I mean of course it wasn’t. It was likely supposed to be subversive anti-drug propaganda, a product of its time no less than Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) and Fantastic Voyage (1966).
well, she did say’ forcing’ herself, that said , ppl being ‘pleasant’ towards ruth would probably have the opposite effect considering how “Well” she “got along” with billie/jen lol
Maybe in Canada. But Sarah is American, the strip is currently set in America, and I’m American (and also fat, particularly from a love of poultry), so I’m holding on for Thanksgiving to get it’s due.
people in the United States majorly use “America” as shorthand for “United States of America” mainly because it’s usually of no consequence to them.
pretty much everywhere else in the English speaking world where the distinction is necessary to operate on the international scene and get stuff done, “Americans” are known more accurately as “staters”.
If you the reader feel less than comfortable visiting your relatives for whatever reason, know that Popeyes around this time sells a Thanksgiving dinner with turkey and potatoes and stuff.
Same nostalgic taste, MINUS having to put up with bigoted relatives.
Now back to our regularly scheduled de-programming.
I think ruth might be about to do her RA job. Like this is probably a good reaction. A mix of “Good for you!” and “Remember that this is probably unhealthy or at least unsustainable”, or maybe it actually isn’t, because she isn’t changing what she says but only how she says it, so.
Do RAs really give emotional therapy/advice like this versus just helping them get in touch with a counselor if someone does reach out to a staff member about it
I think they’d be someone you’d bother with like “hey some student left like a pile of their clothes in the hallway and disappeared” versus something like trying to befriend them and opening up
fake it til you make it they say although i half expect something to happen where it’s like “I am extremely pissed at this” but she’d still be smiling b/c her face is ‘stuck’ that way lol
well, ‘toxic positivity’ can be a thing but so far sarah hasn’t crossed any lines like being “Cheer up/stop being depressed” to someone with a more ‘serious’ issue, so i guess she’s fine for now
Tho, now i want Liz to show up to see how she’d react, either she’d be amused or like “…We need to have a doctor examine you/did you get a concussion” I wonder what Booster would make of all this tho lol,, if they’d think it’d be a good thing b/c before they did something like “you don’t need to make up a reason to be happy” so some of it might be ‘genuine’ even if Sarah is known for her ‘cranky’/default glare face
still expecting her to play the long game as some form of troll or a committed bit but i’d think if ruth did something like this it’d be a lot more troubling than sarah doing this as some sorta coping? mechanism lol
You know, the people on this wing are starting to convince me that they deserve Mary. If your first reaction to seeing a friend smiling–even if that friend is normally dour–is to not smile back and ask what’s got them in a good mood, but instead to make wisecracks or ask what’s wrong, then… you’re just not a very good friend.
Maybe this isn’t going to work out in the long run. Maybe it’s not particularly healthy. But at least she’s fucking trying something different because, as she said herself, her old schtick wasn’t working for her.
Note that not one person she’s interacted with has acknowledged her problem or offered an alternative. It’s just been mockery and derision from everyone. It’s like Willis, having killed off Mike, now needs to make everyone sound like him.
This has just been a very unpleasant storyline.
Mike was killed off because many of the characters already sounded like him, NOT the other way around.
in a tumblr post he made it clear that Mike was done away with because he just didn’t make sense as a character in Dumbing of Age from the very go.
“whenever there was somewhere Mike would fit, there just always seemed to be a better character to fulfill the role… he just seemed like a character who would work better in another comic”.
The way that Willis wrote it, Mike filled the archetypal role of the “Christ figure.” That is, every action he did, was focused on helping others. Every choice he made, was angled at helping them. Mike either told the utter harsh truth, to help them confront, or he told the lie that would manipulate someone to be a better version of themselves. And then he dies in the act of saving his friends. That is exactly the “greater love has no man than one who would lay down his life for his friends” bit.
And the Christ figure is Mike. MIKE. The most harshest, rudest, assholier-than-thou shit in the entire comic. He did all of that because he loved his friends.
I kinda feel like that’s somewhat a commentary on Christianity in DoA. It’s twisted. Real twisted. Deep in there there’s good, somewhere, but every action it takes is just awful and you wish it would stop.
Mike doesn’t make sense in a lot of ways. His parents were wonderful. He had close friends growing up. It’s as if he saw just how horrible and twisted the world was, and hated it, and figured the best way to fight it was to fight fire with fire. But in the context of him having a relationship with any of the main cast? Any time that Mike just acted like Mike, it would feel like abuse, because it was abuse, and it would make less and less sense to have him be a protagonist.
Anyways. This long ramble was basically to say – Mike’s character has always existed as a catalyst to change the other characters; typically, change for the better. But the more he pushed, the less and less influence he would have, because it’s ultimately off-putting to the characters and the audience to have an abusive asshole as a friend. Mike died, after getting so many flashbacks to Ethan and Amber’s childhood, to solidify the fact that despite everything, he cared for his friends more than he cared about his own life. And he died so that he could continue to impact them and act as a catalyst for change, all without having to force him to have a major personality shift and change of heart.
And that’s funny because in Shortpacked, historical Jesus was an asshole as much alongside Mike, but of course only one of those would make the most sense in the Dumbing of Age universe so…
The characters are not perfect people, they do and say weird or stupid thing, usually have unhealthy coping mechanism, doesn’t have very good grasp of most social etiquette and their personalities ofthen clash like a bad chemical reaction. This is, in fact, part of what make reading about them interesting.
Ruth and Sarah are kinda similar bitterfolk, now that I think about it; Ruth might benefit from Sarah”s whole idea of cheerfully saying the nihilistic horseshit she usually says. At the very least Ruth might show some interest in the laboratory results of Ruth’s experiments upon the normies.
Honestly, if she doesn’t burn out or explode, it might work. Being sulky and angry all the time can be a habit. By forcing herself into new behavior, it can add neural pathways, creating new habits. I’m not saying she’ll magically become a cheerful person, but if she keeps it up for a few months, I think she’ll find it’s a lot easier and more natural than she does now. And instead of anger and sulking being the default emotion, she’ll have to put effort into feeling that way, just like now she has to put effort into smiling.
I like how these Sarah strips show how hard it is to change and one of the difficulties is just people around you not being supportive. Shows why sometimes a change in demeanor comes with a change in social circle.
Funnily enough, this is the right attitude and Sarah has cracked the code! She really does care about the people around her.
I’m actually betting this manages to stick. Bet she didn’t have the shitty attitude she started the year with when she met Raidah and co, that was most definitely the consequences of Raidah’s harassment.
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XD
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_programming
great choice of metaphor AND i have been introduced to a new wikipedia page. excellent day in the comments for me
Theory is when ya basically know everything but nothin works.
Practice is when ya don’t know nothin but yet everything just works.
As
programmersautistic people socializing, we combine Theory AND Practice, nothing works, and nobody knows WHY.Is it working…or is it contagious?!
It could be cool Halloween special
It seems as so Sarah is not smiling,
but the Smile itself is this entity wearing her as a face
You mean like this? https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063799/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_8_nm_0_in_0_q_What%27s%2520So%2520Ba It’s not a very GOOD movie!
I mean of course it wasn’t. It was likely supposed to be subversive anti-drug propaganda, a product of its time no less than Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) and Fantastic Voyage (1966).
i guess it’s good she’s laughing at it versus thinking sarah’s like secretly on drugs or doing something criminal/sinister lol
“Smile, and the world will… smile with you?”
“Sneeze and it’s goodbye Seattle.”
“Fourteen, chief.”
I don’t remember that episode of Frasier…
Ruth’s entire existence is an antithesis to Sarah’s new philosophy.
well, she did say’ forcing’ herself, that said , ppl being ‘pleasant’ towards ruth would probably have the opposite effect considering how “Well” she “got along” with billie/jen lol
Also Sarah is sporting a pretty cool top today. Ruth is clearly jealous. Dab on the haters Sarah. Just keep doing you.
Ruth..? La…Laughing?! It’s a Christmas Miracle!
A Thanksgiving Miracle, thank you. Don’t let the Mariah Carey in the air fool you.
Thanksgiving was a month ago :v
Maybe in Canada. But Sarah is American, the strip is currently set in America, and I’m American (and also fat, particularly from a love of poultry), so I’m holding on for Thanksgiving to get it’s due.
Canada is also in America, so I’m not sure what the distinction is
people in the United States majorly use “America” as shorthand for “United States of America” mainly because it’s usually of no consequence to them.
pretty much everywhere else in the English speaking world where the distinction is necessary to operate on the international scene and get stuff done, “Americans” are known more accurately as “staters”.
PSA for United States Thanksgiving this year:
If you the reader feel less than comfortable visiting your relatives for whatever reason, know that Popeyes around this time sells a Thanksgiving dinner with turkey and potatoes and stuff.
Same nostalgic taste, MINUS having to put up with bigoted relatives.
Now back to our regularly scheduled de-programming.
Is this real?
10/10 strip no notes.
Sarah shall spread cheer as one spreads a plague
Maybe Sarah really is Mariah Carey after all
I think ruth might be about to do her RA job. Like this is probably a good reaction. A mix of “Good for you!” and “Remember that this is probably unhealthy or at least unsustainable”, or maybe it actually isn’t, because she isn’t changing what she says but only how she says it, so.
Do RAs really give emotional therapy/advice like this versus just helping them get in touch with a counselor if someone does reach out to a staff member about it
In theory, I think a lot of colleges say RAs are there for emotional support (not therapy), among other duties. In reality, I think it varies a lot.
I think they’d be someone you’d bother with like “hey some student left like a pile of their clothes in the hallway and disappeared” versus something like trying to befriend them and opening up
this seems healthy
Mmm.
fake it til you make it they say although i half expect something to happen where it’s like “I am extremely pissed at this” but she’d still be smiling b/c her face is ‘stuck’ that way lol
Thanks you Sarah, this is the happiest she been in months.
Don’t mind me. Just casually squeezing my boobs while I lose my shit
“HERE HERE HERE, SEE EM?!!?!?” XD
Have to squeeze the laughter out somehow. It might not remember where the exit is without a little bit of help
I have this strange feeling that Ruth tried the “Smile until you trick yourself into being happy” WAY too much when she was younger.
Yep i think this laugh is more about “been there done that” than “you foolish samuhraii”
“long ago in a distant land, I
Aku, shape-shifting master of darkness, unleashed an UNSPEAKABLE EVIL”“but then a FOOLISH student wielding an UNSPEAKABLE EVIL, stepped forth to oppose me”
“before she could blow me, I tore open a portal in time, and FLUNG her into the future, where UNSPEAKABLE EVIL is Law”
“now the fool seeks to turn into an ASS, and undo the future that is RUTH.”
XD
Sarah rocking a sweater like Rorschach from Watchmen, those squiggles keep changing from panel to panel, lol.
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahah
These two are one of my favourite less common dynamics.
This is the correct response.
Could Sarah have something there?
well, ‘toxic positivity’ can be a thing but so far sarah hasn’t crossed any lines like being “Cheer up/stop being depressed” to someone with a more ‘serious’ issue, so i guess she’s fine for now
Tho, now i want Liz to show up to see how she’d react, either she’d be amused or like “…We need to have a doctor examine you/did you get a concussion” I wonder what Booster would make of all this tho lol,, if they’d think it’d be a good thing b/c before they did something like “you don’t need to make up a reason to be happy” so some of it might be ‘genuine’ even if Sarah is known for her ‘cranky’/default glare face
I want Liz to come back just cause I like Liz.
Liz comes back, and it turns out she’s the sullen one now.
Ruth should check for pods.
Ok, just for the record…that’s…25 “ha”s, 3 “heh”s 1 “oh man” and 1 “ffft” from Ruth…..and 15 palindromic “hah”s from Jamie just a few minutes ago!
is this Anti-Sarah… or, hmm… I’m not up to date on my people switching with alternate verions
still expecting her to play the long game as some form of troll or a committed bit but i’d think if ruth did something like this it’d be a lot more troubling than sarah doing this as some sorta coping? mechanism lol
About as funny as Ruth harassing Billie
Ruth cannot argue with results…
You know, the people on this wing are starting to convince me that they deserve Mary. If your first reaction to seeing a friend smiling–even if that friend is normally dour–is to not smile back and ask what’s got them in a good mood, but instead to make wisecracks or ask what’s wrong, then… you’re just not a very good friend.
Maybe this isn’t going to work out in the long run. Maybe it’s not particularly healthy. But at least she’s fucking trying something different because, as she said herself, her old schtick wasn’t working for her.
Note that not one person she’s interacted with has acknowledged her problem or offered an alternative. It’s just been mockery and derision from everyone. It’s like Willis, having killed off Mike, now needs to make everyone sound like him.
This has just been a very unpleasant storyline.
Actually, re:Mike,
Mike was killed off because many of the characters already sounded like him, NOT the other way around.
in a tumblr post he made it clear that Mike was done away with because he just didn’t make sense as a character in Dumbing of Age from the very go.
“whenever there was somewhere Mike would fit, there just always seemed to be a better character to fulfill the role… he just seemed like a character who would work better in another comic”.
Wanna know the funny thing?
The way that Willis wrote it, Mike filled the archetypal role of the “Christ figure.” That is, every action he did, was focused on helping others. Every choice he made, was angled at helping them. Mike either told the utter harsh truth, to help them confront, or he told the lie that would manipulate someone to be a better version of themselves. And then he dies in the act of saving his friends. That is exactly the “greater love has no man than one who would lay down his life for his friends” bit.
And the Christ figure is Mike. MIKE. The most harshest, rudest, assholier-than-thou shit in the entire comic. He did all of that because he loved his friends.
I kinda feel like that’s somewhat a commentary on Christianity in DoA. It’s twisted. Real twisted. Deep in there there’s good, somewhere, but every action it takes is just awful and you wish it would stop.
Mike doesn’t make sense in a lot of ways. His parents were wonderful. He had close friends growing up. It’s as if he saw just how horrible and twisted the world was, and hated it, and figured the best way to fight it was to fight fire with fire. But in the context of him having a relationship with any of the main cast? Any time that Mike just acted like Mike, it would feel like abuse, because it was abuse, and it would make less and less sense to have him be a protagonist.
Anyways. This long ramble was basically to say – Mike’s character has always existed as a catalyst to change the other characters; typically, change for the better. But the more he pushed, the less and less influence he would have, because it’s ultimately off-putting to the characters and the audience to have an abusive asshole as a friend. Mike died, after getting so many flashbacks to Ethan and Amber’s childhood, to solidify the fact that despite everything, he cared for his friends more than he cared about his own life. And he died so that he could continue to impact them and act as a catalyst for change, all without having to force him to have a major personality shift and change of heart.
And that’s funny because in Shortpacked, historical Jesus was an asshole as much alongside Mike, but of course only one of those would make the most sense in the Dumbing of Age universe so…
The characters are not perfect people, they do and say weird or stupid thing, usually have unhealthy coping mechanism, doesn’t have very good grasp of most social etiquette and their personalities ofthen clash like a bad chemical reaction. This is, in fact, part of what make reading about them interesting.
Nobody deserves Mary. Not even Mary deserves Mary.
Ruth and Sarah are kinda similar bitterfolk, now that I think about it; Ruth might benefit from Sarah”s whole idea of cheerfully saying the nihilistic horseshit she usually says. At the very least Ruth might show some interest in the laboratory results of Ruth’s experiments upon the normies.
These two are cute together. They should make out.
Honestly, if she doesn’t burn out or explode, it might work. Being sulky and angry all the time can be a habit. By forcing herself into new behavior, it can add neural pathways, creating new habits. I’m not saying she’ll magically become a cheerful person, but if she keeps it up for a few months, I think she’ll find it’s a lot easier and more natural than she does now. And instead of anger and sulking being the default emotion, she’ll have to put effort into feeling that way, just like now she has to put effort into smiling.
Oh my Satan YES , Ruth please END this facade!
Oh good, it’s been a while since Ruth has been around.
I like how these Sarah strips show how hard it is to change and one of the difficulties is just people around you not being supportive. Shows why sometimes a change in demeanor comes with a change in social circle.
Funnily enough, this is the right attitude and Sarah has cracked the code! She really does care about the people around her.
I’m actually betting this manages to stick. Bet she didn’t have the shitty attitude she started the year with when she met Raidah and co, that was most definitely the consequences of Raidah’s harassment.
results inconclusive. ~<3
And Ruth again demonstrates why she’s one of my favorite characters.