Who is Billy Pilgrim?
Do they fight evil exes?
Or have questionable holidays celebrating the fact that they didn’t starve to death and thus perpetuating the tradition to eat roast (sometimes smoked) turkey instead of the objectively better fried chicken?
I’m currently re-reading Slaughterhouse Five, this time in Ryan North’s graphic novel adaptation. My understanding of Billy Pilgrim’s time-line jumping is that it was a metaphor for dissociative episodes in PTSD.
I’ve certainly experienced similar “space cadet” obliviousness to surroundings… I think a lot of people have. It’s very common to perceive different things from what others consider obvious. And to utterly fail to see the “obvious” things in front of you. That’s why changing user interfaces for machines give so many people so much trouble.
Whether Charlie has the kind of PTSD that Billy Pilgrim had or not, she seems to perceive and interact with time differently, depending on whether Booster is talking with her or not.
I dunno… being someone myself who has varying perceptions of time, different from those of other people, I really don’t quite understand the scorn and derision that I’ve been picking up from some of the comments, recently. (Not the origin to THIS thread, of course! Just a few others.)
Sure, it can interfere with “functioning” and daily task completion like other people expect one to do. But it’s not always impossible to adapt and work with a winding path like that one.
Sounds like I should re-read slaughterhouse Five, more and more I have temporal discontinuity, where I remember similar experiences from the past, but have no idea where in time I am or was.
Might be helpful to talk with someone. When that was happening to me more frequently, it was PTSD. Sometimes it is just spaciness or other reasons, though. Either way, it can help to figure it out together with someone.
Just a thought… (and “someone” is NOT always code for “someone professional”!) Just an idea floating on the wind like a leaf, drifting past, to think of or not, as you like.
Thanks for caring 🙂
I tend not to ask help, which, you know, just adds to your diagnosis 😛
By my own estimate if I have PTSD it is cPTSD. Yay high school.
Anyway, I still have hope that at some point I will feel safe enough to work on my psychological needs. I remember being skilled at constructive self-reflection. But I’m not that high on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs at the moment.
If you are in the US or Canada, calling 2-1-1 (United Way resource directory) is always a kind of a low-key, low-pressure way to start navigating nearby social supports. Just a thought… another leaf on the wind… 🙂
So many fellow PTSD survivors among the readership. I have had mine for more than 50 years now. More than 16 schools by the time I was a sophomore in high school, 4 in 8th grade alone. Plus getting shot at, killed in 2001, and a few other things. And untreated PTSD turns into depression, which they couldn’t treat when I got it because it wasn’t even a diagnosis until 20 years later. I hope that you got treated anyway, because my nightmares have devolved into hallucinogenic trips…
PTSD? As in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder? As in Shell Shock?
Is this a case of one initialism, two meanings, or do you actually mean the result of surviving a harrowing experience and experiencing long-term mental effects from it?
Yes, that is my understanding. Kurt Vonnegut was a prisoner of war during World War Two. My understanding is that Slaughterhouse Five was a metaphorical description of the kinds of post-traumatic dissociation that Vonnegut himself apparently experienced.
Billy Pilgrim (the character l) fought in WW2, became a prisoner of war, and survived the destruction of Dresden. He definitely suffers from PTSD in the novel.
lol this makes me think of that ma3 strip “did i skip a page?!” since something like “oh i already held her hand but she still wasn’t aware of me” does seem something she’d tell booster whether accidentally or semi-bragging (tho I guess based on what we’ve seen so far it’s totally believable that charlie’s used to ppl holding her hand/guiding her with non romantic intentions)
It seemed Booster was going to use her connection with Charlie to force Carla into running through hoops in order to satisfy her sense of psychological control.
Booster is protecting their delicate sister from the sociopath-in-training that is Carla.
“Prove to me that you’re not a massive, flaming, colon sphincter, who will hurt my sister before I help you get with her” is hardly what I’d call “psychological control”.
Traditionally, this is the role of the brothers and father, to scare the prospective boyfriend into proving his worth, or getting lost, before he breaks their sister.
Booster being a protective non-binary sibling is fine. But it seems they’re just enjoying playing with Carla’s head and not respecting their sibling’s autonomy.
As a neurodivergent person, I hated when people infantalized me.
Carla is loud and obnoxious but, well, a good person. She saved Ruth’s life.
I will grant that Charlie’s obvious neurodivergence does factor into my labeling her as “delicate”, or at least more vulnerable to being taken advantage of, but the duty of a more capable, (of seeing and reading the signs, and of ending the threat), family member is to see to it that no one gets to hurt them. Regardless of their other attributes.
Carla has publicly stated that what matters to Carla is Carla. She’s not a stock, cardboard-cutout of a villain, but no one is. If I were in Booster’s shoes, I’d not want to be the one introducing the two, either, as it could be taken as an endorsement, and I’d certainly not want to endorse Carla.
I was wrong. Carla doesn’t appear to be a sociopath.
Carla certainly appears to be a narcissist.
I’d want neither anywhere near anyone I cared about.
How is it transphobia to not want the studied selfishness that is Carla near a loved-one? She goes out of her way to express that she cares about no one but herself.
While that is a read, it is certainly a very uncompromising read since they didn’t directly state ‘Booster is a brother’. They spoke of general, factually traditional roles associated with brothers and fathers. It’s only misogynistic if they insist that is something women are not allowed to do, which they did not.
Oh no, it’s misogynistic as hell if you’re talking about those traditional roles with any kind of approval. Arguing that anyone in the family, but mostly the men, need to test prospective dates for their female kin, is misogynistic. Women can date who they want and don’t need some to try to scare them off.
The transphobic part is a bit less clear, since it’s not stated directly, but since they’re applying the traditional role of brothers scaring prospective boyfriends to Booster and Carla respectively, the implication is there.
Pretty sure “traditionally that’s directed towards the boyfriend” implies “traditionally it’s boys who court girls”, not “Carla is a boy”. Which is true, for some places and some time periods, including the places and time periods where that model of trying to scare off said courtiers is a thing.
I mean, I love me an adorkable disaster lesbian romance, but… I don’t think that’s what this is. I don’t know what this is, but…
**continues backing away slowly**
I think they’re just kinda blind and awkward right now more than anything sinister or potentially destructive like with the almost-not-toxic-towards-the-end relationship Billie and Ruth had.
These two are just a little silly with it.
Well it gets a lot weirder and more problematic if you assume as we had every reason to until this strip that we’d seen all their interactions and nothing like what she said had ever happened.
It gets less creepy, I think, if you imagine that Carla was actually talking AT Charlie, hoping to be acknowledged but never seeing it. That is to say, they WERE meaningfully interacting, but Carla didn’t know that Charlie knew they were doing that, and Charlie didn’t know that Carla didn’t know that Charlie knew they were doing that.
I go into a lot more detail into my headcanons about their interactions in a comment some ways below, which I hope will present a relatively plausible & non-creepy vision of how it all went down!
So did this happen entirely off panel or were there Patreon strips that showed this?
Because, if it was entirely off panel, I’m gonna need a timeline of when this occurred in relation to the recent arcs.
Class isn’t on the weekend (unless you count Friday, and I don’t THINK their specific class is on Friday).
And Carla acknowledges holding hands, but thought maybe Charlie did it because they were cold, which definitely didn’t show under any of the Charlie tags that I just checked.
So, this is Monday. Last time we saw Charlie it was in class on Thursday. That was the time Carla tried to get her attention in the hall outside.
On Saturday, Carla first approached Booster to get them to tell Charlie that she exists. It was Sunday that Carla spent all day waiting in the wrong dorm for Charlie.
It’s hard for me to see space in there for Carla and Charlie to hang out. The Saturday conversation makes no sense if they already had. Nor the waiting all day in the wrong dorm. Maybe they met up after that?
Or maybe they didn’t actually meet up in objective reality, and Charlie is “remembering” things that she just thought about. And Carla is just playing along because “cute girl thinks we’re dating”.
It’s possible, but the more I think about it, the more I think it’s real. But it was last weekend, not the immediately past one.
And Carla’s been trying to her attention and freaking out about it ever since.
About halfway through this thread I thought, “Charlie is telling a little story to make Booster comfortable enough to leave, because she wants a private moment to ask, ‘so, why have you been trying to get my attention?’ She tends to be unaware of people in the moment but remembers it fully later, or something.”
Also noting that “girlfriend” is ambiguous here. This should be interesting either way.
one chapter a day, plus a chapter for the Halloween flashback. First day after the timeskip was the Sunday before classes started. This chapter is the third Monday of classes.
Not sure if this is a case where things happened off-screen and we just didn’t get to be privy to them, or if Charlie’s confusing Carla for someone else or… or something else O.o
Carla admits that they were in each other’s presence and held hands (she just wasn’t sure if it was all intentional).
So unless she’s lying on the spot to go with what Charlie is saying, it really happened, apparently offscreen.
for those a little confused: there wasn’t a significant timeskip (last chapter ended with karaoke, and ruth told jason that she was out late the night before ‘karaokeing’ on feb 8th’s strip). friday thru sunday took place over the three previous chapters (‘but don’t give yourself away,’ ‘everybody’s looking for nothing,’ & ‘it’s the love i haven’t got’). the weekend just passed. last we saw carla, she was hanging out with a hat that said her name in a cute dress. these two meet-ups that charlie interprets as dates (and carla as possibly incidental hanging out, whether out of internal anxiety or charlie’s spaciness) happened off-screen.
for the record, charlie’s actually known carla’s name since ‘joementum.’ (april 24th, 2023 strip ‘My name is’), she just hasn’t acknowledged it in front of carla.
can’t wait for more charlie i am utterly obsessed with her
No. And none of them were over the weekend.
The only place an off-screen meet-up seems to make sense is after Carla spent the day waiting for Charlie in the wrong dorm.
And at the start of this scene with Booster, she was still asking for an introduction.
as mentioned in my previous post, “charlie’s actually known carla’s name since ‘joementum.’ (april 24th, 2023 strip ‘My name is’), she just hasn’t acknowledged it in front of carla.” carla requires explicit acknowledgement of her existence, it’s kind of her thing. usually you don’t refer to someone you’re talking to by name, at least not in english, outside of specific circumstances, and charlie doesn’t talk very much in any of her appearances. you can spend hours even alone with someone without having ever been properly introduced.
the joke is that charlie has literally known who carla is the entire time, carla just wasn’t told. (also lesbians are dumb)(i’m lesbians) booster also could’ve cleared this up at any point, considering they’ve known that carla and charlie share a class since the april 27th, 2023 strip ‘Charlie’.
not everyone will find the joke funny but i personally think it’s brilliant, an extremely funny twist. :3
Though that doesn’t actually show that Charlie knew Carla’s name. She doesn’t say it. We can assume, but we don’t know how much she caught of Carla’s game.
I’m not sure what you mean by Booster clearing it up. Everyone involved knew they shared a class. Carla just wanted an introduction so hopefully Charlie would focus on her a bit.
Nope! any hanging out was off-screen. the last time we see charlie is technically in a bonus strip, standing outside in the snow with the switch, and in the main comic, at class looking at her phone. (april 30th, 2023 strip ‘Wander’)
I think it’s entirely that charlie is so spaced/noncommunicative that absent mindedly holding someones hand without really realizing theres a person on the other end is entirely plausible, up until this reveal.
Plays “Close to Me,” by the Cure on the hacked vinyl record player.
Strains of the Beatles, “Got to Get You Into My Life” drift over from the nearby roller rink speaker system: “Ooh, you were meant to be near me
Ooh, and I want you hear me…Ooh, and I suddenly see you, Ooh, did I tell you I need you?’
but be hilarious/frustrating for carla if the alternate was “oh i have a girlfriend, although we haven’t talked in 5 years but we technically never broke up either” XD
There are some people who believe most any food is best eaten at room temperature, perhaps barring foods whose structural integrity relies on temperature, like ice cream.
Those people are known as muddytruckers you avoid.
The cronch factor of a French fry in relation to temperature is a bell curve. At a certain point it’s cold enough to make those fries cronch again, and that’s what really matters.
I would think if they’re on campus there’s a microwave for them to use and reheat whatever was ordered. if not ordering a new meal i’m sure carla would be in a good enough mood to treat booster to lunch for a month straight now
also surprised they wouldn’t multitask/eat some of the fries even if they don’t unwrap their burger tho i’m more used to standing while eating sometimes even if i’m not walking/def would’ve if i was stuck in a convo with someone (or even just chewing on food while watching carla’s awkward convo lol)
i think air fryers are a bit ‘fancy’ for a college student to have unless you can get some cheaper than a switch but even so i would worry about a roommate mooching it or breaking it lol
Oh, like that thing where both players agree to pretend that it matters which color square goes in the bottom right corner, and get mad at people who point out that it really doesn’t matter!
Of course it matters! If the board is oriented wrong, you will put your queen on the wrong color and the whole game goes to pot. Imagine the confusion:
White: “How did I lose that game? It started off so good.”
Black: “How did we both lose that game? It started off fucked up.”
Director: “Who told these idiots they could play chess?”
Find a copy of the game Knightmare Chess (there were two ‘editions’, both are good and can be added together to make a mega-game). It was a deck of cards you used while playing a standard chess game. While laser lego pirates weren’t in there, it did have a way for you to have a pawn blow up (capturing all the adjacent pieces), rotate the board 90 degrees, and create a “superqueen” that was both a Queen and a Knight, among other insanity.
Yes. If all parties agree after the fact that it was a date, it retroactively becomes a date. But one person claiming it was a date doesn’t make it one.
it def is surprising that charlie would be the one to bring it up/call her a gf, maybe the times that charlie was present/’in the moment’ during the hangout read carla’s body language/actions as being into her
This is my take–Charlie, for all her spaciness, apparently is able to read people quite well, and understood Carla’s intent better than anyone, including Carla.
“This person is interested in me. She’s cute. Okay, we’re dating now, holding hands like a couple of perverts.”
Tbf it’s a pretty typical lesbian experience to not know you were on a date. It has happened to me a few times. I have a friend who was dating someone for 6 months before she realised and they’re married now.
@bogey: i mean, ‘useless lesbian’ trope/stereotype aside it’d be better for more ppl to state their intentions at some point rather than assume b/c it’d be super awkward if someone actually leaned in for a kiss and it backfire/realizing and regretting. (plus for it to be six months unless they take it slow i’d think there’d be other indication of romantic affection as opposed to platonic like kissing versus just hand holding unless they literally act that way with all their other friends)
or like “This is a date? Y’know I’m already dating ___, right?” if not “actually i’m not gay/straight, sorry if i gave you mixed signals?” Or someone, not necessarily hostile but insisting strongly that you don’t want any one on one hangouts to be a date so ppl don’t get the wrong idea off the bat/accidentally lead someone on
Would be nice if there were more endearing oblivious ppl versus douchebags who assume they’re amazing and that you’re into them when you clearly show no interest either way lol
Fun fact, i got broken up with by a woman I was unaware considered us to be dating for the previous half year.
There is no limit to how oblivious a lesbian can be
@mel: lol i wish i had these problems (tho be nice to be more aware if someone was annoyed with me/disliked me within reason) but i can’t rly imagine seeing too many openly gay ppl here, even tho the south isn’t as ‘bad’ as it was two decades ago but i guess i live in a small suburb but i wouldn’t go outta my way to seek a relationship rather than having fellow allies/comrades
Ok this doesn’t make sense. I’m almost 100% positive that this isn’t something we saw happen. And it doesn’t make sense for it to have happened off screen because if they’d hung out multiple times and held hands Carla wouldn’t have needed Booster to introduce her to Charlie. Put in a good word for her due to not knowing where they stand? Sure. Subtly find out where she stands? Definitely. But not an introduction.
My read on this is that Charlie did not give Carla what she would recognize as signals of acknowledgement. Charlie is pretty well-established to seem spacey to other characters, with not a lot of outward indication of what’s going on in her head, while Carla has never dealt in subtlety.
Yeah this doesn’t add up but it’s obviously meant to be a confusing swerve that is going to be explained in future strips, so I’m not really worrying about trying to fit the pieces together.
I don’t think it will be explained. Willis has punked us, they are probably cackling as we speak, and presently will be reaching into their bag of tricks for their next stunt. We may fume at their mischief but they will not stoop to appease us. Or such is my presumption.
skipping over their coupling might make some ppl happy tho
but someone as comically jerky as mike (even tho he got killed off b/c he didn’t rly fit with the story long term), and stuff like arcs with amazigirl existing, them being a couple isn’t too unrealistic evenif it’s somehow ‘accidental’
It took me like a solid five minutes (with intermittent bursts of giggling, b/c it’s still a funny strip) to figure out how this even remotely makes sense, but now I honestly think it does.
The trick, for me, was realizing that “hanging out” or “going out” together doesn’t necessarily require any sort of CONVERSATION, or even verbal acknowledgement of each others’ existence. Carla was convinced that she needed an introduction to Charlie, because Charlie simply never spoke to her during their previous “dates”, or at least never identified her by name when she did.
Picture the following scenario: Carla rolls up to the same bench as Charlie, and sits down to rest after a long skating trip. Naturally enough, she starts going on a long spiel about who she is, how awesome she is, and what awesome things she’s going to do in the near future. Charlie shows absolutely no signs that she even heard any of this, and appears engrossed in her phone. Carla abruptly leaves, in order to cover up how nervous and awkward this makes her. Charlie is about 70% sure this counts as a date, but Carla has no idea if Charlie even knows she exists. Next time they meet, Carla rolls up to Charlie in the halls, and follows her out to the bus stop, making a series of increasingly awkward (and from her perspective, failed) attempts at small talk. They both sit down. Charlie, still staring at her phone, holds Carla’s hand. Silence follows. The bus comes, and Charlie leaves Carla there. Charlie is now 90% sure they’re dating, and Carla is utterly smitten with how cool this random, aloof, stranger who totally doesn’t know her is. Next time they see each other in class, Carla starts yelling about how this freshman won’t pay attention to her, and that’s the first time we see them together in the comic.
I’m hoping it’s something like this scenario, because otherwise it doesn’t make sense that Carla still thought she needed Booster to introduce her to Charlie, while Charlie thought they were already dating. Especially since we didn’t see any off screen stuff to indicate they went on any “dates” before now.
Of a (DOA) semester of Booster being my favorite character, I had never related to them so much as tonight.
Holy shit sdgjsldgjksjg if it weren’t for the “maybe your hands were cold” I’d swear Charlie’s confusing Carla with someone else. Congratulations on avoiding the “will they won’t they” lesbian trap by going full on “we held hands so we’re dating” lesbians, good show everyone.
Counterpoint: “will they won’t they” is a sweet, sweet trap and i will enthusiastically fall for its intoxicating promise every time, allowing my wings to be glued down and my very flesh to dissolve into the blissful agony of its acidic depths.
I still have no use for Booster as a person or a character, but I love Charlie more every time we see her, or even when someone mentions her name on-panel when she’s absent. She’s a force of nature, but not a violent one–more like a morning mist, glistening in the pre-dawn twilight, obscuring everything around her.
i guess something must’ve happened during the karaoke night even if they weren’t a part of it lol
and congrats to carla for getting what she wants more or less, and to the ppl rooting for them to be a couple (tho idk if it’s better or worse that they skipped over more of the courtship, unless we’ll see more flashbacks or future dates lol)
“Sister, Christian” through “Trial and Sarah” if last weekend means 9 days ago. “Don’t Give Yourself Away” if last weekend started the Friday three days ago.
Charlie was introduced to us in between those two.
Because of how Carla acted in class, I would guess this last weekend Carla ran into Charlie, at like the student union or library, and they just chilled, holding hands. But without Charlie ever acknowledging Carla’s introduction.
We know Carla is capable of just chilling, we’ve seen her do it with Sal, Malaya, Marcie, and also Ruth and Lucy.
Carla asks Booster to introduce her to Charlie twice on Saturday, and then for so far unexplained reasons, asks to borrow butter from Joyce.
Carla wakes Booster up around 7:30-8 on Sunday, and then is in Briscoe for 10ish hours (may be hyperbole) before Booster shows up. She’s back in Read to pie Walky as he’s headed out to karaoke, time uncertain.
Don’t forget to look your coworkers dead in the eye while you sink your teeth, over and over, into that stick of butter. You may choose to smile and nod amicably at them all the while to suggest that you may yet prove a benign alpha colleague if they submit without a fight.
If Charlie’s bonus strip happened this weekend, it would have probably been Saturday, maybe Sunday. She’s standing outside student union for at least an hour, at the start there is snow on the ground, and the sky is clear and daylight. At the end, the sun has set / is setting, and it’s snowing.
In the main strip, it snowed all day Friday. Saturday had only one panel outside, when it wasn’t snowing in the morning. Sunday had many strips outside, none showed snowing. The last one was when Walky saw/told his parents off. That happened “a few hours” after they finished their lunch with Jennifer and Asher.
I now assume it was last weekend, not this one. That gives a lot more room for them to hang out.
And it completely recontextualizes all of their interactions since. Carla trying to get her attention in their first strip together isn’t just a narcissist not getting her just attention, but her wondering why the girl she’d been hanging out with and thought she had a connection with wasn’t even acknowledging her.
At this point, I can’t always tell if I’m trolling or just saying something other people find strange. Usually they assume it’s the former and won’t hear a word to the contrary.
When I mention a slightly unusual behavior I had in kindergarten: “You always were a kidder, Taffy.”
When I say, out of nowhere, that I’m gonna turn a real Glock into one of the Blade Blasters from Power Rangers and take it to a convention so I can shoot people dressed as the villains from the show: “You’re clearly being serious about this. Guns are dangerous, and you mustn’t ever do such a thing with them. This is the time to be parasocially stern with you like we know each other.”
That’s okay, so is Carla. Charlie seems to have the best grasp on the situation, which I absolutely love. (Also apparently a decent grasp of Carla’s hand, which I also love.)
Better than the alternative of “i assumed we went on a date but we’re not even rly friends/only have mutual acquaintances and no relationship otherwise” which has happened a lot more irl
What, huh?? This doesn’t make sense even with a time skip. Why would Carla be trying to introduce herself still? Why would she not know where Charlie lives if they went out?
Why would Charlie act like this with someone she thought was her girlfriend?
Someone said she’s mistaken her for someone else, obviously not, since Carla suddenly remembers hanging out with her.
Is Charlie meant to be kind of a Galasso, just a comical caricature?
“Maybe your hands were cold” is the big clue here. It’s ambiguous and doesn’t really make a lot of sense as a real response to that information. I think Carla’s full of shit in that last bubble, because none of that happened.
The way she says that makes me think she means it the “Maybe you only held my hand because yours were cold and there wasn’t anything romantic about it” way.
Have you see the way Carla acts around her? And how Charlie acts in general? I guarantee you, no meaningful conversation took place, and every single interactions was intentionally made to be as ambiguous as possible, while the small parts of their rational minds that still work are working overtime trying to figure out what is happening, considering all possibilities and rejecting all good ones as wishful thinking.
The bit here is that it’s just an escalation of the clueless lesbian trope (Do you think she likes me?” while actively being cuddled by said woman) etc.
That said I do not think this is being executed very well at all. And I’m kind of dissapointed bc I was hoping we’d get some more… idk internal carla? Seeing more of her?
Feels like Willis only really wants to keep her for her bits and jokes as opposed to getting any more depth beyond “RECOGNIZE MY GREATNESS AND SUPERIORITY” jokes
I don’t see what either of them sees in each other. They each seem oblivious to each other’s personality or mental state. They each seem too distracted (Carla by her own awesomeness, Charlie by … something) to even be looking for a relationship. I mean, imagine them trying to have an actual conversation, or making out – they just wouldn’t connect. They’d each do better dating a chatbot than each other.
Talk about dumb relationships: I had a girlfriend in college and none of my friends could understand why I was with her. I don’t to this day see what was wrong with her.
To boil it way the hell down, I was unhappy about something, and instead of speaking my mind I went all passive-aggressive. For a long time. So long that she threw me out.
According to the secret (not really) Dumbiverse lore, Carla isn’t particularly interested in making out with her girlfriends, any more than she is in having sex with them. Hell, she’s not even really that interested in having deep conversations with them either! Her main love languages in that universe, as I recall, were collaborating on pranks, mutual bongoing about acquaintances, and snuggling up on the bed watching movies together. I don’t think Charlie is into bongoing about acquaintances, but the other two remain open as possibilities!
I was going to write about the presence of hand-holding making it understandable we’d never seen anything before, as it was clearly too much for non-Slipshine comics, but we’ve seen Joyce holding two different male hands in strip, so it must be something about Charlie and Carla specifically that makes it different.
Homosexual intimacy is viewed as inherently sexual in many cultures and regions, including the American Midwest. This view extends to things nobody would bat an eye at from a straight couple, like holding hands or Frenching in Walmart.
Um… if I saw a man and a woman Frenching in a Walmart, I would definitely ascribe a sexual characteristic to it. “Normal” kissing, on the other hand (like a simple peck on the lips or cheek, i.e. not Frenching), would indeed likely be seen as more benign and innocuous by most people if it were a straight couple doing it versus a gay couple doing it, granted.
(Unless you meant that the man and woman were engaging in an act of food preparation, in which case, no, I probably wouldn’t ascribe a sexual element to that. Depends on how… weirdly they were going about it. Though in any case, I’d at least wonder why they were doing it in a Walmart, unless they worked there or something.)
Can confirm, am a cashier (not at Walmart tho) and we’ve had people frenching in the supermarket.
It is awkward for everyone, no matter the couple’s gender.
However, last weekend there was a gay couple being very affectionate during my last shift and the old lady right in front of them was ten seconds from blowing up.
This is already better than any relationship Leslie has had in this universe so far.
Also, I find it kind of hilarious Charlie is seemingly getting more action (even if it’s hand-holding) than Booster is, despite Booster more actively pursuing it (hitting on Ruth, Amber, arguably Ethan depending?, and uhh, am I missing anybody?) at various points. Booster may want to rethink their approach.
Which could still technically be about the dentist gf, because I just checked the archives and surprisingly, she actually started dating Anna after Becky and Dina dated. I kinda hope Leslie’s moved onto another girlfriend, we’ll have to see I guess.
So they’ve been “hanging out” a couple of times off panel. That’s about as much solid facts as we can discern. Almost a How I Met Your Mother level recontextualization twist, still.
I love that the third panel makes it feel like Charlie is looking right at us as she drops this bombshell. She knows most of us will respond like Booster, and that’s kind of beautiful.
Eh, Carla is also baffled. There’s still a chance she gets driven insane (“be careful what you wish for”) or that Charlie is so oblivious that we see in a few strips her actual girlfriend who is also named Carla come in and whisk Charlie away while leaving Carla’s brain breaking down from sheer confusion
That’s close to what I’m thinking. Possibly she recognises Carla by name and face, but this hypothetical other person by activity. Or there are two Carlas and this is how we find out.
I can so identify. I suspect I have undiagnosed autism to some extent (I’m in my 60s, they didn’t know back then). Recently when I was visiting my mom in my home town, she talk about somebody who “wanted to be my friend so bad.” I answered, “They were my best friend!” Looking back though, I don’t know what their perception was. My idea of a play-date was somebody would come over and we would play in our own corners. But it never extended to someone I was dating. (Or did it? Oh, god, now I question everything!)
Charlie seems like extremely absent-minded. To a worrying degree, I wonder if she is disassociating. But toxic? I do not understand where you got that impression. Care to elaborate?
It makes no sense and that’s by intention. There’s no basis for speculation; all you can do is stay tuned and wait to see what really happened, if anything.
I remember being shocked at his last words of “Oof, boy golly this sure does hurt. Ouch, oh I’m in a lot of pain here. Gosh, is that the grim reaper here to guide me to the afterlife? Yup, that’s him. Wowie wow wow, I’m dead after all.”
Let’s assume for a moment that Charlie is telling the exact literal truth, canonical events have occurred which fit her description exactly and there’s no misidentification of any information. Now that we’re all in this room together, do we think Carla just casually hangs out and holds hands with with random women, without ever asking for their names or even seeming to recognise them later?
I don’t like imagining any sort of child, because I instinctively think about what that child would be like with me as its parent, and then that causes an episode and then the entire day is gone in the blink of an eye.
But I do understand what you mean. I did it once or twice as a young’un, and it must have been hilarious to the teacher.
Carla has been pestering Booster to get them to tell their sister that Carla exists, and is superawesomecool. Which we, lacking today’s information, assumed meant the two had never interacted and that Carla was still stuck at the sign-waving stage of her crush, but that was a prank, because as it turns out they have been seeing each other somehow, and even holding hands, except because Charlie is Charlie Carla wasn’t sure how much of the situation (including the hand-holding) had registered for her.
turns out Charlie was there for it, just not very expressive about it. Also presumably too busy considering seahorses or bumblebees or some other amusing animal to wonder very much about Carla’s name, phone number, or other topics of so-called normal conversation.
Meanwhile Carla was likely dumbstruck and swooney in Charlie’s presence and forgot her words as well. All in all, very cute, completely dysfunctional and immature but very cute.
So was “last weekend” the immediate past weekend, when Carla was actively trying to find Charlie, or was it the weekend before and all we’ve seen of their interactions been Carla trying to get the attention of the girl she’d already kind of maybe been seeing?
I don’t know if that makes things better or weirder.
I’d go with ‘the weekend before’:
– it’s Monday in comic and to me last weekend is more than a day ago
– we haven’t seen much of Carla on that weekend (room for untold stories)
– Carla’s acting in class seems less weird if they’ve met before
“last weekend” is ambiguous, perhaps intentionally. I still lean towards “this last weekend”, but there’s good points for “last last weekend” too. I eagerly await the answer being revealed within the next six months.
It looks like there’s been a little moderation in the comments section, which is a good thing overall, I think.
Since everyone knows me as the link monster, though, I thought I’d just perhaps remind folks that these are out there, in case anyone feels like reaching out to non-professional peers for a talk.
That’s really insensitive. Everyone knows she was kidnapped by rogue gamers and forced to play Fortnite for three years. They kept her awake with energy drinks and beef jerky. When the authorities final found her (thanks to an anonymous tip that turned out to be from Josh Brolin, of all people), she’d been default dancing for three hours and wouldn’t respond to any name but “Shlorah_Deborah”.
Okay, so Charlie is the one with boobs, Booster is the one wearing pink, and Carla is the one wearing a v-neck shirt. Or at least it looks like pink on my phone.
actually- coming back to my comment afterwards to let you know that another excellent ‘the gays are oblivious’ moment is Snorpy and Chandlo from Bugsnax. Play it- It’s real good.
Every group chat, use of public transit, multiplayer guild, trading card tournament, bench conversation or shared class you’ve ever participated in might count as dating. It’s scary to think about how many hearts we’ve all broken over the years, without us or them ever realising it.
what you never realized at the time was that when your heart broke, it split right along the crevices and tender cracks from all of the small accumulated heartbreaks that came before and you just weathered, laughed off, decided not to dwell upon.
She doesn’t actively ignore anyone though? It’s been established that she is just very absent minded and it can take her a while to realize someone is talking to her.
Nah, ignoring somebody requires intent. Otherwise it’s normal inattentiveness, which has the benefit of being a much less judgemental term that puts less of that needless moral spin on the scenario.
oh shoot, i forgot to post this, (it’s fine no one cares ‘cept for my 3 or 4 sweetie-boos who leave me a sweet comment like bosses, you know who you are, ilyyy =) i know i’m not great at this, but i do need the encouragement if i’m ever gonna git gud haha <3 <3)
NEW PAGE yo 🍑🕶
(also updated ye olde pages, the last two or three that is cuz the uploads were shamefully lo-q)
hey, your colleagues have probably never seen a human naked. they’d look at that and think, “oh no something’s wrong with these tiny misshapen humans on my colleague’s phone”. if anything it might make them stop whatever disgusting thing they were doing.
Like god, even people who hate Carla getting what she wants should be laughing at this – Carla is confused as hell, to the point that even Carla is questioning reality
No. It happened off panel. This strip continues the tradition of a character playing matchmaker to two characters who are already involved. Except this time we weren’t in on the joke.
I’m a bit afraid Charlie might forget about Carla in the future, as easily as she remembers her in a past that Carla doesn’t seem to remember. But seeing Booster’s reaction, she probably won’t ( let’s hope). It’s funny to see Carla discover that she’s already the girlfriend of the girl she likes. Let’s hope she’ll continues to like her for some time to come.
Twist! They already got married off panel, but Charlie forgot to invite anyone and is fuzzy on the details of the event. Carla assumed that it was a skit for a class. Carla’s parents rented out Luxembourg (all of it) for the ceremony and reception. It was lovely, probably.
We’ve never been shown anything of the sort, which makes me doubt it ever happened. I’m like 87% sure Charlie is confusing Carla with somebody else, maybe combining the two in her mind.
Another sudden thought which is probably wrong: Booster has seen this happen before, knows how it’s going to go, and is no longer worried about Charlie (and doesn’t care to worry about Carla).
I, on the other hand, have no idea how this is going to go….
we don’t know if charlie’s dated anyone before but i feel like if they had seen it before they wouldn’t rly think it’d be necessarily to ‘introduce’ them even tho carla was insisting lol
Ehhhh, it’s a sweet reveal if kinda cheaty. This would have been more fun if there was subtle stuff in the archive we could look at and realize was the proof that Charlie thought they were already dating all along.
how are people not getting that the real reveal here is that Carla assumes when people spend time with her it’s “accidental”? this is huge character development stuff for the comic’s main character cmon people
Didn’t think of that. Don’t narcissists have a fragile ego? So if she isn’t a true narcissist, then she could be hiding her insecurities by being obnoxiously in people’s faces
I took Carla thinking it was accidental specifically considering Charlie’s spaciness, not that she thinks that people would only spend time with her on accident.
Maybe this is twisted of me, but a part of me is wodering if Charlie is seriously messing with Carla (and possibly Booster, too, since the whole sibling dynamic) this whole time. The ignoring Carla at first, then talking to her, and then doing this just to mess with Booster.
All if it is an elaborate practical joke designed to mess with Booster and Carla.
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Maybe Charlie is unstuck in time like Billy Pilgrim.
Would kinda explain a lot about her, actually.
Who is Billy Pilgrim?
Do they fight evil exes?
Or have questionable holidays celebrating the fact that they didn’t starve to death and thus perpetuating the tradition to eat roast (sometimes smoked) turkey instead of the objectively better fried chicken?
I assume they’re unstuck in time, or maybe that just happens in the anime adaptation-that’s-actually-a-stealth-sequel.
Good one
That would make sense.
I’m currently re-reading Slaughterhouse Five, this time in Ryan North’s graphic novel adaptation. My understanding of Billy Pilgrim’s time-line jumping is that it was a metaphor for dissociative episodes in PTSD.
I’ve certainly experienced similar “space cadet” obliviousness to surroundings… I think a lot of people have. It’s very common to perceive different things from what others consider obvious. And to utterly fail to see the “obvious” things in front of you. That’s why changing user interfaces for machines give so many people so much trouble.
Whether Charlie has the kind of PTSD that Billy Pilgrim had or not, she seems to perceive and interact with time differently, depending on whether Booster is talking with her or not.
I dunno… being someone myself who has varying perceptions of time, different from those of other people, I really don’t quite understand the scorn and derision that I’ve been picking up from some of the comments, recently. (Not the origin to THIS thread, of course! Just a few others.)
Sure, it can interfere with “functioning” and daily task completion like other people expect one to do. But it’s not always impossible to adapt and work with a winding path like that one.
Sounds like I should re-read slaughterhouse Five, more and more I have temporal discontinuity, where I remember similar experiences from the past, but have no idea where in time I am or was.
Might be helpful to talk with someone. When that was happening to me more frequently, it was PTSD. Sometimes it is just spaciness or other reasons, though. Either way, it can help to figure it out together with someone.
Just a thought… (and “someone” is NOT always code for “someone professional”!) Just an idea floating on the wind like a leaf, drifting past, to think of or not, as you like.
Thanks for caring 🙂
I tend not to ask help, which, you know, just adds to your diagnosis 😛
By my own estimate if I have PTSD it is cPTSD. Yay high school.
Anyway, I still have hope that at some point I will feel safe enough to work on my psychological needs. I remember being skilled at constructive self-reflection. But I’m not that high on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs at the moment.
I get that! Totally. One step at a time.
Take good care, friend.
If you are in the US or Canada, calling 2-1-1 (United Way resource directory) is always a kind of a low-key, low-pressure way to start navigating nearby social supports. Just a thought… another leaf on the wind… 🙂
So many fellow PTSD survivors among the readership. I have had mine for more than 50 years now. More than 16 schools by the time I was a sophomore in high school, 4 in 8th grade alone. Plus getting shot at, killed in 2001, and a few other things. And untreated PTSD turns into depression, which they couldn’t treat when I got it because it wasn’t even a diagnosis until 20 years later. I hope that you got treated anyway, because my nightmares have devolved into hallucinogenic trips…
I’m so sorry you are dealing with all this, Opus the Poet.
Don’t know if it might help at all, but I always share these:
• United Way: https://www.211.org/ or call 2-1-1
• Find Help: https://www.findhelp.org/
• Connect IE: https://connectie.org/?lang=en
PTSD? As in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder? As in Shell Shock?
Is this a case of one initialism, two meanings, or do you actually mean the result of surviving a harrowing experience and experiencing long-term mental effects from it?
Hi Sean,
Yes, that is my understanding. Kurt Vonnegut was a prisoner of war during World War Two. My understanding is that Slaughterhouse Five was a metaphorical description of the kinds of post-traumatic dissociation that Vonnegut himself apparently experienced.
Thanks for clarifying!
Billy Pilgrim (the character l) fought in WW2, became a prisoner of war, and survived the destruction of Dresden. He definitely suffers from PTSD in the novel.
Hope Charlie doesn’t get assassinated at some point. But even if… so it goes.
“Poo-tee-weet?”
Did canon ever establish a name for Dexter’s home planet? If not, is it Trafalmadore?
IIRC it was literally called “Alien”
Charlie just interacts with the world over a dial-up connection. 5000 ping and occasional disconnects.
Ah. That explains it. 🙂 (Cue dial-up modem sound…)
is THAT how it works 🤔
(Charlie seems to live in a happy little reality of her own, I’d like to visit)
Hope you don’t mind seahorses
I mean… dating doesn’t mean you’re exclusive.
I dont know if there’s a word for what Charlie has
The word for what Booster currently has is “migraine”.
Yeah, it’s nice to see Booster being the one fucked with this time. Pretty much every character needs someone who pushes their buttons.
A girlfriend! That’s the word. 😉
lol
Carla. She has Carla.
“90s-style quirkiness”?
A Switch. It might be Booster’s turn again soon, though.
Well, I don’t think we have confirmation on what Carla’s preferences are in that regar- oh wait, you’re talking about the game console…
Wait.
What?
A switch. It’s what Willis just did.
Once again the universe bends itself to Carla’s benefit
As is only proper.
Just came here to say EXACTLY the same thing!
Just gals being pals.
Love on the spectrum. It’s just as screwed up as love off the spectrum.
Aaaaaaaaaah hahahahaha God Damn it, Willis! Well done messing with us all like that. That was absolutely brilliant ahahahahahaha.
lol this makes me think of that ma3 strip “did i skip a page?!” since something like “oh i already held her hand but she still wasn’t aware of me” does seem something she’d tell booster whether accidentally or semi-bragging (tho I guess based on what we’ve seen so far it’s totally believable that charlie’s used to ppl holding her hand/guiding her with non romantic intentions)
It’s good to see Booster’s evil schemes utterly thwarted.
…What part of their scheme was evil though?
And what part of it was thwarted, for that matter?
(Well, aside from the “evil scheme” of eating a warm lunch, that is.)
It seemed Booster was going to use her connection with Charlie to force Carla into running through hoops in order to satisfy her sense of psychological control.
Charlie headed that off.
Their
Typo. My bad.
Booster is protecting their delicate sister from the sociopath-in-training that is Carla.
“Prove to me that you’re not a massive, flaming, colon sphincter, who will hurt my sister before I help you get with her” is hardly what I’d call “psychological control”.
Traditionally, this is the role of the brothers and father, to scare the prospective boyfriend into proving his worth, or getting lost, before he breaks their sister.
wow this accidental transphobia towards Carla deserves multiple pies to the face
Not to mention the bog standard misogyny of the “traditional” role of the man in family gatekeeping access to the women.
Booster being a protective non-binary sibling is fine. But it seems they’re just enjoying playing with Carla’s head and not respecting their sibling’s autonomy.
As a neurodivergent person, I hated when people infantalized me.
Carla is loud and obnoxious but, well, a good person. She saved Ruth’s life.
I will grant that Charlie’s obvious neurodivergence does factor into my labeling her as “delicate”, or at least more vulnerable to being taken advantage of, but the duty of a more capable, (of seeing and reading the signs, and of ending the threat), family member is to see to it that no one gets to hurt them. Regardless of their other attributes.
Carla has publicly stated that what matters to Carla is Carla. She’s not a stock, cardboard-cutout of a villain, but no one is. If I were in Booster’s shoes, I’d not want to be the one introducing the two, either, as it could be taken as an endorsement, and I’d certainly not want to endorse Carla.
Yeah, I don’t actually have any problem with Booster here. (Or at least not beyond the dumbing expected from any character in this comic.)
It was the praise of that traditional male role that got to me.
I was wrong. Carla doesn’t appear to be a sociopath.
Carla certainly appears to be a narcissist.
I’d want neither anywhere near anyone I cared about.
How is it transphobia to not want the studied selfishness that is Carla near a loved-one? She goes out of her way to express that she cares about no one but herself.
The transphobia comes when you refer to both Booster and Carla as male – Booster as a *brother*, Carla as a *boyfriend*.
Transphobia with a healthy dose of misogyny.
While that is a read, it is certainly a very uncompromising read since they didn’t directly state ‘Booster is a brother’. They spoke of general, factually traditional roles associated with brothers and fathers. It’s only misogynistic if they insist that is something women are not allowed to do, which they did not.
Well, until the court comes back with a verdict, maybe armchair litigation is a little bit preemptive.
Oh no, it’s misogynistic as hell if you’re talking about those traditional roles with any kind of approval. Arguing that anyone in the family, but mostly the men, need to test prospective dates for their female kin, is misogynistic. Women can date who they want and don’t need some to try to scare them off.
The transphobic part is a bit less clear, since it’s not stated directly, but since they’re applying the traditional role of brothers scaring prospective boyfriends to Booster and Carla respectively, the implication is there.
Pretty sure “traditionally that’s directed towards the boyfriend” implies “traditionally it’s boys who court girls”, not “Carla is a boy”. Which is true, for some places and some time periods, including the places and time periods where that model of trying to scare off said courtiers is a thing.
Combined with casting Booster in the role of “brother” and the general misogyny of the whole concept, I’m not inclined to cut a lot of slack here.
That’s silly. Charlie doesn’t seem “delicate” at all.
They will have their revenge!!!! Which is best served cold, like these fries
These fries are best served cold? Well maybe with the right salsa.
“Was this part of your plan too, Charlie?”
Anyway Charlie just keeps climbing up my favorite characters list every time she appears.
Charlie: “Carla’s my girlfriend.”
Me: **backing away slowly**
I mean, I love me an adorkable disaster lesbian romance, but… I don’t think that’s what this is. I don’t know what this is, but…
**continues backing away slowly**
I think they’re just kinda blind and awkward right now more than anything sinister or potentially destructive like with the almost-not-toxic-towards-the-end relationship Billie and Ruth had.
These two are just a little silly with it.
Well it gets a lot weirder and more problematic if you assume as we had every reason to until this strip that we’d seen all their interactions and nothing like what she said had ever happened.
Like… even with this strip… they sat near one another without speaking or interacting in any way?
Except that Carla maybe touched her hand once?
Like, if I sit next to someone and bump their hand, it is CREEPY if they then think we’re dating.
I mean, I’m glad Carla’s happy and all, but…
It gets less creepy, I think, if you imagine that Carla was actually talking AT Charlie, hoping to be acknowledged but never seeing it. That is to say, they WERE meaningfully interacting, but Carla didn’t know that Charlie knew they were doing that, and Charlie didn’t know that Carla didn’t know that Charlie knew they were doing that.
I go into a lot more detail into my headcanons about their interactions in a comment some ways below, which I hope will present a relatively plausible & non-creepy vision of how it all went down!
Oh, and to be clear: I’m not saying this is a HEALTHY relationship for either of them, just that it’s not as creepy as you say.
Well, we don’t know what their previous times hanging out were like.
Why do you assume that it was that minimal?
Both Charlie and Carla both know that it never happened. At this point they’re just messing with Booster.
Crack ships are the best ships.
I am cackling. GIRLFRIENDS!
Exactly. This is a gag. It is hilarious. Let’s rejoice.
Thia time skip was longer than I expected…
…what?
hahahaha that’s great
This is incredible.
fucking WHAT ? lol
So did this happen entirely off panel or were there Patreon strips that showed this?
Because, if it was entirely off panel, I’m gonna need a timeline of when this occurred in relation to the recent arcs.
Was definitely not in the patreon bonus strips
They ran into each other a couple of times in or near class recently. Maybe Charlie is just extrapolating from that.
Class isn’t on the weekend (unless you count Friday, and I don’t THINK their specific class is on Friday).
And Carla acknowledges holding hands, but thought maybe Charlie did it because they were cold, which definitely didn’t show under any of the Charlie tags that I just checked.
So, this is Monday. Last time we saw Charlie it was in class on Thursday. That was the time Carla tried to get her attention in the hall outside.
On Saturday, Carla first approached Booster to get them to tell Charlie that she exists. It was Sunday that Carla spent all day waiting in the wrong dorm for Charlie.
It’s hard for me to see space in there for Carla and Charlie to hang out. The Saturday conversation makes no sense if they already had. Nor the waiting all day in the wrong dorm. Maybe they met up after that?
Or maybe they didn’t actually meet up in objective reality, and Charlie is “remembering” things that she just thought about. And Carla is just playing along because “cute girl thinks we’re dating”.
Charlie might have Walter Mitty syndrome:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Mitty
It’s possible, but the more I think about it, the more I think it’s real. But it was last weekend, not the immediately past one.
And Carla’s been trying to her attention and freaking out about it ever since.
We haven’t seen anything like this on-panel, so whatever the elaboration ends up being is probably going to be backfilled from this.
About halfway through this thread I thought, “Charlie is telling a little story to make Booster comfortable enough to leave, because she wants a private moment to ask, ‘so, why have you been trying to get my attention?’ She tends to be unaware of people in the moment but remembers it fully later, or something.”
Also noting that “girlfriend” is ambiguous here. This should be interesting either way.
But Carla plays into it, apparently confirming they were hanging out.
Anyone remember how many days it’s been since the time skip? I’m trying to piece this together
one chapter a day, plus a chapter for the Halloween flashback. First day after the timeskip was the Sunday before classes started. This chapter is the third Monday of classes.
Not sure if this is a case where things happened off-screen and we just didn’t get to be privy to them, or if Charlie’s confusing Carla for someone else or… or something else O.o
Carla admits that they were in each other’s presence and held hands (she just wasn’t sure if it was all intentional).
So unless she’s lying on the spot to go with what Charlie is saying, it really happened, apparently offscreen.
Well, hot damn! Carla’s rizz was so powerful she didn’t even realize she immediately rizzed up Charlie as soon as their hands touched.
well the ‘maybe your hands were cold’ implies that carla did hold her hands rather than it being another person.
Well that went… better than expected? Funnier! Way funnier than expected
booster: oh, no. there’s two of them.
for those a little confused: there wasn’t a significant timeskip (last chapter ended with karaoke, and ruth told jason that she was out late the night before ‘karaokeing’ on feb 8th’s strip). friday thru sunday took place over the three previous chapters (‘but don’t give yourself away,’ ‘everybody’s looking for nothing,’ & ‘it’s the love i haven’t got’). the weekend just passed. last we saw carla, she was hanging out with a hat that said her name in a cute dress. these two meet-ups that charlie interprets as dates (and carla as possibly incidental hanging out, whether out of internal anxiety or charlie’s spaciness) happened off-screen.
for the record, charlie’s actually known carla’s name since ‘joementum.’ (april 24th, 2023 strip ‘My name is’), she just hasn’t acknowledged it in front of carla.
can’t wait for more charlie i am utterly obsessed with her
Was there hand-holding in any of those strips we’ve seen? That seems to be the biggest point of confusion.
No. And none of them were over the weekend.
The only place an off-screen meet-up seems to make sense is after Carla spent the day waiting for Charlie in the wrong dorm.
And at the start of this scene with Booster, she was still asking for an introduction.
as mentioned in my previous post, “charlie’s actually known carla’s name since ‘joementum.’ (april 24th, 2023 strip ‘My name is’), she just hasn’t acknowledged it in front of carla.” carla requires explicit acknowledgement of her existence, it’s kind of her thing. usually you don’t refer to someone you’re talking to by name, at least not in english, outside of specific circumstances, and charlie doesn’t talk very much in any of her appearances. you can spend hours even alone with someone without having ever been properly introduced.
the joke is that charlie has literally known who carla is the entire time, carla just wasn’t told. (also lesbians are dumb)(i’m lesbians) booster also could’ve cleared this up at any point, considering they’ve known that carla and charlie share a class since the april 27th, 2023 strip ‘Charlie’.
not everyone will find the joke funny but i personally think it’s brilliant, an extremely funny twist. :3
Though that doesn’t actually show that Charlie knew Carla’s name. She doesn’t say it. We can assume, but we don’t know how much she caught of Carla’s game.
I’m not sure what you mean by Booster clearing it up. Everyone involved knew they shared a class. Carla just wanted an introduction so hopefully Charlie would focus on her a bit.
I just assumed Carla’s been fucking with Booster.
Nope! any hanging out was off-screen. the last time we see charlie is technically in a bonus strip, standing outside in the snow with the switch, and in the main comic, at class looking at her phone. (april 30th, 2023 strip ‘Wander’)
Thanks that was helpful
I think it’s entirely that charlie is so spaced/noncommunicative that absent mindedly holding someones hand without really realizing theres a person on the other end is entirely plausible, up until this reveal.
You call it obsessed, I call it due diligence, thank you very much.
Mission failed successfully.
Congrats; Carla.
🥲
*plays “Close To You” by The Carpenters on hacked muzak*
Excellent choice!
Plays “Close to Me,” by the Cure on the hacked vinyl record player.
Strains of the Beatles, “Got to Get You Into My Life” drift over from the nearby roller rink speaker system: “Ooh, you were meant to be near me
Ooh, and I want you hear me…Ooh, and I suddenly see you, Ooh, did I tell you I need you?’
Top ten plot twists in
animeDoA.I don’t think anyone saw this coming
but be hilarious/frustrating for carla if the alternate was “oh i have a girlfriend, although we haven’t talked in 5 years but we technically never broke up either” XD
Including Carla and Booster.
A true mood, Booster. Cold fries are pretty sad, drown them in ketchup to fix it.
There are some people who believe most any food is best eaten at room temperature, perhaps barring foods whose structural integrity relies on temperature, like ice cream.
Those people are known as muddytruckers you avoid.
Tbh, if they’re well seasoned, I’m okay with fries at pretty much any temperature.
Zero kelvin?
The cronch factor of a French fry in relation to temperature is a bell curve. At a certain point it’s cold enough to make those fries cronch again, and that’s what really matters.
I would think if they’re on campus there’s a microwave for them to use and reheat whatever was ordered. if not ordering a new meal i’m sure carla would be in a good enough mood to treat booster to lunch for a month straight now
also surprised they wouldn’t multitask/eat some of the fries even if they don’t unwrap their burger tho i’m more used to standing while eating sometimes even if i’m not walking/def would’ve if i was stuck in a convo with someone (or even just chewing on food while watching carla’s awkward convo lol)
Cold fries are why everyone should own a toaster oven. Or an air fryer ig they’re just convection toaster ovens
i think air fryers are a bit ‘fancy’ for a college student to have unless you can get some cheaper than a switch but even so i would worry about a roommate mooching it or breaking it lol
You can get a single service size air fryer with analog controls for about $30 at the big box stores.
They might be forbidden under the same rules as hot plates, though.
…Damn you Willis
It isn’t a date if one of you doesn’t know it is a date.
But if they’re informed after the fact that it was a date, does it become a date?
I think date status requires a certain form of consent. It’s like those chess rules that only exist if both players believe hard enough.
Oh, like that thing where both players agree to pretend that it matters which color square goes in the bottom right corner, and get mad at people who point out that it really doesn’t matter!
Of course it matters! If the board is oriented wrong, you will put your queen on the wrong color and the whole game goes to pot. Imagine the confusion:
White: “How did I lose that game? It started off so good.”
Black: “How did we both lose that game? It started off fucked up.”
Director: “Who told these idiots they could play chess?”
Or like that rule that you can promote a pawn into anything but somehow NOT into a laser-shooting lego pirate?? Man come on
Or the rule that each player gets 2 water tiles to place anywhere on the board at any time.
or that rule that when you’re mad about losing you get to flip the board and that makes you less of a loser actually!
Find a copy of the game Knightmare Chess (there were two ‘editions’, both are good and can be added together to make a mega-game). It was a deck of cards you used while playing a standard chess game. While laser lego pirates weren’t in there, it did have a way for you to have a pawn blow up (capturing all the adjacent pieces), rotate the board 90 degrees, and create a “superqueen” that was both a Queen and a Knight, among other insanity.
Yes. If all parties agree after the fact that it was a date, it retroactively becomes a date. But one person claiming it was a date doesn’t make it one.
it def is surprising that charlie would be the one to bring it up/call her a gf, maybe the times that charlie was present/’in the moment’ during the hangout read carla’s body language/actions as being into her
This is my take–Charlie, for all her spaciness, apparently is able to read people quite well, and understood Carla’s intent better than anyone, including Carla.
“This person is interested in me. She’s cute. Okay, we’re dating now, holding hands like a couple of perverts.”
Tbf it’s a pretty typical lesbian experience to not know you were on a date. It has happened to me a few times. I have a friend who was dating someone for 6 months before she realised and they’re married now.
This story would be even funnier without the “and”
@bogey: i mean, ‘useless lesbian’ trope/stereotype aside it’d be better for more ppl to state their intentions at some point rather than assume b/c it’d be super awkward if someone actually leaned in for a kiss and it backfire/realizing and regretting. (plus for it to be six months unless they take it slow i’d think there’d be other indication of romantic affection as opposed to platonic like kissing versus just hand holding unless they literally act that way with all their other friends)
or like “This is a date? Y’know I’m already dating ___, right?” if not “actually i’m not gay/straight, sorry if i gave you mixed signals?” Or someone, not necessarily hostile but insisting strongly that you don’t want any one on one hangouts to be a date so ppl don’t get the wrong idea off the bat/accidentally lead someone on
Would be nice if there were more endearing oblivious ppl versus douchebags who assume they’re amazing and that you’re into them when you clearly show no interest either way lol
Thing sometimes become dates retroactively. Or even in the middle.
But it is quite easy to go on a date you’re not sure is a date if you’re both too scared to ask.
Fun fact, i got broken up with by a woman I was unaware considered us to be dating for the previous half year.
There is no limit to how oblivious a lesbian can be
@mel: lol i wish i had these problems (tho be nice to be more aware if someone was annoyed with me/disliked me within reason) but i can’t rly imagine seeing too many openly gay ppl here, even tho the south isn’t as ‘bad’ as it was two decades ago but i guess i live in a small suburb but i wouldn’t go outta my way to seek a relationship rather than having fellow allies/comrades
Ok this doesn’t make sense. I’m almost 100% positive that this isn’t something we saw happen. And it doesn’t make sense for it to have happened off screen because if they’d hung out multiple times and held hands Carla wouldn’t have needed Booster to introduce her to Charlie. Put in a good word for her due to not knowing where they stand? Sure. Subtly find out where she stands? Definitely. But not an introduction.
Yeah this is dumb af
dumbing of fuck
People can hang out holding hands without one of them acknowledging the other’s name.
We didn’t see it happen, can confirm that.
My read on this is that Charlie did not give Carla what she would recognize as signals of acknowledgement. Charlie is pretty well-established to seem spacey to other characters, with not a lot of outward indication of what’s going on in her head, while Carla has never dealt in subtlety.
It is entirely possible that Charlie was Booster when talking to Carla about Charlie, and went from there.
Yeah this doesn’t add up but it’s obviously meant to be a confusing swerve that is going to be explained in future strips, so I’m not really worrying about trying to fit the pieces together.
I don’t think it will be explained. Willis has punked us, they are probably cackling as we speak, and presently will be reaching into their bag of tricks for their next stunt. We may fume at their mischief but they will not stoop to appease us. Or such is my presumption.
skipping over their coupling might make some ppl happy tho
but someone as comically jerky as mike (even tho he got killed off b/c he didn’t rly fit with the story long term), and stuff like arcs with amazigirl existing, them being a couple isn’t too unrealistic evenif it’s somehow ‘accidental’
It took me like a solid five minutes (with intermittent bursts of giggling, b/c it’s still a funny strip) to figure out how this even remotely makes sense, but now I honestly think it does.
The trick, for me, was realizing that “hanging out” or “going out” together doesn’t necessarily require any sort of CONVERSATION, or even verbal acknowledgement of each others’ existence. Carla was convinced that she needed an introduction to Charlie, because Charlie simply never spoke to her during their previous “dates”, or at least never identified her by name when she did.
Picture the following scenario: Carla rolls up to the same bench as Charlie, and sits down to rest after a long skating trip. Naturally enough, she starts going on a long spiel about who she is, how awesome she is, and what awesome things she’s going to do in the near future. Charlie shows absolutely no signs that she even heard any of this, and appears engrossed in her phone. Carla abruptly leaves, in order to cover up how nervous and awkward this makes her. Charlie is about 70% sure this counts as a date, but Carla has no idea if Charlie even knows she exists. Next time they meet, Carla rolls up to Charlie in the halls, and follows her out to the bus stop, making a series of increasingly awkward (and from her perspective, failed) attempts at small talk. They both sit down. Charlie, still staring at her phone, holds Carla’s hand. Silence follows. The bus comes, and Charlie leaves Carla there. Charlie is now 90% sure they’re dating, and Carla is utterly smitten with how cool this random, aloof, stranger who totally doesn’t know her is. Next time they see each other in class, Carla starts yelling about how this freshman won’t pay attention to her, and that’s the first time we see them together in the comic.
I’m hoping it’s something like this scenario, because otherwise it doesn’t make sense that Carla still thought she needed Booster to introduce her to Charlie, while Charlie thought they were already dating. Especially since we didn’t see any off screen stuff to indicate they went on any “dates” before now.
I believe you
Of a (DOA) semester of Booster being my favorite character, I had never related to them so much as tonight.
Holy shit sdgjsldgjksjg if it weren’t for the “maybe your hands were cold” I’d swear Charlie’s confusing Carla with someone else. Congratulations on avoiding the “will they won’t they” lesbian trap by going full on “we held hands so we’re dating” lesbians, good show everyone.
Counterpoint: “will they won’t they” is a sweet, sweet trap and i will enthusiastically fall for its intoxicating promise every time, allowing my wings to be glued down and my very flesh to dissolve into the blissful agony of its acidic depths.
I still have no use for Booster as a person or a character, but I love Charlie more every time we see her, or even when someone mentions her name on-panel when she’s absent. She’s a force of nature, but not a violent one–more like a morning mist, glistening in the pre-dawn twilight, obscuring everything around her.
Charlie’s absent anyway, whether she’s on-panel or not.
Can’t tell if I’ve missed something or if Charlie is even more of a space cadet than we’ve been shown so far
i guess something must’ve happened during the karaoke night even if they weren’t a part of it lol
and congrats to carla for getting what she wants more or less, and to the ppl rooting for them to be a couple (tho idk if it’s better or worse that they skipped over more of the courtship, unless we’ll see more flashbacks or future dates lol)
W H A T
help too cute i cant stay normal about thi
“Sister, Christian” through “Trial and Sarah” if last weekend means 9 days ago. “Don’t Give Yourself Away” if last weekend started the Friday three days ago.
Charlie was introduced to us in between those two.
Great prank on us though. [chef’s kiss]
Good looking out.
Because of how Carla acted in class, I would guess this last weekend Carla ran into Charlie, at like the student union or library, and they just chilled, holding hands. But without Charlie ever acknowledging Carla’s introduction.
We know Carla is capable of just chilling, we’ve seen her do it with Sal, Malaya, Marcie, and also Ruth and Lucy.
Carla asks Booster to introduce her to Charlie twice on Saturday, and then for so far unexplained reasons, asks to borrow butter from Joyce.
Carla wakes Booster up around 7:30-8 on Sunday, and then is in Briscoe for 10ish hours (may be hyperbole) before Booster shows up. She’s back in Read to pie Walky as he’s headed out to karaoke, time uncertain.
She was gonna eat the butter on its own in front of Mary, as a show of dominance
oh that makes sense. I wonder if I could use that at work.
Don’t forget to look your coworkers dead in the eye while you sink your teeth, over and over, into that stick of butter. You may choose to smile and nod amicably at them all the while to suggest that you may yet prove a benign alpha colleague if they submit without a fight.
I work with cattle.
hahaha
do cattle not have alphas
They do, but I don’t really consider the bulls my coworkers. And the cows are already easily… cowed.
Well, this does rather render the point mooot.
Do not recommend.
I highly recommend.
Impeccable comic-tracking as always! Very helpful 🙂
Yeah, it’s really hard to see when in that schedule even one meet up with Charlie could have happened.
If Charlie’s bonus strip happened this weekend, it would have probably been Saturday, maybe Sunday. She’s standing outside student union for at least an hour, at the start there is snow on the ground, and the sky is clear and daylight. At the end, the sun has set / is setting, and it’s snowing.
In the main strip, it snowed all day Friday. Saturday had only one panel outside, when it wasn’t snowing in the morning. Sunday had many strips outside, none showed snowing. The last one was when Walky saw/told his parents off. That happened “a few hours” after they finished their lunch with Jennifer and Asher.
open-source journalism at its finest 👌
I now assume it was last weekend, not this one. That gives a lot more room for them to hang out.
And it completely recontextualizes all of their interactions since. Carla trying to get her attention in their first strip together isn’t just a narcissist not getting her just attention, but her wondering why the girl she’d been hanging out with and thought she had a connection with wasn’t even acknowledging her.
Que…?
The dumbing circle: complete.
Somebody link me the strips where this happened lol, I thought they last interacted in class
Those strips don’t exist.
Omg Taffy quit trolling people
At this point, I can’t always tell if I’m trolling or just saying something other people find strange. Usually they assume it’s the former and won’t hear a word to the contrary.
hilariously someone always does seems to think you’re serious
When I mention a slightly unusual behavior I had in kindergarten: “You always were a kidder, Taffy.”
When I say, out of nowhere, that I’m gonna turn a real Glock into one of the Blade Blasters from Power Rangers and take it to a convention so I can shoot people dressed as the villains from the show: “You’re clearly being serious about this. Guns are dangerous, and you mustn’t ever do such a thing with them. This is the time to be parasocially stern with you like we know each other.”
I never realized how much I needed this until just now.
Ship Carlie(?) sails.
Is Carlie acceptable?
been calling them charla myself
It’s the ChaCa Slide
(your hand into my hand because it might be cold)
I’m lost.
That’s okay, so is Carla. Charlie seems to have the best grasp on the situation, which I absolutely love. (Also apparently a decent grasp of Carla’s hand, which I also love.)
Everybody but Charlie is lost. And Charlie isn’t lost only because she hasn’t noticed she’s in a maze yet
It goes deeper. Charlie IS the maze….
It all hinges on “I’m not entirely certain, but I kinda assumed”.
But, Booster, the best thing in life is a burger but cold!
Better than the alternative of “i assumed we went on a date but we’re not even rly friends/only have mutual acquaintances and no relationship otherwise” which has happened a lot more irl
Absolute unhinged crazy talk
I feel like everyone both won and lost this round.
I don’t know, I fell like Charlie is pretty much this strip winner.
I think Charlie isn’t even playing the game.
Charlie is literally playing eighth dimensional chess. It’s why she can’t focus on anything else.
But she still won this strip.
Why should Charlie play the game? She won before it started….
The most devious conclusion to this you could have come up with, Willis. I applaud/curse you.
quite early for april fools day lol, but yeah as far as artist/story trolls go atl east some ppl would ceelbrate it
I…I love Charlie.
Charlie stocks rising
💹💍💎💰🪙
we need more ppl like charlie. i’d love to be as (seemingly) chill as her tho idk if i could date someone like carla unless it’s a more toned down ver
that said, would be interesting to see her actually in an emotional state and how that’d be handled
I have never felt more kinship with Booster than I have in this moment.
Y-yay lesbians
(Bro this continuity isn’t mathing)
Instead of trying to put the star-shaped block in the triangular hole, maybe a different approach would help.
Unfortunately I’m a fucking moron, so it’s all going in the square hole
Don’t be so down on yourself. I’m sure you’re plenty smart.
Aw that’s sweet 💖
The events Charlie refers to presumably happened of-screen, HueSatLight has a bit of a breakdown on when those could have occurred above 🙂
Eugh I was forced to stare at that typo for like a good 10 seconds while the page loaded after I pressed ‘Post Comment’ >.<
Hey hey, so, a priest an imam and a rabbit walk into a blood bank,
Goes off to ask a chatbot for the rest of the joke.
Hey, I do all my donations in gymnasiums, as god intended.
Thank you ❤
(Why a blood bank?)
Tbh Carla accidentally romancing her crush off panel and not realising it is both on brand and very relatable
. o O ( huh, I guess we’re holding hands. probably shouldn’t read anything into this )
I’ve had something like that experience before.
I’ve been a pretty useless lesbian a couple of times, but never that useless.
“Oh you want to sleep with me sure, oh i guess you like to sleep naked, that’s fine, omfg you kissed me???”
if only everyone (who wants to) can just easily get a partner by the other person stating it, would take a lot of pressure off
makes me think of that 4chan? screenshot of like “they’re gonna be married and two kids before he realizes she’s into him” or something like that
What, huh?? This doesn’t make sense even with a time skip. Why would Carla be trying to introduce herself still? Why would she not know where Charlie lives if they went out?
Why would Charlie act like this with someone she thought was her girlfriend?
Someone said she’s mistaken her for someone else, obviously not, since Carla suddenly remembers hanging out with her.
Is Charlie meant to be kind of a Galasso, just a comical caricature?
“Maybe your hands were cold” is the big clue here. It’s ambiguous and doesn’t really make a lot of sense as a real response to that information. I think Carla’s full of shit in that last bubble, because none of that happened.
The way she says that makes me think she means it the “Maybe you only held my hand because yours were cold and there wasn’t anything romantic about it” way.
Have you see the way Carla acts around her? And how Charlie acts in general? I guarantee you, no meaningful conversation took place, and every single interactions was intentionally made to be as ambiguous as possible, while the small parts of their rational minds that still work are working overtime trying to figure out what is happening, considering all possibilities and rejecting all good ones as wishful thinking.
I’m with Booster, I hate this…
Well, you could always take a break for 6 month, that way you can just speed read/skip past tihs and enjoy the other charas
The bit here is that it’s just an escalation of the clueless lesbian trope (Do you think she likes me?” while actively being cuddled by said woman) etc.
That said I do not think this is being executed very well at all. And I’m kind of dissapointed bc I was hoping we’d get some more… idk internal carla? Seeing more of her?
Feels like Willis only really wants to keep her for her bits and jokes as opposed to getting any more depth beyond “RECOGNIZE MY GREATNESS AND SUPERIORITY” jokes
Carla’s such a clueless lesbian, she didn’t even notice she’d met Charlie before. Makes a lot of sense to me.
You sure are active today. You mentioned depression earlier. Do you need to talk? (This is a serious offer, I can give you my email or something)
Are you for real?? Get a life. And learn fucking pronouns terfy shithead
What pronouns? What, are they hidden in his icon somehow?
The offer is appreciated, but no, thank you. I don’t talk to very many people.
Maybe this is the turning point for Carla from slapstick force of nature to fleshed out, fragile, lost-like-the-rest-of-us cast member?
This is pretty much the only way this could possibly have ended.
If this is on the level, it is actually the funniest way this could have ended.
I have so many questions.
It’s probably gonna be a long time til we get answers to them, with this comic only updating on Tuesday and Thursday.
Taffy, OH MY GOD.
(new readers: please do not listen to their lies, the comic is still updating daily as normal)
New readers, if you’re using a rando’s comment halfway down the page for your update information, consider not doing that in the first place.
Last kickstarter did so bad, not only don’t we get weekend strips, we lost Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Blurnsday.
So do I, this is awesome.
Agreed.
I don’t see what either of them sees in each other. They each seem oblivious to each other’s personality or mental state. They each seem too distracted (Carla by her own awesomeness, Charlie by … something) to even be looking for a relationship. I mean, imagine them trying to have an actual conversation, or making out – they just wouldn’t connect. They’d each do better dating a chatbot than each other.
As if anyone needed an invitation to imagine these two making out.
They could surprise you. But also, people have dumb relationships in college. I mean, we had Joyce and Ethan once. And Ethan and Mike.
I’m rooting for the two weirdos, though. Let’s see where this lesbian situationship goes.
Talk about dumb relationships: I had a girlfriend in college and none of my friends could understand why I was with her. I don’t to this day see what was wrong with her.
How did you break up?
To boil it way the hell down, I was unhappy about something, and instead of speaking my mind I went all passive-aggressive. For a long time. So long that she threw me out.
According to the secret (not really) Dumbiverse lore, Carla isn’t particularly interested in making out with her girlfriends, any more than she is in having sex with them. Hell, she’s not even really that interested in having deep conversations with them either! Her main love languages in that universe, as I recall, were collaborating on pranks, mutual bongoing about acquaintances, and snuggling up on the bed watching movies together. I don’t think Charlie is into bongoing about acquaintances, but the other two remain open as possibilities!
Im confused. I’ve checked every charlie reference and they were on weekdays around classes.
If this was off screen, are we going to get a b&w past scene
( What is that word For past cutaway?)
Flashback.
Yup, flashback.
(BAIT AND) SWITCH
I GET IT AR AR AR AR AR AR AR
what in the good god damn
Wow from delayed reaction to skipping over to relationship status. I guess that’s a win?
I was going to write about the presence of hand-holding making it understandable we’d never seen anything before, as it was clearly too much for non-Slipshine comics, but we’ve seen Joyce holding two different male hands in strip, so it must be something about Charlie and Carla specifically that makes it different.
Homosexual intimacy is viewed as inherently sexual in many cultures and regions, including the American Midwest. This view extends to things nobody would bat an eye at from a straight couple, like holding hands or Frenching in Walmart.
I-is th-this
forbidden love? S-so l-l-l-l-lewd, I – *swoon*Um… if I saw a man and a woman Frenching in a Walmart, I would definitely ascribe a sexual characteristic to it. “Normal” kissing, on the other hand (like a simple peck on the lips or cheek, i.e. not Frenching), would indeed likely be seen as more benign and innocuous by most people if it were a straight couple doing it versus a gay couple doing it, granted.
(Unless you meant that the man and woman were engaging in an act of food preparation, in which case, no, I probably wouldn’t ascribe a sexual element to that. Depends on how… weirdly they were going about it. Though in any case, I’d at least wonder why they were doing it in a Walmart, unless they worked there or something.)
Um… Erm… Uh……….
Can confirm, am a cashier (not at Walmart tho) and we’ve had people frenching in the supermarket.
It is awkward for everyone, no matter the couple’s gender.
However, last weekend there was a gay couple being very affectionate during my last shift and the old lady right in front of them was ten seconds from blowing up.
Did someone manage to stop the countdown in time?
she was an undercover cop wearing a bug. good thing Mr D figured that out and clipped off that wire just in time
Wait WHAT? They already hung out and held hands? What was any of this about? I’m super confused.
i guess that’s part of the joke “carla: charlie doesn’t realize i exist” “charlie: she’s my girlfriend!”
This is already better than any relationship Leslie has had in this universe so far.
Also, I find it kind of hilarious Charlie is seemingly getting more action (even if it’s hand-holding) than Booster is, despite Booster more actively pursuing it (hitting on Ruth, Amber, arguably Ethan depending?, and uhh, am I missing anybody?) at various points. Booster may want to rethink their approach.
i wonder if leslie is still with that ‘sexy dentist’ lol
I’ve wondered that before too, the closest we have is Leslie’s line in this panel about Becky having been with Dina longer than she’s been with her girlfriend: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2021/comic/book-11/03-see-you-in-the-funny-page/relevant/
Which could still technically be about the dentist gf, because I just checked the archives and surprisingly, she actually started dating Anna after Becky and Dina dated. I kinda hope Leslie’s moved onto another girlfriend, we’ll have to see I guess.
I liked Mindy better.
Anna’s awful, but unfortunately so is Leslie’s taste in women.
So they’ve been “hanging out” a couple of times off panel. That’s about as much solid facts as we can discern. Almost a How I Met Your Mother level recontextualization twist, still.
…. What???
I love that the third panel makes it feel like Charlie is looking right at us as she drops this bombshell. She knows most of us will respond like Booster, and that’s kind of beautiful.
Thank god Carla got what she wanted. I’d hate to see what happened if she didn’t.
Eh, Carla is also baffled. There’s still a chance she gets driven insane (“be careful what you wish for”) or that Charlie is so oblivious that we see in a few strips her actual girlfriend who is also named Carla come in and whisk Charlie away while leaving Carla’s brain breaking down from sheer confusion
One needs explicit confirmation, the other has enough with implicit subtext.
I… I … I can’t with Charlie
Wait, what?
When did this happen?
I’m reserving judgment, for the moment, but I could be won over.
I feel as if I’ve seen this hand-holding, even though the universe seems to disagree with that feeling.
Also, glad to see Carla falling into the “doesn’t realize she’s in a relationship” useless lesbian trope.
BWAHAHAHAHA omg 😂 This is amazing! DYW, you got us you sly dog 🤣
How long until we learn Charlie’s face-blind and she’s actually seeing a different lanky redhead?
That’s close to what I’m thinking. Possibly she recognises Carla by name and face, but this hypothetical other person by activity. Or there are two Carlas and this is how we find out.
FLISDHUAEHSUIGVHSAIUFEASHLASKEIFHUAEJKSHVNJSHDLFSFWALDCJKAFHEWUIYDIUESHKFHIWPIFJSDHLKWUIYQFUICKJHSDJKVFKYERPQIRREYURFIWESKFHSKFNHWIEPURYQIUCNJVHDIPFUWFQYIUSDHAKJYQPFJAHKJCNJVKJAPQUFISDKNCJHWEPUQYPRUFSANVJKDAYQWPFUIQISDHFIAYPQYFUHSIAHFWYRQPQUIDAQPIFCHNIUGWAHIYWUIQPFUIWAHPFUIW
Oh that’s freaking AMAZING what the POOP flsjdahjkaJKDSJP
I can so identify. I suspect I have undiagnosed autism to some extent (I’m in my 60s, they didn’t know back then). Recently when I was visiting my mom in my home town, she talk about somebody who “wanted to be my friend so bad.” I answered, “They were my best friend!” Looking back though, I don’t know what their perception was. My idea of a play-date was somebody would come over and we would play in our own corners. But it never extended to someone I was dating. (Or did it? Oh, god, now I question everything!)
Hahaha what a great punchline to this little arc 😌💖
Wait, when did they hold hands? Did I miss that?
Check all 12 of Charlie’s appearances and you’ll find nothing of the sort.
I think there’s been some indication in past strips that the characters sometimes do things when we’re not looking at them.
Darnit, messed the tags up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPvzGU41iNo
Sure, but in this case, all the indications were that Carla had been seeking Charlie out but hadn’t actually found her.
WHAT
Waaaaait what?
So this romance was in-media-res from the get go?
Sneaky Willis! 😛
Way to endear Carla to me. Endearing level + 1000!
Obviously I’d need more info, but it sounds like Carla just found someone more toxic than her.
Yep, nothing more toxic than not knowing what’s going on and not liking to ask.
Is that toxic beacuse honestly alot of my life is like that.
Charlie seems like extremely absent-minded. To a worrying degree, I wonder if she is disassociating. But toxic? I do not understand where you got that impression. Care to elaborate?
Coffee then comment amigo. Coffee THEN comment.
That… seems pretty typical for lesbian relationships actually.
^
It makes no sense and that’s by intention. There’s no basis for speculation; all you can do is stay tuned and wait to see what really happened, if anything.
*(mic drop)*
*(not to be confused with a Mike drop)*
[groan]
Yes, he did groan a lot before finally perishing.
I remember being shocked at his last words of “Oof, boy golly this sure does hurt. Ouch, oh I’m in a lot of pain here. Gosh, is that the grim reaper here to guide me to the afterlife? Yup, that’s him. Wowie wow wow, I’m dead after all.”
“Live with … integrity…
one … regrrrr… bleh”
what a plot twist
I thought we agreed to call it a (bait and) Nintendo
Gotta hit the light Nintendo before you enter a room. It’s important.
Please be careful: the heavy Nintendo hits back!
hey my book is boring, do you wanna Nintendo?
Ha, and here we all were assuming this was a moment for Carla to grow.
We forget the cardinal rule. The universe bows to Carla.
Okay, how many strips did I miss while I was down with covid?
That depends on how many days you had COVID.
I hope you are feeling better, Alan!
Let’s assume for a moment that Charlie is telling the exact literal truth, canonical events have occurred which fit her description exactly and there’s no misidentification of any information. Now that we’re all in this room together, do we think Carla just casually hangs out and holds hands with with random women, without ever asking for their names or even seeming to recognise them later?
Imagine stubborn child with a crush silently holding hands with someone trying to get their attention, and that’s what I’m picturing happened lol
I don’t like imagining any sort of child, because I instinctively think about what that child would be like with me as its parent, and then that causes an episode and then the entire day is gone in the blink of an eye.
But I do understand what you mean. I did it once or twice as a young’un, and it must have been hilarious to the teacher.
Carla has been pestering Booster to get them to tell their sister that Carla exists, and is superawesomecool. Which we, lacking today’s information, assumed meant the two had never interacted and that Carla was still stuck at the sign-waving stage of her crush, but that was a prank, because as it turns out they have been seeing each other somehow, and even holding hands, except because Charlie is Charlie Carla wasn’t sure how much of the situation (including the hand-holding) had registered for her.
turns out Charlie was there for it, just not very expressive about it. Also presumably too busy considering seahorses or bumblebees or some other amusing animal to wonder very much about Carla’s name, phone number, or other topics of so-called normal conversation.
Meanwhile Carla was likely dumbstruck and swooney in Charlie’s presence and forgot her words as well. All in all, very cute, completely dysfunctional and immature but very cute.
so that’s my understanding
So was “last weekend” the immediate past weekend, when Carla was actively trying to find Charlie, or was it the weekend before and all we’ve seen of their interactions been Carla trying to get the attention of the girl she’d already kind of maybe been seeing?
I don’t know if that makes things better or weirder.
you’re making a lot of this rest on Charlie’s apprehension of linear time
I’d go with ‘the weekend before’:
– it’s Monday in comic and to me last weekend is more than a day ago
– we haven’t seen much of Carla on that weekend (room for untold stories)
– Carla’s acting in class seems less weird if they’ve met before
Yeah, that’s basically where I got to. My first assumption was this past weekend and that just made no sense.
The previous one works much better.
“last weekend” is ambiguous, perhaps intentionally. I still lean towards “this last weekend”, but there’s good points for “last last weekend” too. I eagerly await the answer being revealed within the next six months.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA holy shit, this is brilliant!
How far into the semester are we?
This is the Monday of the third week of classes.
Thank you! Well, that’s enough time then.
It looks like there’s been a little moderation in the comments section, which is a good thing overall, I think.
Since everyone knows me as the link monster, though, I thought I’d just perhaps remind folks that these are out there, in case anyone feels like reaching out to non-professional peers for a talk.
https://www.samaritans.org/how-we-can-help/contact-samaritan/
https://findahelpline.com/i/iasp
https://www.nami.org/NAMI/media/NAMI-Media/Helpline/NAMI-National-HelpLine-WarmLine-Directory.pdf
Huh. Didn’t know there was an Anxiety Hotline.
<3
I think I may have wandered into the negaverse again. Hillary is still president, right?
That’s really insensitive. Everyone knows she was kidnapped by rogue gamers and forced to play Fortnite for three years. They kept her awake with energy drinks and beef jerky. When the authorities final found her (thanks to an anonymous tip that turned out to be from Josh Brolin, of all people), she’d been default dancing for three hours and wouldn’t respond to any name but “Shlorah_Deborah”.
Definitely the negaverse. Dangit.
( glad to see youre feeling better )
Was a comment deleted?
W HA T
Okay, so Charlie is the one with boobs, Booster is the one wearing pink, and Carla is the one wearing a v-neck shirt. Or at least it looks like pink on my phone.
oh thank you now i understand everything
actually- coming back to my comment afterwards to let you know that another excellent ‘the gays are oblivious’ moment is Snorpy and Chandlo from Bugsnax. Play it- It’s real good.
Wait… How many people have I dated without realizing?!
*CONFUSED CLOUD NOISES*
Every group chat, use of public transit, multiplayer guild, trading card tournament, bench conversation or shared class you’ve ever participated in might count as dating. It’s scary to think about how many hearts we’ve all broken over the years, without us or them ever realising it.
what you never realized at the time was that when your heart broke, it split right along the crevices and tender cracks from all of the small accumulated heartbreaks that came before and you just weathered, laughed off, decided not to dwell upon.
this is me in every social circle im in
I expected this to get awkward…
But not in this way.
They had us in the first two panels, not gonna lie.
of all the things i expected to possibly happen this was not one of them.
carla’s her girlfriend but has been actively ignoring her in every strip they’re together, ok 🙄
She doesn’t actively ignore anyone though? It’s been established that she is just very absent minded and it can take her a while to realize someone is talking to her.
if someone’s talking to you and you’re too in your own head to hear, you’re still ignoring them 😊
Nah, ignoring somebody requires intent. Otherwise it’s normal inattentiveness, which has the benefit of being a much less judgemental term that puts less of that needless moral spin on the scenario.
and everyone knows that’s not charlie’s intent? speaking from personal experience, normal people take it very poorly and offensively
i’ll be real with you guys, i was hangry when i wrote this
It’s okay, I don’t understand it.
oh shoot, i forgot to post this, (it’s fine no one cares ‘cept for my 3 or 4 sweetie-boos who leave me a sweet comment like bosses, you know who you are, ilyyy =) i know i’m not great at this, but i do need the encouragement if i’m ever gonna git gud haha <3 <3)
NEW PAGE yo 🍑🕶
(also updated ye olde pages, the last two or three that is cuz the uploads were shamefully lo-q)
We care, even if we forget to comment. 🙂
These are great.
aw thank you!!!
Great! Just love this strip.
🫀✨
I’m assuming this is safe for work, since it doesn’t say NSFW.
ahaha i’m cracking up just thinking of the various ways i could answer that
i’ll go with: your colleagues are cows
They’re already doing sexually explicit things in public, I don’t want to encourage their exhibitionism.
hey, your colleagues have probably never seen a human naked. they’d look at that and think, “oh no something’s wrong with these tiny misshapen humans on my colleague’s phone”. if anything it might make them stop whatever disgusting thing they were doing.
if all else fails, do the butter thing.
Those cows have seen more naked humans than any of us.
Boy this brings back memories of me having to ask, “This is a date right”? While resting my head in the woman’s lap.
Oh that’s so real.
this is the funniest fucking way this could have gone and i am here for everyone seething in the comments
Like god, even people who hate Carla getting what she wants should be laughing at this – Carla is confused as hell, to the point that even Carla is questioning reality
Charlie is going to break her
Carla is shuffling through her mental trains looking for interesting derailments.
( was i drunk or stoned then )
Did I miss the comic where they held hands? Was it a bonus or a slipstream or something?
No. It happened off panel. This strip continues the tradition of a character playing matchmaker to two characters who are already involved. Except this time we weren’t in on the joke.
We are Jennifer, we are Joyce.
Your second link is borked.
I’m being silenced!
https://www.dumbingofage.com/relentlessly-2/
stellar slipshine idea of no-dialogue panels of them holding hands, lol
Am I reading too much into the first panel or did Booster somehow “switched” Charlie into the world outside her head?
Did they hold hands on panel? Or is this new information?
I am also upset. I am on Booster’s side in all this.
Me too, but they reaction also got me more relaxed about Carla and Charlie situation.
Even Carla is confused. We’re going to see Charlie break Carla
I’m a bit afraid Charlie might forget about Carla in the future, as easily as she remembers her in a past that Carla doesn’t seem to remember. But seeing Booster’s reaction, she probably won’t ( let’s hope). It’s funny to see Carla discover that she’s already the girlfriend of the girl she likes. Let’s hope she’ll continues to like her for some time to come.
I wonder if not showing most of Walky and Lucy’s kisses was a sign we shouldn’t expect to see every significant step in every relationship.
Suddenly the dork-factor is off the scale.
That’s why I read DoA each day.
Today’s strip is so wonderful.
Okay…what? My gut is telling me Charlie has confused Carla with someone else.
LMAOOOOO i love it. show us the wedding willis
Twist! They already got married off panel, but Charlie forgot to invite anyone and is fuzzy on the details of the event. Carla assumed that it was a skit for a class. Carla’s parents rented out Luxembourg (all of it) for the ceremony and reception. It was lovely, probably.
perfection. i love it
I’m going to be so sad if we don’t get to see a blue hand holding flash back
24 page slip shine exclusive of Carla and Charlie holding hands and nothing else
They held hands? When did that happen? I don’t remember this.
We’ve never been shown anything of the sort, which makes me doubt it ever happened. I’m like 87% sure Charlie is confusing Carla with somebody else, maybe combining the two in her mind.
I love this. Even Carla can’t register what
What’s “burber derber”, seen on the sign in the BG?
Burger Derby was taken.
( is my guess )
My guess was: a station where they serve burgers.
It’s probably a play on Erbert & Gerbert’s
Another sudden thought which is probably wrong: Booster has seen this happen before, knows how it’s going to go, and is no longer worried about Charlie (and doesn’t care to worry about Carla).
I, on the other hand, have no idea how this is going to go….
we don’t know if charlie’s dated anyone before but i feel like if they had seen it before they wouldn’t rly think it’d be necessarily to ‘introduce’ them even tho carla was insisting lol
Ehhhh, it’s a sweet reveal if kinda cheaty. This would have been more fun if there was subtle stuff in the archive we could look at and realize was the proof that Charlie thought they were already dating all along.
A chunk of folks aren’t fully convinced Charlie isn’t just THAT much of a space cadet and mistook Carla for somebody else
YEAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH CARLA! STAYS! WINNING!!!!!!!!!!!
CARLA ALWAYS WINS!!!! THIS IS PRO CARLA HOURS.
I’m so happy with this turnout.
how are people not getting that the real reveal here is that Carla assumes when people spend time with her it’s “accidental”? this is huge character development stuff for the comic’s main character cmon people
also its really cute
it might be a charlie specific thing considering she’s had some ‘movie nights’ with lucy and ruth or that one time
Didn’t think of that. Don’t narcissists have a fragile ego? So if she isn’t a true narcissist, then she could be hiding her insecurities by being obnoxiously in people’s faces
I took Carla thinking it was accidental specifically considering Charlie’s spaciness, not that she thinks that people would only spend time with her on accident.
Maybe this is twisted of me, but a part of me is wodering if Charlie is seriously messing with Carla (and possibly Booster, too, since the whole sibling dynamic) this whole time. The ignoring Carla at first, then talking to her, and then doing this just to mess with Booster.
All if it is an elaborate practical joke designed to mess with Booster and Carla.
I m*may* have some trust issues… 😎
What’s this “offscreen hand-holding” baloney?? I’m calling applesauce on this! Panels or it didn’t happen!