‘Cause when I saw this last night on Patreon my immediate reaction was “why did Sarah just slutshame Roz for no reason?” instead of… I mean that’s still weird but Sarah is actually totally enough of a complete social trash pile that she would say this and in this circumstance.
God damn it, I totally forgot Liz existed. I seriously thought this was just Sarah shitting on Roz for no reason.
I had to read it several times (and read your comment) to see it!! Maybe because it breaks my suspension of disbelief. Sarah knows better than asking Robin how to deal with family issues.
The biggest thing that Dorothy has to potentially learn is that something like the Presidency isn’t something that you earn because of good grades, morality, or even because you would do the best job. Let alone because you deserve it. Abraham Lincoln lost a lot of elections. It’s because you’re selected to do so by your party and then the electoral college. I wonder how Dorothy would deal with that kind of failure. She didn’t do so well when she realized she couldn’t even get the dorm hall to vote for her (not that it was an election).
I don’t think Dorothy is that obtuse not to realise that networking is important. The problem is that she also knows that she’s not exactly the most freely social person ever. She makes spreadsheets. She uses outdated lingo and cringes.
But at the end of the day, Dorothy is also unapologetically… Dorothy. Turning herself into Roz wouldn’t get her the platform she wants to be elected for.
I actually think Roz may be the only person Dorothy genuinely loathes. It’s kind of interesting given she’s normally the all-loving hero but there’s some genuine jealousy there.
True, though Roz isn’t exactly doing, like, literally anything to endear herself to Dorothy, either.
Roz has been shitty to Joyce, took advantage of Joe in what was honestly deeply fucked up on her part, and is a condescending douchebag to her on a regular basis. She also has the negative association with Ryan and the party, even if that wasn’t Roz’s fault. The RA thing obviously didn’t help, since Dorothy got embarrassed by Roz outdoing her, and Roz rubbed her nose in it.
I think it also doesn’t help they do align on some political topics, but Roz sees Dorothy as too weak-willed to hold Joyce to task and too willing to forgive, and Dorothy probably sees Roz as someone who thinks “personal responsibility” are dirty words. Like, has Roz ever once demonstrated contrition for like, anything, ever? Any inkling that maybe she isn’t the main character of life who can just do whatever she likes, whenever she wants?
Huh. I thought I remembered a strip where Roz was pissed about Ryan, but the closest I could find was her being given no information and giving Joyce a card for, presumably, therapy.
A few strips before the ‘card’ incident… Roz was asking how Dorothy/Joyce liked the party. Her words: “It wasn’t so bad. Well, I guess it did peter out a little early cuz of some dumb fight or whatever. Someone’s always gotta make a scene”.
Granted it is unlikely that she personally knew Ryan, and probably wasn’t aware of the events that occurred prior to the “fight”. (Although I don’t think the house where the party was held would have been that big, so its surprising she wouldn’t have been aware of what happened to Joyce, or at least had an idea of what lead to the events.)
This is a weird read given that Dorothy yelling at her prompts Roz to offer Joyce a number to a crisis hotline, meaning Roz was able to piece together enough of the puzzle that she felt compelled to lend Joyce a hand.
Yes, she sort of maybe pieced it together (or at least figured out that something bad happened to Joyce.) But only after prodding from Dorothy.
I didn’t think she was ever siding with Ryan… her “gotta make a scene” comment was probably due to lack of knowledge. (I’m just surprised she would lack that knowlege is all.)
I did not get a slut-shaming read from that. Dorothy hasn’t minded going for it, and she’s friends with Joe. I viewed it as an honest question. Why would a person be jealous over someone else making a choice that would hinder opportunities they want if they did it? Roz was claiming jealousy over Sarah’s slut-shaming, but Dorothy was asking why would only fans be a source of jealousy? I don’t think Roz needs to be contrite especially over slut-shaming, but I think the above poster was talking about her being contrite for past behavior she has done (hence the, “like anything”.)
Roz gave a reason why it would be a source of jealousy – she’s making money off it. It might not be a reason for Dorothy to be jealous, specifically, but then Roz wasn’t talking to Dorothy.
To be fair, even though she wishes no harm to Roz, Roz did go off on Dorothy for Joyce being uneducated on topics as if being her friend meant it was her job to FIX Joyce, has been mean to her, Joyce and Becky, and even now takes a condescending stance as if she is above her. Why would she like Roz?
Roz also assumes the worst of people and rages at them for it which is the very opposite of her who thinks the best of people and quietly points out her concerns without trying to hurt them. Roz takes a wrecking ball to things where Dorothy would use a soft approach.
Most other people have their issues but they are often not directed at Dorothy and when they are (Becky) it is obvious it comes from insecurity/pain/trauma so it is easier to look past. Roz just smugly acts like she is better and more interesting and snaps at her even when she is nice to her because… she genuinely thinks not caring about a few social rules other people still care about makes her enlightened or something.
But Roz was generally right about those things. She got mad at Joyce for basically being a hypocrite as that point she only started caring about gay people because of Becky. This after she literal try to help a gay guy go back into the closet.
She was always right to get mad at Becky. She took Robin from dead last in the polls to single handely nearly winning the election. Roz pointed out that Robin would do horrible things and Becky knew this because that specially was part of their deal. I mean Becky could’ve explain “I’m planning on sabotaging her” but instead taunted someone with legimate grievances.
Then again when Becky did say she was going to sabotage Robin she never actually made an effort to do so. She just kind of acted disappointed that Robin was going to win like she forgot that’s exactly why Robin hired her.
I’ve really got no idea how we’re supposed to take the Robin/Becky thing. It’s completely incomprehensible to me if Becky is supposed to have been able to bring Robin to the point of victory by tweeting vaguely leftist sentiments. Somehow that brings a populist majority to the Republican candidate without turning away the Trumpist Republican base?
I can see it bringing some social media popularity, though not without a huge backlash from right-wing trolls that didn’t seem to happen, but that doesn’t translate into actual votes.
The only way I can see her actually winning is a sympathy vote after the kidnappings, and that’s an awful thing to blame Becky for.
You make it sound like it’s something that could happen only in a online comic strip.
Speaking more generally, I find it interesting the fans of a genuinely funny strip don’t always seem to have much of a sense of humor. Of course the whole Becky/Robin election doesn’t make sense. It’s a joke. It’s also a trope.
Somebody wants somebody else to fail, so they pretend to help them but every bit of help is sabotage. Except every bit of sabotage actually turns out
to be an act of inadvertent genius that guarantees the other person’s success. That’s the whole gimmick behind ‘The Producers.’
Yeah, that’s fair, I guess.
It mostly bothers me when other commenters take it seriously and blame Becky for it. Nor do we actually see anything that comes off as even inadvertant genius.
I don’t think she ever did? I’m pretty sure it was a textual element that Becky made Robin look good, but it sure didn’t actually mean anything to her polls and then Robin withdrew anyway.
Which Becky definitely had some role in, both in being the kidnapping target and her Big Inspiring Tweet Thread (which definitely comes off as Broadly Inspirational and appealing, the way a general campaign speech does, rather than any specific policy discussion, so I can see it appealing to moderates on either side of the aisle as an inspiring underdog speech.) But since said thread was intended to get attention on her after she gave herself over to kidnappers, and therefore get AS MANY PEOPLE AS POSSIBLE talking about it and therefore looking for the kidnappers she listed by name, still a shitty thing to hold against her.
Yes, Roz was right about Joyce being a hypocrite regarding gay rights.
But, at that point, Joyce had started to realize the error of her ways. Continuing to brow-beat her at that point (especially in a way that was disruptive to the class as a whole) seemed… unnecessary.
Joyce was being a hypocrite at that moment. She was yelling angrily about ‘the church’ being homophobic but took no ownership of her own part in that until Roz yelled at her. Joyce even said later that sometimes Roz can be mean, but sometimes she needs someone to be mean.
It’s all been said before, but I’m not at all sure that 30 seconds after someone has that revelation is the best time to attack them for not figuring it all out yet. Seems to me it’s as likely to drive them away again as bring them fully onto your side.
Nor am I convinced that Joyce is right that she needed it. It might have worked out in her case – convinced her faster, but that still doesn’t mean it’s a necessary approach.
I don’t think it was a perfect or even necessary approach all the time, but at some point Joyce was going to have to grapple with that hypocrisy and Dorothy sure wasn’t gonna tell her. It didn’t have to be Roz, but I do think at some point it was going to take someone bluntly laying out she was being a hypocrite. Sometimes people do need a verbal brick to get it. Hell, some people figure ‘Eh, if it was a big deal and I was doing something actually wrong, they would be angry and upset. So clearly, if they’re being so calm about it, it’s no big deal.’
I do wonder if Roz really has more ‘people-person’ skills than Dorothy.
Yes, Roz had more support of people on the floor (who viewed Dorothy as too much of a workaholic/bookworm). But that’s a rather small group of people, and a rather narrow situation. But if Roz were put in a situation where she had to deal with people who opposed her? Her overbearing attitude might actually put her at a disadvantage compared to Dorothy (who is probably better able to be empathetic and/or a consensus builder.)
Dorothy is a nice person and wants to be nice to everyone all the time, but for the obvious reasons of being A Person she likes some people more than she likes others, or: Joyce is on a higher tier than Carla and Other Rachel. She’s incapable of casually engaging with the rest of her dorm, but only starts trying to prove she can when challenged for the position of RA and so just starts trying to force herself to be more affable, more charming, and just completely fails at it because everyone there likes Dorothy well enough, but they can tell she’s being completely artificial. Dorothy cannot actually talk to people like this, she can’t force herself to be everyone’s friend because that’s not how she’s wired, but it’s something she thought she had to power through.
Roz is, actually, genuinely an effortlessly social butterfly. She’s not particularly close to anyone that we’ve seen, but every instance of her in-comic is her being genuine, and that means her bratty self-righteous woker than thou behaviour as much as it means her asserting autonomy over her body as a way to prove she’s not Robin’s pawn for political gain, reaching out to Joyce after the party, casually intermingling with everyone and dragging them along for the ride because she’s just actually really good at casual conversation. Roz puts herself out there in a way that invites people to her.
When it comes to actually being in a position of authority, yeah I do actually think Roz would be better at it. Dorothy would be too wrapped up in Doing The Right Thing to solve anything, she’d tie herself in knots trying to find the perfect solution where everyone is Being Better and they can all be the good person Dorothy knows they are, whereas Roz would just hear it out and say what she thinks and close the book on it, which I think is pretty much all you’d need to be an RA. It’s not like they’re supposed to be this dramatic.
Again… judging Roz by how well she deals with the people on the floor may not be a good measure of how much of a “people-person” they are, simply because its was a select group of people who were probably pre-disposed to her ideals. Put her in a more diverse population (where she has to deal with right wingers, libertarians, hard-core christians, moderates, etc.), then see how much of a “social butterfly” she is.
As for being in a “Position of authority”, even the president does not have absolute power, and has to deal with others. Dorothy would try to find a middle ground to actually get at least some things done. Roz would stake out an extreme position, call anyone who didn’t agree with her 100% to be idiots, then complain when she wasn’t able to get the support she needed.
Dorothy would be too busy trying to find the right way to solve it that considers everyone’s feelings and carefully charts how to validate everyone involved that it never gets done, and it’s not like Dorothy cares about the people involved either way but she sure thinks she has to.
Roz, and I don’t know how to come at the idea that she’s not a social butterfly for not being polite to the dregs of society, would just get it done and at least one person would be mad about it, but she’s an RA. There’s not much she can fuck up that’s so bad that the people involved can’t recover.
Getting everyone (or at least a significant number) of people involved is the way you come to agreements so that things can get done.
Attempting to be a dictator (i.e. “This is what I want”) without considering opposing opinions is unlikely to succeed, in any real political position.
As for “just” being an RA… if that’s all Roz would aspire to, even then her “My way!” attitude might run into problems, because even the RA might have to answer to others. (She would have to be the RA for people who like her, but she’d also have to be the RA for people like Mary, who would probably be quite eager to go over her head.)
Dorothy is a major policy wonk and probably really should be chief of staff or something, the person telling the elected politician what to do (or at least, what to aim for.) You *can* be an intellectual policy wonk and a successful politician like Obama or Hillary (hey, she did get more votes than Trump!) but I dunno that Dorothy is on the right path for that yet. I think it starts with being a party volunteer and working a long time inside things… Actually odd that Dorothy isn’t doing that; dunno if she hasn’t realized she needs it, or if she’s Waiting For Yale (and not being in such a Republican state.)
so in this analogy, Bill Waterson is the presidency? and making a living as a cartoonist is, like, pretty awesome except if you’re Bill Waterson, who presumably wouldn’t settle for less than being Bill Waterson? So Dorothy is… Schrödinger’s Bill Waterson? yes?
If YOU were Bill Waterson, would you settle for less than being Bill Waterson? Wouldn’t you consider it a failure if you were Bill Waterson and instead of making Calvin and Hobbes you’d made… I dunno, 9 Chickweed Lane?
I see in so many of these anti-Dorothy comments the same smart competent hard-working ambitious women aren’t allowed to win/be likable that I saw back in 2016. Someone wrote a very good article about the trope tracing it through movies and other media (ex Reese Witherspoon in election).
Only misogyny could penalize a woman for being too hard working. It’s like the way you’re supposed to wear makeup but you know not look like you’re wearing makeup. You have to be effortless or not try at all. But only for women. (White) Men neither have to wear makeup nor pretend they’re not trying and that they don’t actually want power.
I hope better for Dorothy that how Hillary is being treated in this comments section. And yeah, senator and Secretary of State are both pretty impressive and so is how much people love working with HRC. The world would be a much better place if she’d been elected.
Obviously it’s not how elections are determined. But still, she got more Americans to vote for her, after winning the nomination, and coming close to nomination in 2008. She can win popularity contests, but was done in by nearly random quirks of how the Electoral College played out.
The way Roz is talking, Dorothy would never even be a credible primary candidate, let alone contending in the general election.
And that’s despite being the glass ceiling of being the first ever major party female nominee. And a decades long right-wing media smear campaign. And a bullshit scandal revived publicly at the last moment because NYC FBI agents close to Guiliani were going to leak it. And Russian interference amplifying ever malicious rumor on social media. Not to mention the usual voter suppression.
Willis specifically said after the 2016 election that its outcome (and the ramifications thereof, since DoA is set “in our universe” and Word of Willis is that the current US President in real life is always the current US President in Dumbing of Age) would make Dorothy “a little less idealistic, and a little more bitter” going forward, so I definitely think that’s something she already realizes.
Since DoA always takes place in the present year, that would make this January 2021. Granted, it’s an alternate January 2021 where nobody is wearing masks or anything, and weren’t doing so in Fall 2020 either, but it’s entirely possible that the failed coup was mere days ago for these guys.
Fair, but Willis did mention Dorothy in particular when they said that, because of her presidential aspirations (not to mention things like Carla, in-comic, referring to Dorothy as “Little Miss Hillary Clinton Junior” just a few weeks or so IRL before the 2016 election).
That feels sadly like a story where we’d see Dorothy waiting for Hillary be elected then a Gilligan Cut to her looking shell shocked. A feeling that a lot of us could mimic.
Even if she realized that after the 2016 election results, she seems to be still be acting as if you have to go to a good (preferably Ivy league) college and get good grades and have a perfect record to be elected President.
It’s also worth it for Dorothy, if she’s going to point out things like that, some birds produce crop milk which is different but analogous to mammalian milk. It is not nursed, but is produced in the crop of the parent bird and fed to the chicks. Imagine mom and dad vomiting cottage cheese into your mouth, but it’s tasty and makes you feel loved. Pigeons, doves, flamingi, and male emperor penguins do this.
I’d say the biggest thing Dorothy has to learn is that Presidency isn’t really what she wants, what she want is more akin to be überdelegate of the federal state of earth. But then she would have to stop making spreadsheets about what people like and rather ask and write down what people think they need.
The sex tape early in the first semester. I’m fairly certain Joe consented to that, though, and I don’t remember any particular blowback on him for being one of the parties in the video.
To be fair, some birds do produce something that is considered “crop milk” which isn’t lactated in a traditional sense and is more of a cottage cheese like consistency. I knew that flamingos did it but after a quick googling it turns out pigeons do it too. Also since they lack sweat glands, it is regurgitated. Birds are gross.
Platypus are not birds. They are in fact mammals known as Monotremes. This also includes Echidna as both are animals that are mamalian yet lay eggs. They have no defined nipples and just lactate through their pores so you’re not wrong about that.
Also fun fact, both baby Platypus and baby Echidna are called “Puggles”
I can’t think of baby Echidnas without thinking of that one Sonic the Hedgehog comic where Knuckles’s dad microwaved his egg to turn him into a Christ allegory.
I mean, milk ducts we use for lactation are just repurposed sweat glands y’know. It’s not even the grosses thing baby animals are fed. Be happy we’re not one of those animals that has to get our antibodies from eating poop.
Or vitamin K. That’s the reason guinea pigs eat a certain type of their poop and during the first weeks of life they have to eat their parents’ as they don’t have the motor skills to eat their own.
Between Roz in Panel 3 here and Joyce in the last strip, we’re getting a lot of Faz-esque expressions lately.
I’m curious how this storyline, with Roz calling her “unelectable” and Becky calling her personality flavorless, is playing into Dorothy’s overall arc.
Dorothy got accepted by Yale, and now she has a choice to make. To do that, I think Dorothy is probably going to question her political ambitions, whether or not that is the thing she should be doing.
What the answer is probably depends on if Willis wants to keep her in the comic or not.
DoA Season 2 is all about Mike doing Invasion of the Body Snatchers on the whole cast. The main plot will be revealed during the next storyline (“I will leave you a phantom”).
Thank you for showing consideration for everyone’s sleep schedules by not posting the link ^^ (Not even a little bit sarcastic!) (Does that specific denial just make me seem more sarcastic?)
TVTropes is extremely good as a database of accessible and easily understandable shorthands for reoccurring visuals, archetypes and actions in media, say how a toyetic action/adventure story will have a team of the Leader, Snarky Sidekick, Big Guy, Smart Nerd and Emotional Heart (the Five Man Band) or how the scene where a character swoops in at the last minute to save someone from certain death is always cool (the Big Damn Heroes).
It is even gooder when that database of accessible and easily understandable shorthands touches on the mechanics of writing and gives words and terminology to them a casual audience never knew how to define, like how Flanderization has become the universally accepted definition of “a character in an ongoing plot gets gradually filtered down into their most surface level personality” or one of my favourite pieces of advice, the Establishing Character Moment, where you sell your audience on your character and their worth in one big moment. Everything you need to know about Becky and Joyce’s friendship is made clear at the end of the first strip, four years before Becky would become a main character, with the phrase “how about an inaugural poop?”
Where TVTropes has descended into outright villainy and why I blame it and CinemaSins for the utter eradication of media literacy is when that writing advice is turned into an objective read of a work of fiction and then it’s placed on this big archive of media writing shorthands that portrays an air of authenticity even though it was written by one nerd with an axe to grind that his OTP is totally the Fan Preferred Couple and the romance that happened is Strangled By The Red String. Now you’ve got an entire generation of nerds who don’t experience stories, they’re going down the checklist of tropes and trying to measure on a scale whether or not the villain is Unintentionally Unsympathetic and how their redemptive arc makes them a Karma Houdini instead of just deciding for themselves based on how the story makes them feel, the actual bleeding point of experiencing fiction.
Ad they can just do that because they think it and instead of thinking and saying it and then going on with their day they get to immortalize it on the page every single article has for “Your Mileage May Vary” pieces, which somehow has the gall to pretend that any single person writing any of them has enough of a beat on an audience to figure out what is or isn’t a Broken Base.
TVTropes teaches you how to write by apologizing in advance.
Eh, I’m definitely reading it more as “it will make you unwanted for election because of puritanical standards of sexual purity” as opposed to “you can’t get the job because you’re a smelly harlot.”
More that Dorothy’s personal concerns about her electivity seem to be growing somewhat… strange and off-putting? Like it used to be cute-sad when she worried about her own electivity, but worrying about it in others?
It’s that a) Roz has never shown interest in being electable b) what Rose etc said about Dorothy’s behaviour about electability and c) that even if Dorothy believes those purity standards are wrong, she’s criticizing Roz rather than those standards
Being “Unelectable” is a concerning issue to bring up with someone who has made it pretty clear that they loathe the idea of actually being elected to anything beyond a dorm-based position.
You noticed that, too, huh. If Roz is after some kind of political office, I don’t remember it, so unless Dorothy is aiming that descriptor at herself, I’ve got no clue what she’s on about.
I get the impression that maybe Dorothy assumes that everyone (or at least the vast majority) of the other students in this Political Science class are there because they very much want to be successful politicians someday.
Dorothy might be projecting a bit without realizing it.
It’s also probably a safer assumption with Roz because she’s an activist and comes from a politically connected family, and if their competition over the RA position was the election they treated it like, Roz would have beaten her.
(Rose by any other name) yes, thank you. judging by electability is weird and despite Roz being “political” she doesn’t want to run for office, not to mention if that were the case, releasing a sex tape with her real name attached to it will have done way more than having an only fans, so dorothy’s point would be moot anyway.
as well as it being weird and bad vibes imho for her to bring up electability in general, it definitely feels to me like the point is to shame Roz. Just because Dorothy is reasonably open and is sexually active herself doesn’t mean she’s perfect about sex work etc. She might be doing it subconsciously or self-deluding (“this makes me uncomfortable for political reasons, not because I have a bias against sex workers!”), but I really feel that it’s what’s happening.
Wait a sec… who are you suggesting is “politically savvy”?
Of the 2 of them, I would say Dorothy is probably the more politically savvy… she understands the risks involved with things like sexual exposure, she gave Becky advice when she was campaign manager, etc. Dorothy may not have the charisma for higher office, but she’s knows the game. Roz is far-left and overly idealistic… great if she wants to run for lower office (city councilman/mayor/congress-critter) in a more liberal part of the country, but probably a death sentence if she actually wanted to go further than that.
Is it politically savvy to clamp down and shut yourself up in the name of working within a system that’s stacked against you in the name of changing it for the better, when that system works really hard to make sure it continues as is to the benefit of its ruling class?
Is it politically savvy to stick to a set of principles that would make you unelectable, giving the election to your opponent (who then begins to wreck the country)?
To make ANY change, you have to be in a position of power, which means either getting elected to office, or at least having a significant number of “followers”.
Its an imperfect world, but its the one that aspiring politicians like Dorothy have to work within.
How’s Dorothy going to make changes when the people around her don’t want those changes, because those changes line their pockets?
If Dorothy’s going to compromise her principals to get as high up as possible, what’s going to happen when she tries to act on those principals she let go of to climb? You think she’s the only politician who ever did that?
Dorothy’s ambition is “just become the leader of the country and fix everything.” She has no idea what she’s doing other than that it’s right.
Yes, money is often far more influential in politics than it should be. But, there are a few things to keep in mind:
– Those with money are not some sort of monolithic block. Many are far-right, willing to wreck the country in pursuit of short-term profits (Koch brothers for example), while others are much more moderate, recognizing problems in the country (such as wage disparity, environmental problems, etc.) and would be willing to donate to a candidate with left-of-center views
– A politician does not have to have perfect policies in order to improve the lives of its citizens. Take Obamacare for example… Probably not the “Free healthcare for all!” that many on the political left would have wanted, but it still extended health care to millions of people who would not have had it otherwise. (And Obama had no problems fundraising during his re-election campaign after.)
Also, “we shouldn’t have well-meaning people try to enter politics because Politicians Are Bad and their dreams will invariably be crushed” draws toward political nihilism, accelerationism, and the like – and that never leads anywhere good.
Hell, given the whole ‘attempting to ban porn on their platform because credit card companies’ thing I suspect this strip will be hopelessly dated within two years, tops.
Prob not. Naps would actually help. Most common triggers are sleep deprivation (possibly caused by sleep apnea but not necessarily), caffeine or less commonly alcohol or nicotine.
idk, I sleep pretty regularly (as in, often nap), I don’t do caffeine, alcohol, or nicotine, but I DO get paralysis on the regular if there’s even a little light in the room…
Just various blank stares that can easily be read as ‘dear god is it too late to change to another section?’ (Yes, yes it is. Everyone who could have changed at the end of Day 1.)
Roz is habitually shitty to her and Joyce, and also used Joe for revenge porn without his consent. Roz has earned this reaction, honestly, petty or not.
Wasn’t he seriously misled about its purpose, though? Like yeah, he was happy after the fact due to the infamy being good for his sex life, but consent gathered through deception is… not good.
She told him she was going to make a sex tape and upload it to the internet, which he consented to on the grounds of ‘when a chick wants to frigging make a sex tape, you jump that no matter what.’
She didn’t tell him about her sister being in Congress, which made it more likely to get a lot of attention, but I can’t find anything that indicates that she actively deceived him about it’s purpose. It’s also possible she took ‘no matter what’ as he’d be okay with it.
She likely felt she didn’t NEED to clarify that she was related to Robin, as she probably assumed he knew her last name and could put 2 and 2 together. I feel like the only reason Joe was blindsided by the political side of it all was because he didn’t care enough to recognize that she shared a last name with a Congresswoman
I mean that’s true to some extent, but I’d guess it’s true of most of the students. Dorothy might have recognized the name, but I doubt most other college freshmen would make the connection off the bat.
Now, it could still easily be that Roz assumed that. It’s such an overwhelming fact of her life that it could be hard to realize that most other people wouldn’t pay any attention.
Roz lashed out at Joyce one time in a way that was really only wrong because she was blaming Joyce for taking part of something bigger than her and outside of her control, except she was totally dating a gay dude to make him straight and then afterwards I don’t think they ever really interact. Roz’s mistake there struck me more as seeing Joyce change and going “pft but you were Problematic earlier, so your change is meaningless” which, like, hello twitter thank you for your guest spot.
Roz and Dorothy… I think their biggest interaction was the RA thing where Roz was, demonstrably, way better at the social stuff than Dorothy, just maybe not the job itself, except the social stuff is probably more important.
I can sorta see how “making a porno to get back at my sister’s political ambitions” could be classified as revenge, but only just. She still had a point, it was her body and she couldn’t just let Robin control it.
(she also did inform him that he was being videotaped. Danny was the unwitting cameraman)
Roz’s greatest crime is trying to out her queer sister so she’d lose her job, which given that the job was ‘republican congresswoman’ is not completely unjustifiable.
Roz never attempted this. Getting her together with Leslie wasn’t about outing Robin, it was about making Robin experience the effects of the shitty policies she was trying to pass.
It’s not entirely clear what Roz’s intent was with setting Leslie and Robin up. My original thought was that it was about getting Robin to realize that she was queer and thus lead her to change her policies (and likely party and probably thus out of politics).
Later it seemed more like outing was the goal all along and that Leslie wasn’t in on that part of the plan, but was considered acceptable collateral damage.
Roz said what her plan was. Her plan was for Robin to out HERSELF. Whether she means Robin coming out or Robin being Robin is unclear. Regardless, she wasn’t exactly crying when someone else did it.
I think Roz’s biggest goal there, ultimately, was ‘get Robin out of Congress,’ and Robin being outed was the best method she could see so she cared less about ‘how’. (Roz definitely doesn’t trust that Robin would change her policies based off Becky’s appealing to liberals, both because Robin clearly values being in office more than what policies she’s supporting and, I think, because Roz has clearly been set up as the kind of liberal for whom ANY compromise – and compromise is in fact inevitable in the process of governing, unfortunately, though there are some things that can’t be budged on – is a betrayal. Plus, even a liberal Congress member’s family is still gonna be the stuff of gossip, so even if Robin had run as a Democrat I think she’d still have tried to veto Roz having an OnlyFans account. Less of the family-friendly image, but still a lecture on Appropriate Behavior.)
Kinda sorta, which come to think of it defines a lot of Roz’s behaviour.
She didn’t out Robin herself, but she sure as heck thought it was great to parade it around to go “see that? My sister, a Republican Congresswoman, is a big smelly hypocriical jerk!” while doing the RA thing and wearing a cowboy hat for some reason.
Which, well, that is taking ownership of Robin’s sexuality, even when Robin was an actively malevolent and destructive force for her own gain. She thought about hooking Robin and Leslie, presumably, to get Robin to change her way, that’s noble in a vacuum, but when Robin was forcefully outed she was totally happy to show it off because it made her more agreeable to go “see? I’m not like that.
Laughing when some hardcore Evangelical Republican gets caught in a gay bathhouse is a timeless American pass time, but it’s funny because that dude’s being a hypocrite and tithing all the money he can from his flock. It’s weird to treat it as an opportunity for victory for you, personally, the way Roz did.
Roz showed her that she easily hand Dorothy’s butt to her in an election and that caused a minor drunken breakdown as it was a serious reality check that people don’t necessarily vote Lisa Simpson.
Roz has been mean to her, Joyce and Becky and literally has the attitude of Panel 5 of ‘I’m more interesting and fun and better than you’ which she has outright said to her face before.
Even the kind and caring Dorothy who cares for many does not necessary enjoy people that are smug jerks that condescend to her.
Roz said they were just jealous first. Dorothy asked ‘should we be jealous of something that has X consequence that I would not like to have’? I don’t agree that that is condescending necessarily and it comes after Roz has already implied she is better than them i.e. worthy of jealousy.
It’s condescending because she doesn’t even know if Roz WANTS to go into office and it really isn’t her business to comment on it either way. Especially because Roz only said SARAH was jealous because Sarah took cheap shots at her sex life out of nowhere for no real reason. If Dorothy has a problem with that, then I’d have to question Dorothy’s ethics in this scenario.
True, we don’t know for sure that Roz wants to get elected to any position.
But, 1) it is a politics class with a very select group of students, so there will be a higher proportion of aspiring politicians in that class, 2) Roz is politically active, and running for election is a logical next step.
Roz has told Dorothy flat out she has no interest in taking any positions of authority. She mostly seems interested in sex work and things related to that (she volunteers for planned parenthood and Willis’ Tumblr said that he kept looking for the chance to write that she was the sex columnist in the school paper but couldn’t find somewhere to put it).
Admittedly, I don’t remember her ever telling Dorothy that she had no interest in “postions of authority”. (Not saying it didn’t happen, just saying I don’t remember it.)
I’m generally of the opinion is a bit of an asshole, what with the whole performative allyship at the cost of actual marginalized people thing.
But in todays strip her comment was just a pretty proportionate response to Sarah throwing shade and not really aimed at Dorothy (or any of the other people in class).
I suspect this is a case where protagonist centered morality really comes into play. We don’t see a lot of it, but it’s worth remembering that while we often see her in relationship to LGBT rights, her real activism focus was reproductive rights and the very slut-shamy stuff happening in this strip. That’s an area where she’s not an ally, but part of the marginalized group.
Sex is weird. I think people still have this desire to judge people for having a lot of sex. Or for not having enough sex. Or having sex badly. There’s a lot of hangups about it and as progressive as people can be I feel like people don’t know how to manage where they put sex in. Is it empowering? Is it degrading? Is it just a thing we do and not a big deal? Is it the BIGGEST deal ever and we have to only do it in VERY specific circumstances? Is the idea of Sarah’s sister being too horny valid? Would you argue that Joe’s too horny? Or would you argue horniness isn’t bad and it’s just how you act within that horniness? Is there a point where there’s a difference between being sex positive and finding a limits to being horny constantly?
Well it’s complicated, but I think that at least as long as you’re not hurting anyone and everything is consensual, you don’t have anything to answer for.
I am thoroughly convinced that only a sociopathic person would ever want to be president. Like even if you wanna be a good president you kinda gotta be a cutthroat and corrupt kinda person. I am convinced the BEST you can hope for out of a leader is “mostly ok”. Dorothy either would have to be a worse person to be president or settle for a lower position.
Honestly the idea of wanting to be president from a young age does tend to rub me the wrong way. Kind of self important goal for someone who just received the right to vote.
People like having agency in whether or not their country goes to shit, weirdly enough. Like yeah, politics absolutely attracts narcissists and people looking out for a payout/kickbacks, but it also attracts people who want to use power to enact good, even if they have to hold their nose while doing it to get past the stench.
I think Dorothy’s totally idealistic and sincere about it even if I think the endgoal is, like, impossible. Yeah you go get ’em, 19-year old with big ideas for making everything better for everyone. In hindsight, there may be something apropos of Dorothy’s political ambitions being “look at this mess, I gotta fix it” except applied to an entire country.
The idea of Dorothy becoming the POTUS feels, like, cartoonish as hell to me, it feels like that one future episode of the Simpsons where Lisa’s the President which wow I guess that’s appropriate, but then the answer there is “okay but if she doesn’t literally become the President then I guess she’ll have to settle for improving as many as lives as she can with her current level of power, and then keep going so she can improve more lives with even more power, and then just never ever stop because the morality and motivation of Dorothy’s actions are more important than the actual job.”
I mean I just can’t imagine going through non-executive level politics, seeing the ways it slowly crushes your soul and the limitations on the presidency (while also recognizing just how much power it is,) and actually thinking ‘yes. I am the best possible person for this job. I am capable of handling the pressure of enacting policies that directly decide who lives and who dies. This is a job I want.’ Like, between the pressure required and the ego, man. Cannot fathom it.
Dorothy for some reason still hasn’t caught on to how politics work and still believes it’s about wanting to do the best, knowing as much as possible and having the best arguments.
I suspect the Yale acceptance letter will expand upon these themes soon. I don’t think it’s going to be as simple as, “okay bye everyone I’m off to Yale”. Dorothy will have to weigh her childhood dream of being president against the life she currently lives, and ask herself if her desires have changed.
She will also have to weigh up whether Yale is a good school where she will learn a lot, whereas this university seems to be a mal-administered dumpster fire where the teachers won’t or can’t teach and the resident students are bullied and neglected by their residential guardians and fed on junk food.
I honestly wonder where Roz makes her OnlyFans content, given the dean put the fear of God into her for her sex tape with Joe stunt and impressed on her that anything done on school property was his concern, and didn’t exactly make a secret of the fact he’d expel her if it’d happen again.
Roz is definitely not stupid, so I wonder if she just makes a bunch of content in batches when home or goes to guys/girls’ places or what. Like, this is a really silly thing to wonder about, but I’ve got a lot of friends in the industry, so to speak, so I wonder about the logistics more than most would.
Sure, but after the stunt she pulled, it’s not exactly a stretch to think she’s not off his radar.
Like, Roz is cashing in on being Roz DeSanto for her OnlyFans, almost certainly, so yeah, it’s be much weirder if the dean *didn’t* find out about it. This is the kind of thing that does get articles online.
I would imagine she’s 18 or older, yeah, and whether or not she does nudity, she still likely needs to be careful about where she makes her content. Some pasties, etc, aren’t going to keep her from getting booted in a flash, but like I said, Roz isn’t stupid, I’d imagine she probably is being more careful than that.
Roz wasn’t underage to begin with when she made the sex tape with Joe (if for no other reason than that Willis has an explicit policy of not depicting under-18s in Sexy Situations), the Dean’s threat was on the grounds of her being a student at his college and making the tape on college property.
I’m assuming she either does that stuff at friends’ places, or maybe she found a cheap apartment in town she can rent, and she makes her OnlyFans content there. So she’s most likely not doing it on school property.
Well Sarah was talking about her own sister, Roz percieved it as being about her and sarah snarked back at her, as Sarah is wont to do. Then Dorothy responded to Roz’s insinuation that they’re just jealous of her.
I think she was asking for advice about Liz, but asking Robin how she deals with a sister who’s ‘too horny for her own good’ implies Robin has one. Meaning Roz. Who, as she points out, is right there.
Besides, like Sarah really thinks Robin has good advice to give and believes that asking for personal advice of a stranger is something that you ought to do as part of a pol. sci. class.
I mean yes Sarah is an asshole to people who aren’t Joyce and Dina, and she still thought it was funny when Dina got mad that Sarah had tricked her into partaking in an occult ritual steeped in magical thinking.
Dorothy, Dorothy, Dorothy. This pathetic country hired a literal scam artist and probable (proven?) rapist who went out of his way to degrade race relations nationwide just to create a cult around himself. Getting fucked on camera is a drop in the ocean, at this point in history.
Sorry, I’m not American and I am honestly curious about how you use the term. Does this mean that someone like Marco Rubio (his parents were from Cuba, right?) can be described as a “man of colour”?
Yeah sorry about that, when I heard presidential rape I immediately went to the rape accusation of Joe Biden, the accusation that was believed by the current vice president, that had the date, the location and was told to others at the time it, allegedly, happened so should have been investigated but wasn’t
Harris never said that, though it’s been commonly spread. She was asked about “the women who feel like their space has been invaded in the past, by the vice president?” and she then said that she believed them.
This was a year or so before Tara Reade went public with her accusation.
There’s an awful lot of rumor and misinformation about that story. It never had the kind of verification that other high profile allegations get before being published.
And it’s not like there’s a huge constituency rabidly pursuing every opportunity they get to bray “oh yeah well wuh’bout” to deflect attention away from the previous administration when they’re criticized.
Or just pissed that their candidate didn’t win the primary. Much of the initial push behind those accusations came from the worst among Sanders supporters.
It had been my hope that Robyn would switch parties and become the AOC of the setting instead of the Palin. Sadly, she’s gone out of politics entirely.
AOC has already been mentioned by Robin in the strip (and has actually appeared in a Patreon exclusive, I believe), though. Remember, DoA is “our world but fictionalized.”
I remember a picture of Robin sitting outside Leslie’s house with the caption “redemption is a story, it’s not real,” and I wasn’t sure if that was going to be literal or if Robin would beat the odds. It was literal.
It’s our world but fictionalized (and we’ve specifically seen characters at least wear t-shirts of/otherwise namedrop Dinosaur Comics and xkcd, just off the top of my head), so yes.
Yeah but they’re all College AU reboots of long-running sci-fi series that started as a college coming of age story and had a spinoff about working at a toy store.
In New Zealand, we had a member of parliament, Georgina Beyer, who was both the world’s first openly trans mayor (elected 1994) and member of parliament (elected in 1999). She’s also a former sex worker who advocates for sex workers’ rights. Really an amazing person.
What a weird strip today! I don’t think Robin will be able to answer this question or that her answer would help Sarah dealing with one or both of her sisters. Also, how can Roz do an Onlyfans while she shares a room with someone like Mary? Does this mean that Mary is now constantly living in her boyfriend’s room or she’s with her in that?
Yeah, Willis said on Tumblr that Mary’s parents were probably very nice people but Mary picked up all the wrong lessons at church. Maybe they had a super ‘fire and brimstone’ youth pastor or something.
I doubt it, she’s a professor now and wants to look like it. From what I recall she’s quite enjoying her current outfit with its peanut butter elbow patches and spinning bow-tie.
I can definitely see her wearing an EXPERTEATS t-shirt while not at work, though.
While it’s certainly low, I expect it ties more to her own fears that anything sexual she does will be brought back and used against her once she’s in politics.
After all, it was Roz that first mentioned onlyfans, so it wasn’t Dorothy who initiated the topic. And Dorothy wasn’t saying whether Roz was morally right or wrong, only that it would have a negative impact on a person’s electability (which seems to me to be a valid topic for discussion in a class on politics.)
I think Dorothy is coming at it the way you are, that Roz isn’t doing anything wrong so much as she’s doing something her voter base thinks is wrong.
But I think for Dorothy to leap to Roz’s chances at attaining office is, well, it’s judgmental. It’s Dorothy telling Roz without any prompting that she’s doomed her chances to reach her goal, except that goal is something Dorothy might just be assuming in Roz and Roz’s goals are completely different, or that Roz wouldn’t want to sacrifice her pride to attain those goals and maybe she doesn’t even have to.
Like maybe Dorothy is an idiot and doesn’t know what she’s talking about, but she’s getting a level of righteousness in her own path, that she’ll work within a stifling and hateful system to change it and make it better, so Roz can go into office and also have an OnlyFans account when she’s 19.
True, it could be a false assumption on Dorothy’s party that Roz wants to run for political office. But given Roz’s political activism, its not that far-fetched.
And even if Roz herself doesn’t want to run for office, others in the class might want to. (And Roz’s activities on onlyfans might cause unexpected repercussions down the road even if she enters the private sector. “We would like to hire you at McDonalds, but we googled your name, and we don’t think you have the moral integrity to flip hamburgers.”)
Roz has already said she has no interest in positions of authority, in no uncertain terms, when talking to Dorothy. “It’s in my blood, but I hate my stupid blood. Sure, I’d be great at it, but I. Don’t. Want. It.’
The only reason she even wanted to be the RA was so she didn’t have to deal with Mary as a roommate anymore. Even Dorothy seemed to agree that was reason enough.
But even if Roz discounts the possibility of going into politics, my other point still stands… a history of public sex work might end up being a limiting factor in whatever potential career she might want.
Fair, but right now, Roz’s career interests are sex work and writing about sex. She also volunteers with Planned Parenthood so I dunno if she’d be into a job with them.
Dorothy feels the need to repress her sexual desires to make herself electable, but she defends that position by acting like she’s better than anyone who chooses sexual liberation. It’s the same kind of attitude I see in women who try to shame other women for dressing or acting a certain way.
Dorothy wasn’t even involved in this conversation, but she felt the need to interject that OnlyFans would make Roz unelectable. The comment very much reinforced the existing power structures rather than addressing the discrimination sex workers face.
I think calling it “repressing sexual desires” is too harsh, but I think I agree with the spirit of what you’re saying.
Dorothy doesn’t have a problem with sexual liberation, she has a problem with how enough people have a problem with it that it changes how she can live her life, and how she has to capitulate to it and play by rules she doesn’t want to get ahead.
I was thinking back to a conversation she had with Joyce, when she first started dating Walky, about being horny but also worried that she’ll be judged if she acts on her desires. That’s a difficult position and I empathize with her. But in today’s strip we’re seeing a resentment of Roz for not playing by the same rules. I called it a slut-shame because she doesn’t open the broader question of why sex work might make someone unelectable, she just takes a cheap shot.
Now that I’ve been reminded of Liz’s existence I feel distraught that we never got a scene of her trying to hook up with Joe and then he just starts babbling and trying to deflect until Liz gives him a once over and goes “oh damn, you’re straight up in love with Joyce, aren’t you?”
Big stupid meatheads internally tortured by their first dose of the Feels is my aesthetic.
I can’t remember an interaction in this comic where her behavior wasn’t based upon the foundation of “I’m Right and everyone who disagrees is a Stupid Trash Person.” Getting Robin to hook up with Leslie, yelling at Joyce, doing the sex tape, campaigning for RA…she doesn’t treat people like people, she’s got fucking zero empathy, and every single interaction is about her being Right about something. She has deeply held ideals, and I agree with most of them, but it’s almost like she cares more about winning arguments than actually improving lives.
Would love to be reminded of examples that demonstrate compassion or sympathy for another person…I can’t think of a single one right now.
Sure, Roz can be insufferable. BUT right here, in this strip, she wasn’t doing fuck all until Sarah and Dorothy started taking shots at her. I find it hard to fault her for taking shots back.
Honestly, as far as taking shots goes, Roz’s were very mild. She basically just did the “Pffft, you’re just jealous” brush off and when Dorothy didn’t let that drop by saying “An onlyfans can make you unelectable”, she just said “You can not have an onlyfans and still not get elected.”
Yeah, I’m not impressed with Sarah here but Dorothy really didn’t say much, beyond a fairly tame “this thing has specific negative consequences for the career I (and supposedly you) want to be in,” and Roz’s response was an extremely shitty personal attack.
Roz’s entire personality is about how she’s better than everyone. Sniping at Dorothy by saying “whatever, I’m still more likable than you, you stupid puritanical child” is a low blow, and completely uncalled for in the face of the original statement: that controversial public behavior can have negative consequences for your image.
Roz could’ve engaged that argument. Instead, she Fazzed her way through with – surprise, surprise – zero goddamn empathy.
That is not at all what happened. She didn’t say anything about Dorothy’s likeability here. She said “You can not have an onlyfans and not get elected to office anyway.” in response to Dorothy making condescending comments about how Roz wouldn’t be electable, when she KNOWS that Roz has no interest in holding office because Roz has TOLD HER, in no uncertain terms, she has no interest in holding any positions of authority. Even if Roz WAS though, her onlyfans isn’t Dorothy’s business to comment on and Dorothy should’ve just left it alone when Sarah was the one who started off by making shitty comments about Roz. All Roz did was brush it off saying ‘You’re just jealous of the money I make’ and Dorothy couldn’t let it drop.
given how low the bar is set right now, in 10 years a politician with an onlyfans account would be a breath of fresh air, because we’d be given a choice between someone who has a bunch of naked pictures online or another person who is directly responsible for the death of only 10 people.
Counterpoint: if the biggest “problem” you can name of a politician RIGHT NOW is “they have an OnlyFans account”, there’s a good chance they’re the best pick at a national level BY FAR.
Actually I would say there is some asymmetrical moralizing going on….
A republican can have multiple ex-wives, have affairs outside of marriage, and engage in all sorts of criminal activity and all will be forgiven by the voter base. If a Democrat does anything more suggestive than putting dijon mustard on a hot dog, they are somehow immoral sinners who will burn in hell.
Roz’s problem ain’t that she’s got an onlyfans. It’s that she absolutely believes she’s always in the right, and the second anyone disagrees with her, she immediately assumes they’re a prude rather than, yknow, just someone who disagrees with her.
That bein’ said man Dorothy needs to relax a little.
wait. serious question. does lube usually even have a smell? like all the lubes i’ve used i think never had more than the faintest smell. maybe silicon-based lubes are different? i’ve only used water based. or maybe Roz (or, i guess Sarah) uses flavoured lube?
i’m ok with Robin thinking birds lactate, but this is bugging me.
The lube we use is allegedly Ylang Ylang- scented, but it mostly smells like medical plastic. It’s not overpowering, but you can definitely smell it on us if you sit nearby.
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“Will these be on the test, also”
alt-text: hmm, I remember doing that but the opposite for the “What’s a Pope?” Shortpacked!
Okay but is panel 2 Sarah referring to Liz, or Joyce
Yes
Aye.
Of course?
YES.
…oh you know what, is she talking about Liz?
‘Cause when I saw this last night on Patreon my immediate reaction was “why did Sarah just slutshame Roz for no reason?” instead of… I mean that’s still weird but Sarah is actually totally enough of a complete social trash pile that she would say this and in this circumstance.
God damn it, I totally forgot Liz existed. I seriously thought this was just Sarah shitting on Roz for no reason.
Liz is Sarah’s Roz.
Yup, though I honestly doubt Sarah likes Roz virtually at all, either.
She wasn’t NOT shitting on Roz.
But she also must be fully aware that Roz has zero shame about it.
I had to read it several times (and read your comment) to see it!! Maybe because it breaks my suspension of disbelief. Sarah knows better than asking Robin how to deal with family issues.
Definitely both.
The biggest thing that Dorothy has to potentially learn is that something like the Presidency isn’t something that you earn because of good grades, morality, or even because you would do the best job. Let alone because you deserve it. Abraham Lincoln lost a lot of elections. It’s because you’re selected to do so by your party and then the electoral college. I wonder how Dorothy would deal with that kind of failure. She didn’t do so well when she realized she couldn’t even get the dorm hall to vote for her (not that it was an election).
I don’t think Dorothy is that obtuse not to realise that networking is important. The problem is that she also knows that she’s not exactly the most freely social person ever. She makes spreadsheets. She uses outdated lingo and cringes.
But at the end of the day, Dorothy is also unapologetically… Dorothy. Turning herself into Roz wouldn’t get her the platform she wants to be elected for.
I actually think Roz may be the only person Dorothy genuinely loathes. It’s kind of interesting given she’s normally the all-loving hero but there’s some genuine jealousy there.
Plus contempt.
True, though Roz isn’t exactly doing, like, literally anything to endear herself to Dorothy, either.
Roz has been shitty to Joyce, took advantage of Joe in what was honestly deeply fucked up on her part, and is a condescending douchebag to her on a regular basis. She also has the negative association with Ryan and the party, even if that wasn’t Roz’s fault. The RA thing obviously didn’t help, since Dorothy got embarrassed by Roz outdoing her, and Roz rubbed her nose in it.
I think it also doesn’t help they do align on some political topics, but Roz sees Dorothy as too weak-willed to hold Joyce to task and too willing to forgive, and Dorothy probably sees Roz as someone who thinks “personal responsibility” are dirty words. Like, has Roz ever once demonstrated contrition for like, anything, ever? Any inkling that maybe she isn’t the main character of life who can just do whatever she likes, whenever she wants?
Huh. I thought I remembered a strip where Roz was pissed about Ryan, but the closest I could find was her being given no information and giving Joyce a card for, presumably, therapy.
That’s the best I’ve got.
As far as I can remember, Roz never actually found out about Ryan.
You may be mixing her up with Ron, the host of the party who drove them back to campus after the incident.
An N and a Z are just the same letter tilted sideways anyway.
Good point, JBezto!
So CLOSE to being related to Jeff Benos, head of Amanoz, and concocting a scheme to murder him and inherit his fortune. Alas.
you can always izherit his fortuze. it’s something
You meaz, it caz be somethizg?
A few strips before the ‘card’ incident… Roz was asking how Dorothy/Joyce liked the party. Her words: “It wasn’t so bad. Well, I guess it did peter out a little early cuz of some dumb fight or whatever. Someone’s always gotta make a scene”.
Granted it is unlikely that she personally knew Ryan, and probably wasn’t aware of the events that occurred prior to the “fight”. (Although I don’t think the house where the party was held would have been that big, so its surprising she wouldn’t have been aware of what happened to Joyce, or at least had an idea of what lead to the events.)
This is a weird read given that Dorothy yelling at her prompts Roz to offer Joyce a number to a crisis hotline, meaning Roz was able to piece together enough of the puzzle that she felt compelled to lend Joyce a hand.
Yes, she sort of maybe pieced it together (or at least figured out that something bad happened to Joyce.) But only after prodding from Dorothy.
I didn’t think she was ever siding with Ryan… her “gotta make a scene” comment was probably due to lack of knowledge. (I’m just surprised she would lack that knowlege is all.)
Oh, and here is the relevant cartoon:
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2012/comic/book-2/03-the-first-step-towards-recovery/peter/
Dorothy is going out of her way to basically slutshame Roz here.
What do you think Roz has to be contrite about?
I did not get a slut-shaming read from that. Dorothy hasn’t minded going for it, and she’s friends with Joe. I viewed it as an honest question. Why would a person be jealous over someone else making a choice that would hinder opportunities they want if they did it? Roz was claiming jealousy over Sarah’s slut-shaming, but Dorothy was asking why would only fans be a source of jealousy? I don’t think Roz needs to be contrite especially over slut-shaming, but I think the above poster was talking about her being contrite for past behavior she has done (hence the, “like anything”.)
Roz gave a reason why it would be a source of jealousy – she’s making money off it. It might not be a reason for Dorothy to be jealous, specifically, but then Roz wasn’t talking to Dorothy.
To be fair, even though she wishes no harm to Roz, Roz did go off on Dorothy for Joyce being uneducated on topics as if being her friend meant it was her job to FIX Joyce, has been mean to her, Joyce and Becky, and even now takes a condescending stance as if she is above her. Why would she like Roz?
Roz also assumes the worst of people and rages at them for it which is the very opposite of her who thinks the best of people and quietly points out her concerns without trying to hurt them. Roz takes a wrecking ball to things where Dorothy would use a soft approach.
Most other people have their issues but they are often not directed at Dorothy and when they are (Becky) it is obvious it comes from insecurity/pain/trauma so it is easier to look past. Roz just smugly acts like she is better and more interesting and snaps at her even when she is nice to her because… she genuinely thinks not caring about a few social rules other people still care about makes her enlightened or something.
But Roz was generally right about those things. She got mad at Joyce for basically being a hypocrite as that point she only started caring about gay people because of Becky. This after she literal try to help a gay guy go back into the closet.
She was always right to get mad at Becky. She took Robin from dead last in the polls to single handely nearly winning the election. Roz pointed out that Robin would do horrible things and Becky knew this because that specially was part of their deal. I mean Becky could’ve explain “I’m planning on sabotaging her” but instead taunted someone with legimate grievances.
Then again when Becky did say she was going to sabotage Robin she never actually made an effort to do so. She just kind of acted disappointed that Robin was going to win like she forgot that’s exactly why Robin hired her.
Also* instead of alway
Specifally* instead of specially.
Half that my mistakes are auto correct. The other half are because of me.
I’ve really got no idea how we’re supposed to take the Robin/Becky thing. It’s completely incomprehensible to me if Becky is supposed to have been able to bring Robin to the point of victory by tweeting vaguely leftist sentiments. Somehow that brings a populist majority to the Republican candidate without turning away the Trumpist Republican base?
I can see it bringing some social media popularity, though not without a huge backlash from right-wing trolls that didn’t seem to happen, but that doesn’t translate into actual votes.
The only way I can see her actually winning is a sympathy vote after the kidnappings, and that’s an awful thing to blame Becky for.
You make it sound like it’s something that could happen only in a online comic strip.
Speaking more generally, I find it interesting the fans of a genuinely funny strip don’t always seem to have much of a sense of humor. Of course the whole Becky/Robin election doesn’t make sense. It’s a joke. It’s also a trope.
Somebody wants somebody else to fail, so they pretend to help them but every bit of help is sabotage. Except every bit of sabotage actually turns out
to be an act of inadvertent genius that guarantees the other person’s success. That’s the whole gimmick behind ‘The Producers.’
Yeah, that’s fair, I guess.
It mostly bothers me when other commenters take it seriously and blame Becky for it. Nor do we actually see anything that comes off as even inadvertant genius.
I don’t think she ever did? I’m pretty sure it was a textual element that Becky made Robin look good, but it sure didn’t actually mean anything to her polls and then Robin withdrew anyway.
It’s heavily implied that there was a poll surge after the kidnapping.
Which Becky definitely had some role in, both in being the kidnapping target and her Big Inspiring Tweet Thread (which definitely comes off as Broadly Inspirational and appealing, the way a general campaign speech does, rather than any specific policy discussion, so I can see it appealing to moderates on either side of the aisle as an inspiring underdog speech.) But since said thread was intended to get attention on her after she gave herself over to kidnappers, and therefore get AS MANY PEOPLE AS POSSIBLE talking about it and therefore looking for the kidnappers she listed by name, still a shitty thing to hold against her.
Yes, Roz was right about Joyce being a hypocrite regarding gay rights.
But, at that point, Joyce had started to realize the error of her ways. Continuing to brow-beat her at that point (especially in a way that was disruptive to the class as a whole) seemed… unnecessary.
Joyce was being a hypocrite at that moment. She was yelling angrily about ‘the church’ being homophobic but took no ownership of her own part in that until Roz yelled at her. Joyce even said later that sometimes Roz can be mean, but sometimes she needs someone to be mean.
It’s all been said before, but I’m not at all sure that 30 seconds after someone has that revelation is the best time to attack them for not figuring it all out yet. Seems to me it’s as likely to drive them away again as bring them fully onto your side.
Nor am I convinced that Joyce is right that she needed it. It might have worked out in her case – convinced her faster, but that still doesn’t mean it’s a necessary approach.
I don’t think it was a perfect or even necessary approach all the time, but at some point Joyce was going to have to grapple with that hypocrisy and Dorothy sure wasn’t gonna tell her. It didn’t have to be Roz, but I do think at some point it was going to take someone bluntly laying out she was being a hypocrite. Sometimes people do need a verbal brick to get it. Hell, some people figure ‘Eh, if it was a big deal and I was doing something actually wrong, they would be angry and upset. So clearly, if they’re being so calm about it, it’s no big deal.’
I think Dorothy’s more envious of Roz’s people-person skills than hateful of her for who she is.
I do wonder if Roz really has more ‘people-person’ skills than Dorothy.
Yes, Roz had more support of people on the floor (who viewed Dorothy as too much of a workaholic/bookworm). But that’s a rather small group of people, and a rather narrow situation. But if Roz were put in a situation where she had to deal with people who opposed her? Her overbearing attitude might actually put her at a disadvantage compared to Dorothy (who is probably better able to be empathetic and/or a consensus builder.)
Here’s how I see it:
Dorothy is a nice person and wants to be nice to everyone all the time, but for the obvious reasons of being A Person she likes some people more than she likes others, or: Joyce is on a higher tier than Carla and Other Rachel. She’s incapable of casually engaging with the rest of her dorm, but only starts trying to prove she can when challenged for the position of RA and so just starts trying to force herself to be more affable, more charming, and just completely fails at it because everyone there likes Dorothy well enough, but they can tell she’s being completely artificial. Dorothy cannot actually talk to people like this, she can’t force herself to be everyone’s friend because that’s not how she’s wired, but it’s something she thought she had to power through.
Roz is, actually, genuinely an effortlessly social butterfly. She’s not particularly close to anyone that we’ve seen, but every instance of her in-comic is her being genuine, and that means her bratty self-righteous woker than thou behaviour as much as it means her asserting autonomy over her body as a way to prove she’s not Robin’s pawn for political gain, reaching out to Joyce after the party, casually intermingling with everyone and dragging them along for the ride because she’s just actually really good at casual conversation. Roz puts herself out there in a way that invites people to her.
When it comes to actually being in a position of authority, yeah I do actually think Roz would be better at it. Dorothy would be too wrapped up in Doing The Right Thing to solve anything, she’d tie herself in knots trying to find the perfect solution where everyone is Being Better and they can all be the good person Dorothy knows they are, whereas Roz would just hear it out and say what she thinks and close the book on it, which I think is pretty much all you’d need to be an RA. It’s not like they’re supposed to be this dramatic.
Again… judging Roz by how well she deals with the people on the floor may not be a good measure of how much of a “people-person” they are, simply because its was a select group of people who were probably pre-disposed to her ideals. Put her in a more diverse population (where she has to deal with right wingers, libertarians, hard-core christians, moderates, etc.), then see how much of a “social butterfly” she is.
As for being in a “Position of authority”, even the president does not have absolute power, and has to deal with others. Dorothy would try to find a middle ground to actually get at least some things done. Roz would stake out an extreme position, call anyone who didn’t agree with her 100% to be idiots, then complain when she wasn’t able to get the support she needed.
We have very different views on these characters.
Dorothy would be too busy trying to find the right way to solve it that considers everyone’s feelings and carefully charts how to validate everyone involved that it never gets done, and it’s not like Dorothy cares about the people involved either way but she sure thinks she has to.
Roz, and I don’t know how to come at the idea that she’s not a social butterfly for not being polite to the dregs of society, would just get it done and at least one person would be mad about it, but she’s an RA. There’s not much she can fuck up that’s so bad that the people involved can’t recover.
Getting everyone (or at least a significant number) of people involved is the way you come to agreements so that things can get done.
Attempting to be a dictator (i.e. “This is what I want”) without considering opposing opinions is unlikely to succeed, in any real political position.
As for “just” being an RA… if that’s all Roz would aspire to, even then her “My way!” attitude might run into problems, because even the RA might have to answer to others. (She would have to be the RA for people who like her, but she’d also have to be the RA for people like Mary, who would probably be quite eager to go over her head.)
I’m afraid I can’t consider being mean to Mary as a negative.
Because it might lead to Roz putting a giant sticker of a hallway on a wall and then going through it, and when Mary tries she bonks her head on it.
I don’t think Dorothy is the type of person that makes a good politician. It’s not natural for her in the way it is for say, Becky or Roz.
I think she’d make a great local politician but not a national one.
Dorothy is a major policy wonk and probably really should be chief of staff or something, the person telling the elected politician what to do (or at least, what to aim for.) You *can* be an intellectual policy wonk and a successful politician like Obama or Hillary (hey, she did get more votes than Trump!) but I dunno that Dorothy is on the right path for that yet. I think it starts with being a party volunteer and working a long time inside things… Actually odd that Dorothy isn’t doing that; dunno if she hasn’t realized she needs it, or if she’s Waiting For Yale (and not being in such a Republican state.)
She volunteered with Robin’s opponent last semester.
Jake Manley, if I recall.
OMFG, no. Clinton is NOT a successful politician. “Got more votes than Trump” is meaningless; that’s not how US presidential elections are settled.
Hillary Clinton has a long, successful political career.
Something is not “successful” if your endgoal completely falls apart. That’s not how success works.
Being a Senator is still a huge political success. Vast majority of politicians never reach those heights.
If your endgame is “senator”, sure. If your endgame is the actual presidency, then “only” getting to senator is a failure.
It’s the same difference as, lesssaaayyyyy, making a living as a cartoonist and being Bill Waterson.
so in this analogy, Bill Waterson is the presidency? and making a living as a cartoonist is, like, pretty awesome except if you’re Bill Waterson, who presumably wouldn’t settle for less than being Bill Waterson? So Dorothy is… Schrödinger’s Bill Waterson? yes?
If YOU were Bill Waterson, would you settle for less than being Bill Waterson? Wouldn’t you consider it a failure if you were Bill Waterson and instead of making Calvin and Hobbes you’d made… I dunno, 9 Chickweed Lane?
Oh wow your thought experiment is AWFUL
i don’t want to play anymore
Not on the campaign trail.
What Z said.
I see in so many of these anti-Dorothy comments the same smart competent hard-working ambitious women aren’t allowed to win/be likable that I saw back in 2016. Someone wrote a very good article about the trope tracing it through movies and other media (ex Reese Witherspoon in election).
Only misogyny could penalize a woman for being too hard working. It’s like the way you’re supposed to wear makeup but you know not look like you’re wearing makeup. You have to be effortless or not try at all. But only for women. (White) Men neither have to wear makeup nor pretend they’re not trying and that they don’t actually want power.
I hope better for Dorothy that how Hillary is being treated in this comments section. And yeah, senator and Secretary of State are both pretty impressive and so is how much people love working with HRC. The world would be a much better place if she’d been elected.
Obviously it’s not how elections are determined. But still, she got more Americans to vote for her, after winning the nomination, and coming close to nomination in 2008. She can win popularity contests, but was done in by nearly random quirks of how the Electoral College played out.
The way Roz is talking, Dorothy would never even be a credible primary candidate, let alone contending in the general election.
And that’s despite being the glass ceiling of being the first ever major party female nominee. And a decades long right-wing media smear campaign. And a bullshit scandal revived publicly at the last moment because NYC FBI agents close to Guiliani were going to leak it. And Russian interference amplifying ever malicious rumor on social media. Not to mention the usual voter suppression.
Her charisma stats aren’t high enough, she put everything into int (book smarts), wis (what she notices in friends) and dex (watch her go!).
She’d make a better judge than politician.
Dorothy for Supreme Court
Willis specifically said after the 2016 election that its outcome (and the ramifications thereof, since DoA is set “in our universe” and Word of Willis is that the current US President in real life is always the current US President in Dumbing of Age) would make Dorothy “a little less idealistic, and a little more bitter” going forward, so I definitely think that’s something she already realizes.
Since DoA always takes place in the present year, that would make this January 2021. Granted, it’s an alternate January 2021 where nobody is wearing masks or anything, and weren’t doing so in Fall 2020 either, but it’s entirely possible that the failed coup was mere days ago for these guys.
Yeah but so what? Thats easily true of 50% of the country post 2016.
Who among the readers doesn’t that describe?
Fair, but Willis did mention Dorothy in particular when they said that, because of her presidential aspirations (not to mention things like Carla, in-comic, referring to Dorothy as “Little Miss Hillary Clinton Junior” just a few weeks or so IRL before the 2016 election).
That feels sadly like a story where we’d see Dorothy waiting for Hillary be elected then a Gilligan Cut to her looking shell shocked. A feeling that a lot of us could mimic.
I wonder if in real life Dorothy would have been spitting nails at the James Comey letter or Russian interference.
those who don’t believe in current electoral systems
Even if she realized that after the 2016 election results, she seems to be still be acting as if you have to go to a good (preferably Ivy league) college and get good grades and have a perfect record to be elected President.
Something like that plan helped get Biden into the White House. So in about five months, we’ll see a more upbeat Dorothy?
It’s also worth it for Dorothy, if she’s going to point out things like that, some birds produce crop milk which is different but analogous to mammalian milk. It is not nursed, but is produced in the crop of the parent bird and fed to the chicks. Imagine mom and dad vomiting cottage cheese into your mouth, but it’s tasty and makes you feel loved. Pigeons, doves, flamingi, and male emperor penguins do this.
*to know that…
I’d say the biggest thing Dorothy has to learn is that Presidency isn’t really what she wants, what she want is more akin to be überdelegate of the federal state of earth. But then she would have to stop making spreadsheets about what people like and rather ask and write down what people think they need.
I can’t wait for Robin’s response, which will probably be horribly embarrassing for all parties involved and yet exceptionally sharp.
Possible, but I suspect you’ll have a long wait.
I have to say, a full week and no one has died from her “educating,” truly what glorious times we live in.
Am I beating the sarcasm drum too hard?
Yes, but beat it harder anyway.
Phrasing.
I wonder if Dorothy is still bothered Roz absolutely would have clobbered her in the dorm election if, you know, it had actually been an election.
She would be, though Roz wasn’t exactly on her Christmas card list before that, anyway, given her using Joe in a way that’d make Linda Tripp blush.
In what way did Roz use Joe?
The sex tape early in the first semester. I’m fairly certain Joe consented to that, though, and I don’t remember any particular blowback on him for being one of the parties in the video.
Joe consented to being recorded, but not having it uploaded.
He was not entirely displeased about it being uploaded, but that’s no credit to Roz.
NEVERMIND I remembered wrong. https://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-1/05-media-rumble/interview-2/
The fact that Joe wanted to be used doesn’t change the fact that he was used.
It … does, though? It’s not fair to fault her for “using” him if he was fine with it.
(it’s Clif. they kid. =)
To be fair, some birds do produce something that is considered “crop milk” which isn’t lactated in a traditional sense and is more of a cottage cheese like consistency. I knew that flamingos did it but after a quick googling it turns out pigeons do it too. Also since they lack sweat glands, it is regurgitated. Birds are gross.
THANK YOU I was looking that up.
So to answer Willis’ question in the alt text I’m actually “well actualling” panel 6 after letting panel 1 slide.
What about the platypus?
They make their children play a game for their milk by having them suck it up through their sweat.
Platypus are not birds. They are in fact mammals known as Monotremes. This also includes Echidna as both are animals that are mamalian yet lay eggs. They have no defined nipples and just lactate through their pores so you’re not wrong about that.
Also fun fact, both baby Platypus and baby Echidna are called “Puggles”
For anyone wondering why “Puggles”, they were named after these:
https://www.puggle.com/product/puggle-in-a-bag/
I can’t think of baby Echidnas without thinking of that one Sonic the Hedgehog comic where Knuckles’s dad microwaved his egg to turn him into a Christ allegory.
I wish I were making this up.
…yea, now I kinda wish you were too…
Good old Hot Pocket of Destiny.
Pro-tip: platypuses are not birds, even despite the beak. I grant they don’t have teats though.
the plural of “platypus” isn’t “platypodes” but it oughtta be.
It’s correct etymologically, but also unduly pedantic.
The best plural in English is “platypuses”, or you can also just say “platypus”.
“Platypi” is WRONG!!!!!
!!!!!
I hate “octopi” for the same reason. The plural is “octopodes”, “octopuses”, or even “octopus”, dammit!
I’m partial to ‘platypeople’ myself. =)
Clearly, it should be pletypus.
btw what’s the collective noun for a group of platypese?
A paddle of platypuses.
that sounds right.
pluralapus
Platypus “beaks” are also (relatively) soft and leathery, again unlike bird beaks.
Do you think the Platypus is a bird. Honest answer.
Of course not. But sweat being your only option for food is pretty gross.
I mean, milk ducts we use for lactation are just repurposed sweat glands y’know. It’s not even the grosses thing baby animals are fed.
Be happy we’re not one of those animals that has to get our antibodies from eating poop.Some caecilian species feed their babies their shed skin.
Yum!
Or vitamin K. That’s the reason guinea pigs eat a certain type of their poop and during the first weeks of life they have to eat their parents’ as they don’t have the motor skills to eat their own.
Yeah they’re not birds but being forced to suck your food through sweat….
I guess I’ll leave it to you to figure out how gross that is.
Still better than birds ( drinking vomit)
Yeah on second thought, drinking filtered mammal blood isn’t ad gross as much as it is evil.
DELICIOUSLY evil…
Birds are also evil. Except for ravens, those are pretty chill.
This and also pelicans who are fabled to feed younglings by they own blood from chest, so Dorothy stop being Lisa.
Pelicans feeding younglings by stabbing themselves in the chest is based in about as much reality as Anakin going saberhappy on them.
Sorry wrong use of word fabled i mean folk tale. How does it work? fable mean almost folk tale/fiction but fabled mean something real and famous
Fabled means famous but it doesn’t mean automatically that’s a literal truth.
Somehow I doubt Robin is aware of that information.
I LOVE ALL OF THIS THREAD (*0*)
I get that birds don’t nurse, but does that mean you can’t nurse birds?
I mean…could and should are two very different things. But hey, a cat nursed some ducklings in Ireland so there is that.
Google has told me that you can’t milk a dolphin, but it can volunteer it to you as a sea gift.
ExperTEATs…
Experimenting…
Now, just how can you expect angry comments from a set-up like that?
Between Roz in Panel 3 here and Joyce in the last strip, we’re getting a lot of Faz-esque expressions lately.
I’m curious how this storyline, with Roz calling her “unelectable” and Becky calling her personality flavorless, is playing into Dorothy’s overall arc.
Dorothy got accepted by Yale, and now she has a choice to make. To do that, I think Dorothy is probably going to question her political ambitions, whether or not that is the thing she should be doing.
What the answer is probably depends on if Willis wants to keep her in the comic or not.
I mean, even if she chooses Yale, she still has this whole semester. That could go on forever if Willis so chooses.
DoA Season 2 is all about Mike doing Invasion of the Body Snatchers on the whole cast. The main plot will be revealed during the next storyline (“I will leave you a phantom”).
Sara’s Onlyfans would be a 2 second loop of her scowling at the camera, played without interruption 24/7. And she’d make a lot of money off of it.
As soon as I posted I knew the h was missing.
Joe is a subscriber.
That’s someone’s fetish I’m sure.
For sure it is according to Rule 34.
Everything is someone’s fetish is rule 36. Rule 34 if somebody draw this
Source?
I mean SAUCE?
Glorious tv tropes
Thank you for showing consideration for everyone’s sleep schedules by not posting the link ^^ (Not even a little bit sarcastic!) (Does that specific denial just make me seem more sarcastic?)
TVTropes is extremely good as a database of accessible and easily understandable shorthands for reoccurring visuals, archetypes and actions in media, say how a toyetic action/adventure story will have a team of the Leader, Snarky Sidekick, Big Guy, Smart Nerd and Emotional Heart (the Five Man Band) or how the scene where a character swoops in at the last minute to save someone from certain death is always cool (the Big Damn Heroes).
It is even gooder when that database of accessible and easily understandable shorthands touches on the mechanics of writing and gives words and terminology to them a casual audience never knew how to define, like how Flanderization has become the universally accepted definition of “a character in an ongoing plot gets gradually filtered down into their most surface level personality” or one of my favourite pieces of advice, the Establishing Character Moment, where you sell your audience on your character and their worth in one big moment. Everything you need to know about Becky and Joyce’s friendship is made clear at the end of the first strip, four years before Becky would become a main character, with the phrase “how about an inaugural poop?”
Where TVTropes has descended into outright villainy and why I blame it and CinemaSins for the utter eradication of media literacy is when that writing advice is turned into an objective read of a work of fiction and then it’s placed on this big archive of media writing shorthands that portrays an air of authenticity even though it was written by one nerd with an axe to grind that his OTP is totally the Fan Preferred Couple and the romance that happened is Strangled By The Red String. Now you’ve got an entire generation of nerds who don’t experience stories, they’re going down the checklist of tropes and trying to measure on a scale whether or not the villain is Unintentionally Unsympathetic and how their redemptive arc makes them a Karma Houdini instead of just deciding for themselves based on how the story makes them feel, the actual bleeding point of experiencing fiction.
Ad they can just do that because they think it and instead of thinking and saying it and then going on with their day they get to immortalize it on the page every single article has for “Your Mileage May Vary” pieces, which somehow has the gall to pretend that any single person writing any of them has enough of a beat on an audience to figure out what is or isn’t a Broken Base.
TVTropes teaches you how to write by apologizing in advance.
Tropes Are Tools, Tropes Are Not Bad.
Once donations reach a certain threshold per month, the fan base gets a 24-hour loop of Sarah destroying a $2 thrift store lamp with a baseball bat.
I’m sure some people would be into that.
Dorothy is on top of the issue I’m really concerned about here.
(Is Robin trying to make some kind of pun on her name?)
yikes dotty
Eh, I’m definitely reading it more as “it will make you unwanted for election because of puritanical standards of sexual purity” as opposed to “you can’t get the job because you’re a smelly harlot.”
Oh – I didn’t think it was for that reason.
More that Dorothy’s personal concerns about her electivity seem to be growing somewhat… strange and off-putting? Like it used to be cute-sad when she worried about her own electivity, but worrying about it in others?
I thought the “you” in her sentence was referring to herself, hence why she was asking as to why she should be jealous of it.
Roz is a political activist from a family that produced at least one federal politician.
It’s that a) Roz has never shown interest in being electable b) what Rose etc said about Dorothy’s behaviour about electability and c) that even if Dorothy believes those purity standards are wrong, she’s criticizing Roz rather than those standards
I know, right?
Being “Unelectable” is a concerning issue to bring up with someone who has made it pretty clear that they loathe the idea of actually being elected to anything beyond a dorm-based position.
You noticed that, too, huh. If Roz is after some kind of political office, I don’t remember it, so unless Dorothy is aiming that descriptor at herself, I’ve got no clue what she’s on about.
I get the impression that maybe Dorothy assumes that everyone (or at least the vast majority) of the other students in this Political Science class are there because they very much want to be successful politicians someday.
Dorothy might be projecting a bit without realizing it.
It’s a reasonable assumption, I suppose. It does make a lot of other assumptions baby necessity, of course.
It’s also probably a safer assumption with Roz because she’s an activist and comes from a politically connected family, and if their competition over the RA position was the election they treated it like, Roz would have beaten her.
(Rose by any other name) yes, thank you. judging by electability is weird and despite Roz being “political” she doesn’t want to run for office, not to mention if that were the case, releasing a sex tape with her real name attached to it will have done way more than having an only fans, so dorothy’s point would be moot anyway.
as well as it being weird and bad vibes imho for her to bring up electability in general, it definitely feels to me like the point is to shame Roz. Just because Dorothy is reasonably open and is sexually active herself doesn’t mean she’s perfect about sex work etc. She might be doing it subconsciously or self-deluding (“this makes me uncomfortable for political reasons, not because I have a bias against sex workers!”), but I really feel that it’s what’s happening.
Having a little sister obsessed with cereal is a bigger problem I imagine.
Cereal never turns into a creepy stalker.
…no, wait, this is a Willis universe.
Cereal usually doesn’t turn into a creepy stalker.
“Experteats”
I think Robin loves her own breasts than anyone else does.
It’s such a good play on words!
#desantohugehonkers
Oof, those pre-2016-election gags haven’t aged well…
If you scroll down you’ll see I didn’t even find it all that amusing at the time. Granted it gave me an excuse to draw some Robin fanservice.
My hot take of the night is that Roz is just Dorothy if the latter had less of a filter and could say what was on her mind.
Dorothy is an all-loving hero and Roz is an angry progressive.
Dorothy, ironically, dislikes Roz because she’s much more ingratiating and politically savvy.
Wait a sec… who are you suggesting is “politically savvy”?
Of the 2 of them, I would say Dorothy is probably the more politically savvy… she understands the risks involved with things like sexual exposure, she gave Becky advice when she was campaign manager, etc. Dorothy may not have the charisma for higher office, but she’s knows the game. Roz is far-left and overly idealistic… great if she wants to run for lower office (city councilman/mayor/congress-critter) in a more liberal part of the country, but probably a death sentence if she actually wanted to go further than that.
Is it politically savvy to clamp down and shut yourself up in the name of working within a system that’s stacked against you in the name of changing it for the better, when that system works really hard to make sure it continues as is to the benefit of its ruling class?
Is it politically savvy to stick to a set of principles that would make you unelectable, giving the election to your opponent (who then begins to wreck the country)?
To make ANY change, you have to be in a position of power, which means either getting elected to office, or at least having a significant number of “followers”.
Its an imperfect world, but its the one that aspiring politicians like Dorothy have to work within.
How’s Dorothy going to make changes when the people around her don’t want those changes, because those changes line their pockets?
If Dorothy’s going to compromise her principals to get as high up as possible, what’s going to happen when she tries to act on those principals she let go of to climb? You think she’s the only politician who ever did that?
Dorothy’s ambition is “just become the leader of the country and fix everything.” She has no idea what she’s doing other than that it’s right.
Yes, money is often far more influential in politics than it should be. But, there are a few things to keep in mind:
– Those with money are not some sort of monolithic block. Many are far-right, willing to wreck the country in pursuit of short-term profits (Koch brothers for example), while others are much more moderate, recognizing problems in the country (such as wage disparity, environmental problems, etc.) and would be willing to donate to a candidate with left-of-center views
– A politician does not have to have perfect policies in order to improve the lives of its citizens. Take Obamacare for example… Probably not the “Free healthcare for all!” that many on the political left would have wanted, but it still extended health care to millions of people who would not have had it otherwise. (And Obama had no problems fundraising during his re-election campaign after.)
Also, “we shouldn’t have well-meaning people try to enter politics because Politicians Are Bad and their dreams will invariably be crushed” draws toward political nihilism, accelerationism, and the like – and that never leads anywhere good.
EXPERTEATS!
(and now i want to return to college)
Now I kinda assume every class is like that, and the rest of the students just bring popcorn and watch the show
“I thought finishing Gender Studies meant I’d escape this.”
So was OF a thing when Joe and Roz made a movie?
Retroactively due to sliding timescale, probably. Unless she hadn’t QUITE set it up yet.
and by the time this semester ends, new readers will be wondering what it was.
Hell, given the whole ‘attempting to ban porn on their platform because credit card companies’ thing I suspect this strip will be hopelessly dated within two years, tops.
It has only been a week. Fuck off I thought they were at least on week 2!
Of course 5 months make a school week that’s the closes we can get to measuring time in this comic.
I feel so bad for everyone else in this class.
The whole goddamn semester’s going to be like this.
That’s what they get for being background characters
They should bring popcorn.
And homemade twizzlers!
I like how you can read the background dudes expression as ‘nope, don’t want any of this’.
I had classes like those, I just tried to nap through them
prob related to why I have a problem with sleep paralysis
Prob not. Naps would actually help. Most common triggers are sleep deprivation (possibly caused by sleep apnea but not necessarily), caffeine or less commonly alcohol or nicotine.
idk, I sleep pretty regularly (as in, often nap), I don’t do caffeine, alcohol, or nicotine, but I DO get paralysis on the regular if there’s even a little light in the room…
Just various blank stares that can easily be read as ‘dear god is it too late to change to another section?’ (Yes, yes it is. Everyone who could have changed at the end of Day 1.)
Not angry.
I was working on sarcastic, with an extra helping of condescending.
Oh yay! Back to Dina!
lotta Fazface going around today (in-comic).
I think Roz in panel 3 might actually look smugger than Faz ever has. Which is a pretty big accomplishment.
Why is Dorothy being nasty to Roz? She’s never nasty to anyone. Even Becky, who goes out of her way to annoy her.
Roz isn’t exactly Dorothy’s favorite person.
Or anyone’s favorite person.
Roz is habitually shitty to her and Joyce, and also used Joe for revenge porn without his consent. Roz has earned this reaction, honestly, petty or not.
Joe consented to the video being made and posted on the internet.
Wasn’t he seriously misled about its purpose, though? Like yeah, he was happy after the fact due to the infamy being good for his sex life, but consent gathered through deception is… not good.
She told him she was going to make a sex tape and upload it to the internet, which he consented to on the grounds of ‘when a chick wants to frigging make a sex tape, you jump that no matter what.’
She didn’t tell him about her sister being in Congress, which made it more likely to get a lot of attention, but I can’t find anything that indicates that she actively deceived him about it’s purpose. It’s also possible she took ‘no matter what’ as he’d be okay with it.
She likely felt she didn’t NEED to clarify that she was related to Robin, as she probably assumed he knew her last name and could put 2 and 2 together. I feel like the only reason Joe was blindsided by the political side of it all was because he didn’t care enough to recognize that she shared a last name with a Congresswoman
I mean that’s true to some extent, but I’d guess it’s true of most of the students. Dorothy might have recognized the name, but I doubt most other college freshmen would make the connection off the bat.
Now, it could still easily be that Roz assumed that. It’s such an overwhelming fact of her life that it could be hard to realize that most other people wouldn’t pay any attention.
Joe was surprised to find it was on the internet if I remember right. But his second thought was that it was free advertising.
He was surprised about the Congresswoman bit. He told Dorothy later that Roz said she was going to upload it.
Has she?
Roz lashed out at Joyce one time in a way that was really only wrong because she was blaming Joyce for taking part of something bigger than her and outside of her control, except she was totally dating a gay dude to make him straight and then afterwards I don’t think they ever really interact. Roz’s mistake there struck me more as seeing Joyce change and going “pft but you were Problematic earlier, so your change is meaningless” which, like, hello twitter thank you for your guest spot.
Roz and Dorothy… I think their biggest interaction was the RA thing where Roz was, demonstrably, way better at the social stuff than Dorothy, just maybe not the job itself, except the social stuff is probably more important.
I can sorta see how “making a porno to get back at my sister’s political ambitions” could be classified as revenge, but only just. She still had a point, it was her body and she couldn’t just let Robin control it.
(she also did inform him that he was being videotaped. Danny was the unwitting cameraman)
Heh. Yeah, I forgot about that last part. Danny absolutely did not consent to being used as an unwitting camera holder!
Roz’s greatest crime is trying to out her queer sister so she’d lose her job, which given that the job was ‘republican congresswoman’ is not completely unjustifiable.
Roz never attempted this. Getting her together with Leslie wasn’t about outing Robin, it was about making Robin experience the effects of the shitty policies she was trying to pass.
It’s not entirely clear what Roz’s intent was with setting Leslie and Robin up. My original thought was that it was about getting Robin to realize that she was queer and thus lead her to change her policies (and likely party and probably thus out of politics).
Later it seemed more like outing was the goal all along and that Leslie wasn’t in on that part of the plan, but was considered acceptable collateral damage.
Roz said what her plan was. Her plan was for Robin to out HERSELF. Whether she means Robin coming out or Robin being Robin is unclear. Regardless, she wasn’t exactly crying when someone else did it.
I think Roz’s biggest goal there, ultimately, was ‘get Robin out of Congress,’ and Robin being outed was the best method she could see so she cared less about ‘how’. (Roz definitely doesn’t trust that Robin would change her policies based off Becky’s appealing to liberals, both because Robin clearly values being in office more than what policies she’s supporting and, I think, because Roz has clearly been set up as the kind of liberal for whom ANY compromise – and compromise is in fact inevitable in the process of governing, unfortunately, though there are some things that can’t be budged on – is a betrayal. Plus, even a liberal Congress member’s family is still gonna be the stuff of gossip, so even if Robin had run as a Democrat I think she’d still have tried to veto Roz having an OnlyFans account. Less of the family-friendly image, but still a lecture on Appropriate Behavior.)
Kinda sorta, which come to think of it defines a lot of Roz’s behaviour.
She didn’t out Robin herself, but she sure as heck thought it was great to parade it around to go “see that? My sister, a Republican Congresswoman, is a big smelly hypocriical jerk!” while doing the RA thing and wearing a cowboy hat for some reason.
Which, well, that is taking ownership of Robin’s sexuality, even when Robin was an actively malevolent and destructive force for her own gain. She thought about hooking Robin and Leslie, presumably, to get Robin to change her way, that’s noble in a vacuum, but when Robin was forcefully outed she was totally happy to show it off because it made her more agreeable to go “see? I’m not like that.
Laughing when some hardcore Evangelical Republican gets caught in a gay bathhouse is a timeless American pass time, but it’s funny because that dude’s being a hypocrite and tithing all the money he can from his flock. It’s weird to treat it as an opportunity for victory for you, personally, the way Roz did.
Literally nothing you just wrote is true.
Dorothy hates Roz and only Roz.
Roz showed her that she easily hand Dorothy’s butt to her in an election and that caused a minor drunken breakdown as it was a serious reality check that people don’t necessarily vote Lisa Simpson.
more like “hardly ever”.
Roz has been mean to her, Joyce and Becky and literally has the attitude of Panel 5 of ‘I’m more interesting and fun and better than you’ which she has outright said to her face before.
Even the kind and caring Dorothy who cares for many does not necessary enjoy people that are smug jerks that condescend to her.
While I’d normally agree with that, I’d point out that in this particular strip, Dorothy made a condescending and rude comment about Roz first.
Roz said they were just jealous first. Dorothy asked ‘should we be jealous of something that has X consequence that I would not like to have’? I don’t agree that that is condescending necessarily and it comes after Roz has already implied she is better than them i.e. worthy of jealousy.
It’s condescending because she doesn’t even know if Roz WANTS to go into office and it really isn’t her business to comment on it either way. Especially because Roz only said SARAH was jealous because Sarah took cheap shots at her sex life out of nowhere for no real reason. If Dorothy has a problem with that, then I’d have to question Dorothy’s ethics in this scenario.
True, we don’t know for sure that Roz wants to get elected to any position.
But, 1) it is a politics class with a very select group of students, so there will be a higher proportion of aspiring politicians in that class, 2) Roz is politically active, and running for election is a logical next step.
Roz has told Dorothy flat out she has no interest in taking any positions of authority. She mostly seems interested in sex work and things related to that (she volunteers for planned parenthood and Willis’ Tumblr said that he kept looking for the chance to write that she was the sex columnist in the school paper but couldn’t find somewhere to put it).
Admittedly, I don’t remember her ever telling Dorothy that she had no interest in “postions of authority”. (Not saying it didn’t happen, just saying I don’t remember it.)
Fair enough, it was a long time ago and it’s a long strip. I have a hard time remembering some stuff too. I went and found my source though – here it is: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-7/03-the-thing-i-was-before/misery/)
I read this as Dorothy not specifically talking about Roz, but herself via the use of a generalized “you.”
I can see that, but in response to Roz’s comment, it definitely sounds like another shot at Roz, and I can’t fault Roz for taking it as such.
I’m generally of the opinion is a bit of an asshole, what with the whole performative allyship at the cost of actual marginalized people thing.
But in todays strip her comment was just a pretty proportionate response to Sarah throwing shade and not really aimed at Dorothy (or any of the other people in class).
I suspect this is a case where protagonist centered morality really comes into play. We don’t see a lot of it, but it’s worth remembering that while we often see her in relationship to LGBT rights, her real activism focus was reproductive rights and the very slut-shamy stuff happening in this strip. That’s an area where she’s not an ally, but part of the marginalized group.
ah, the putrid smell of slutshaming. didn’t they learn anything in gender studies?
Sex is weird. I think people still have this desire to judge people for having a lot of sex. Or for not having enough sex. Or having sex badly. There’s a lot of hangups about it and as progressive as people can be I feel like people don’t know how to manage where they put sex in. Is it empowering? Is it degrading? Is it just a thing we do and not a big deal? Is it the BIGGEST deal ever and we have to only do it in VERY specific circumstances? Is the idea of Sarah’s sister being too horny valid? Would you argue that Joe’s too horny? Or would you argue horniness isn’t bad and it’s just how you act within that horniness? Is there a point where there’s a difference between being sex positive and finding a limits to being horny constantly?
Well it’s complicated, but I think that at least as long as you’re not hurting anyone and everything is consensual, you don’t have anything to answer for.
So how you act on your horniness, I guess?
Nothing at all wrong with being horny. Quite a bit problematic about letting it run your life.
But in any case, I don’t recall Sarah being in gender studies.
I am thoroughly convinced that only a sociopathic person would ever want to be president. Like even if you wanna be a good president you kinda gotta be a cutthroat and corrupt kinda person. I am convinced the BEST you can hope for out of a leader is “mostly ok”. Dorothy either would have to be a worse person to be president or settle for a lower position.
Honestly the idea of wanting to be president from a young age does tend to rub me the wrong way. Kind of self important goal for someone who just received the right to vote.
“Power tends to corrupt, and Absolute Power corrupts absolutely. Great leaders are almost always bad people.”
— J. Dalberg Acton
People like having agency in whether or not their country goes to shit, weirdly enough. Like yeah, politics absolutely attracts narcissists and people looking out for a payout/kickbacks, but it also attracts people who want to use power to enact good, even if they have to hold their nose while doing it to get past the stench.
I think Dorothy’s totally idealistic and sincere about it even if I think the endgoal is, like, impossible. Yeah you go get ’em, 19-year old with big ideas for making everything better for everyone. In hindsight, there may be something apropos of Dorothy’s political ambitions being “look at this mess, I gotta fix it” except applied to an entire country.
The idea of Dorothy becoming the POTUS feels, like, cartoonish as hell to me, it feels like that one future episode of the Simpsons where Lisa’s the President which wow I guess that’s appropriate, but then the answer there is “okay but if she doesn’t literally become the President then I guess she’ll have to settle for improving as many as lives as she can with her current level of power, and then keep going so she can improve more lives with even more power, and then just never ever stop because the morality and motivation of Dorothy’s actions are more important than the actual job.”
I mean I just can’t imagine going through non-executive level politics, seeing the ways it slowly crushes your soul and the limitations on the presidency (while also recognizing just how much power it is,) and actually thinking ‘yes. I am the best possible person for this job. I am capable of handling the pressure of enacting policies that directly decide who lives and who dies. This is a job I want.’ Like, between the pressure required and the ego, man. Cannot fathom it.
Dorothy for some reason still hasn’t caught on to how politics work and still believes it’s about wanting to do the best, knowing as much as possible and having the best arguments.
Not really surprising. She’s only 19. Plenty of time to learn.
Lots of people in this country who don’t get how politics work. Not a few of them are political activists.
What makes you think she “hasn’t caught on”?
It is quite possible she has a good handle on what is needed to be elected, but just lacks a certain amount of charisma.
I suspect the Yale acceptance letter will expand upon these themes soon. I don’t think it’s going to be as simple as, “okay bye everyone I’m off to Yale”. Dorothy will have to weigh her childhood dream of being president against the life she currently lives, and ask herself if her desires have changed.
She will also have to weigh up whether Yale is a good school where she will learn a lot, whereas this university seems to be a mal-administered dumpster fire where the teachers won’t or can’t teach and the resident students are bullied and neglected by their residential guardians and fed on junk food.
I honestly wonder where Roz makes her OnlyFans content, given the dean put the fear of God into her for her sex tape with Joe stunt and impressed on her that anything done on school property was his concern, and didn’t exactly make a secret of the fact he’d expel her if it’d happen again.
Roz is definitely not stupid, so I wonder if she just makes a bunch of content in batches when home or goes to guys/girls’ places or what. Like, this is a really silly thing to wonder about, but I’ve got a lot of friends in the industry, so to speak, so I wonder about the logistics more than most would.
The Dean would have to know it exists.
Mind you, she might no longer be underage.
It could also be she does non-nudity.
Sure, but after the stunt she pulled, it’s not exactly a stretch to think she’s not off his radar.
Like, Roz is cashing in on being Roz DeSanto for her OnlyFans, almost certainly, so yeah, it’s be much weirder if the dean *didn’t* find out about it. This is the kind of thing that does get articles online.
I would imagine she’s 18 or older, yeah, and whether or not she does nudity, she still likely needs to be careful about where she makes her content. Some pasties, etc, aren’t going to keep her from getting booted in a flash, but like I said, Roz isn’t stupid, I’d imagine she probably is being more careful than that.
immediate thought is making a set dressing to disguise the dorm room
Roz wasn’t underage to begin with when she made the sex tape with Joe (if for no other reason than that Willis has an explicit policy of not depicting under-18s in Sexy Situations), the Dean’s threat was on the grounds of her being a student at his college and making the tape on college property.
It’s probably made at other people’s places.
I’m assuming she either does that stuff at friends’ places, or maybe she found a cheap apartment in town she can rent, and she makes her OnlyFans content there. So she’s most likely not doing it on school property.
Daaaaaamn, Sarah just came for Roz outta nowhere. XD Seriously, Sarah and Dorothy, she wasn’t even doing anything today.
She was just mindin’ her damn business, eatin’ some fruit.
Well Sarah was talking about her own sister, Roz percieved it as being about her and sarah snarked back at her, as Sarah is wont to do. Then Dorothy responded to Roz’s insinuation that they’re just jealous of her.
Ow, I forget everything about Liz. The today strip changed all meaning now.
I think she was asking for advice about Liz, but asking Robin how she deals with a sister who’s ‘too horny for her own good’ implies Robin has one. Meaning Roz. Who, as she points out, is right there.
Besides, like Sarah really thinks Robin has good advice to give and believes that asking for personal advice of a stranger is something that you ought to do as part of a pol. sci. class.
She was asking because of Liz. Not just to drag Roz I assume.
Probably, yeah.
Agreed, but the way she asked implied Roz was the same, while she was right there.
“i cAn sMeLL tHe luBe fRoM hErE”
what a clown
Yeah, that was uncalled-for.
I mean yes Sarah is an asshole to people who aren’t Joyce and Dina, and she still thought it was funny when Dina got mad that Sarah had tricked her into partaking in an occult ritual steeped in magical thinking.
(I also would laugh at Dina in this circumstance)
Dorothy, Dorothy, Dorothy. This pathetic country hired a literal scam artist and probable (proven?) rapist who went out of his way to degrade race relations nationwide just to create a cult around himself. Getting fucked on camera is a drop in the ocean, at this point in history.
Yes, but Trump was a rich white guy. Roz is a woman of colour. The reaction would be very different, I assure you.
True. True. She’s not part of the fragile majority.
Oh I assume we’re complaining about USA, and not my stupid country. That fascism wave in 21st century messed the world up
Is Roz a woman of colour?
I’m 99% sure the DeSanto family meant to be Latinx.
Correctamundo.
Sorry, I’m not American and I am honestly curious about how you use the term. Does this mean that someone like Marco Rubio (his parents were from Cuba, right?) can be described as a “man of colour”?
one is “of color” if one is not lily white
Yeah it’s something that really only gets its meaning across in white-majority countries like Canada and the US.
It obviously hits differently when we’re talking South Korea and Madagascar.
Yeah, Becky was able to tell off the bat that her family was Mexican. I’m taking that to mean they’re visibly not white.
OK, this nails it. Thank you all for your explanations. Without the comments section many strips would be incomprehensible for me!
You mean Biden right, the alleged rapist?
No, I meant the previous sack of shit. It’s not my fault these freaks make it ambiguous who we’re talking about.
Yeah sorry about that, when I heard presidential rape I immediately went to the rape accusation of Joe Biden, the accusation that was believed by the current vice president, that had the date, the location and was told to others at the time it, allegedly, happened so should have been investigated but wasn’t
Harris never said that, though it’s been commonly spread. She was asked about “the women who feel like their space has been invaded in the past, by the vice president?” and she then said that she believed them.
This was a year or so before Tara Reade went public with her accusation.
There’s an awful lot of rumor and misinformation about that story. It never had the kind of verification that other high profile allegations get before being published.
And it’s not like there’s a huge constituency rabidly pursuing every opportunity they get to bray “oh yeah well wuh’bout” to deflect attention away from the previous administration when they’re criticized.
Or just pissed that their candidate didn’t win the primary. Much of the initial push behind those accusations came from the worst among Sanders supporters.
“I am once again asking you to let better be the enemy of best.”
Makes popcorn and soda and sets up a lawn chair and blast shield for the imminent heated discussion.
If there’s one to be had, I won’t be taking part. I’ve said my piece on this particular sub-topic.
ReverendLovejoyOkayIBelieveYou.gif
That’s the dude from American Dad, isn’t it?
No, the Simpsons. But you were close!
Same show, really.
It had been my hope that Robyn would switch parties and become the AOC of the setting instead of the Palin. Sadly, she’s gone out of politics entirely.
AOC has already been mentioned by Robin in the strip (and has actually appeared in a Patreon exclusive, I believe), though. Remember, DoA is “our world but fictionalized.”
I remember a picture of Robin sitting outside Leslie’s house with the caption “redemption is a story, it’s not real,” and I wasn’t sure if that was going to be literal or if Robin would beat the odds. It was literal.
This is my favorite punch line of a strip ever, maybe. Just Dorothy’s need for confirmation here, not Roz’s comment.
To be faaaaiiiiirrrr, it’s definitely a reasonable concern, with Robin.
It’s a deeply relatable comment by Dorothy I’m not even gonna lie.
Is the Robin’s other mistake in panel 1 a trap for us? It feels like a trap.
Are there webcomics in the world of DoA
It’s our world but fictionalized (and we’ve specifically seen characters at least wear t-shirts of/otherwise namedrop Dinosaur Comics and xkcd, just off the top of my head), so yes.
Yeah but they’re all College AU reboots of long-running sci-fi series that started as a college coming of age story and had a spinoff about working at a toy store.
There will be if the IDS dares run Julia Gray in the wrong order.
Dorothy, I know a least one or two congress people that are prostitutes. But I also know a otaku turned prime minister in his country. So there is a hope for you.
*were prostitutes.
“But Señora Perón, it’s an easy mistake. I’m still called an admiral, yet I gave up the sea long ago.”
It looks like there’s hope for politics yet!
Remember everyone, fandom isn’t just a fun hobby!
Our future elections depend on it!
In New Zealand, we had a member of parliament, Georgina Beyer, who was both the world’s first openly trans mayor (elected 1994) and member of parliament (elected in 1999). She’s also a former sex worker who advocates for sex workers’ rights. Really an amazing person.
Congress people who were prostitutes is good news. Finally, politicians that fuck you instead of fucking you over.
What a weird strip today! I don’t think Robin will be able to answer this question or that her answer would help Sarah dealing with one or both of her sisters. Also, how can Roz do an Onlyfans while she shares a room with someone like Mary? Does this mean that Mary is now constantly living in her boyfriend’s room or she’s with her in that?
Or maybe Roz is somehow blackmailing Mary.
If so, serves her right.
Blackmailing Mary with WHAT??? Now I’m really curious about this possibility.
Mary once unwittingly helped a gay person. If it comes out, she’ll be ostracised from her religious group.
I see Mary as an inverse Joyce. Her parents are liberal atheists and she converted to Republican fundamentalism as a form of rebellion.
Willis has confirmed that Mary’s parents are actually pretty great, but I think they’re christian too.
That’s great and all, but do any of you have a source? I mean a SAUCE?
I think it was in the tumblr? One of the local DoApaedias like BBCC might know.
Yeah, Willis said on Tumblr that Mary’s parents were probably very nice people but Mary picked up all the wrong lessons at church. Maybe they had a super ‘fire and brimstone’ youth pastor or something.
Roz definitely isn’t filming on camera.
*campus. She’s probably filming with a camera.
Where do you even get campus developed these days? Fotomat’s gone, and the drugstore got rid of their 1-hour photo machines.
Wait, I thought Roz was no longer allowed to film her NSFW videos on Campus. Where is she recording her onlyfans sessions?
Delaware, probably.
If her channel is so succesdful she could probably rent a cheap motel room for a night. Or film simething at the home/apartment of a participant.
I think the key part is that it shouldn’t be recognizable her videos are on campus. Set up the right background…
Also her OF is probably less public than her Joe tape.
Where are the EXPERTEATS T-shirts? Will Robin wear one for the next session?
I doubt it, she’s a professor now and wants to look like it. From what I recall she’s quite enjoying her current outfit with its peanut butter elbow patches and spinning bow-tie.
I can definitely see her wearing an EXPERTEATS t-shirt while not at work, though.
I WAS writing an angry comment, but only because Robin is back and there’s no DoA character I fucking loathe more.
But what about all her redeeming features???? I’m sure she has at least one!
She has two: her sisters are pretty great.
That was a pretty harsh slut-shame from Dorothy. I expected better from her.
While it’s certainly low, I expect it ties more to her own fears that anything sexual she does will be brought back and used against her once she’s in politics.
If she didn’t have that fear, she sure as fuck got it when Mike pointed it out.
Yeah I’m definitely reading this as Dorothy capitulating to a misogynistic voter base instead of endorsing them.
Which still leaves room for Dorothy to still be approaching this the wrong way.
Was it actually a shut-shame?
After all, it was Roz that first mentioned onlyfans, so it wasn’t Dorothy who initiated the topic. And Dorothy wasn’t saying whether Roz was morally right or wrong, only that it would have a negative impact on a person’s electability (which seems to me to be a valid topic for discussion in a class on politics.)
It’s a bit of a weird topic.
I think Dorothy is coming at it the way you are, that Roz isn’t doing anything wrong so much as she’s doing something her voter base thinks is wrong.
But I think for Dorothy to leap to Roz’s chances at attaining office is, well, it’s judgmental. It’s Dorothy telling Roz without any prompting that she’s doomed her chances to reach her goal, except that goal is something Dorothy might just be assuming in Roz and Roz’s goals are completely different, or that Roz wouldn’t want to sacrifice her pride to attain those goals and maybe she doesn’t even have to.
Like maybe Dorothy is an idiot and doesn’t know what she’s talking about, but she’s getting a level of righteousness in her own path, that she’ll work within a stifling and hateful system to change it and make it better, so Roz can go into office and also have an OnlyFans account when she’s 19.
True, it could be a false assumption on Dorothy’s party that Roz wants to run for political office. But given Roz’s political activism, its not that far-fetched.
And even if Roz herself doesn’t want to run for office, others in the class might want to. (And Roz’s activities on onlyfans might cause unexpected repercussions down the road even if she enters the private sector. “We would like to hire you at McDonalds, but we googled your name, and we don’t think you have the moral integrity to flip hamburgers.”)
Roz has already said she has no interest in positions of authority, in no uncertain terms, when talking to Dorothy. “It’s in my blood, but I hate my stupid blood. Sure, I’d be great at it, but I. Don’t. Want. It.’
The only reason she even wanted to be the RA was so she didn’t have to deal with Mary as a roommate anymore. Even Dorothy seemed to agree that was reason enough.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-7/03-the-thing-i-was-before/misery/
I had forgotten about her saying that.
But even if Roz discounts the possibility of going into politics, my other point still stands… a history of public sex work might end up being a limiting factor in whatever potential career she might want.
Fair, but right now, Roz’s career interests are sex work and writing about sex. She also volunteers with Planned Parenthood so I dunno if she’d be into a job with them.
Dorothy feels the need to repress her sexual desires to make herself electable, but she defends that position by acting like she’s better than anyone who chooses sexual liberation. It’s the same kind of attitude I see in women who try to shame other women for dressing or acting a certain way.
Dorothy wasn’t even involved in this conversation, but she felt the need to interject that OnlyFans would make Roz unelectable. The comment very much reinforced the existing power structures rather than addressing the discrimination sex workers face.
I think calling it “repressing sexual desires” is too harsh, but I think I agree with the spirit of what you’re saying.
Dorothy doesn’t have a problem with sexual liberation, she has a problem with how enough people have a problem with it that it changes how she can live her life, and how she has to capitulate to it and play by rules she doesn’t want to get ahead.
I was thinking back to a conversation she had with Joyce, when she first started dating Walky, about being horny but also worried that she’ll be judged if she acts on her desires. That’s a difficult position and I empathize with her. But in today’s strip we’re seeing a resentment of Roz for not playing by the same rules. I called it a slut-shame because she doesn’t open the broader question of why sex work might make someone unelectable, she just takes a cheap shot.
That’s actually a really good point.
Bird teats? Tweet teats? Tweats?
Now that I’ve been reminded of Liz’s existence I feel distraught that we never got a scene of her trying to hook up with Joe and then he just starts babbling and trying to deflect until Liz gives him a once over and goes “oh damn, you’re straight up in love with Joyce, aren’t you?”
Big stupid meatheads internally tortured by their first dose of the Feels is my aesthetic.
Of course not. We’re gonna be waiting for this payoff (and Joyce finding out) for a LONG time.
No no no it can still happen
Liz just vanished into the aether from the corpse-like grip of Sarah Hugs
She can still make this worse somehow
I am uncomfortable with the class discussion. And honestly, I suspect the class lesson too.
Regardless of anything else, the slut shaming is real bad.
Slut shaming isn’t cool
There are plenty of reasons to diss on Roz without bringing up sex
God, Roz is insufferable.
I can’t remember an interaction in this comic where her behavior wasn’t based upon the foundation of “I’m Right and everyone who disagrees is a Stupid Trash Person.” Getting Robin to hook up with Leslie, yelling at Joyce, doing the sex tape, campaigning for RA…she doesn’t treat people like people, she’s got fucking zero empathy, and every single interaction is about her being Right about something. She has deeply held ideals, and I agree with most of them, but it’s almost like she cares more about winning arguments than actually improving lives.
Would love to be reminded of examples that demonstrate compassion or sympathy for another person…I can’t think of a single one right now.
She found out Joyce had been attacked at the party and offered her a number to call.
She showed some compassion for Joyce here, but even then it was couched in condescension.
Yea…I often agree with Roz’s beliefs, but very rarely agree with how she presents them.
In her defence, the condescension only comes out when Joyce basically calls her a witch. The compassion in offering the card was real.
Thanks to both you and Spencer who referenced this one! I’d forgotten that interaction.
that kind of makes her the perfect politician
Sure, Roz can be insufferable. BUT right here, in this strip, she wasn’t doing fuck all until Sarah and Dorothy started taking shots at her. I find it hard to fault her for taking shots back.
word.
Honestly, as far as taking shots goes, Roz’s were very mild. She basically just did the “Pffft, you’re just jealous” brush off and when Dorothy didn’t let that drop by saying “An onlyfans can make you unelectable”, she just said “You can not have an onlyfans and still not get elected.”
Yeah, I’m not impressed with Sarah here but Dorothy really didn’t say much, beyond a fairly tame “this thing has specific negative consequences for the career I (and supposedly you) want to be in,” and Roz’s response was an extremely shitty personal attack.
Roz’s entire personality is about how she’s better than everyone. Sniping at Dorothy by saying “whatever, I’m still more likable than you, you stupid puritanical child” is a low blow, and completely uncalled for in the face of the original statement: that controversial public behavior can have negative consequences for your image.
Roz could’ve engaged that argument. Instead, she Fazzed her way through with – surprise, surprise – zero goddamn empathy.
That is not at all what happened. She didn’t say anything about Dorothy’s likeability here. She said “You can not have an onlyfans and not get elected to office anyway.” in response to Dorothy making condescending comments about how Roz wouldn’t be electable, when she KNOWS that Roz has no interest in holding office because Roz has TOLD HER, in no uncertain terms, she has no interest in holding any positions of authority. Even if Roz WAS though, her onlyfans isn’t Dorothy’s business to comment on and Dorothy should’ve just left it alone when Sarah was the one who started off by making shitty comments about Roz. All Roz did was brush it off saying ‘You’re just jealous of the money I make’ and Dorothy couldn’t let it drop.
Roz has said she has no interest in public office?
When we first met her she was giving out free condoms and encouraging others to have safe sex.
given how low the bar is set right now, in 10 years a politician with an onlyfans account would be a breath of fresh air, because we’d be given a choice between someone who has a bunch of naked pictures online or another person who is directly responsible for the death of only 10 people.
Counterpoint: if the biggest “problem” you can name of a politician RIGHT NOW is “they have an OnlyFans account”, there’s a good chance they’re the best pick at a national level BY FAR.
Actually I would say there is some asymmetrical moralizing going on….
A republican can have multiple ex-wives, have affairs outside of marriage, and engage in all sorts of criminal activity and all will be forgiven by the voter base. If a Democrat does anything more suggestive than putting dijon mustard on a hot dog, they are somehow immoral sinners who will burn in hell.
Dorothy & Sarah got real sl*t shaming this comic…i hope this comes back to bite them in the butt
There actually are birds who nurse milk, like pigeons and flamingos.
now I dislike pigeons even more. That’s – no.
I feel seen by that punchline and hovertext. I response would be more “mocking Robin and trying to be funny” than “angry,” but still.
“It’s Impossible to Shake the Smell of Lube” needs to be a book title.
Roz’s problem ain’t that she’s got an onlyfans. It’s that she absolutely believes she’s always in the right, and the second anyone disagrees with her, she immediately assumes they’re a prude rather than, yknow, just someone who disagrees with her.
That bein’ said man Dorothy needs to relax a little.
Dorothy hasn’t see much Anthro art, has she?
Has anyone mentioned yet that “wean” is basically the opposite of “drink”?
Nope – according to a page search for ‘wean’.
But I would have – immediately after I looked it up.
You’re right. Robin’s statement is even more nonsensical than it first appeared to be. Hilarious, but nonsensical nevertheless.
wait. serious question. does lube usually even have a smell? like all the lubes i’ve used i think never had more than the faintest smell. maybe silicon-based lubes are different? i’ve only used water based. or maybe Roz (or, i guess Sarah) uses flavoured lube?
i’m ok with Robin thinking birds lactate, but this is bugging me.
Yeah I’m kinda confused on that one too.
Maybe the smell she thinks is coming from the lube is actually something else?
The lube we use is allegedly Ylang Ylang- scented, but it mostly smells like medical plastic. It’s not overpowering, but you can definitely smell it on us if you sit nearby.
The silicone stuff has no odor at all. Some water-based ones are flavored, so I assume would be scented
Dorothy is far too good of a person to ever be president. Only evil people ever get that far. She could probably be like… A mayor
Don’t try to correct someone about biology after a sick burn Dor, twill fall on the DEAFEST of ears.
Imagine Roz has no speech bubble in panel 3. It makes it much funnier.