Yeah. I kinda question the use of the word ‘good’ here at all.
What does Dorothy even mean by ‘good’? Moral? Well executed? Flawless?
What does Walky even mean? Perfect? Better than Walky?
I feel like this conversation can only end badly with them both speaking in platitudes.
Yeah, but we didn’t buy it. I was a slacker, first time I had straight As in my life was in college, and that’s because college is easier for a slacker than high school. I definitely didn’t avoid alcohol, it was part of every party, I even made and sold the fake IDs. Drugs mostly waited until college and after, only had a little weed in high school. Way more weed now in my 50s, now that high quality edibles are sold in stores, I never liked smoking it.
My morals have no problem with any of that.
Indeed, it’s very common. Right the hand I use to draw with, and right the correct feel different. Right the accurate and right the moral feel the same. Humans have a big sloppy halo effect and want to put all the good things in one box. We are wired for tribal logic, rather than cool logic.
There are no good presidents. All of them are war criminals. She is internally debating whether or not her life goals will still make her “happy” even though they are objectively bad.
More like she’s considering whether she could live with the choices she’d have to make and whether she could do enough good in the position to make up for the bad, rather than “will being a monster make me happy”.
It’s a good thing she’s realized what she’s dealing with before the U.S government makes her the next Oppenheimer. But I don’t think doubling down and becoming the next President Truman instead is the answer to that.
(I’m referencing the fact that Truman off the record called Oppenheimer a cry baby bongo for feeling bad that he brought nukes into the world)
I was expecting Oppenheimer to be less of a full-tilt biopic (my fault for accepting a ticket without doing the research) but that was one of the most darkly comedic moments I’ve seen in a movie in a long time.
I’m not entirely sure because the way this site handles comment nesting makes it hard to tell where this lines up, but I presume you’re referring to the recyclables bit.
Recycling, specifically as it is currently handled, is not actually significantly better for the environment than how trash disposal is currently handled, and if both were actually handled the way the are SUPPOSED to be handled, recycling anything other than aluminum *would* be generally worse for the environment overall than trash disposal.
The process of recycling plastic and paper actually releases more greenhouse gases than just making new plastic and paper. But that’s just when recycling is done the way it’s supposed to be done.
Most of the recycling produced here in the US gets shipped overseas because capitalism, the barges that ship it overseas aren’t properly secured so a huge chunk of it gets accidentally dumped into the ocean, contributing to the plastic pollution as much if not more than improper garbage dumping does. Then, what actually DOES make it overseas, usually winds up in places like China and the Philippines where they don’t have much in the way of environmental protection laws so instead of actually recycling the recyclables, they just burn most of it, which is extremely bad for the atmosphere.
Garbage, on the other hand, is *supposed* to be buried in landfills located a certain distance away from the water tables so it doesn’t poison them, and deep enough that when it gets filled over with soil you can plant plants and the roots won’t reach the bad stuff so they can grow healthily. There are currently parks built over old landfills that have been filled in and all the trees and plants are healthy and beautiful, quality nature literally over top of the plastics, metal, and papers throw away over the decades. The paper biodegrades just fine over time, the metal doesn’t cause any significant issues, and the plastic *does* break down into something toxic (eventually), but it’s too far from the water tables to cause a problem and too deep to affect the plantlife up above.
If all garbage was disposed of properly, we only recycled aluminum and other metals, paper companies would stop deforesting and exclusively use trees farmed specifically for the purpose of paper production, we’d stop using much in the way of disposable plastics and instead focused on reuseable plastic, metal, and glass products, design products to be repaired and maintained instead of thrown away and replaced, and if we switched to clean energy sources as much as possible, then the environment would be fine long enough for us to figure out a way to undo the damage done.
Is all that feasible, probably not, unfortunately, but recycling isn’t anywhere close to better, especially not when it’s handled as poorly as it is, so getting all holier than thou about people who don’t do it consistently is just a waste of energy you could instead spend on either advocating for things that might actually work or enjoying the time we’ve got left with a livable planet.
Loved it <3
One thing i might correct though, in my understanding paper companies are not the main drivers of deforestation. That would be agriculture, particularly livestock.
I was going to say I didn’t deforest, but we do cut volunteer saplings out of pastures. De-reforesting. And we buy some gluten feed too.
If it were cost free, I’d replace all the grass with deep-rooted species, that’s better at sequestering carbon that forest. Especially with what grows in our timber.
For anyone with lawn in North America, consider Buffalo Grass (Bouteloua dactyloides). Deep roots, drought resistant, infrequent to no mowing.
That is correct that paper companies are not the main factor in deforestation, I just know that deforestation is *usually* pointed at as the reason we should recycle paper instead of making more, hence why I was suggesting paper companies should use sustainable methodology for harvesting their wood pulp, which as far as I am aware, most already do.
now that Cannabis is being decriminalized in more places, maybe we can start growing industrial hemp for paper. doesn’t require as much chemical treatment, and better at taking CO2 out of the air.
It’s defensive because I’m actively trying to combat people talking down to others about their recycling habits in a pretentious and condescending manner, but it’s worth noting that I’m doing so by pointing out actual *facts* about the recycling industry. There is literally nothing I can do on an individual level to meaningfully affect the environment in a positive manner. There are things I can do that lower the impact I personally have, but recycling is factually not one of them.
Also, I don’t know about where you live, but where I live it costs MONEY to be able to recycle as it isn’t a service provided by my municipality, I literally cannot AFFORD to recycle, even if I DID think it would help the situation. So good job being condescending over poor people for not solving the problem caused by billionaires, you priviledged prick.
Then there’s also the fact that a loooot of the push to recycle the way we currently do has absolutely come from giant companies successfully shifting the blame for pollution away from their massive manufacturing operations and onto individual consumers. “We all have to be responsible!” they say, “Sort your plastics properly to save the Earth!”
But as long as these huge corporations don’t do the work necessary to reduce their emissions or cut back on THEIR industrial usage of single-use unrecyclable plastic, all the rest of us being forced to switch to biodegradable cups and straws won’t make a meaningful impact (apart from on immunocompromised folks and those with allergies — making them sick or even killing them is a *kind* of impact).
oh man maybe she’s about to do something moderately subversive, which might, at worst, serve as a warning sign and maybe even a mild threat to the power structures at hand
One time I was having thoughts along the line of, “I am being so Good. I am going to handle this situation in a way that makes it so easy for the other person. I’m going to be Good and practical and have feelings that convey their value to me but not in a way that imposes on them” and anyway, some of these thoughts were happening while I was in the process of getting denied coverage for a medication, and that was unrelated, but I started crying because of my thoughts, and the poor pharmacist felt so bad.
It’s interesting to me that she says it’s a theory she keeps wanting to test, like she hasn’t been testing it. She’s just not good at being bad, and that’s okay.
The detail is that since she is overthinking things, she has not realized that, something tells me that singing will not be enough to lighten all this.
These two know one another very well. Of course, Dorothy’s evolving, as is Walky, so I imagine some of their knowledge of each other, and themselves, is going to have to evolve, too.
It’s good to see this kind of empathy towards Dorothy.
I’m serious, I know there are many characters and everyone has their favorite, but I think that if there were a ranking of who has been judged too harshly, it seems that the girl would take first place.
Perhaps you have noticed it in many comments, it seems that she is the only character who is most severely reproached for her mistakes.
Isn’t the evolution of a character supposed to take time and these steps, even if they are slow, should they be taken into account?
And regarding the future of these two, I only hope that this interaction continues.
Progress is not immediate, it takes time and the fact that Dorothy is aware of being good or happy, at least for me, is a first step, small, but it is.
I’m more questioning Walky’s advice that Dorothy can’t depart from his false perception of her perfection because she would no longer be herself, which only harmfully reinforces her self-destructive feeling that she has to be perfect.
Like, dude, let the poor girl be happy. Don’t tell her she’s wrong to want that. It’s fucked up.
He did something like that here too. She needs to be around someone who doesn’t put her on a pedestal, like at all.
Someone who thinks she’s ordinary, and that she’s still worth knowing. (Arnold)
Oh wait, that’s true.
While I love that they both continue to interact, they are still learning.
Yes, Walky shined recently, but that does not mean that he continued to make mistakes, and it is true, those words are not the correct ones, but that is where Dorothy must already realize that she is human and it is normal to make mistakes and I dare to Say that when you finally realize that, you have the courage to say it in front of your friends (Joyce and Walky mainly).
And once she says it, they will realize that her words were hurtful, even if they were not intended that way.
I read it as Walky thinking that Dorothy is at her happiest when she’s doing good. Her goal to become president has 10,000 flaws but ultimately stems from a desire to help peopl. She’s floundering because the singular path she’s built up her whole life is starting to get shaky, but that doesn’t mean the answer is to 180 and start acting like a selfish asshole. She’s a classic Lawful Good, like when Hank Hill tried to turn himself into the police when playing GTA but more savvy.
I think this conversation is going to do a lot of work in dismantling the pedestal Walky’s put under Dorothy, and I’m interested in where it will leave the two of them.
He also weirdly said something deep, Dorothy feels bad about how she handled the whole Walky situation. She liked him a lot, broke up with him because she’s in her own head. Then when she was too tempted to get back with instead of being honest about it she plopped a girl that liked him in front of him to remove him from the equation and has been dealing with the fact that she fucking hates that.
Being good is being honest with yourself and Dorothy hasn’t been doing that.
If I remember correctly, you once drew a short comic involving Joe and Joyce and entries from the Kama Sutra that Joyce OK’d for a then-hypothetical relationship.
Goddammit you’re 19. Your job isn’t to be good *or* to be happy, it’s to finish undergrad and try to avoid committing arson. Walky can run his own life, you can decide to use your powers for good or for evil later, stop inventing problems and responsibilities.
“Good” doesn’t mean anything useful in what she’s thinking about. She’s equivocating between, “devoting my entire life to the singular goal of being president so I can decide what’s best for everyone” and “respecting my ex’s boundaries”.
She needs to ask herself why she wants to be president, then ditch the “and being president is the best and therefor only way to do that”. Jennifer once said the most Dorothy will probably accomplish would be a seat on the federal bench somewhere. If what she wants to do is look at a situation, and judge what the proper outcome should be, then she should get a JD and get some relevant experience as a lawyer and go from there (or stick to lawyering if that’s a better fit). If she wants to change policy to help people, there’s legislator, staffers, advocates at NGOs, lots of roles she could fill. Some of those paths have a sliver of a chance of leading to the presidency, but that shouldn’t be her goal. especially not at 19.
There are other ways to help, Dorothy really wants to help and the detail is that she must remove all that storm that she herself created and thus she will be able to see more clearly.
Oof, yeah, this shit’s tough. But sometimes, you have to face the fact that what you used to consider “good” is no longer good for you. You’ve changed, you’ve grown, and your old dreams don’t fit any longer. They’re like an old pair of shoes. They were a good fit for you then, but they hurt now. Maybe a new pair would fit this version of you a lot better, but you aren’t going to find it if you won’t take off the old pair.
…I really thought this analogy meant something, huh. Idk, I’ve been through “this is my endgame” and then the pain of slowly coming to terms with the fact that it wasn’t, or that values I used to hold were actually detrimental, or relationships I thought were forever weren’t going to pan out the way I’d planned. It’s hard and it hurts like hell sometimes, but to anybody who’s in that position, it can be done.
in the second one, she has a line prepared to say/think, to tamp down the idea, “isn’t that silly for a 19 year old”? That’s the line of doubt she’s expecting, probably one she’s been repressing for a while. The nightmare suggests she’s been thinking about how there’s a lot of situation’s she’s been ill-equipped to handle. So maybe she’s been questioning them since book 1. But probably one of the two links at the top is what you mean.
I don’t think most of those had serious plans to be President when they were Dorothy’s age. Trump certainly didn’t focus on it until relatively recently. If Hillary was plotting her course there in 1966, she was wildly optimistic. Biden didn’t run in 2016, when as a sitting VP he would have likely had a lock on the nomination.
Were they all ambitious? Certainly. Was that always focused explicitly on being President? I don’t think so. Especially, as we go back into the early adult years.
And again, Dorothy had already passed up Yale before Raidah said anything.
based on the following strip (february 17, 2023 “war criminal”), she was aware of the “challenges” that would come with being the president, but having it spelled out point-blank by someone forced her to finally face reality. it’s interesting how many parallels that can be drawn between not just joyce and dorothy, but dorothy and jennifer, as people who define themselves (at least in part) by their ability to solve problems and help people, even if their approaches are very different.
dorothy: i can solve this.
jennifer: head cheerleader, problem solver.
She’d love to test that theory, but Walky keeps rejecting her advances/she keeps backing down. At least, that’s my proposed theory of what she wants to test, just being in a relationship that is mainly based on ‘he’s hot and likes dumb thing I like and to hell with improving anything about me anymore’. She knows being with him makes her grades dive because she gets distracted, so why not ruin more?
I posit that Dorothy is the Spring Semester equivalent of Amazi-Girl: she’s the big plotline around which the story will come to a volume-ending climax. if that’s true, then we must answer the obvious question: WHO WILL BE HER NEMESIS?
(a) Her parents
(b) Raidah
(c) Walky
(d) Joyce
(e) Lucy
(f) Becky
(g) Dina
(h) Yale
(i) Herself
(j) Walkyverse Dorothy
god it’s probably just walkyverse nostalgia talking but i would genuinely love for some kind of self-indulgent walkyverse tinged stress nightmare to happen at some point.
also !!! while i will admit that in terms of character richness and on-screen development the two dorothys are extremely night and day, it is super interesting to note that walkyverse’s dorothy is a dorothy who has in a sense, lost her life’s purpose and is extremely messy about it. it’s honestly been really great to see some of those extreme character flaws be reflected back onto dumbingverse dorothy post time-skip.
Can I give my point of view, as a martial art student for almost 10 years?
I confess I was taking some time to answer you. Did I started Kenjutsu because I wanted to be a better person, a better friend? Someone better at making friends and in the neighbor I live?
Or I just wanted to be obstinate because martial art?
I don’t want to be president, or be rich. My dreams are kinda of humble: to left my parents house, to have a girlfriend. Not to be so distracted at work. Earn the suficient to drive in my car weekends. Take care my schizo brother.
Some dreams are not so humble, I confess: be an artist. Be an animator or a comic writer like Willis. Bring Socialism to my country.
When I started Kenjutsu, I was still in church. 10 years later, I left church and I’m still here. So, I started to search spirituality in everthing beyond Christianity. (ops, I guess I want to be president, too, haha).
I confess some parts of Bushido is kinda of toxic/violent. Like, the pursuit to be better can travel throught obsession. But I feel like this were my life until now. Taking care of my family is very hard and I have to make very difficult choices everyday.
It’s hard and sad, but it’s all I got.
After your comment, I started to figure out why I’m sad watching Dorothy in Dumbing of Age.
And I’m sad because I’m starting to think there’s no sollution for her. This is her life, now. There’s no happiness and there’s no absolutlely good things. In any way she goes.
Anyway, martial arts or Philosophy can be great for her. Imagine, Joyce went to atheism and Dorothy, another religion….
I was going to say she could join a Buddhist monastery like Krillin. it feels too jokey. I think there’s ways out of her blues, but she is still in her “dark night of the soul”, figuratively. Joyce had one too, more literally, and she’s making it through.
A hobby that encourages obsession might be good for her. She could channel her obsessiveness into her martial art, and the other parts of her life that only have regular amounts of stress.
Really feeling for Dorothy here. Empathizing with her about this temptation — because doing good feels right, but feels like it so often goes unrewarded, at least beyond the personal satisfaction of knowing we’ve done The Right Thing. And we built ourselves around that…
Or: what if we built ourselves around that personal satisfaction? Doing good to win praise or reward doesn’t work very well. Choosing to do good for the guaranteed endogenous reward seems like a no-brainer. Most others will hate you for it, be unaware of it, or be pleased but never say anything, so who needs their worthless notice? The one in ten who will thank you are a bonus.
can someone teach dorothy that Achieving Your Dreams And Being Good are not the route to happiness
girl needs to, like, go do some crimes and watch nobody get hurt or something
or maybe she could learn about desire being the root of all suffering I guess to go full on lisa simpson
“you push us together, then tell me to leave her for ya, then kiss me, then try to put us back together”
you kinda gotta feel bad for walky in all this. he tries to seek advice, because he doesn’t know what to do, but all he gets is terrible/conflicting advice from the people he trusts.
Dorothy’s almost there, she needs to start asking ‘is it really good?’ Not if she’s been TOLD something is good, but if her prior habit patterns were, in fact, actually good and useful for herself and others. This is akin to ‘What do you REALLY believe is right?”
Not what you were told, or what the profs or teachers or authority figures you grew up with tell you is right, but what YOU understand to be right.
which can be complete 180 from what you were told, pressured, or read was ‘right’ or ‘good’.
She needs to develop some self-awareness, and hate to say it, but Empathy, both tend to be short supply when you’re a late teens early twenties, because that kind of judgment comes from actually LIVING your life, and she’s still her parent’s little clone at this point-taught to embody THEIR hopes, ideas, and dreams…without the experience to judge for herself.
I mean, from what we see of Dorothy parents they seem to have made an effort to let her build on her own belief and aspirations from a young age. Unless we get something more later, most of Dorothy’s judgements of what is right and good seem to come from herself.
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“look, I’m workshopping What Dotty Wants, trying all the options, digging for sidequests, idk”
Being happy doesn’t mean always being good either. Even if you want it to.
Yeah. I kinda question the use of the word ‘good’ here at all.
What does Dorothy even mean by ‘good’? Moral? Well executed? Flawless?
What does Walky even mean? Perfect? Better than Walky?
I feel like this conversation can only end badly with them both speaking in platitudes.
[See old joke about the difference between a nice girl and a good girl.]
**google fu**
… the joke that amounts to the nice girl has sex while the girl girl doesn’t?
I expected a pet play thing.
High schoolers are basically taught that studying hard, getting good grades, and staying away from drugs and alcohol are all morally good.
Yeah, but we didn’t buy it. I was a slacker, first time I had straight As in my life was in college, and that’s because college is easier for a slacker than high school. I definitely didn’t avoid alcohol, it was part of every party, I even made and sold the fake IDs. Drugs mostly waited until college and after, only had a little weed in high school. Way more weed now in my 50s, now that high quality edibles are sold in stores, I never liked smoking it.
My morals have no problem with any of that.
Indeed, it’s very common. Right the hand I use to draw with, and right the correct feel different. Right the accurate and right the moral feel the same. Humans have a big sloppy halo effect and want to put all the good things in one box. We are wired for tribal logic, rather than cool logic.
There are no good presidents. All of them are war criminals. She is internally debating whether or not her life goals will still make her “happy” even though they are objectively bad.
That… puts this in a different light than I had considered
More like she’s considering whether she could live with the choices she’d have to make and whether she could do enough good in the position to make up for the bad, rather than “will being a monster make me happy”.
Dangerous road there Dorothy.
It’s a good thing she’s realized what she’s dealing with before the U.S government makes her the next Oppenheimer. But I don’t think doubling down and becoming the next President Truman instead is the answer to that.
(I’m referencing the fact that Truman off the record called Oppenheimer a cry baby bongo for feeling bad that he brought nukes into the world)
I was expecting Oppenheimer to be less of a full-tilt biopic (my fault for accepting a ticket without doing the research) but that was one of the most darkly comedic moments I’ve seen in a movie in a long time.
Not that I watch many movies.
she gonna pirate a movie
she gonna keep using winrar after the 40 day free trial period has ended
She gonna play a game with CHEAT CODES
She gonna put recyclables into the TRASH BiN
She gonna jailbreak her phone.
She gonna use an adblocker.
She gonna go to Chicago and put ketchup on a hotdog.
She gonna graffiti on a public restroom!
(69th comment BTW, count them if you also bored)
No, no, no. Even at her worst, Dorothy wouldn’t do that.
I should be subversive the next time I go to Chicago.
Ok, maybe one bite, because ketchup on hot dogs is gross. But I can handle one bite.
I don’t even understand how anyone can use a device connected to the Internet without putting an adblocker or twelve on it.
When internetting, always use protection.
That one is not like the others. Seriously. Don’t do that.
I’m not entirely sure because the way this site handles comment nesting makes it hard to tell where this lines up, but I presume you’re referring to the recyclables bit.
Recycling, specifically as it is currently handled, is not actually significantly better for the environment than how trash disposal is currently handled, and if both were actually handled the way the are SUPPOSED to be handled, recycling anything other than aluminum *would* be generally worse for the environment overall than trash disposal.
The process of recycling plastic and paper actually releases more greenhouse gases than just making new plastic and paper. But that’s just when recycling is done the way it’s supposed to be done.
Most of the recycling produced here in the US gets shipped overseas because capitalism, the barges that ship it overseas aren’t properly secured so a huge chunk of it gets accidentally dumped into the ocean, contributing to the plastic pollution as much if not more than improper garbage dumping does. Then, what actually DOES make it overseas, usually winds up in places like China and the Philippines where they don’t have much in the way of environmental protection laws so instead of actually recycling the recyclables, they just burn most of it, which is extremely bad for the atmosphere.
Garbage, on the other hand, is *supposed* to be buried in landfills located a certain distance away from the water tables so it doesn’t poison them, and deep enough that when it gets filled over with soil you can plant plants and the roots won’t reach the bad stuff so they can grow healthily. There are currently parks built over old landfills that have been filled in and all the trees and plants are healthy and beautiful, quality nature literally over top of the plastics, metal, and papers throw away over the decades. The paper biodegrades just fine over time, the metal doesn’t cause any significant issues, and the plastic *does* break down into something toxic (eventually), but it’s too far from the water tables to cause a problem and too deep to affect the plantlife up above.
If all garbage was disposed of properly, we only recycled aluminum and other metals, paper companies would stop deforesting and exclusively use trees farmed specifically for the purpose of paper production, we’d stop using much in the way of disposable plastics and instead focused on reuseable plastic, metal, and glass products, design products to be repaired and maintained instead of thrown away and replaced, and if we switched to clean energy sources as much as possible, then the environment would be fine long enough for us to figure out a way to undo the damage done.
Is all that feasible, probably not, unfortunately, but recycling isn’t anywhere close to better, especially not when it’s handled as poorly as it is, so getting all holier than thou about people who don’t do it consistently is just a waste of energy you could instead spend on either advocating for things that might actually work or enjoying the time we’ve got left with a livable planet.
Wow, that was a LOT longer than I thought it was when I was typing it up, lol
Loved it <3
One thing i might correct though, in my understanding paper companies are not the main drivers of deforestation. That would be agriculture, particularly livestock.
I was going to say I didn’t deforest, but we do cut volunteer saplings out of pastures. De-reforesting. And we buy some gluten feed too.
If it were cost free, I’d replace all the grass with deep-rooted species, that’s better at sequestering carbon that forest. Especially with what grows in our timber.
For anyone with
lawnin North America, consider Buffalo Grass (Bouteloua dactyloides). Deep roots, drought resistant, infrequent to no mowing.That is correct that paper companies are not the main factor in deforestation, I just know that deforestation is *usually* pointed at as the reason we should recycle paper instead of making more, hence why I was suggesting paper companies should use sustainable methodology for harvesting their wood pulp, which as far as I am aware, most already do.
now that Cannabis is being decriminalized in more places, maybe we can start growing industrial hemp for paper. doesn’t require as much chemical treatment, and better at taking CO2 out of the air.
This seems defensive as hell, and you trying to justify not recycling. It’s not working.
This is hilarious.
recycling plastic is PR, to trick people into not caring about plastic waste. https://www.npr.org/2024/02/15/1231690415/plastic-recycling-waste-oil-fossil-fuels-climate-change.
kind of audacious to paint “we need reusable items, and repairable, not disposable, tech” as “you’re trying to justify not recycling”
You can easily google most of that information if you don’t think it’s true.
It’s defensive because I’m actively trying to combat people talking down to others about their recycling habits in a pretentious and condescending manner, but it’s worth noting that I’m doing so by pointing out actual *facts* about the recycling industry. There is literally nothing I can do on an individual level to meaningfully affect the environment in a positive manner. There are things I can do that lower the impact I personally have, but recycling is factually not one of them.
Also, I don’t know about where you live, but where I live it costs MONEY to be able to recycle as it isn’t a service provided by my municipality, I literally cannot AFFORD to recycle, even if I DID think it would help the situation. So good job being condescending over poor people for not solving the problem caused by billionaires, you priviledged prick.
Then there’s also the fact that a loooot of the push to recycle the way we currently do has absolutely come from giant companies successfully shifting the blame for pollution away from their massive manufacturing operations and onto individual consumers. “We all have to be responsible!” they say, “Sort your plastics properly to save the Earth!”
But as long as these huge corporations don’t do the work necessary to reduce their emissions or cut back on THEIR industrial usage of single-use unrecyclable plastic, all the rest of us being forced to switch to biodegradable cups and straws won’t make a meaningful impact (apart from on immunocompromised folks and those with allergies — making them sick or even killing them is a *kind* of impact).
o hay someone else brought a citation for this while I was typing, heh.
There’s a reason “reduce” and “reuse” come before “recycle”.
But yeah, “plastic recycling” has always been smoke and mirrors. Glass and metal actually are recyclable, so are most types of paper.
.. But will she use the cheat codes?
Baby steps. She’s gonna watch a movie about pirates first.
But is Dorothy a Slave Of Duty?
No. And what’s more, she never was one!
❤️
Legal in the Netherlands!
She’s gonna drink a can of soda without facing the logo toward the camera.
In a thread on right to repair, it was pointed out that with subscriptions you don’t own anything you buy, is piracy even theft?
oh man maybe she’s about to do something moderately subversive, which might, at worst, serve as a warning sign and maybe even a mild threat to the power structures at hand
“Having sex would make me happy. So then… if you give me a good fucking, then I’ll be happy and good?”
– Dorothy, probably
But what if the sex is bad?
She’s been satisfied with it before. 8
Can’t be.
By definition, a ‘good fucking’ is good sex. It’s right there in the name.
Doesn’t matter, had sex.
We haven’t heard anything about bad sex re Dotty*, so I imagine her breakups are for other reasons.
*Well, we know that Amana is her last resort.
Ooh, ooh, villain arc!
Oh, Dotty
Not just Dotty, I felt this in my CORE
One time I was having thoughts along the line of, “I am being so Good. I am going to handle this situation in a way that makes it so easy for the other person. I’m going to be Good and practical and have feelings that convey their value to me but not in a way that imposes on them” and anyway, some of these thoughts were happening while I was in the process of getting denied coverage for a medication, and that was unrelated, but I started crying because of my thoughts, and the poor pharmacist felt so bad.
Geez, sorry to hear that, hope you are doing better now.
It’s interesting to me that she says it’s a theory she keeps wanting to test, like she hasn’t been testing it. She’s just not good at being bad, and that’s okay.
Okay, what the hell is Walky eating? Based on the color I can only think mac’n’cheese but I cannot decipher it.
(Willis I swear I’m not taking aim at your art, I’m just deeply curious)
Scrambled eggs, maybe?
It’s a little early for tossed salad.
Not if Dorothy decides she’d rather be happy than good, it’s not. 😜
He’s a little Walky to be eating a salad, though.
I was thinking pasta, tbh, but that seems semi-implausible.
The detail is that since she is overthinking things, she has not realized that, something tells me that singing will not be enough to lighten all this.
She needs to find the place where “Not Good” doesn’t mean “Bad”. Be happy with a C+ because you understand the effort, not the result.
These two know one another very well. Of course, Dorothy’s evolving, as is Walky, so I imagine some of their knowledge of each other, and themselves, is going to have to evolve, too.
It’s good to see this kind of empathy towards Dorothy.
I’m serious, I know there are many characters and everyone has their favorite, but I think that if there were a ranking of who has been judged too harshly, it seems that the girl would take first place.
Perhaps you have noticed it in many comments, it seems that she is the only character who is most severely reproached for her mistakes.
Isn’t the evolution of a character supposed to take time and these steps, even if they are slow, should they be taken into account?
And regarding the future of these two, I only hope that this interaction continues.
Dreaming is free
Great conversation, so good for both of them.
… is it though?
Progress is not immediate, it takes time and the fact that Dorothy is aware of being good or happy, at least for me, is a first step, small, but it is.
I’m more questioning Walky’s advice that Dorothy can’t depart from his false perception of her perfection because she would no longer be herself, which only harmfully reinforces her self-destructive feeling that she has to be perfect.
Like, dude, let the poor girl be happy. Don’t tell her she’s wrong to want that. It’s fucked up.
He did something like that here too. She needs to be around someone who doesn’t put her on a pedestal, like at all.
Someone who thinks she’s ordinary, and that she’s still worth knowing. (Arnold)
It’s not a pedestal. It’s just a read. Maybe an outdated one, but a good one.
Oh wait, that’s true.
While I love that they both continue to interact, they are still learning.
Yes, Walky shined recently, but that does not mean that he continued to make mistakes, and it is true, those words are not the correct ones, but that is where Dorothy must already realize that she is human and it is normal to make mistakes and I dare to Say that when you finally realize that, you have the courage to say it in front of your friends (Joyce and Walky mainly).
And once she says it, they will realize that her words were hurtful, even if they were not intended that way.
I read it as Walky thinking that Dorothy is at her happiest when she’s doing good. Her goal to become president has 10,000 flaws but ultimately stems from a desire to help peopl. She’s floundering because the singular path she’s built up her whole life is starting to get shaky, but that doesn’t mean the answer is to 180 and start acting like a selfish asshole. She’s a classic Lawful Good, like when Hank Hill tried to turn himself into the police when playing GTA but more savvy.
I think this conversation is going to do a lot of work in dismantling the pedestal Walky’s put under Dorothy, and I’m interested in where it will leave the two of them.
Although the future of both of them is uncertain, I want this interaction to continue, I love how this pair interacts.
I am very happy to see tangible proof of Walky character growth. He is handle all this so well compared to what he could had done some time ago.
He also weirdly said something deep, Dorothy feels bad about how she handled the whole Walky situation. She liked him a lot, broke up with him because she’s in her own head. Then when she was too tempted to get back with instead of being honest about it she plopped a girl that liked him in front of him to remove him from the equation and has been dealing with the fact that she fucking hates that.
Being good is being honest with yourself and Dorothy hasn’t been doing that.
You getting together with your ex-boyfriend isn’t being BAD Dorothy.
Kinda wanting to draw something saucey with Joyce.
Which sauce? Pork cutlet? Oyster? :p
“Do et.”
– that one dude from Star Wars
If I remember correctly, you once drew a short comic involving Joe and Joyce and entries from the Kama Sutra that Joyce OK’d for a then-hypothetical relationship.
Haha may be a bit ambitious for me, but there’s some fun to be had there.
Please do. I really enjoy your Joye fanart (and all your art in general, but I kinda figured that was implied).
Seconded!
It was just Joyce holding a book and a blushing Joe, but it got the message across.
best of both meanings. Joyce making a marinara wearing nothing but an apron.
If Thalia wills it, you shall.
Do it! Your art is so lovely. 🙂
do iiit
This guy gets it.
Goddammit you’re 19. Your job isn’t to be good *or* to be happy, it’s to finish undergrad and try to avoid committing arson. Walky can run his own life, you can decide to use your powers for good or for evil later, stop inventing problems and responsibilities.
counterpoint, IU has two ROTC buildings.
I used to know what a sequitar was.
“Sequined guitar”
I’m calling my guitar a non-sequitar from now on. I don’t care how much explanation the joke is going to require.
You’re going to explain?
“Good” doesn’t mean anything useful in what she’s thinking about. She’s equivocating between, “devoting my entire life to the singular goal of being president so I can decide what’s best for everyone” and “respecting my ex’s boundaries”.
She needs to ask herself why she wants to be president, then ditch the “and being president is the best and therefor only way to do that”. Jennifer once said the most Dorothy will probably accomplish would be a seat on the federal bench somewhere. If what she wants to do is look at a situation, and judge what the proper outcome should be, then she should get a JD and get some relevant experience as a lawyer and go from there (or stick to lawyering if that’s a better fit). If she wants to change policy to help people, there’s legislator, staffers, advocates at NGOs, lots of roles she could fill. Some of those paths have a sliver of a chance of leading to the presidency, but that shouldn’t be her goal. especially not at 19.
There are other ways to help, Dorothy really wants to help and the detail is that she must remove all that storm that she herself created and thus she will be able to see more clearly.
also worth noting that her definition of happiness leans heavily on potential future happiness.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/counselor
Oof, yeah, this shit’s tough. But sometimes, you have to face the fact that what you used to consider “good” is no longer good for you. You’ve changed, you’ve grown, and your old dreams don’t fit any longer. They’re like an old pair of shoes. They were a good fit for you then, but they hurt now. Maybe a new pair would fit this version of you a lot better, but you aren’t going to find it if you won’t take off the old pair.
…I really thought this analogy meant something, huh. Idk, I’ve been through “this is my endgame” and then the pain of slowly coming to terms with the fact that it wasn’t, or that values I used to hold were actually detrimental, or relationships I thought were forever weren’t going to pan out the way I’d planned. It’s hard and it hurts like hell sometimes, but to anybody who’s in that position, it can be done.
“The plan is nothing; the planning is everything.”
Can anyone point me back to where this thread of Dorothy questioning her life goals started?
implied: https://www.dumbingofage.com/letter/
more obviously: https://www.dumbingofage.com/goals-2/
in the second one, she has a line prepared to say/think, to tamp down the idea, “isn’t that silly for a 19 year old”? That’s the line of doubt she’s expecting, probably one she’s been repressing for a while. The nightmare suggests she’s been thinking about how there’s a lot of situation’s she’s been ill-equipped to handle. So maybe she’s been questioning them since book 1. But probably one of the two links at the top is what you mean.
If her dream can be crushed so easily by a second year college student then did she really want to be the President?
Dorothy: That’s a great question! I don’t know!
But, yeah, I do think Raidah’s comment wouldn’t have hit so hard if she wasn’t already doubting.
She’d already gotten and not accepted the Yale offer before she ran into Raidah.
Like I can’t see Clinton (either one), Trump, Obama, Biden, Bush (senior) etc plans to be the President ever being derailed by anyone, at anytime
Yet Raidah says a couple of sentences and it throws Dorothy into a world of doubt?
I don’t think most of those had serious plans to be President when they were Dorothy’s age. Trump certainly didn’t focus on it until relatively recently. If Hillary was plotting her course there in 1966, she was wildly optimistic. Biden didn’t run in 2016, when as a sitting VP he would have likely had a lock on the nomination.
Were they all ambitious? Certainly. Was that always focused explicitly on being President? I don’t think so. Especially, as we go back into the early adult years.
And again, Dorothy had already passed up Yale before Raidah said anything.
based on the following strip (february 17, 2023 “war criminal”), she was aware of the “challenges” that would come with being the president, but having it spelled out point-blank by someone forced her to finally face reality. it’s interesting how many parallels that can be drawn between not just joyce and dorothy, but dorothy and jennifer, as people who define themselves (at least in part) by their ability to solve problems and help people, even if their approaches are very different.
dorothy: i can solve this.
jennifer: head cheerleader, problem solver.
here’s one from book 7: https://www.dumbingofage.com/counselor
I get why Dorothy thinks this way but Walky knows her. Testing it won’t make her happier.
I think there’s something to it. She’s been devoting herself to this singular idea for so long. She needs a chance to find out who she is without it.
There Ought to be a healthy middle ground between ‘banging your head against a wall’ and ‘be selfish’.
I’m yet to find it but I am sure it exists.
Is Dorothy’s biggest problem altruism or rejecting Yale?
She’s either hot or cold, but she couldn’t go full-on kamikaze with how she’s treating things right now.
Dorothy would absolutely hate Yale, and Yale would hate her.
Yale would love to have her on their list of famous alumni.
She’d love to test that theory, but Walky keeps rejecting her advances/she keeps backing down. At least, that’s my proposed theory of what she wants to test, just being in a relationship that is mainly based on ‘he’s hot and likes dumb thing I like and to hell with improving anything about me anymore’. She knows being with him makes her grades dive because she gets distracted, so why not ruin more?
She’s already tested that theory and her lab partner is right there. The result: that mode is unsustainable for her.
She’s tried only twice, third times the charm.
I posit that Dorothy is the Spring Semester equivalent of Amazi-Girl: she’s the big plotline around which the story will come to a volume-ending climax. if that’s true, then we must answer the obvious question: WHO WILL BE HER NEMESIS?
(a) Her parents
(b) Raidah
(c) Walky
(d) Joyce
(e) Lucy
(f) Becky
(g) Dina
(h) Yale
(i) Herself
(j) Walkyverse Dorothy
god it’s probably just walkyverse nostalgia talking but i would genuinely love for some kind of self-indulgent walkyverse tinged stress nightmare to happen at some point.
also !!! while i will admit that in terms of character richness and on-screen development the two dorothys are extremely night and day, it is super interesting to note that walkyverse’s dorothy is a dorothy who has in a sense, lost her life’s purpose and is extremely messy about it. it’s honestly been really great to see some of those extreme character flaws be reflected back onto dumbingverse dorothy post time-skip.
I bet it’s going to be “herself”. Can she live with herself if she does something impulsive and gets what she wants, consequences be damned?
(k) Joe
What did he do?
Oh right, stole her girl.
The answer is an alt version of Walkyvers Dorothy who did become president and evil
Alt version of Walkyverse Dorothy who became president and good. The perfect Dorothy that she can never live up to.
{sfx: small dresden codak child} we must do science to her
That’s the face of a woman who is standing on the precipice and really thinks about jumping into pure chaos.
Your comment made me think: Dorothy is unhappy because she’s thinking of her situation as something to be escaped, not a delicious problem to solve.
Kind of ironic considering how eager she is to fix everyone else’s problems.
Oh no, she’s gone full emo.
Forget a therapist, what Dorothy really needs is a philosopher
Or an old martial arts master who will instil life lessons into her through a series of stealth lessons disguised as manual labour.
Can I give my point of view, as a martial art student for almost 10 years?
I confess I was taking some time to answer you. Did I started Kenjutsu because I wanted to be a better person, a better friend? Someone better at making friends and in the neighbor I live?
Or I just wanted to be obstinate because martial art?
I don’t want to be president, or be rich. My dreams are kinda of humble: to left my parents house, to have a girlfriend. Not to be so distracted at work. Earn the suficient to drive in my car weekends. Take care my schizo brother.
Some dreams are not so humble, I confess: be an artist. Be an animator or a comic writer like Willis. Bring Socialism to my country.
When I started Kenjutsu, I was still in church. 10 years later, I left church and I’m still here. So, I started to search spirituality in everthing beyond Christianity. (ops, I guess I want to be president, too, haha).
I confess some parts of Bushido is kinda of toxic/violent. Like, the pursuit to be better can travel throught obsession. But I feel like this were my life until now. Taking care of my family is very hard and I have to make very difficult choices everyday.
It’s hard and sad, but it’s all I got.
After your comment, I started to figure out why I’m sad watching Dorothy in Dumbing of Age.
And I’m sad because I’m starting to think there’s no sollution for her. This is her life, now. There’s no happiness and there’s no absolutlely good things. In any way she goes.
Anyway, martial arts or Philosophy can be great for her. Imagine, Joyce went to atheism and Dorothy, another religion….
I was going to say she could join a Buddhist monastery like Krillin. it feels too jokey. I think there’s ways out of her blues, but she is still in her “dark night of the soul”, figuratively. Joyce had one too, more literally, and she’s making it through.
A hobby that encourages obsession might be good for her. She could channel her obsessiveness into her martial art, and the other parts of her life that only have regular amounts of stress.
Wax on, wax off.
Really feeling for Dorothy here. Empathizing with her about this temptation — because doing good feels right, but feels like it so often goes unrewarded, at least beyond the personal satisfaction of knowing we’ve done The Right Thing. And we built ourselves around that…
…but what if we didn’t? What if?
Or: what if we built ourselves around that personal satisfaction? Doing good to win praise or reward doesn’t work very well. Choosing to do good for the guaranteed endogenous reward seems like a no-brainer. Most others will hate you for it, be unaware of it, or be pleased but never say anything, so who needs their worthless notice? The one in ten who will thank you are a bonus.
For Dorothy being good means being perfect. Vanquish all evil and reign victorious over a utopia.
We’re not call to be perfect though we are called to try. That is hard enough.
Plays Avenue Q “For Now” on hacked Muzak
Damn, the fact that Walky just…KNOWS this about Dorothy too…
I se a villain origin story here.
(Not really though,, she is to good for that. But she would be terrifying.)
can someone teach dorothy that Achieving Your Dreams And Being Good are not the route to happiness
girl needs to, like, go do some crimes and watch nobody get hurt or something
or maybe she could learn about desire being the root of all suffering I guess to go full on lisa simpson
“you push us together, then tell me to leave her for ya, then kiss me, then try to put us back together”
you kinda gotta feel bad for walky in all this. he tries to seek advice, because he doesn’t know what to do, but all he gets is terrible/conflicting advice from the people he trusts.
Ah, so instead of rebelling against her parents, she rebels against herself
Dorothy’s almost there, she needs to start asking ‘is it really good?’ Not if she’s been TOLD something is good, but if her prior habit patterns were, in fact, actually good and useful for herself and others. This is akin to ‘What do you REALLY believe is right?”
Not what you were told, or what the profs or teachers or authority figures you grew up with tell you is right, but what YOU understand to be right.
which can be complete 180 from what you were told, pressured, or read was ‘right’ or ‘good’.
She needs to develop some self-awareness, and hate to say it, but Empathy, both tend to be short supply when you’re a late teens early twenties, because that kind of judgment comes from actually LIVING your life, and she’s still her parent’s little clone at this point-taught to embody THEIR hopes, ideas, and dreams…without the experience to judge for herself.
I mean, from what we see of Dorothy parents they seem to have made an effort to let her build on her own belief and aspirations from a young age. Unless we get something more later, most of Dorothy’s judgements of what is right and good seem to come from herself.
Dorothy is the female Optimus Prime and shall deliver someday a state of the union address to put to rest all question of her leadership.
“GIVE ME YOUR FACE!”