i mean, basically a golden opportunity to give real teachings and undoing any potential damage Robin would have influencing over any actual susceptive kids or so lol
which would bring more Schadenfreude at Jason’s expense? several of them laughing in his face now, or Dorothy yelling at him for wasting her afternoon on a fool’s errand.
I like Becky’s relationship with her two living moms. She pushes back against both of them for different reasons, but can’t seem to quite escape either Robin or Leslie entirely. Both care about her, but between Leslie coming on too strong and taking it personally that Becky shies away from her motherly overtures, and Robin being like the posterchild of “disaster bisexual”, along with Becky’s abandonment baggage, it’s a constant push and pull.
I mean I know that she’s been well established as “The Smart One™” among them, but I feel a twinge of sadness at how quickly and happily Joyce points to Dorothy as “the smarty one”.
joyce has been described as blonde before even tho it’s more of a ‘dirty’ blonde/darker, but i’m sure it’s better off if she didn’t write any political text books even with help lol
Yep. HueSatLight speaks the truth! And also I can’t remember in what strip it’s said but she’s kiiiiind of indebted because campaigning and then dropping out comes at a steep price o/
Yes! This one. Between the ominous “she’ll learn” of the alt-text and not having a golden parachute but only getting a tenure, I don’t think she’s all that loaded.
Comfortable maybe, and she’s probably kept the flat she was sharing with Becky. Which is a lot to say in this economy! But not rich-rich.
Didn’t find it, but she does refer to her place in Bloomington as both an apartment and a house. Wjatever it is, she’s probably renting. And I think it’s pretty common for members of congress / Senators to have a residence near DC, with a big variation of how fancy they are. Like a bunch of them sharing a house where they ate off of Frisbies all the way to luxury homes.
Plus Robin’s nominal home in her district was probably in her hometown, New Albany I think. That’s three, and would be down to two, and it’s plausible that an adult sibling (and potentially their family) is the actual resident in her New Albany home.
I like that Becky passes on it – she’s not interested in Robin’s campaign anymore. As for Dorothy, yeah, that’s gonna be rough to think about. I seriously hope her trauma doesn’t actually end in her giving up.
The real question here is…
Does Dorothy really want to do it?
Besides the fact that Robin hasn’t exactly been one to take Dorothy very seriously, I daresay that if he finds out that Becky refused, he’ll find some excuse to do it later.
And as for Dorothy, if she refuses, I think the only one who will be worried is Joyce.
I’m crossing my fingers Dorothy isn’t going to take it. It hurts that Joyce is so quick to put herself down and prop Dorothy up… When her friend doesn’t want her to. She’s become so unhappy in that pedestal everyone (including herself) put her on, it broke her.
Doing this kind of detailed work is grueling. Doing it as ghost writing, not even exposure, would be a shit deal even if she were healthy – and she does need time to heal.
Yes, exactly, not only Walky, everyone who knows Dorothy and even herself, have put that pedestal that has been a great inconvenience.
It seems that Walky is already somewhat aware of what is happening, I mean, they had that conversation, I know they don’t It is correct to say that he finally opened his eyes, but at least it is seen that he is not condemning her for making some new decision in her life, it seems that it will be Joyce who will make Dorothy’s possible decisions in a not positive way.
If she’s not even getting credit for it, she may as well sabotage the whole thing. Not like she understands politics well enough to write a competent textbook anyway, so there’s no reason to bother trying for free.
The quality of the thing doesn’t even matter, because it’s just a grift motivated by Robin’s realization that she can force people to buy it regardless.
Exactly. Even if she were stupid enough to listen to this random Englishman she doesn’t even really know, and even if Robin hasn’t forgotten about the whole concept because she blinked in the last few seconds, there’s absolutely no incentive for Dorothy to put the slightest bit of effort into this dumbass book idea. She could just copy/paste the phrase “political science is the science of political” a few thousand times, add some photographs of Skittles to keep it visually interesting, and call that a textbook.
Which frankly a lot more people need to know. If you want to pressure a system, you need to know which parts can be forced because they’re just custom and what parts are actually part of the structure and can’t be ignored.
Robin’s class leans so heavily into the corruption and cynicism that the class doesn’t seem likely to learn anything else. Most likely because Robin probably doesn’t know much.
The key bit is that you can ignore anything you want if you have a sufficiently shameless Supreme Court, because it doesn’t matter what anything actually says. All that matters is what five justices say that it means.
To some extent, but there’s only so far even that can get you.
In some cases, a President really can just ignore the Supreme Court (illegally), but not in all cases, because some things you can do just by ordering your own subordinates, as long as they’ll obey, but in other cases you’d need to rely on federal and state judges, who will listen to the SC.
Or I’ve heard people who vaguely know that the filibuster is just a matter of Senate Rules and can be changed, think that also applies to needing a supermajority for an impeachment conviction.
Or people who see a President doing something on his own authority in one area and decide if he doesn’t do what they want somewhere else where he lacks Constitutional authority or previous authorization from Congress, then it can only be because he doesn’t want to.
Even working within the system, you need to know what the rules are in order to exploit them. Or where and how far the Court will let you do so.
Maybe Robin is cursed to be subverted every time she delegates. Becky completely inverted Robin’s campaign platform. Now Dorothy has a chance to ignore the charge, research and write a book-length diatribe on the contrast between the stated goals of the system and the ways it’s been perverted over the years.
I mean, does robin actually plan to take it to a publishing company or just have jason photocopy like 500 copies to bind together and make the students buy them then lol.
Side note, I remember referencing Joyce’s character progression with ” Plato’s allegory of the cave, ” once before.
Now with Dorothy I’m looking at her and I’m thinking about Mcbeth and the story theme about a persons assention to power while descending from sanity and morality.
Honestly I have to wonder if this will be simply put to bed by someone (Becky?) simply saying no on Dorothy’s behalf for her own good.
Dorothy is obsessive in her desire to feel useful to the point of self destruction. She has sometimes been a bit condescending in how she helps people but honestly maybe someone has to do it for her too. Sometimes “treat others as you would want to be treated” is the wrong phrase (instead treat others how they want to be treated: can’t assume the person is like you, it’s why you get weird shit like religious people assuming someone will appreciate pointing out all the ways someone is going against god or whatever). But maybe how Dorothy reacts to problems means she wouldn’t mind if someone just once or twice did it for her and took the reins on occasion rather than assuming easily that she’s clearly got this.
I wonder if interacting with Robin one-on-one would put the final blow into Dotty’s presidential dream. Getting a direct and intimate look into how politics works and maybe Robin saying she is too honest and too goody-two-shoes for this line of work.
It’s the beauty of the character that take itself too seriously, it makes putting them through absurd situations even funnier as they try (and fail) to remain dignified.
Dorothy’s face and line in the last panel are telling to me. I can’t imagine she’s completely ignorant of what an unreasonable and foolhardy endeavor it would be for her, an undergrad, to write a textbook (because, let’s not kid ourselves, there’s no “assisting” here, Jason can’t help and Robin ain’t doing shit). Now, Joyce has just declared, and with gleeful enthusiasm at that, that this unreasonable and foolhardy thing MUST be her dream, reinforcing the notion Dorothy’s built up in her mind that ALL her dreams and aspirations have been unreasonable and foolhardy, as indicated by her resigned response. I’m curious what her response will be.
Dorothy in her current state engaging with Robin in her current state should be interesting. If nothing else, it should give Dotty the motivation to keep others from doing the job or teaching people how to do it.
I hope they can find a way to get Becky to cooperate. Not just to make what they’ll write more like Robin’s style, but because I really would like to see her and Dorothy work together on writing something. Maybe when Robin returns to politics (for the opposite party to the one she was before, hopefully) she might want them both with her.
Just because you’ve written a book doesn’t mean that you don’t have to edit it a shit-ton and then get it properly published. I’ve read enough freshman essays to know this is going to look like it was written on caffeine and a prayer unless it takes at least longer than the entire storyline of DOA so far.
For reference: a team of graduate students (PhDs, MFAs in Creative Writing, and MAs) revises our ENG 101 book annually and it takes a full team just to update (not write from scratch) the project, maybe 5-6 new chapters, a new structure, and some cuts. That project basically pays for snacks and the odd pizza at meetings even though it serves the largest individual class on campus.
Robyn should find a better scam, because this one might buy an ice cream cake and that’s it. Or if it fails…woof.
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“in my dreams it was UNASSUMING satisfaction”
alt: to be fair to Robin, she said CRUSHES
JASON is the one assuming
Her seven evil exes, no doubt.
I think if Robin is involved it will be glorious in some way.
Or at least sparkly.
i mean, basically a golden opportunity to give real teachings and undoing any potential damage Robin would have influencing over any actual susceptive kids or so lol
*plays “Defying Gravity” from Wicked Sountrack on hacked muzak*
It’s what she worked, and waited foooor…
She can have all she ever wanted.
“But I don’t want it…”
“No, I can’t want it anymoooore…”
*thunderous applause*
Or how about no to shameless spec work? Don’t work for free folks. Especially not in college.
it could go to raising her gpa, a ‘free’ A tho i doubt she needs it lol
tho at this point busywork might be good for her
Still better than exposure, I reckon.
It’s Jason’s satisfaction though. I think I’d prefer the exposure in that case.
Depends on who he’s exposing himself to.
Look at him, does he look like a man who expects to have any satisfaction in his life?
Tell them your deadline, Jason.
which would bring more Schadenfreude at Jason’s expense? several of them laughing in his face now, or Dorothy yelling at him for wasting her afternoon on a fool’s errand.
What we have to keep in mind is that Dorothy has it 9/10ths written already just because.
It’s Dorothy. She has had a finished manuscript since before joining uni. All that’s left is a 15th rewrite.
“Oh, she wants it tomorrow. That’s clearly impossible so I’m ignoring the deadline. You should too.”
Well, robin said ‘by tomorrow’ but i imagine by then she’d forget lol
I like Becky’s relationship with her two living moms. She pushes back against both of them for different reasons, but can’t seem to quite escape either Robin or Leslie entirely. Both care about her, but between Leslie coming on too strong and taking it personally that Becky shies away from her motherly overtures, and Robin being like the posterchild of “disaster bisexual”, along with Becky’s abandonment baggage, it’s a constant push and pull.
Yes! Also I love the way Jason is doing the assignment while throwing out all the warning signals he can stomach, because goddamn it Robin.
I didn’t know that “disaster bisexual” was a thing until today. Thank you.
I’ve heard “disaster gay”; guess it can come in different stripes…
(didn’t originally intend the queer flag pun but i ran with it)
Yeah. I was pretty sure Robin had nothing to offer Becky, and Becky would make sure to get paid in something.
Did Robin bother to change the passwords on the campaign accounts?
I mean I know that she’s been well established as “The Smart One™” among them, but I feel a twinge of sadness at how quickly and happily Joyce points to Dorothy as “the smarty one”.
You’re smart too, Joyce, you were just in a cult
“Christianity” might not be a cult, but a lot of groups that identify as Christian are.
True. And the one Joyce grew up in certainly qualifies.
Thank you — I feel a little less isolated now.
He said “smarty… blonde”, though. Is Joyce blonde? Her hair looks more light brown to me.
joyce has been described as blonde before even tho it’s more of a ‘dirty’ blonde/darker, but i’m sure it’s better off if she didn’t write any political text books even with help lol
Isn’t Robin rich from all her grifting and abuse of America or did she spend all of her money on jeweled cadburry eggs?
She forgot to be corrupt in the way that got her a golden parachute. https://www.dumbingofage.com/sneakinta/
She should’ve sucked up to the NRA then started an alt right podcast. What an amateur.
Gotten in on the Lincoln Project scam.
Yep. HueSatLight speaks the truth! And also I can’t remember in what strip it’s said but she’s kiiiiind of indebted because campaigning and then dropping out comes at a steep price o/
https://www.dumbingofage.com/properly-2/ this one maybe?
Yes! This one. Between the ominous “she’ll learn” of the alt-text and not having a golden parachute but only getting a tenure, I don’t think she’s all that loaded.
Comfortable maybe, and she’s probably kept the flat she was sharing with Becky. Which is a lot to say in this economy! But not rich-rich.
Didn’t her sister mention she had like three houses?
This is a trick to get me to read all the Roz and/or Robin strips.
Didn’t find it, but she does refer to her place in Bloomington as both an apartment and a house. Wjatever it is, she’s probably renting. And I think it’s pretty common for members of congress / Senators to have a residence near DC, with a big variation of how fancy they are. Like a bunch of them sharing a house where they ate off of Frisbies all the way to luxury homes.
Plus Robin’s nominal home in her district was probably in her hometown, New Albany I think. That’s three, and would be down to two, and it’s plausible that an adult sibling (and potentially their family) is the actual resident in her New Albany home.
How much is vainglorious satisfaction worth in exposure?
That has to be worth at least three exposures, or fifty “really appreciate it”-s.
I like that Becky passes on it – she’s not interested in Robin’s campaign anymore. As for Dorothy, yeah, that’s gonna be rough to think about. I seriously hope her trauma doesn’t actually end in her giving up.
The real question here is…
Does Dorothy really want to do it?
Besides the fact that Robin hasn’t exactly been one to take Dorothy very seriously, I daresay that if he finds out that Becky refused, he’ll find some excuse to do it later.
And as for Dorothy, if she refuses, I think the only one who will be worried is Joyce.
So it’ll be Robin’s job to lay, er, get Dottie layed.
somewhere i can hear a whole STACK of spreadsheets perking up
i have no idea how i even know what that sounds liiike
also thus is Lewis’ island where dreams come true
too late to run now, Dorothy, they’re mania-festing
Vainglorious Satisfaction sounds like a Euphemism and a half.
Vainglorious Satisfaction is the name of my goth metal band.
(He has his own tiny bow tie.)
Vainglorious satisfaction is a euphemism for being taken advantage of.
I really hope Dorothy isn’t actually gonna bother. It sounds about as fun as the R.A. “election” story.
lol imagine if Roz is like “oh /i’ll/ do it to spite my sister” and makes dorothy wanna do it to spite roz
the perfect Jason story would be Lawsome.
I’m crossing my fingers Dorothy isn’t going to take it. It hurts that Joyce is so quick to put herself down and prop Dorothy up… When her friend doesn’t want her to. She’s become so unhappy in that pedestal everyone (including herself) put her on, it broke her.
Doing this kind of detailed work is grueling. Doing it as ghost writing, not even exposure, would be a shit deal even if she were healthy – and she does need time to heal.
Yes, exactly, not only Walky, everyone who knows Dorothy and even herself, have put that pedestal that has been a great inconvenience.
It seems that Walky is already somewhat aware of what is happening, I mean, they had that conversation, I know they don’t It is correct to say that he finally opened his eyes, but at least it is seen that he is not condemning her for making some new decision in her life, it seems that it will be Joyce who will make Dorothy’s possible decisions in a not positive way.
There’s been a lot of people being treated how their first semester selves established they would like to be treated going around lately.
I’d say there’s a half chance Dorothy initially agrees, then self sabatoges by writing something ridiculous that Robin get published anyway.
If she’s not even getting credit for it, she may as well sabotage the whole thing. Not like she understands politics well enough to write a competent textbook anyway, so there’s no reason to bother trying for free.
The quality of the thing doesn’t even matter, because it’s just a grift motivated by Robin’s realization that she can force people to buy it regardless.
Exactly. Even if she were stupid enough to listen to this random Englishman she doesn’t even really know, and even if Robin hasn’t forgotten about the whole concept because she blinked in the last few seconds, there’s absolutely no incentive for Dorothy to put the slightest bit of effort into this dumbass book idea. She could just copy/paste the phrase “political science is the science of political” a few thousand times, add some photographs of Skittles to keep it visually interesting, and call that a textbook.
That’s not fair. She knows exactly how the US government is structured to work, under ideal conditions, in a frictionless vacuum.
Which frankly a lot more people need to know. If you want to pressure a system, you need to know which parts can be forced because they’re just custom and what parts are actually part of the structure and can’t be ignored.
Robin’s class leans so heavily into the corruption and cynicism that the class doesn’t seem likely to learn anything else. Most likely because Robin probably doesn’t know much.
The key bit is that you can ignore anything you want if you have a sufficiently shameless Supreme Court, because it doesn’t matter what anything actually says. All that matters is what five justices say that it means.
To some extent, but there’s only so far even that can get you.
In some cases, a President really can just ignore the Supreme Court (illegally), but not in all cases, because some things you can do just by ordering your own subordinates, as long as they’ll obey, but in other cases you’d need to rely on federal and state judges, who will listen to the SC.
Or I’ve heard people who vaguely know that the filibuster is just a matter of Senate Rules and can be changed, think that also applies to needing a supermajority for an impeachment conviction.
Or people who see a President doing something on his own authority in one area and decide if he doesn’t do what they want somewhere else where he lacks Constitutional authority or previous authorization from Congress, then it can only be because he doesn’t want to.
Even working within the system, you need to know what the rules are in order to exploit them. Or where and how far the Court will let you do so.
Maybe Robin is cursed to be subverted every time she delegates. Becky completely inverted Robin’s campaign platform. Now Dorothy has a chance to ignore the charge, research and write a book-length diatribe on the contrast between the stated goals of the system and the ways it’s been perverted over the years.
Or a scathing examination of the limits of politics and social structure.
Dorothy ends up so depressed, she doesn’t show up to accept her honorary doctorate.
Dotty agrees and turns in a manuscript. After it is printed and bound it turns out to be her Dexter and Monkey Master fanscript.
I don’t think Dorothy’s managed to build up quite enough spite to pull an “American Fiction”…at least, not yet!
I mean, does robin actually plan to take it to a publishing company or just have jason photocopy like 500 copies to bind together and make the students buy them then lol.
On the one hand, they DEFINITELY shouldn’t write the textbook for… like a gazillion reasons.
… but on the other hand, Dorothy could use some vainglorious satisfaction right about now.
Hmmmm…
I just had the thought….
Jason x Dorothy?
Why not? Couldn’t be any worse than how the Sal thing went
Jason is a TA. Dorothy is a student in one of his classes.
I would hope he wouldn’t be stupid enough to make an identical mistake twice.
Actually, an identical mistake would be if he had sex with that same specific student (Sal) twice while also being her TA.
And yes, he was stupid enough to do that.
isn’t he technically still with ruth? unless she doesn’t care/decides to have an ‘open’ relationship
We just found the title for the next compilation, haven’t we? “I Can Pay You in VAINGLORIOUS SATISFACTION”
Aside to Dorothy: I really like the hat
Fuck it, accept the offer and then just put a bunch of cheat codes and tips for 5th- and 6th-generation video games in there.
Transcribe and rephrase a few Schoolhouse Rock cartoons.
Someone’s not feeling very poli-psyched today.
Side note, I remember referencing Joyce’s character progression with ” Plato’s allegory of the cave, ” once before.
Now with Dorothy I’m looking at her and I’m thinking about Mcbeth and the story theme about a persons assention to power while descending from sanity and morality.
Honestly I have to wonder if this will be simply put to bed by someone (Becky?) simply saying no on Dorothy’s behalf for her own good.
Dorothy is obsessive in her desire to feel useful to the point of self destruction. She has sometimes been a bit condescending in how she helps people but honestly maybe someone has to do it for her too. Sometimes “treat others as you would want to be treated” is the wrong phrase (instead treat others how they want to be treated: can’t assume the person is like you, it’s why you get weird shit like religious people assuming someone will appreciate pointing out all the ways someone is going against god or whatever). But maybe how Dorothy reacts to problems means she wouldn’t mind if someone just once or twice did it for her and took the reins on occasion rather than assuming easily that she’s clearly got this.
he’s relatively honest about it eh ?
The alt/hover text says what I was thinking.
How Becky is not the smarty one, at least today?
She’s not the smarty one, and yet today she’s the smart one.
If you’re smarty enough, the wrong people won’t notice.
I wonder if interacting with Robin one-on-one would put the final blow into Dotty’s presidential dream. Getting a direct and intimate look into how politics works and maybe Robin saying she is too honest and too goody-two-shoes for this line of work.
Jason’s got a stiff upper lip, I’ll say that for him. He managed to relay all that with a straight face, with just a few disapproving pauses.
It’s the beauty of the character that take itself too seriously, it makes putting them through absurd situations even funnier as they try (and fail) to remain dignified.
Batman, gardening.
Is this a crossover with Vainglorious? I love Hiveworks crossovers!
Dorothy’s face and line in the last panel are telling to me. I can’t imagine she’s completely ignorant of what an unreasonable and foolhardy endeavor it would be for her, an undergrad, to write a textbook (because, let’s not kid ourselves, there’s no “assisting” here, Jason can’t help and Robin ain’t doing shit). Now, Joyce has just declared, and with gleeful enthusiasm at that, that this unreasonable and foolhardy thing MUST be her dream, reinforcing the notion Dorothy’s built up in her mind that ALL her dreams and aspirations have been unreasonable and foolhardy, as indicated by her resigned response. I’m curious what her response will be.
Aw, jeez, Dorothy.
Dorothy in her current state engaging with Robin in her current state should be interesting. If nothing else, it should give Dotty the motivation to keep others from doing the job or teaching people how to do it.
I hope they can find a way to get Becky to cooperate. Not just to make what they’ll write more like Robin’s style, but because I really would like to see her and Dorothy work together on writing something. Maybe when Robin returns to politics (for the opposite party to the one she was before, hopefully) she might want them both with her.
GCU Vainglorious Satisfaction
Just because you’ve written a book doesn’t mean that you don’t have to edit it a shit-ton and then get it properly published. I’ve read enough freshman essays to know this is going to look like it was written on caffeine and a prayer unless it takes at least longer than the entire storyline of DOA so far.
For reference: a team of graduate students (PhDs, MFAs in Creative Writing, and MAs) revises our ENG 101 book annually and it takes a full team just to update (not write from scratch) the project, maybe 5-6 new chapters, a new structure, and some cuts. That project basically pays for snacks and the odd pizza at meetings even though it serves the largest individual class on campus.
Robyn should find a better scam, because this one might buy an ice cream cake and that’s it. Or if it fails…woof.
yknow, i didnt notice til literally this second that jason and dorothy look kind of similar