herself. So I dunno. Her saying “Existing” just feels weird because in my mind it’s like “You could stop.”
Like if Amber said “existing” I’d be like “yeah” cuz like her dad’s a mob boss and she’s got a dead best friend and another going through depression and her ex-boyfriend and her had that halloween party fight and that’s not even keeping in mind her neurodivergence. Dotty just feels like an overachiever to me. Existing ain’t hard. Achieving is hard.
I get it. I can’t exactly argue a lot of Dorothy’s stress isn’t self inflicted. She does also hold herself to that same high standard of perfection, but that can be a mental illness in itself. The inability to relax, the compulsion to achieve can get as toxic as any other. That’s before you consider she’s been through an equal amount of trauma from external factors no one could control. She got kidnapped, saw a guy likely trying to assault her and Joyce get stabbed a bunch.
I think it’s harder to understand from the outside that inability to chill is a problem. One Dorothy’s dealing with as her personal and professional life keeps taking L’s even if they’re ones she could easily dismiss. Some people just can’t.
Reminded of how, when I was first diagnosed with my anxiety disorder, people kept asking me what I had to be anxious about. “Not much, really. That’s why it’s a disorder.”
Dorothy thinks she has to exist as the “early life” section of her idealized future self’s wikipedia article. The ideal version of herself can take charge of any situation and knows what to do when she does. This Dorothy thought she took charge of a situation, and thinks she got someone’s skull bashed in as a result. She thought she took charge of the situation, and thinks she got Joyce abducted again by the murderer.
Every time this comes up I want to say that I don’t get it. Dorothy took charge promptly when everybody was uncertain, led the team, and in the end they got out and the bad guys didn’t. Yes, lessons to be learned about the practicalities of leadership in conflict, but I think I would feel exultant, not depressed.
Good leaders don’t always make good decisions; they’re accounted good because the good results stack up higher than the bad ones. It’s making timely decisions that can be carried out, which makes leadership valuable.
She did that, but I think she had a naive idea about succeeding. What shook Dorothy was the realization she could do everything right, but it still costs somebody.
The guys with the deadly weapons were in charge. She said when to go out the only exit. A lot of things happened, both for and against their escape, that she did not account for. Her view of herself is someone who knows what’s best in any situation, having full control. She did not, not even of her “team”.
Blaine got out.
She’s having nightmares about Ross being killed, and Joyce being abducted again. She blames herself for those. You’d feel exultant, great. She doesn’t.
Strictly speaking mental health problems don’t actually need a “reason,” or a cause. Sometimes they just are. Also, Dorothy has always seemed ok to other people because her symptoms are generally socially acceptable. No one complains when she jogs more and studies harder. Best analogy I can think of right now is that folks are less likely to notice someone’s eating disorder if they’re skinny because that’s socially acceptable. They don’t necessarily notice the damage it’s doing internally.
Existing is extremely hard when you have anxiety, even doing a job that isn’t super stressful can cause massive burnout. I relate to this even more because it’s Dorothy saying it
Existing can absolutely be hard when you’ve built up your identity so much to be one thing that you don’t really know how to be anything else. It’s easy to say you can just be something else, but it’s a lot harder in practice. Dorothy has built her entire self around becoming the President (and as HueSatLight put it, embodying the “early life” section of what she wants her future wikipedia entry to look like). If you can’t understand that then you’ve built a much healthier identity than Dorothy has.
Also, technically Dorothy’s current identity crisis is at least mostly self-inflicted, but it didn’t come to her in a vacuum. She doesn’t seem to have been taught that it’s okay to fail sometimes, and in fact it’s inevitable. She literally cannot be what she feels she has to be, and the only alternative is utter failure in her understanding.
I know other people have said this in various different ways, but the fact that Dorothy’s problems right now are almost entirely self-inflicted is exactly what makes this strip feel tragic as f*ck to me (well, that, and I think I’m also rather a chronic overachiever myself). It’s…tragic in a very Shakespearean way, rather than in a Lifetime way, if that makes any sense. I don’t sympathize with Dorothy because she’s reacted understandably poorly to incredibly horrible circumstances, I sympathize with her because she has a single, enormous, character flaw which she’s been given countless opportunities to fix, opportunities which she’s completely rejected every single time and it’s obviously driving her to her impending doom.
well a lot of ppl do seem to struggle/burn out at college age but dororthy does seem to be over ambitious compared to the rest of the cast
idk if she’d rly be that much better if she just actively did nothing as well/go stir crazy but even if ppl are making bad decisions and biting off more than they can chew, depression and executive dysfunction can strike even if you do take care of yourself
be interesting if dorothy did go to another doctor, and trying out antidepressants and seeing if it works for her as long as she doesn’t spiral or double down about fixing everyone’s problems but i guess she doesn’t want any medication b/c of potential future scandals (although i feel like by the time dorothy’s old enough to be president it shouldn’t be a stigma. If anything it’d be concerning for the opposite like “wow our world leaders are just rawdogging life and not on any meds”)
Did this for 40 something years. It took thatbl9ng to find myself in a position to actively acknowledge what was going on, and to express myself publicly.
idk if amber specificlaly knows but dorothy’s brought it up before even if she doesn’t actively practice it (unless her jewish-ness is an ethnic thing and not a religious choice)
It’s stretched tightly across her forehead.
She’ll feel better after surving a horror scenario or two and killing/help killing a few slasher killers.
Oh, and she has to write a book about persevering through it as well.
This comic already hit me pretty hard on a personal level, and then your comment practically quadrupled that impact. OW. That….yeah, that is a very concise explanations of a lot of life problems I’ve had the past. Jeez.
Maybe a little fling with Amber, but she should find some people with no history of expectations she can just be ordinary around. A person can be in more than one social circle.
lol is that even possible? i mean, not that that should ever be a goal, but y’know i’m sure some stuff would contradict each other like being paranoid and distrustful of everyone/antisocial while others have an unhealthy codependency/attachment to certain ppl
I recently discovered I have adhd and lemme tell you, that alone is full of contradictions already! It seems the brain doesn’t really care about logical consistency…
I don’t really practice Judaism anynore but i consider my self culturally Jewish and agnostic but i needed a rest from work Yom Kippur fell on sunday and monday so i asked my work if i could take Yom Kippur off they knew i was Jewish I wanted visit my family a Monday but my work said I had to use my PTO off beacuse the state I work remotely in doesn’t have to give Yom Kippur off. Even though the state I live in does l. I have a big interview on Wednesday for a non profit in the state I work in which will not only pay me 10k more then I make currently but has better benefits.
Any way I get it Dotty if you want to use religious and cultural reasons to justify a break and you actually are part of said group, then go for it. But also seriously take the whole weekend and maybe Monday off you need it also tell your therapist about this.
Thank you! Just got told my work needed to be redone beacuse of technicality, by my current employer 16 hours worth of work so I really really need that new job.
Oh man, if I had a nickel for every close personal friend who’s told me in the last few months that existing isn’t living, I’d have two nickels, which isn’t much, but is probably a sign.
Dorothy has lost all control of her life and, as a controlling person, her response is to tighten her grip, which means accepting that she’s no longer driving the car is too terrifying to admit. I have been there and it is Very Not Good.
Just in case anyone else feels like Dorothy does (and like I do right now) I’ll play some calm instrumental music over the hacked computer speakers… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYl7v0YsX9g
Somehow it doesn’t help with feeling sad, though.
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with no overtime pay, either, yikes
Is there at least a Christmas bonus?
You expect it to buy a swimming pool, but it’s really just a jelly-of-the-month club membership.
i mean, dorothy IS jewish…tho i wonder if anyone’s ever used that as an excuse to discriminate like “oh we know you don’t celebrate christmas so we excluded a christmas bonus”
Generally discrimination for religious minorities around Christmas in America involves insisting that we celebrate your holidays.
The most impactful financially: requirements that we take unpaid time off for no dang reason in December. Getting cranky, refusing, or firing us for wanting time off for our own essential familial holidays (remember: our actually-important holidays aren’t in the winter).
The most impactful emotionally: Christmas and “””holiday””” parties often really suck for a lot of us. (We literally aren’t allowed to say so, or else we hate joy, aren’t team players, etc.)
And anything to do with santa and Jesus or Christmas in public schools is just awful.
Christmas can be your favorite thing, that’s totally fine!
But it probably really isn’t our thing, at all, and that ought to be way more OK.
Yeah, a lot of the people who run businesses and public institutions still have this quaint Victorian notion that the people they work with are their extended family and should cheerfully participate in their personal celebrations. Insisting that you are not related, and have your own life and your own special times, must seem rude, I guess, to those living in such a delusion. I wish they would wake up.
And let me say, being a Christian, that the way in which Santa/Jesus/Christmas are wildly and tastelessly overdone in school, in businesses, and all over the streets just sucks all the joy out of the season and makes me want to get it over with.
The fun thing about my work’s “Christmas party” is that it generally takes place in November because it’s easier to book a venue then. I don’t know if that makes it better to non-Christmas-celebrators, but probably not.
Thankfully, they also don’t care much if you don’t go. (The people high up enough to actually believe “your team is like your family” are also so high up they’ve no idea if you’ve attended the Christmas party or not.)
“Here we’re like a family. I’m going to constantly lord my authority over you and get mad if you think me ever doing anything positive towards you isn’t the most grand act of charity imaginable.”
Remember: The owner of a company explicitly has certain contradictory material interests to its employees! You and your fellow workers may not be family, but that doesn’t mean you can’t find solidarity together along these material interests, even if you are diametrically opposed in other ways! If the boss says unionization is a bad idea (and you should just trust them like a family 🤮), it is their material interests talking, not yours!
“The bourgeoisie is blind to the concerns of the working class.”
-This message brought to you by Labor Union Akko
No, being part of a miority was never used as a reason to discriminate ever. Especially being Jew.
Obligatory /s because people wil be people.
Aw, jeez, Dotty.
You catalog pokemon, Amber? C’mon the games do that for you!
But not as well as Amber does
Catalog, sure. But organizing them in Boxes is a whole other ordeal.
Technically speaking Professor Oak sends you out on your journey to catalogue pokemon so your actual first job is catalogue all of them.
If by “catalog” you mean, “the little machine in my pocket automatically does all the registering and organizing of the world’s elementally attuned, mystical wild life, while I bully toddlers and the elderly alike, on my quest to take out the regions syndicate of organized crime”, then sure.
Think of it more as, you’re gathering data. The pokedex knows what like…pokemon are but you meeting, battling them and catching them is what allows the pokedex to GAIN that information.
ie. It doesn’t know stuff like their height, weight, footprint or location range until you catch one, so I assume you’re actually assisting with that research in some way.
I mean probably! If the technology exists to create what are essentially pocket dimensions in which to carry your captured monsters, the very concept of the Pokeball, who knows what other kinds of technology can fit in the same space?
Given the Transformers can usually also occupy much less space in their vehicle forms, makes you wonder if Pokemon trainers have been using alien technology all along :p
Or if Transformers are very advanced Pokemons.
Starscream I choose you.
Steel type is right there
Aw, it’s just an everyday non-localized claudication, nothing mysterious at all.
More than a few pokemon are canonically aliens, as well as mythical creatures, ghosts(both human and pokemon), and gods.
Technically speaking pokeballs aren’t pocket dimensions, but the bags are. Pokemon are canonically able to convert themselves into an energy form, that energy that makes them up is called “infinity energy”. A pokeball is a device that is able to store that energy and convert it into data (hence why they can be stored in a computer). That’s why there are those beams of light in the anime when they exit and enter the balls. According to Legends Arceus pokemon are also able to use that infinity energy to shrink down to a very small size, so the old precursors to the modern pokeballs *do* physically contain them while they are in their smaller form. This shrinking and growing is also what causes pokemon to seemingly appear and disappear, when they aren’t visible it’s because they are shrunk down so small you can’t see them hiding behind the grass or rocks or whatever.
But the bags *are* fully functional pocket dimensions, made by Sylph Co. to be bigger on the inside. That’s why they can store an endless amount of stuff, even things that physically take up more space than the bag, like bicycles.
I’ve subscribed to the headcanon that you are the one adding information into the Pokedex. Have you seen how batshit insane some of the entries are? They sound like a 10yo wrote them.
Either that or the Pokemon Professors be experimenting with doses of Acid in their free time 😛
Well, that would explain why they send 10 year old kids out to wander the wilderness unsupervised and harass the wildlife.
There is a long way to go
I know, right? There are at least one hundred fifty, or more, to see!
I know it’s too soon to speak, but I really hope Dorothy comes out of all of this triumphant.
And by triumphant we mean president.
What? We have to get a good one eventually.
All else aside, if the comic continues to move at the same pace it is now, it’d take roughly three and a half centuries real time before we get to Dorothy being age-eligible for the presidency.
YES!
At least there’s a nice rap song to help with the first 150.
Or the first 812, if you listen to Brian David Gilbert’s Perfect Pokérap:
https://youtu.be/rJTeVOOFMHM
It’s been a long road, getting from there to here.
Oh no… poor Dorothy.
🥺🫂
Work is always existing, and existing is sometimes work.
it’s a miracle some ppl have survived this long, mental issues aside, with all the garbage food in america and car/other accidents happening, i’m surprised more ppl don’t die off easily, some ppl even survive bullet wounds too
Yeah, Dorothy’s ringing a lot of bells lately re: my college experience.
Grad school felt like that for me more than undergrad. Why I didn’t do as well. Having school therapist that could only see you once every 5 months due to high turnover and a lot of students didn’t help either. Some day I would like to finish that degree, but I worry that nothing will transfer.
Do finish it. I finally wrapped up my PhD just after turning 50. And there has ALWAYS been a grad student older than me, if that helps.
As a rather younger PhD dropout who spends a lot of time arguing with myself about when might be “too late” to go finish it… while it was reassuring that there were students in my cohort ~10 years older, I also know that the academic job market is uh, pretty ruthless about career tempo. Are you doing a postdoc or angling for a tenure-track position, or do you have different goals? I think I worry most about persevering through the rest of the degree and then finding out I’m only competitive to be an adjunct at the second satellite campus of Nowhere State School of Mines and Haberdashery, because the pool is full of 27-year-olds with five Nature publications.
There is a lot of connections issues too, as no one wants to hire me because I don’t have connections in the area, but then I am over qualified even without my masters degree for other jobs. Makes it hard to get money to finish the degree. I just don’t want the years I put into it to be useless because I didn’t go back in time. The field I am in is invasive weeds (biology/ecology/environmental), but they tell me that they will only hire me for janitorial jobs in state parks because of the lack of connections (doing that would supposedly get me the connections according to them). To be honest, I wouldn’t mind being something like a paralegal for environmental law. I have been in a published paper, but only once, and that seems to more deter jobs out of the field than help me in the field. The whole, you won’t stay here because you have been published so we won’t hire you. The worst limbo.
That’s how it is sometimes.
I do hope Dorothy’s closer to a breakthrough than a breakdown, but I mean, we’ll see how it goes for her. I’m glad she’s talking to Amber, though, she does indeed notice these things.
Recently I have noticed certain positive aspects in Amber (I’m not a big fan of her), but if she is a possible option to help Dorothy…well, let’s see what happens.
amber would be good to talk to, idk if booster would get involved but amber would have a bit more personal experience compared to booster who’s only educationally knowledable about psych stuff tho i’m sure they’ve gone through stuff growing up too
Huh. Dorothy is Jewish? Seventh Day Adventist?
I thought she was Catholic, so this doesn’t make sense
Pretty sure one of her parents is Jewish? At least culturally so
I understand that she is of Jewish descent.
I’m pretty sure she’s being facetious about “keeping the Sabbath” because she isn’t Jewish and has been quite vocal about her atheism in the past, iirc? (Unless I’m mistaking her with another character)
Dorothy is Jewish she mentioned it when talking to Robin about as soon as people find out she is Jewish and a woman on Twitter she is bombarded by hateful, sexist and anti Semitic comments. but she is an atheist but Judaism operates in that sort Grey ethno religious thing where people can declare they are culturally Jewish also she could have a Catholic mom or dad or Jewish mom or dad and still be considered Jewish by the reform and reconstructist Jewish denominations.
Conservative and orthodox too, so long as its your mom. Judaism is the religion of the Jews, the same way Shinto is the religion of the Japanese.
Yeah, she’s an atheist. Which freaked Joyce out a bit when she found out.
She has some Jewish ancestry, but doesn’t generally identify as Jewish or actively practice anything.
Jewishness isn’t so much an identity as an ethnicity with a religious entranceway. If you were born a Jew, you’re stuck that way regardless of your beliefs. Anyone could become a Jew, but then you’ve gotta learn the religion and the practices before its official.
Truth is, most Jews I’ve met aren’t religious people in general, maybe they like some of the holiday traditions but otherwise pretty secular.
I respect your view that Jewishness is primarily seen as an ethnicity with religious ties, but it’s essential to acknowledge that Jewish identity can be quite diverse. While some may connect strongly with the religious aspects, many Jews, like myself, appreciate the cultural and secular traditions without considering it their ethnic identity. It’s a complex tapestry of identity within the Jewish community.
“Religion = faith/belief” is actually an original Christian contribution to religious thought.
Belief is not how Jews define religion. We much more typically define religion as an identity (similar to a tribe), and/or relating to what practices you do.
There are tons of atheist Jews, it’s not a problem for us. You can’t lose your Judaism by changing your mind.
Personally, I don’t really call myself an atheist because I still practice some parts of Judaism and hold it sacred. But I don’t actually put faith in any metaphysical phenomena or believe that biblical law is morally compulsory on anyone, so I suppose an atheist would probably call me an atheist, heh
you’ve said that several times, that a person stops being Christian by changing their mind, and that’s not at all how it happened for me. It’s not just like an identity or practices I decided to stop identifying as or stop doing. It’s a realization that I didn’t have the beliefs anymore.
and you keep saying that Christians invented the idea that religion = faith/belief, and that sounds like Christian propaganda to me. They got it from a Roman mystery religion. And with countless religions existing before that, I doubt it was a unique idea even then.
The idea that a person cannot stop being a member of a religion is abhorrent to me.
” It’s a realization that I didn’t have the beliefs anymore.” I should add that it was also something I absolutely did not want at the time. I was desperate to keep believing. So “just changing your mind” is at a minimum incredibly ignorant and inaccurate. It’s like it came out of a Chick tract.
Changing your mind is the wrong way to put it, since as you say it’s not really a conscious intentional process much of the time.
That said, the concept is basically right. Christianity has a very different approach than Judaism or known religions of antiquity. Might not be unique, but it certainly wasn’t the norm. The whole faith/belief leads to salvation thing wasn’t really part of pre-Christian religions. There were gods, everyone knew that, and they required sacrifices or ritual behaviors or the like to get or keep their favor. Belief wasn’t really relevant, just what you did.
Fair enough. I’ll try to remember and retire that phrase — it doesn’t show respect for how very unwanted and painful that process can be for people. My apologies.
“There were gods, everyone knew that”
Aristophanes and Diogenes must have been time travelers??
The poet who wrote, “The fool said in his heart, ‘There is no God’; they have dealt corruptly; they have committed abominable deeds; no one does good.” only accidentally described disbelief as impiety, probably just doing it phonetically.
No, I think you’re participating in the Christian hegemony. Also, Zoroastrianism is a “religion of antiquity”.
Thank you, Leorale. And to clarify, because it does sound judgmental, the reason I find it abhorrent when apostasy isn’t respected is because of things like the Inquisition, or modern religious courts who claim authority over former adherents.
I agree actually, I guess I was just explaining the traditional way that it’s recognized. There are definitely people I know that wouldn’t fit the precise traditional definitions of Jewishness, but they are still a part of what you could call the Jewish cultural continuum.
I mean you can be a religious jew AND an atheist. I know because there’s atheist religious jews at my synagogue! 😀
But i do get what you mean, she’s also doesn’t seem to be religious and is a vocal atheist
And if anyone is confused by how there can be an atheist, religious Jewish person:
Christianity is, in general, an orthodoxic (right thought/belief) religion, concerned that you have the appropriate faith in god.
Judaism is, if I remember right, orthoPRAXIC (right action), more concerned with what you *do* than what you believe.
You get atheist Christians too. Some of them are even vicars
There are ways to be Jewish and also atheist. But she’s irreligious. Although probably some exposure to actual Judaism through a grandparent. https://www.dumbingofage.com/catholic/
She’s a Jewish Atheist. Non-religious though some Jewish Atheists do keep Sabbath and stuff.
Now I wonder if Dorothy’s family/sinagogue would agree with playing videogames on sabbath or if it’s forbidden because it require pressing buttons….
Her parents aren’t religious, so I doubt they would care. I doubt she has a synagogue.
I thought her parents were religious but raised her areligiously to let her choose for herself what to believe?
You can be culturally Jewish and be an atheist or agnostic I am agnostic and identify as Jewish so did my grandfather.
This. I remember the first time I heard that one could be atheist and still be Jewish. I was so confused at first.
Funnily enough, it was a rabbi who mentioned it.
I was confused when I heard that you can stop being Christian just by changing your mind. 🙂
As someone who just coined the lexographic nightmare “non-Christmas-celebrators” upthread, because I wrote “non-Christian”, then remembered that atheists such as myself still celebrate Christmas, the idea that I’m still culturally Church of Scotland makes a lot of sense.
There was a book I read once called The Little Book of Calvin, which was a tongue-in-cheek exploration of why Scots take pride in being miserable, and the author said that one of the most Scottish Calvinist people he knew was his grandfather, who firmly believed God didn’t exist and that was why everything sucked.
Saint Nicholas is a historical person who did live and die. So to a person who doesn’t subscribe to an Abrahamic belief, Santa Claus is technically more real than God.
So I guess even atheists have a justification to celebrate December 25 by way of celebrating Santa.
ew
I mean, I’ve never looked into it that deeply, but I believe there’s some pretty good evidence that Jesus really existed as well. I don’t personally believe he was the Son of God, but I also don’t believe a Turkish bishop who died in the 4th century instead moved to the North Pole, where he gained immortality and a lot of weight.
Santa Claus has Nicholas’ name, but Santa Claus comes from Odin as Jólnir.
Don’t believe in him either, sorry!
(Also, there’s not a huge amount of evidence for that. I mean, probably more than that Easter is named after a goddess the Venerable Bede may have completely made up, but still.)
PS. “Changing your mind” was a tongue-in-cheek description of the non-fraught manner in which I stopped believing in God during college, but, it’s too mean/disrespectful towards people who experienced a deeply fraught loss of faith.
Sorry!
When Leslie came in for the gender studies class Dorothy said she was “Irish and Jewish”, not white.
Mood, bongo.
I feel like I’d vibe with this more if it was literally anyone but Dorothy saying it.
Dorothy not read well as mentally fragile, or particularly religious, or both? I think that’s kind of a Walky flaw, and maybe some of the other cast. They really put her on this pedestal of excellence no one could really live up to.
Like ok. I get that Dorothy has a stressful life because of her lifestyle but that feels less like an “existing” flaw. In a weird way it really feels like she brings a lot of this anxiety on herself. So I dunno. Her saying “Existing” just feels weird because in my mind it’s like “You could stop.”
Like if Amber said “existing” I’d be like “yeah” cuz like her dad’s a mob boss and she’s got a dead best friend and another going through depression and her ex-boyfriend and her had that halloween party fight and that’s not even keeping in mind her neurodivergence. Dotty just feels like an overachiever to me. Existing ain’t hard. Achieving is hard.
I get it. I can’t exactly argue a lot of Dorothy’s stress isn’t self inflicted. She does also hold herself to that same high standard of perfection, but that can be a mental illness in itself. The inability to relax, the compulsion to achieve can get as toxic as any other. That’s before you consider she’s been through an equal amount of trauma from external factors no one could control. She got kidnapped, saw a guy likely trying to assault her and Joyce get stabbed a bunch.
I think it’s harder to understand from the outside that inability to chill is a problem. One Dorothy’s dealing with as her personal and professional life keeps taking L’s even if they’re ones she could easily dismiss. Some people just can’t.
+1 This.
Reminded of how, when I was first diagnosed with my anxiety disorder, people kept asking me what I had to be anxious about. “Not much, really. That’s why it’s a disorder.”
Dorothy thinks she has to exist as the “early life” section of her idealized future self’s wikipedia article. The ideal version of herself can take charge of any situation and knows what to do when she does. This Dorothy thought she took charge of a situation, and thinks she got someone’s skull bashed in as a result. She thought she took charge of the situation, and thinks she got Joyce abducted again by the murderer.
Every time this comes up I want to say that I don’t get it. Dorothy took charge promptly when everybody was uncertain, led the team, and in the end they got out and the bad guys didn’t. Yes, lessons to be learned about the practicalities of leadership in conflict, but I think I would feel exultant, not depressed.
Good leaders don’t always make good decisions; they’re accounted good because the good results stack up higher than the bad ones. It’s making timely decisions that can be carried out, which makes leadership valuable.
She did that, but I think she had a naive idea about succeeding. What shook Dorothy was the realization she could do everything right, but it still costs somebody.
The guys with the deadly weapons were in charge. She said when to go out the only exit. A lot of things happened, both for and against their escape, that she did not account for. Her view of herself is someone who knows what’s best in any situation, having full control. She did not, not even of her “team”.
Blaine got out.
She’s having nightmares about Ross being killed, and Joyce being abducted again. She blames herself for those. You’d feel exultant, great. She doesn’t.
It’s always fun when someone admits they consider witnessing a murder to be something to feel exultant over.
That didn’t actually happen, though.
A lot of Dorothy’s sense of self depends on her existing the way she does, I think.
Strictly speaking mental health problems don’t actually need a “reason,” or a cause. Sometimes they just are. Also, Dorothy has always seemed ok to other people because her symptoms are generally socially acceptable. No one complains when she jogs more and studies harder. Best analogy I can think of right now is that folks are less likely to notice someone’s eating disorder if they’re skinny because that’s socially acceptable. They don’t necessarily notice the damage it’s doing internally.
Existing is extremely hard when you have anxiety, even doing a job that isn’t super stressful can cause massive burnout. I relate to this even more because it’s Dorothy saying it
Existing can absolutely be hard when you’ve built up your identity so much to be one thing that you don’t really know how to be anything else. It’s easy to say you can just be something else, but it’s a lot harder in practice. Dorothy has built her entire self around becoming the President (and as HueSatLight put it, embodying the “early life” section of what she wants her future wikipedia entry to look like). If you can’t understand that then you’ve built a much healthier identity than Dorothy has.
Also, technically Dorothy’s current identity crisis is at least mostly self-inflicted, but it didn’t come to her in a vacuum. She doesn’t seem to have been taught that it’s okay to fail sometimes, and in fact it’s inevitable. She literally cannot be what she feels she has to be, and the only alternative is utter failure in her understanding.
I know other people have said this in various different ways, but the fact that Dorothy’s problems right now are almost entirely self-inflicted is exactly what makes this strip feel tragic as f*ck to me (well, that, and I think I’m also rather a chronic overachiever myself). It’s…tragic in a very Shakespearean way, rather than in a Lifetime way, if that makes any sense. I don’t sympathize with Dorothy because she’s reacted understandably poorly to incredibly horrible circumstances, I sympathize with her because she has a single, enormous, character flaw which she’s been given countless opportunities to fix, opportunities which she’s completely rejected every single time and it’s obviously driving her to her impending doom.
well a lot of ppl do seem to struggle/burn out at college age but dororthy does seem to be over ambitious compared to the rest of the cast
idk if she’d rly be that much better if she just actively did nothing as well/go stir crazy but even if ppl are making bad decisions and biting off more than they can chew, depression and executive dysfunction can strike even if you do take care of yourself
be interesting if dorothy did go to another doctor, and trying out antidepressants and seeing if it works for her as long as she doesn’t spiral or double down about fixing everyone’s problems but i guess she doesn’t want any medication b/c of potential future scandals (although i feel like by the time dorothy’s old enough to be president it shouldn’t be a stigma. If anything it’d be concerning for the opposite like “wow our world leaders are just rawdogging life and not on any meds”)
For the past few years I’ve been saying “I’m not living, I’m just existing.”
Did this for 40 something years. It took thatbl9ng to find myself in a position to actively acknowledge what was going on, and to express myself publicly.
“Since when are you Jewish?”
“Since sundown last night.”
idk if amber specificlaly knows but dorothy’s brought it up before even if she doesn’t actively practice it (unless her jewish-ness is an ethnic thing and not a religious choice)
FINE! Fucked up, Insecure, Neurotic and Emotional.
It’s stretched tightly across her forehead.
She’ll feel better after surving a horror scenario or two and killing/help killing a few slasher killers.
Oh, and she has to write a book about persevering through it as well.
Dorothy, it doesn’t really count as rest if you’re putting a lot of effort into not thinking about why you so urgently need a break.
This comic already hit me pretty hard on a personal level, and then your comment practically quadrupled that impact. OW. That….yeah, that is a very concise explanations of a lot of life problems I’ve had the past. Jeez.
And there it is. That’s why I find Dorothy relatable.
If I was Amber, hearing Dorothy’s last line, I’d be going to Ruth, suggesting Dotty is in danger of serious self-harm. Like, ultimate self-harm.
Sorry. “were Amber.”
Amber isn’t a wereAmber, don’t be silly
She kind of is though.
i mean, is ruth in any better condition right now?
i think last time they hung out dorothy did drink even tho she supervised
Ruth would at least know to do something, and would have the resources to do it.
Somebody else’s problem to think about is exactly what Ruth needs from time to time.
Dorothy went to Ruth I beleive Ruth is aware of the situation.
Ruth is not aware that D. considers mere existence to be work.
“At sundown, I have laundry to do. Please help me”
lol imagine if joyce reacted to doorthy inviting anyone else to do laundry together.
But yeah given she was tempted to have fun with walky, maybe she should find a hookup/fling, feels liek it’d be easier in college
Maybe a little fling with Amber, but she should find some people with no history of expectations she can just be ordinary around. A person can be in more than one social circle.
Dorothy: Mental Health Issues: Ya gotta catch em all
Amber: NO
lol is that even possible? i mean, not that that should ever be a goal, but y’know i’m sure some stuff would contradict each other like being paranoid and distrustful of everyone/antisocial while others have an unhealthy codependency/attachment to certain ppl
I recently discovered I have adhd and lemme tell you, that alone is full of contradictions already! It seems the brain doesn’t really care about logical consistency…
All the brain cares about is sensory input.
I don’t really practice Judaism anynore but i consider my self culturally Jewish and agnostic but i needed a rest from work Yom Kippur fell on sunday and monday so i asked my work if i could take Yom Kippur off they knew i was Jewish I wanted visit my family a Monday but my work said I had to use my PTO off beacuse the state I work remotely in doesn’t have to give Yom Kippur off. Even though the state I live in does l. I have a big interview on Wednesday for a non profit in the state I work in which will not only pay me 10k more then I make currently but has better benefits.
Any way I get it Dotty if you want to use religious and cultural reasons to justify a break and you actually are part of said group, then go for it. But also seriously take the whole weekend and maybe Monday off you need it also tell your therapist about this.
g/l with that interview!
Thank you! Just got told my work needed to be redone beacuse of technicality, by my current employer 16 hours worth of work so I really really need that new job.
[crosses fingers for interview]
Thank you!
Amber is doing a really good job being a supportive friend!
Man, I can’t read this comic without remembering the Big Lebowski
https://youtu.be/CDsgyIMK1LM?feature=shared
Technically, that’s inertia, not work. Work is what’s required to alter the trajectory of your existence.
Inertia is a property of matter.
Oh man, if I had a nickel for every close personal friend who’s told me in the last few months that existing isn’t living, I’d have two nickels, which isn’t much, but is probably a sign.
Oh, yeah, that was me basically from when Willis started publishing webcomics until around when the book10 KS shipped.
…Yeah. Been there, Dorothy.
It’s not a good way to be.
I’m sure Amber have these “mental issue iceberg” on her Reddit or something like this
Live to Work… Dotty is so proudly American
Dorothy has lost all control of her life and, as a controlling person, her response is to tighten her grip, which means accepting that she’s no longer driving the car is too terrifying to admit. I have been there and it is Very Not Good.
Maybe she should try making some chocolate pudding.
Preferably using dark chocolate.
She tightens her grip on the chocolate pudding, which just makes it ooze through her fingers.
The metaphor does not escape her.
Does Indiana University HAVE carpeted floors? Sounds like a clean-up nightmare waiting to happen.
At 4:00 AM?
👏
➕1️⃣
hahaha…haha… T_T
Yeah, if you have work 7 days/week without a job, your work is spiraling downwards.
Dorothy needs a hug.
Speaking of Pokemon, has anybody else been watching the new anime series? It hits a little differently without Ash, but I’ve been enjoying it so far.
Not me singing “it’s everyday bro, it’s everyday bro” as a response to Dorothy existing 😭
Because of how wild some are, collecting them is more akin to a bingo card
Not all heroes wear capes…
No Capes!
[/Edna_Mode]
Oh! It me.
Ugg, that dorm room is just full of desperate cries for therapy.
There’s only two of ’em in there.
Oh dear, this ain’t good.
And I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to use electronics when you observe the Sabbath, Dorothy. 😛
I’m pretty sure Dorothy isn’t Orthodox. Or even Conservative.
But also, no, no it’s not. At least she’s talking about it, sort of!
to exist is a work by itself…
Oh hey Dorothy hit the wall I did in post secondary
Existing = Work
Just in case anyone else feels like Dorothy does (and like I do right now) I’ll play some calm instrumental music over the hacked computer speakers…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYl7v0YsX9g
Somehow it doesn’t help with feeling sad, though.
This one’s a little more uplifting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlUcmD0zPI4
They should trade hair colors and live the other’s life for a day!
🤭😏
*plays “pa$$ the time” by Bronze*