Also Mary totally blew her chance at a redemption arc here. Jennifer was giving her a free out she didn’t deserve. That was at least one person she’s hurt willing to shake the etch-a-sketch of baggage between them. Ya, blew it Mary.
That’s not why she just appeared. She’s there to be an ass and then run into a little misfortune for our laughter, kinda like the running gag with Team Rocket. 😛
They’re charismatic, fashionable, stylish, motivated, multi-talented, witty, and they’ve even got a talking cat. We could broadly say that Mary is motivated, but that’s really all she’s got going for her.
Unless she appeared to kick start a segue to our sponsor, Glasswire the next chapter, which is supposed to be an extended Halloween flashback beginning on July 2nd.
The thing is, though … I KNOW Mary. I know several Marys. (Mary’s? Maries? English can be strange.) The tendency to use one’s self-perceived “righteousness” as a club to beat others is strong in Fundagelical culture, and that culture is endemic in my area. To be frank, it’s at least as strong in the male version of Mary (let’s use ‘Moe’), less passive-aggressive and more just plain aggressive and threatening.
The concept that other people can be happy and successful and well-adjusted WITHOUT the crutch of Fundamentalism simply enrages them. They needed it, so YOU must need it, too. If you don’t, you are blinded or ignorant or simply lying. Believe me, they are FIRM in that mindset.
I mean, literally, the Gospels are 90% about Jesus being harassed by religious fundamentalists before the ones in bed with the fascists (Roman) government murder him for being a hippie reformer.
Mary’s type of people have been around a very long time.
I remember there being a bit more about the actual message of his reforms.
It’s also worth remembering that the gospels were written later and in the context of conflict between the newly growing Christian movement within and outside of Judaism and their conflicts with Jewish authorities. It’s not exactly an unbiased perspective.
I’m not sure that there’s any real merit to saying, “The Gospels aren’t necessarily an accurate reflection of reality that we have no records of at the time.” At least if the point is discussing the idea of Christianity as a liberal reform version of Judaism.
Which, of course, is primarily being brought up here as a contrast to the fact Mary is exactly the sort of person who Historical Jesus (whether you believe he existed or not) thought was a trashfire.
Also, Random Theology Trivia: I remember being fascinated by a teacher pointing out Jesus is actually part of the same reform movement he’s always butting heads with. The Pharisees get vilified but they and he mostly have peaceful arguments about the way to bring back morality to Hellenized/Romanized Judea.
It’s the Sadducees (Roman collaborators) who straight up want to murder him.
LOL! I genuinely laughed hard at this and made my wife look at me funny.
In my head about halfway through the reading went from standard reading to the reading T the beginning of “Team Rocket’s Rockin'” and it’s way funnier imagining super dramatic views of Mary condicendingly sneering down against changing backgrounds at the viewer as a small group of the cast looks on in confusion, wondering wtf is going on with the background behind Mary. SURPRISE! IT’S CARLA, ending with a big background that says “Lol JK! Carla is the best!” Before skating off laughing leaving Mary to look enraged…
Yeah I guess you’re right about something. Spite it all, the Team Rocket trio at their hearts are just a bunch of screwballs who love and care about their pokemon.
Mary on the other hand doesn’t love anyone except for a version of God who happens to agree with her in everything she does.
I just realized that if Joyce and Becky got into a discussion about whether God exists in front of Mary, Mary would BSOD over whether to vocally side with an out-and-proud lesbian. Make it happen, Willis!
Jesus Christ, people. One little flag ain’t gonna kill somebody’s post, y’all need to stop freakin’ out every time like it’s gonna have any immediate effect.
Yeah, and then the worst consequence is that it gets moderated, seen for what it is, and then most likely left alone, I’d think. I don’t even think there’s a way to tell before that, which is actually good because it lets people feel safer flagging a comment that’s actually bothersome and nobody will ever know you misclicked if you don’t rat yourself out.
Brown eyes… Isn’t.. racist? I’m pretty sure people from all over the world have brown eyes. I’ll admit it’s more common in some areas than others, but it’s certainly not exclusively tied to any one denomination.
We’re saying, “Racist people frequently compare people of color’s eyes to Shit, to be racist. On purpose. So let’s try not to do that on accident, so we don’t make ourselves look like we agree with racists when we don’t.”
Considering I never liked blonde jokes, I’m not a fan of insulting or making fun of the color of anyone’s anything. I might query your life choices a bit more if you turn your skin blue by bathing in silver or something like that one guy, but that is more due to their own actions and wondering what the side effects would be. I know that it wasn’t the desired outcome, but still can’t think that it would end well health wise.
After all these comment sections about which character is the most awful to the others it’ll be nice to have one where everyone agrees on who the awful one is
Cartoonish,100%. Doesn’t mean there aren’t people actually like this or far worse. Just that they all should be laughed at, and simultaneously guarded against.
Oh, I was absolutely raised fundamentalist. But I still find Mary cartoonish in the same way that the real-life existence of Mike Pence doesn’t make Cobra Commander and less cartoonish. And if gladly take 50 oh Cobra Commander over one of Mike Pence any day.
Cobra Commander used to be cartoonish to me but then I found out that Eric Prince of Blackwater fame, created his private army using the money from his family’s Multi-Level Marketing Scheme.
Joyce’s mom (blanking on her name because I always call her Karen in my head, oops) is still before Mary on that list, imo, as are all the other terrible parents. Mary is terrible but isn’t responsible for/fucking up the development of other people (yet??? yikes)
I know I did when I was still steeped in fundieworld.
Especially once I became aware of different versions of Christianity that had different requirements for avoiding hell and I would stay up all night praying, begging for God to give me some kind of indication whether I was doing the right one or not.
I highly doubt she worries about Hell. Source: the pre-Halloween strip where she went on a rant about needing to believe that others won’t repent even IF in Hell.
If she does, I think it’s at some subconscious level. All the people like her I’ve dealt with have been just insufferably sure of their divinely-saved nature, right? Because JESUS!
It really is a matter of being just that insufferable.
Who knows, really? Even when we do get to the Halloween ark, I just can’t help but think something bad is gonna happen before then, or leave us on some massive cliffhanger!
I think it’s just a weird, judgmental Mary take. No one acts like anything is really different and we know all the drama from her pre-timeskip story. Mary’s just a jerk and remember Jen punched her once. She has a grudge.
I don’t think she can be fixed but there are little kernels of a deeper character there. Like the fact she’s an artist and drew the art we see all the time on Joyce and Sarah’s door. She essentially did that purely altruistically. That’s weird for the Mary we see most of the time. She also stole Malaya’s art once to study it because it was technically better. She actually cares about improving her craft. Also her art teacher sucks. I’ll never not say that. No constructive criticism from that guy at all.
Anyway there are little fragments of interest in Mary buried under all the vile.
I doubt it. I used to hope the little developments with Mary were leading somewhere, but she’s shown no sign of any of that in a long time. She’s just here to be awful. Maybe will find something out about her in Willis’ secret director’s commentary notes after they finish the series in 2041.
To be sincere, i don’t want a character development, I want Mary to become more and more miserable and alone with her drawings and be angry for this without the ability to change.
Like, yeah, Satan’s a real big fan of hers, given how much of his work she’s making manifest in the world, but still, I get that they had that whole thing involving Ruth and Carla, but Mary’s acting extremely vindictive here, far more than one would expect. She’s always been a horrible person, but targeting Jennifer/Billie like that is… unusual.
My guess? Mary was involved in some manner with the whole Halloween mess. Maybe as an instigator, maybe just a coincidental interaction that put her in the Drama Splash Zone, maybe even as a victim of something that happened that she’s now lashing out over…
…but this isn’t Mary being generically an asshole, this is targeted…
Funny you said that, i actually thought frieza’s voice sounded like an evil queen or something, like I always read it as kind of feminine for some reason.
But yeah it makes a lot more sense now, I totally hear it 🤣
Mary just spends all her free time waiting behind that door for someone she hates (which fortunately for her is most people) to walk past. Roz has been learning how to scale buildings and climb through windows from Sal.
I was just thinking something that, it’s like despite her hating everyone around her do to her own warped self righteous principle she can’t function without interaction with others via conflict or getting in someone else’s business.
Mary making everyone else look good by comparison. She is so frigid polar bears will flock to her to survive global warming. Which would be horrible as they’d eat her and then get sick.
While the term frigid is often used as such, English is a contextual language and the verbiage was clear that it wasn’t gender targeted. Even if it were, the definition you provided would also apply to Mary as a religious zealot.
Ah. I don’t think there is any way (not being X‘s doctor) to say „X is frigid“ without it being a slur.
Frigid person, ok, maybe, describing any attributes (like voice, demeanor, ..) fine, yeah, totally works meaning very cold. „X is frigid“ no. Never do that.
since we’re talking about the importance of using the right word here I’ll just go ahead and stick my nose in to say that no way is “frigid” a slur. gendered insult? yes, if an increasingly uncommon and nonsensical one. slur? no.
Yeah, considering the context being immediately followed by “polar bears flock to her to survive global warming” (which, a reminder, it’s climate change, not global warming. Some places have winters that are getting substantially drier and colder because of it as well), I think the context makes it very clear to anyone reading that it is using frigid like “cold-hearted,” not “prudish,” and it’s definitely being used as an insult, not a slur.
May I genuinely ask what the distinction is between a gendered insult and a slur, to you?
There’s a thread above that breaks down why it’s not a great look to describe someone with brown eyes as having “shit-colored eyes” whether or not you meant it in a white supremacist way. In my experience, “frigid” used to describe a woman or a female-presenting person is every bit as loaded, and yes, codified in that specific word when it’s applied to a woman, and not, say, an ice-cream cone. (Is it because it’s an adjective and not a noun? Would “frigid b*tch” qualify as a slur, or is that also only a gendered insult?)
I hope I’m not coming across as pissy, because I don’t feel that way. But I am curious, since I don’t think I agree with you here.
hi! I’m glad you asked, because I’ve been putting some thought into it today. here’s my genuine answer: I don’t think “frigid” qualifies as a slur mostly because of 1) its lack of popularity, 2) its valid (and more prevalent) usage for things like the weather, and 3) its lack of severity. and I think it is a combo of those things, not just one or two…so I guess it might be more offensive in circles where it’s a more common insult.
1) I’d expect to be called “b*tch” or “wh*re” before I would expect to be called frigid
2) there are some insults that really CAN’T be used for anything else. the n-word is a prime example. it can be reclaimed but that’s about it, and even that can be controversial. “frigid” applies to the weather most frequently, with guest appearances in lots of other fields
3) to return to my first point, I can’t help but feel that “b*tch” is the harsher and more frequently used word out of the phrase “frigid b*tch”. certainly I would never think to censor “frigid” with an asterisk or two
I guess another thing that might be worth noting is that the era of use matters, for various reasons. some terms that were very insulting in the 1800s are completely unused today and would be more likely to provoke bafflement or amusement than outrage. the insulting use of “frigid” dates back to…what, the mid-1900s? (I’m guessing.) so it’s more of an issue than some older insults, but some of the social factors that brought it into use have disappeared/become less common/changed, so it doesn’t strike me as very relevant anymore. in another 50 years, it might be a complete (or near-complete) non-issue.
however, I will grant you that “frigid” does match the google definition of “slur”, lol. it just seems to me that “slur” is a needlessly strong word to describe something like “frigid”.
thanks for reading and no worries, you didn’t come off as pissy at all! I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts on the matter if you want to share, though I can’t promise to respond with anything other than “agree to disagree”.
Fine, Mary is such a cold unfeeling monster polar bears will flock to her in hopes of surviving global warming. Which is a shame because they’d eat her and then get sick.
We’ve been having fun arguing about which character is the worst post-timeskip, but now Mary is here to set the bar right back where it belongs, at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.
I was kind of hoping Mary, having fulfilled her narrative purpose, went away during the time skip. Maybe Peter got her pregnant in an echo of the other universe. Maybe she died, and it’s ok because nobody was going be stuck mourning her. Maybe she just kind of ceased to exist.
Well, welcome back, Mary. I just called to say I hate you.
Unfortunately I suspect Joyce’s mom is going to find out about a bunch of what Joyce is currently getting up to in order to kick off the next major conflict and I suspect Mary will have something to do with that
Yeah I wasn’t a fan of Mary being mocked as a puritanical asshole because she was a hypocrite. It skirts a line for me though it’s not a deal breaker in fiction.
Her views are wrong because they are wrong period. Her views should cause her to be alone or in a small and unimaginative world as a consequence. The whole hypocrisy angle takes away from that really in terms of impact and is distracting. It almost implies the views would be ‘fine’ if she kept her word.
Mary, you’re only remembered for two things:
A) being a douchebag
B) being named after the only woman christianity has ever respected, esp since your religion is the only thing that defines you besides point A)
I guess she must have broken up with her boyfriend.
The scary thing is, she’s probably going to end up as an art teacher, making children hate both art and school for the rest of their lives. All so she can get her ego stoked. She seems like that sort.
Does Mary read to anyone else like this is a monologue that she’s been practicing in the shower ever since Halloween? This has big “main villain” energy to me. She’s been dreaming about this moment when she can gloat over her enemy who has been brought low. And Jennifer took away all of the power Mary thought she would get out of that interaction by not caring about her.
Yeah she definitely planned this in her head for the next time Jennifer came around. The fact she was skulking in her doorway just waiting gives that away.
I am not sure these two have even had an on-panel conversation since Billie hid in her room and Mary was mad since she was basically in just her undies
Mary is a starter villain. Everyone has gone through so much shit her taunts and hatred is unimportant. At least until she’s named a Supreme Court Justice much to Dorothy’s horror.
I often tire of Mary being little more than a joke delivery device. I’d like one time to see a empathetic portrayal of her (just because we can empathize with someone doesn’t mean we have to like them).
Hard for me to feel any empathy or sympathy for someone who actively, purposefully, and gleefully seeks to harm others just for being different from her. She’s an unrepentant bigot and a sadist. I don’t care what backstory or inner life she has, she’ll get no sympathy from me.
people like mary exist in large numbers in this country and have a lot of control that they use solely to hurt people. they do not deserve empathy, and you picked a very, very bad weekend to tell us otherwise.
Definitely don’t deserve empathy. Not entitled to empathy. But empathy is a tool that can be used to change people. If you see someone with empathy for the enemy, please call them out in the sense of protecting safe spaces for people, not punishing people for trying.
^ this, thanks. no one HAS to give anyone else their time or emotional energy or anything else, and in cases like these it’s completely understandable to not even want to. but, well. empathy is a tool that can be used to change people.
“Empathy is a tool that can be used to change people” is a nice li’l aphorism but this isn’t a teen movie where the villain is a real estate developer. These people have no empathy for us, and what’s more, empathy is seen as weakness. They seek only one thing: our subjugation and destruction.
“We should have empathy for the worst people on Earth” is how you get us killed. So no, if I see someone with empathy for the enemy I see someone opening the back door to let the Asshole Zombies inside the building. At best, they’ve threatened everyone else with their stupidity. At worst, they’ve joined the enemy. Either way, they’ll doom us all.
A lot of this, but in slightly less dramatic terms. The freaks who want us shot in the streets aren’t worth your empathy, because they’ll mock you for it at best and won’t accept even the smallest little olive branch. Thinking you can change “people” like Mary is naive and a good way to get people hurt.
Even with people like Mary, if you’ve got a personal connection – like you’re a relative or were a friend before they got more extreme – it can sometimes work. As long as they don’t have power over you and you believe it’s safe, it can be worth the effort. Deradicalization is possible.
Reaching out to strangers or casual acquaintances like Mary is to Jen is pointless at best.
The best example is the time Dave Rubin (A gay conservative commentator) went on Ben Shapiro’s show, only to be ruthlessly mocked for his homosexuality while trying to show that conservatives don’t necessarily HATE gay people.
It was dumb, sad, and pathetic, from a sad and pathetic man who doesn’t realize he’s the hen in the foxhouse. Yes, I messed that analogy up on purpose, because that’s the case. But people like him let foxes into the henhouse because they think “Oh, they’re not THAT bad.”
No. They are that bad, and every day they prove it more and more.
And if you’re trying use empathy to reach people who make a living off of riling up people with hate, you’re basically asking for what you get.
Sometimes, rarely, it’s possible to reach those that aren’t professional bigots.
Well let’s wind this thread back a bit. Brute’s comment was to point out that as cartoonish as Mary is, there are a lot of people just like her IRL who are very dangerous and undeserving of empathy. And by “undeserving” they mean not only are these people not entitled to empathy but that empathy should not be given to them under any circumstances.
Spriteless_auntie, seemingly misunderstanding this point, replies with the pithy aphorism, “empathy is a tool that can be used to change people!”
My point is, that may be true in movies (or webcomics,) but not in real life.
mary seems liek the type of chara that’d be amusing yet annoying to look back on ten years from now, or ending up having a daughter that befriends/is the best friend of another chara that couldn’t stand her lol
It took me a few minutes of thinking to figure out what Mary is even trying to do. Make Jennifer happy by reminding her that she is someone Mary hates? Hurt her by laughing at her old misfortunes? Does she just grasp at any personal details about anyone who walks on the floor to make make sure they think she, Mary, is the center of the universe? Nah, it doesn’t occur to her other people don’t think that until they tell her.
What Mary is trying to doesn’t have anything to do with Jennifer, it occurred to me. She’s continuing right in the middle of the last interaction they had like she has not thought about anything else since. Like she’s spending her life stuck in that one moment when her games of espionage, manipulation, humiliation and blackmail paid off by successfully forcing Ruth and Billie apart.
(Never mind that it was a doomed, destructive relationship neither of them wanted and the outcome where they both stayed alive and got healthier, Jennifer moved out, Ruth stayed RA, Carla went back to being untouchable to abuse and Mary got some seriously incriminating blackmail hanging over herself was, to Mary, a less favorable outcome than she would have thought possible.)
See, what Mary is doing here is celebrating the greatest and most unambiguous personal victory in her life.
I’m hoping Jennifer will come back with something along the lines of “Look Mary, what are you even talking to me for? You got your hits in, good job kicking on Ruth and me and everyone while we were down by the way. But speaking of ‘throwing away my life’, I do have a life that doesn’t revolve around you so was there anything you wanted or would you like to buzz off now?”
just when Joyce, sarah, and Jennifer are fighting over the worst person in the strip award, Mary arrives with her theme song being played by an orchestra
Fuck Tuesday, more officially known as the Rosewater Festival, is a centuries-old holiday which traditionally takes place on the 37th Tuesday of a given year. It celebrates the release of Shrek 2 in Minnesota, and typically involves heavy consumption of alcohol mixed with rosewater, hence the name. The more colloquial name comes from the tendency of those celebrating to organise educational orgies in rented community centers, with an emphasis on safe sex and the importance of consent.
In recent years, a controversial branch of Minnesotans called Minneapolis has become the de facto face of the holiday, ever since their 1996 armed takeover of a boathouse on Lake Superior. They occupied the building for 13 hours, grabbing people off the street and forcing them to join a Ms. Pac-Man tournament, refusing to provide any beverages other than rosewater and Coors beer, which they served in coffee mugs.
In 1842, a man named Hugo Pennington attempted to propose legislation which would officially fix the date of Fuck Tuesday to the 15th of September. He was pelted by a crowd with several hundred eggs and legally renamed “Squareboy Squashfun”, which remained his name until his death in 1900.
her acting ‘normal’ (in relative to a readers opinion) would prolly make her seem outta chara/even more suspicious.
Or super convoluted plot twist of: my parents are actually just as rich as carla’s but theyr’e cutting me off/giving their inheritance to a sibling /other relative instead, so fuck them, I was faking this whole christian thing anyways and acted this way outta habit /even without them around in case someone was hired to follow me and observe my behavior lol
Those lurking eyes from the darkened room though… It does make me wonder if Mary is single now? Bad breakup? She seems even less tolerable than the last time we saw her.
makes me wonder what the rest of her group at home is like compared to her (seems like some parents would scold her to show more ‘humility’ unless they’re cool with her smugness being religious superiority based)
HOORAY! Mary is back and she’s worse than ever! Her hate for Jennifer is so exaggerated to highlight how she’s the one with big personal problems, I’d like to know more about that. Jennifer shows admirable calm with this crazy girl. Brava! I wonder if this meeting with Mary will be the beginning of a long flashbacks.
lol i’d love to see how ppl would react if they’ve been reading all the other walkyverse comics for years with a new strip of mary being ‘likeable’/good/etc (i haven’t ready anything else other than shortpacked so idk if mary’s actually more realistically/evenly balanced in any other works)
i mean, i can imagine some ppl being 45 and acting similar, even if they don’t use the same words but hopefully they aren’t coworkers you’re stuck with (or shitty politicians cough but we don’t need to poen that can of worms)
damn and here I thought we got lucky and she died in a snow storm during the time skip, by she didn’t so now we’re still stuck with her disgusting bigoted ass dirtying up the story.
Coincidence, I wager. Willis has said that Mary’s parents are pretty great people, which I’m pretty sure excludes “dirty cop on the mob’s payroll”. Or “dirty cop”. Or just “cop” in general.
Hey, be nice to cops. It’s gotta be really hard to always be the person in power in any given daily encounter, yet still be a nervous wreck paralysed with absolute terror from the thought of somebody doing exactly what you say out of fear for their life. That must be really difficult for them, being so simultaneously tough and also complete chicken-shit cowards at all times.
I’ve always said, people who hate cops don’t have the balls to be the guys who will break into an unarmed, innocent Black person’s apartment and shoot them in the face while they’re sleeping, then the very next day stand around outside a school waiting for an active shooter to get the urge to machine gun kids out of his system.
You’re right, it takes a lot of courage to deliberately induce a particularly violent case of Cynophobia in themselves and then continuously walk into buildings they know have dogs inside. And unarmed civilians can be scary at the best of times, so maybe I’m being too harsh on cops for wanting to play deadly games of Red Light, Green Light with people who were just minding their own business. Thanks for this wake-up call.
Uncle Bradford had a farm, E-I-E-I-O
And to that farm we sent Mary, E-I-E-I-O
Her bigoted shit here and her bigoted shit there,
Here a shit, there a shit
Everywhere a bigoted shit
We sent Mary to the farm, E-I-E-I-O.
Like, nobody even asked her to remember anything, she’s just flying off the handle about literally nothing that anybody but her has said. I guess that’s all Her Sort tend to do, though.
i assume willis self moderates it rather than having a bot or so look over it, or maybe even having a couple private moderators helping out, so i wouldn’t worry too much
Ah yes. After so long dealing with complicated characters that, no matter how hard readers try and stretch things, are neither absolute villains or paragons, it is comforting to deal with someone who is just blatant garbage.
lol mary sure is set off easily. weird to see someone call themselves cool, but i keep forgetting these kids are still in their young 20s (not that there wouldn’t be immature 50 year olds that might think this lol)
Seems like she’d be too easily moody to stay with her bf for long if they’re still together unless her religious views makes her stick it through in the long run lol
well, not in public but it does feel like i still have temper tantrums if i’m upset enough at home, guess anger isn’t a thing that really goes away but i consider most college students to be “in their 20s” since a couple years doesn’t make too much of a diff other than being allowed to suddenly drink/smoke/etc(other than the ‘sheer power of youth/being untraumatized’ i’m surprised more ppl made it outta college without looking more aged/starting to grey but i suppose it varies lol)
Lmao. Really took her all of 30 seconds to fuck up being Cooly Smug And Mean huh.Someone just. Not caring her opinion or what she thinks is her kryptonite.
This is some main campus kind of culture/drama. The only thing where you would live on a branch campus mattered was ease of access to different things. Everyone was basically always around everyone.
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Mary, cool… FUNNIEST JOKE EVER
The sanity veneer is thin with this one.
Honestly forgot Mary was in the comic…I mean not really she’s too awful for that, but it has been awhile.
Also Mary totally blew her chance at a redemption arc here. Jennifer was giving her a free out she didn’t deserve. That was at least one person she’s hurt willing to shake the etch-a-sketch of baggage between them. Ya, blew it Mary.
That’s not why she just appeared. She’s there to be an ass and then run into a little misfortune for our laughter, kinda like the running gag with Team Rocket. 😛
Except Team Rocket are likeable
They’re charismatic, fashionable, stylish, motivated, multi-talented, witty, and they’ve even got a talking cat. We could broadly say that Mary is motivated, but that’s really all she’s got going for her.
I don’t know. I kind of like Mary’s fashion sense. Not here particularly, but some of her past appearances.
Unless she appeared to kick start a segue to
our sponsor, Glasswirethe next chapter, which is supposed to be an extended Halloween flashback beginning on July 2nd.https://twitter.com/damnyouwillis/status/1503516378250330113
I just use wireshark. Free and opensource, also preexists the ripoff thing.
The thing is, though … I KNOW Mary. I know several Marys. (Mary’s? Maries? English can be strange.) The tendency to use one’s self-perceived “righteousness” as a club to beat others is strong in Fundagelical culture, and that culture is endemic in my area. To be frank, it’s at least as strong in the male version of Mary (let’s use ‘Moe’), less passive-aggressive and more just plain aggressive and threatening.
The concept that other people can be happy and successful and well-adjusted WITHOUT the crutch of Fundamentalism simply enrages them. They needed it, so YOU must need it, too. If you don’t, you are blinded or ignorant or simply lying. Believe me, they are FIRM in that mindset.
I mean, literally, the Gospels are 90% about Jesus being harassed by religious fundamentalists before the ones in bed with the fascists (Roman) government murder him for being a hippie reformer.
Mary’s type of people have been around a very long time.
I remember there being a bit more about the actual message of his reforms.
It’s also worth remembering that the gospels were written later and in the context of conflict between the newly growing Christian movement within and outside of Judaism and their conflicts with Jewish authorities. It’s not exactly an unbiased perspective.
I’m not sure that there’s any real merit to saying, “The Gospels aren’t necessarily an accurate reflection of reality that we have no records of at the time.” At least if the point is discussing the idea of Christianity as a liberal reform version of Judaism.
Which, of course, is primarily being brought up here as a contrast to the fact Mary is exactly the sort of person who Historical Jesus (whether you believe he existed or not) thought was a trashfire.
Also, Random Theology Trivia: I remember being fascinated by a teacher pointing out Jesus is actually part of the same reform movement he’s always butting heads with. The Pharisees get vilified but they and he mostly have peaceful arguments about the way to bring back morality to Hellenized/Romanized Judea.
It’s the Sadducees (Roman collaborators) who straight up want to murder him.
*The More You Know Rainbow*
Mary is faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar beyond a redemption arc.
Plenty of worse fictional characters have gotten redemption arcs. She doesn’t seem to be being set up for one though.
To be redeemed, you have to think you did something wrong.
Mary’s basically a team rocket villain at this point. She exists to get dunked on
She might as well have a fittingly dunder-headed motto, too. Something like:
Prepare for trouble, it’s time for a spin!
Where I’ll make you repent for your sin!
To protect the world from degeneration,
To convert all people in our nation,
To denounce the line between fear and love,
To extend our reach to the one true God above,
Mary!
Bradford!
Team Mary, basking in the Holy Light!
Give up now, you know I’m right!
Sorry just couldn’t help myself. 😅
But this pretty much sums up what she lives by in a nutshell, no?
Lol very funny!
LOL! I genuinely laughed hard at this and made my wife look at me funny.
In my head about halfway through the reading went from standard reading to the reading T the beginning of “Team Rocket’s Rockin'” and it’s way funnier imagining super dramatic views of Mary condicendingly sneering down against changing backgrounds at the viewer as a small group of the cast looks on in confusion, wondering wtf is going on with the background behind Mary. SURPRISE! IT’S CARLA, ending with a big background that says “Lol JK! Carla is the best!” Before skating off laughing leaving Mary to look enraged…
HAH, amazing! who would be her Meowth, even?
Excellent use of Team Rocket scansion.
@Thag Simmons
I think you just insulted Team Rocket – or the trio (quatro) anyway. The four of them are far more likable than Mary.
Yeah I guess you’re right about something. Spite it all, the Team Rocket trio at their hearts are just a bunch of screwballs who love and care about their pokemon.
Mary on the other hand doesn’t love anyone except for a version of God who happens to agree with her in everything she does.
Yes. This. Exactly this.
To be fair in universe the trio insult themselves by identifying with a guy worse than Mary.
Yes, well, they’re the definitive example for a reason, while Mary is lucky to get throwaway appearances.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Willis makes Mary actually dangerous. This comic is very good about subverting expectations.
I just realized that if Joyce and Becky got into a discussion about whether God exists in front of Mary, Mary would BSOD over whether to vocally side with an out-and-proud lesbian. Make it happen, Willis!
That made me laugh hard! Thanks!
Sadly, she’d just insist both are damned because God can’t save lesbians! Only faith in Jesus by WASPCHS (White Anglo Saxon Protestant CIS H-s!)
Becky: That’s literally not how salvation by faith alone works.
Mary: IT WORKS HOW I SAY IT WORKS!
Wish she hadn’t returned to the comic. Was starting to hope she’d been hit by a car or something.
Mary doesn’t deserve pupils.
Irises? Whatever, she should have dots for eyes.
I ACCIDENTALLY FLAGGED SORRY PLEASE DON’T COUNT IT SORRY
Jesus Christ, people. One little flag ain’t gonna kill somebody’s post, y’all need to stop freakin’ out every time like it’s gonna have any immediate effect.
It takes five little flags for that to happen.
Recall the pivotal Six Flags Incident in DoA:
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2019/comic/book-10/02-to-remind-you-of-my-love/sixflags/
(Flagged by accident, sorry. Of course)
Yeah, and then the worst consequence is that it gets moderated, seen for what it is, and then most likely left alone, I’d think. I don’t even think there’s a way to tell before that, which is actually good because it lets people feel safer flagging a comment that’s actually bothersome and nobody will ever know you misclicked if you don’t rat yourself out.
I think it vanished after 5 flags and only gets restored on moderation, but I’m not 100% sure of that.
Still pretty unlikely.
Yep, that’s it
Actually it’s 10, but that’s the gyst of it, yes.
Sorry it’s just my customer-service reaction, where it’s five stars or “fire this chump” and actually matters :/
This is so menacing wtf
honestly forgot mary had colored eyes
Just remember that they’re shit-colored and you won’t forget.
…. much as you might want to.
Don’t most people have brown eyes?
Yes, but most people with brown eyes are lovely and their eyes are lovely.
Mary is an asshole. The shit metaphor is appropriate for her specifically.
its kind of not though.
‘I’m gonna say racist tropes about someone i dont like’
isnt a thing
Interesting, I almost thought of it as insulting, on account I actually have brown eyes IRL.
But I didn’t see it as racist exactly.
Brown eyes… Isn’t.. racist? I’m pretty sure people from all over the world have brown eyes. I’ll admit it’s more common in some areas than others, but it’s certainly not exclusively tied to any one denomination.
No one here is saying “Brown eyes are Racist!”
We’re saying, “Racist people frequently compare people of color’s eyes to Shit, to be racist. On purpose. So let’s try not to do that on accident, so we don’t make ourselves look like we agree with racists when we don’t.”
Ah, thanks for clearing that up. 🙂
And yet another dose of awful from racists that I didn’t know about until now.
TDIL gets pretty sucky sometimes.
Wait, what does TDIL mean? 😅
This day I learned?
Considering I never liked blonde jokes, I’m not a fan of insulting or making fun of the color of anyone’s anything. I might query your life choices a bit more if you turn your skin blue by bathing in silver or something like that one guy, but that is more due to their own actions and wondering what the side effects would be. I know that it wasn’t the desired outcome, but still can’t think that it would end well health wise.
Wait, they go after specifically the eye color? I’ve never heard of this.
Me neither. But I lead a sheltered existence.
Never heard of that one. Fair enough.
Yes she really pops in general today for some reason
it’s a unfair world…
Must be the new haircut.
Marian, Marian, quite contrarian, how does your brain work
Electro-chemical gradients.
Mary lurking in that first panel, waiting to fuck up someone’s day
Oh wow, I hadn’t even noticed. It’s impressive how she’s the worst and still finds new depths of worseness.
After all these comment sections about which character is the most awful to the others it’ll be nice to have one where everyone agrees on who the awful one is
Yeah Jennifer sucks!
Mary is a kind of cartoonish shitty that everyone can agree is bad. Billie is a more realistic kind of shitty.
Mary is slightly cartoonish in the way that minor characters have to be for the sake of comprehensibility, but her brand of shitty is extremely real.
wait you think Mary is cartoonish?
That’s the funniest joke of all
Cartoonish,100%. Doesn’t mean there aren’t people actually like this or far worse. Just that they all should be laughed at, and simultaneously guarded against.
To the folks saying she’s Cartoonish: Tell me you weren’t raised fundamentalist without telling me you weren’t raised fundamentalist. 🙂
I was raised fundamentalist. They rarely come out and say “I am a bigot who thinks that I am better than you.”
Oh, I was absolutely raised fundamentalist. But I still find Mary cartoonish in the same way that the real-life existence of Mike Pence doesn’t make Cobra Commander and less cartoonish. And if gladly take 50 oh Cobra Commander over one of Mike Pence any day.
Cobra Commander used to be cartoonish to me but then I found out that Eric Prince of Blackwater fame, created his private army using the money from his family’s Multi-Level Marketing Scheme.
Which is literally Cobra’s origin in the comics.
I’ve known people like Mary. She honestly is pretty tame in comparison.
That’s basically what Mary is for.
Yep. The one unarguable hate sink.
Since two of the characters who were worse than Mary (Blaine and Ross) are dead, Mary is pretty high up there on the most terrible DoA characters.
Joyce’s mom (blanking on her name because I always call her Karen in my head, oops) is still before Mary on that list, imo, as are all the other terrible parents. Mary is terrible but isn’t responsible for/fucking up the development of other people (yet??? yikes)
I like to imagine Mary is always peeking out her door waiting for someone to pass by so she can make their life more miserable.
it’s not exactly hard work but someone’s gotta do it. it’s like being a bridge troll but the payment you exact is being miserable as hell.
Out there somewhere is a seat on a homeowner’s association board with her name on it.
I feel Mary must be deeply insecure – about her self; about her faith; her worthiness. I kinda pity her.
I wonder if she worries about going to hell all time. Must be terrifying.
I know I did when I was still steeped in fundieworld.
Especially once I became aware of different versions of Christianity that had different requirements for avoiding hell and I would stay up all night praying, begging for God to give me some kind of indication whether I was doing the right one or not.
Yeah, terrifying really is the right word for it.
I highly doubt she worries about Hell. Source: the pre-Halloween strip where she went on a rant about needing to believe that others won’t repent even IF in Hell.
This one, right?
If she does, I think it’s at some subconscious level. All the people like her I’ve dealt with have been just insufferably sure of their divinely-saved nature, right? Because JESUS!
It really is a matter of being just that insufferable.
Hate is a drug and Mary is an addict.
mary,,, what are you even talking about
Same here. I think a “It’s Jennifer actually, who are you? Is in order here.
Mary is still thinking of her as one of the “gays” I assume.
wait, is this in reference to The Halloween Incident? are we not yet privy to the full context of this interaction or am I just missing something?
Who knows, really? Even when we do get to the Halloween ark, I just can’t help but think something bad is gonna happen before then, or leave us on some massive cliffhanger!
Well we’ve only got a handful of days left before This Was Halloween starts, so we’re running out of time for something else!
It starts this upcoming Saturday, actually!
[Note to self, stock up on popcorn this week.]
I think it’s just a weird, judgmental Mary take. No one acts like anything is really different and we know all the drama from her pre-timeskip story. Mary’s just a jerk and remember Jen punched her once. She has a grudge.
I think it’s a reference to Mary being bi.
God I hope so. I can fix her.
I can put maggots in her hair products.
Yeah, and send her up marshmallow stairs to slow her down when Dina chases her! 😈
Don’t waste good maggots.
I don’t think she can be fixed but there are little kernels of a deeper character there. Like the fact she’s an artist and drew the art we see all the time on Joyce and Sarah’s door. She essentially did that purely altruistically. That’s weird for the Mary we see most of the time. She also stole Malaya’s art once to study it because it was technically better. She actually cares about improving her craft. Also her art teacher sucks. I’ll never not say that. No constructive criticism from that guy at all.
Anyway there are little fragments of interest in Mary buried under all the vile.
I am going to be so mad if Willis ends up making me care about Mary as a character
You know that will happen one day. I actually hope for that because it would be a good and very dramatic story.
I doubt it. I used to hope the little developments with Mary were leading somewhere, but she’s shown no sign of any of that in a long time. She’s just here to be awful. Maybe will find something out about her in Willis’ secret director’s commentary notes after they finish the series in 2041.
To be sincere, i don’t want a character development, I want Mary to become more and more miserable and alone with her drawings and be angry for this without the ability to change.
…okay, it’s odd that Mary is bringing this up.
Like, yeah, Satan’s a real big fan of hers, given how much of his work she’s making manifest in the world, but still, I get that they had that whole thing involving Ruth and Carla, but Mary’s acting extremely vindictive here, far more than one would expect. She’s always been a horrible person, but targeting Jennifer/Billie like that is… unusual.
My guess? Mary was involved in some manner with the whole Halloween mess. Maybe as an instigator, maybe just a coincidental interaction that put her in the Drama Splash Zone, maybe even as a victim of something that happened that she’s now lashing out over…
…but this isn’t Mary being generically an asshole, this is targeted…
Are you kidding me? Even Satan would know better than to give her benefit of the doubt.
This technically means she’s one of the Devil’s Rejects. 😆 Sorry couldn’t help myself
Probably Mary thinks she was involved. Or she might just be targeting the queer people again.
Yep. That’s definitely too much even for Mary. I think too she was involved is whatever happens during Halloween.
Please stop badmouthing Satan, who you’re confusing with Lucifer in any case.
Seconded
Hail Satan, lord of anarchy, revelry, BDSM and queerness
God’s the one who’s no fun and bigoted
Something about Mary’s utter loss of composure in only three panels is making me hear her as Frieza.
that is hilarious and if you don’t mind I’ll be hearing Mary speak with Frieza’s voice in my head until the end times
Is that the Linda Young version of Freeza?
Funny you said that, i actually thought frieza’s voice sounded like an evil queen or something, like I always read it as kind of feminine for some reason.
But yeah it makes a lot more sense now, I totally hear it 🤣
Mary just spends all her free time waiting behind that door for someone she hates (which fortunately for her is most people) to walk past. Roz has been learning how to scale buildings and climb through windows from Sal.
I was just thinking something that, it’s like despite her hating everyone around her do to her own warped self righteous principle she can’t function without interaction with others via conflict or getting in someone else’s business.
Avoiding conflict really isn’t Roz’s style.
And unless she managed to switch rooms, Roz is Mary’s roomie.
Mary making everyone else look good by comparison. She is so frigid polar bears will flock to her to survive global warming. Which would be horrible as they’d eat her and then get sick.
Umm, just FYI, “frigid” is kind of a gendered insult, often used derogatorily about women in general. (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/frigidity)
Not sure that was the meaning you intended. Just a friendly word to the wise. 🙂
Holy woah! ☹️ I always thought it was just a synonym for “cold”.
But thankfully, now I know. And knowing is half the battle. 👍
It is a synonym for cold, but when used to refer to women it has the subtext of “sexually unavailable and/or prude”
While the term frigid is often used as such, English is a contextual language and the verbiage was clear that it wasn’t gender targeted. Even if it were, the definition you provided would also apply to Mary as a religious zealot.
Ah. I don’t think there is any way (not being X‘s doctor) to say „X is frigid“ without it being a slur.
Frigid person, ok, maybe, describing any attributes (like voice, demeanor, ..) fine, yeah, totally works meaning very cold. „X is frigid“ no. Never do that.
Because language is contextual.
since we’re talking about the importance of using the right word here I’ll just go ahead and stick my nose in to say that no way is “frigid” a slur. gendered insult? yes, if an increasingly uncommon and nonsensical one. slur? no.
Yeah, considering the context being immediately followed by “polar bears flock to her to survive global warming” (which, a reminder, it’s climate change, not global warming. Some places have winters that are getting substantially drier and colder because of it as well), I think the context makes it very clear to anyone reading that it is using frigid like “cold-hearted,” not “prudish,” and it’s definitely being used as an insult, not a slur.
Sorry if it’s a little tangential, but yeah I agree re:climate change, it can cause weather of BOTH extremes
May I genuinely ask what the distinction is between a gendered insult and a slur, to you?
There’s a thread above that breaks down why it’s not a great look to describe someone with brown eyes as having “shit-colored eyes” whether or not you meant it in a white supremacist way. In my experience, “frigid” used to describe a woman or a female-presenting person is every bit as loaded, and yes, codified in that specific word when it’s applied to a woman, and not, say, an ice-cream cone. (Is it because it’s an adjective and not a noun? Would “frigid b*tch” qualify as a slur, or is that also only a gendered insult?)
I hope I’m not coming across as pissy, because I don’t feel that way. But I am curious, since I don’t think I agree with you here.
hi! I’m glad you asked, because I’ve been putting some thought into it today. here’s my genuine answer: I don’t think “frigid” qualifies as a slur mostly because of 1) its lack of popularity, 2) its valid (and more prevalent) usage for things like the weather, and 3) its lack of severity. and I think it is a combo of those things, not just one or two…so I guess it might be more offensive in circles where it’s a more common insult.
1) I’d expect to be called “b*tch” or “wh*re” before I would expect to be called frigid
2) there are some insults that really CAN’T be used for anything else. the n-word is a prime example. it can be reclaimed but that’s about it, and even that can be controversial. “frigid” applies to the weather most frequently, with guest appearances in lots of other fields
3) to return to my first point, I can’t help but feel that “b*tch” is the harsher and more frequently used word out of the phrase “frigid b*tch”. certainly I would never think to censor “frigid” with an asterisk or two
I guess another thing that might be worth noting is that the era of use matters, for various reasons. some terms that were very insulting in the 1800s are completely unused today and would be more likely to provoke bafflement or amusement than outrage. the insulting use of “frigid” dates back to…what, the mid-1900s? (I’m guessing.) so it’s more of an issue than some older insults, but some of the social factors that brought it into use have disappeared/become less common/changed, so it doesn’t strike me as very relevant anymore. in another 50 years, it might be a complete (or near-complete) non-issue.
however, I will grant you that “frigid” does match the google definition of “slur”, lol. it just seems to me that “slur” is a needlessly strong word to describe something like “frigid”.
thanks for reading and no worries, you didn’t come off as pissy at all! I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts on the matter if you want to share, though I can’t promise to respond with anything other than “agree to disagree”.
also jesus, sorry, that got long
Fine, Mary is such a cold unfeeling monster polar bears will flock to her in hopes of surviving global warming. Which is a shame because they’d eat her and then get sick.
Hey, that’s rude to cold unfeeling monsters.
Thank you, Vukodlak.
We’ve been having fun arguing about which character is the worst post-timeskip, but now Mary is here to set the bar right back where it belongs, at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.
God I dislike that animal
Which one? Mary, her Lamb, or the bourgeois Party Pig born with a silver spoon in her mouth?
I was kind of hoping Mary, having fulfilled her narrative purpose, went away during the time skip. Maybe Peter got her pregnant in an echo of the other universe. Maybe she died, and it’s ok because nobody was going be stuck mourning her. Maybe she just kind of ceased to exist.
Well, welcome back, Mary. I just called to say I hate you.
Unfortunately I suspect Joyce’s mom is going to find out about a bunch of what Joyce is currently getting up to in order to kick off the next major conflict and I suspect Mary will have something to do with that
You’re probably right. How will she make contact, the phone book?
Maybe Facebook? After all, Joyce did connect with Sarah’s sister that way.
Willis has said that Mary’s not going to get teen pregnant, because that sounds too much like punishing people for hvaing sex.
Yeah I wasn’t a fan of Mary being mocked as a puritanical asshole because she was a hypocrite. It skirts a line for me though it’s not a deal breaker in fiction.
Her views are wrong because they are wrong period. Her views should cause her to be alone or in a small and unimaginative world as a consequence. The whole hypocrisy angle takes away from that really in terms of impact and is distracting. It almost implies the views would be ‘fine’ if she kept her word.
Mary is giving off “Troll living under a bridge” vibe here.
Okay, which one of ya’ll conjured up Mary? No! Back!
It was me. *hangs head in shame*
I guess we’re too cool to remember you, Mary.
Hi, Mary.
Bye, Mary.
didn’t someone just say the other day that it had been a while since we’d seen Mary? thanks a million for the jinx lol
*hides
for your crimes you will be given a sprite!
Nooo I wanted lemonade!
Mary, there is quite literally no sense in which you are remotely cool.
Please remove her from the tags, Willis, which I assume sends her to the DoA Shadow Realm.
how come Mary doesn’t hang out with Asher and Raidah anyway
gotta complete the asshole trinity
Hay! Asher’s nice so far. Just use that awful dentist.
Hey, Hank’s trying to be better. 🙁
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2020/comic/book-10/02-to-remind-you-of-my-love/dozen/
I mean, I can think of at least one reason Mary wouldn’t hang out with a Muslim character, call it a hunch.
her family’s probably not important enough for raidah to consider befriending her
Mary, you’re only remembered for two things:
A) being a douchebag
B) being named after the only woman christianity has ever respected, esp since your religion is the only thing that defines you besides point A)
I love the lurking eyes in panel 1
I guess she must have broken up with her boyfriend.
The scary thing is, she’s probably going to end up as an art teacher, making children hate both art and school for the rest of their lives. All so she can get her ego stoked. She seems like that sort.
ooooh, I like that idea. The “broke up with her boyfriend” part, not the art teacher part.
Wishing Mary a very ‘fuck off and die’.
You’re not too cool for fuck all.
to quote Best Girl Carla: “Dear God, kill Mary”
Best prayer in the whole comic.
Mike yelling “Hail Satan” at Carol Brown is a close runner-up tho
Like I said on Patreon last night:
“Oh, Mary. If only somebody loved you.”
That’s kind of the primary purpose of the way she practices religion, to believe in a God that loves her and justifies her toxic behavior. 🙄
At least we can all be united in hating Mary
It’s the gift that keeps on giving.
Does Mary read to anyone else like this is a monologue that she’s been practicing in the shower ever since Halloween? This has big “main villain” energy to me. She’s been dreaming about this moment when she can gloat over her enemy who has been brought low. And Jennifer took away all of the power Mary thought she would get out of that interaction by not caring about her.
Yeah she definitely planned this in her head for the next time Jennifer came around. The fact she was skulking in her doorway just waiting gives that away.
Oh. Mary.
I forgot you were in this comic.
And frankly, I was enjoying it.
No Billie, if you engage she’ll keep talking to you, best to just tune her out like white noise.
Mary is the embodiment of white noise, in the sense that she’s the noises that too many white people make.
I am not sure these two have even had an on-panel conversation since Billie hid in her room and Mary was mad since she was basically in just her undies
They have.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/tag/mary+jennifer/
Ahhh, there you go then. Wonder if she’s still with the weird dude.
She probably stole his skin and hid the rest of him in a sewer.
Bug off, Mary.
Mary is a starter villain. Everyone has gone through so much shit her taunts and hatred is unimportant. At least until she’s named a Supreme Court Justice much to Dorothy’s horror.
Shit, she’s just Barrett, isn’t she?
I don’t get it, why is Billie having a conversation with that mirror
Oh. Mary is alive. Too bad
I often tire of Mary being little more than a joke delivery device. I’d like one time to see a empathetic portrayal of her (just because we can empathize with someone doesn’t mean we have to like them).
but mary’s an asshole
Like I said we can feel empathy for someone and acknowledge that they are also an asshole.
Hard for me to feel any empathy or sympathy for someone who actively, purposefully, and gleefully seeks to harm others just for being different from her. She’s an unrepentant bigot and a sadist. I don’t care what backstory or inner life she has, she’ll get no sympathy from me.
if Mary wants my empathy she can stop being a fascist, simple as
She’s more human than some of the fundies I’ve met growing up. Creepy bunch of people.
people like mary exist in large numbers in this country and have a lot of control that they use solely to hurt people. they do not deserve empathy, and you picked a very, very bad weekend to tell us otherwise.
Definitely don’t deserve empathy. Not entitled to empathy. But empathy is a tool that can be used to change people. If you see someone with empathy for the enemy, please call them out in the sense of protecting safe spaces for people, not punishing people for trying.
^ this, thanks. no one HAS to give anyone else their time or emotional energy or anything else, and in cases like these it’s completely understandable to not even want to. but, well. empathy is a tool that can be used to change people.
“Empathy is a tool that can be used to change people” is a nice li’l aphorism but this isn’t a teen movie where the villain is a real estate developer. These people have no empathy for us, and what’s more, empathy is seen as weakness. They seek only one thing: our subjugation and destruction.
“We should have empathy for the worst people on Earth” is how you get us killed. So no, if I see someone with empathy for the enemy I see someone opening the back door to let the Asshole Zombies inside the building. At best, they’ve threatened everyone else with their stupidity. At worst, they’ve joined the enemy. Either way, they’ll doom us all.
A lot of this, but in slightly less dramatic terms. The freaks who want us shot in the streets aren’t worth your empathy, because they’ll mock you for it at best and won’t accept even the smallest little olive branch. Thinking you can change “people” like Mary is naive and a good way to get people hurt.
Even with people like Mary, if you’ve got a personal connection – like you’re a relative or were a friend before they got more extreme – it can sometimes work. As long as they don’t have power over you and you believe it’s safe, it can be worth the effort. Deradicalization is possible.
Reaching out to strangers or casual acquaintances like Mary is to Jen is pointless at best.
The best example is the time Dave Rubin (A gay conservative commentator) went on Ben Shapiro’s show, only to be ruthlessly mocked for his homosexuality while trying to show that conservatives don’t necessarily HATE gay people.
It was dumb, sad, and pathetic, from a sad and pathetic man who doesn’t realize he’s the hen in the foxhouse. Yes, I messed that analogy up on purpose, because that’s the case. But people like him let foxes into the henhouse because they think “Oh, they’re not THAT bad.”
No. They are that bad, and every day they prove it more and more.
And if you’re trying use empathy to reach people who make a living off of riling up people with hate, you’re basically asking for what you get.
Sometimes, rarely, it’s possible to reach those that aren’t professional bigots.
“this isn’t a teen movie” I mean. it’s a comic?
I was talking about real life. As was the person I was responding to. As were you.
will respectfully submit that we were all talking about both (subject probably wouldn’t have come up without Mary)
Well let’s wind this thread back a bit. Brute’s comment was to point out that as cartoonish as Mary is, there are a lot of people just like her IRL who are very dangerous and undeserving of empathy. And by “undeserving” they mean not only are these people not entitled to empathy but that empathy should not be given to them under any circumstances.
Spriteless_auntie, seemingly misunderstanding this point, replies with the pithy aphorism, “empathy is a tool that can be used to change people!”
My point is, that may be true in movies (or webcomics,) but not in real life.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Mary is going to get worse. Remember she wanted Ruth to “give” Carla to her.
Mary is actually dangerous.
Everyone like her is dangerous, and there’s not enough time in the world to sort them all out.
mary seems liek the type of chara that’d be amusing yet annoying to look back on ten years from now, or ending up having a daughter that befriends/is the best friend of another chara that couldn’t stand her lol
It took me a few minutes of thinking to figure out what Mary is even trying to do. Make Jennifer happy by reminding her that she is someone Mary hates? Hurt her by laughing at her old misfortunes? Does she just grasp at any personal details about anyone who walks on the floor to make make sure they think she, Mary, is the center of the universe? Nah, it doesn’t occur to her other people don’t think that until they tell her.
What Mary is trying to doesn’t have anything to do with Jennifer, it occurred to me. She’s continuing right in the middle of the last interaction they had like she has not thought about anything else since. Like she’s spending her life stuck in that one moment when her games of espionage, manipulation, humiliation and blackmail paid off by successfully forcing Ruth and Billie apart.
(Never mind that it was a doomed, destructive relationship neither of them wanted and the outcome where they both stayed alive and got healthier, Jennifer moved out, Ruth stayed RA, Carla went back to being untouchable to abuse and Mary got some seriously incriminating blackmail hanging over herself was, to Mary, a less favorable outcome than she would have thought possible.)
See, what Mary is doing here is celebrating the greatest and most unambiguous personal victory in her life.
I’m hoping Jennifer will come back with something along the lines of “Look Mary, what are you even talking to me for? You got your hits in, good job kicking on Ruth and me and everyone while we were down by the way. But speaking of ‘throwing away my life’, I do have a life that doesn’t revolve around you so was there anything you wanted or would you like to buzz off now?”
Feels unlikely, though.
just when Joyce, sarah, and Jennifer are fighting over the worst person in the strip award, Mary arrives with her theme song being played by an orchestra
Insert “AMATEURS” meme here.
Ahhhh right no matter what, there’s always Mary at the bottom of the barrel.
No seriously, get this idiot out of here. Why can’t Mary just act fucking normal?
but to her, this is Tuesday
Fuck Tuesday.
Oh! That’s my favorite holiday!
Fuck Tuesday, more officially known as the Rosewater Festival, is a centuries-old holiday which traditionally takes place on the 37th Tuesday of a given year. It celebrates the release of Shrek 2 in Minnesota, and typically involves heavy consumption of alcohol mixed with rosewater, hence the name. The more colloquial name comes from the tendency of those celebrating to organise educational orgies in rented community centers, with an emphasis on safe sex and the importance of consent.
In recent years, a controversial branch of Minnesotans called Minneapolis has become the de facto face of the holiday, ever since their 1996 armed takeover of a boathouse on Lake Superior. They occupied the building for 13 hours, grabbing people off the street and forcing them to join a Ms. Pac-Man tournament, refusing to provide any beverages other than rosewater and Coors beer, which they served in coffee mugs.
In 1842, a man named Hugo Pennington attempted to propose legislation which would officially fix the date of Fuck Tuesday to the 15th of September. He was pelted by a crowd with several hundred eggs and legally renamed “Squareboy Squashfun”, which remained his name until his death in 1900.
Sorry, what was the question?
Beautiful 🤌
Where Coors exists, no beauty can follow.
She is normal, everyone else is wrong.
No, she’s not normal. She’s a fucking anomaly like the rest of her kind, and she’s got no place in any reasonable society.
her acting ‘normal’ (in relative to a readers opinion) would prolly make her seem outta chara/even more suspicious.
Or super convoluted plot twist of: my parents are actually just as rich as carla’s but theyr’e cutting me off/giving their inheritance to a sibling /other relative instead, so fuck them, I was faking this whole christian thing anyways and acted this way outta habit /even without them around in case someone was hired to follow me and observe my behavior lol
Hot take: Mary should be on the Supreme Court
(so that they can all be [REDACTED] and [REDACTED] and then [REDACTED] and machine-processed into [REDACTED] and fed to [REDACTED])
Mad-Libs opportunity? 😛
She already is, under the alias Amy Coney Barrett.
…Fuck, you’re right, dammit
reMEMBER ME, BILLIE? WHEN I KILLED YOUR BROTHER
OMG, a Roger Rabbit reference, didn’t think I would ever see one of those.
Those lurking eyes from the darkened room though… It does make me wonder if Mary is single now? Bad breakup? She seems even less tolerable than the last time we saw her.
Maybe Peter got arrested for being part of Jan. 6 or something
I suddenly realized that more characters in this comic might seek help if Mary wasn’t there to make them feel ‘normal’ by comparison.
It is nice to have Mary here again to remind us that while the rest of the cast can be jerks from time to time they are still not as bad as Mary.
I find it refreshing that Mary is drawn as normal, reasonably attractive even and not as a cliché
Its good
Mary, losing her shit. Seems like our “perfect christian” have some debts, huh?
makes me wonder what the rest of her group at home is like compared to her (seems like some parents would scold her to show more ‘humility’ unless they’re cool with her smugness being religious superiority based)
HOORAY! Mary is back and she’s worse than ever! Her hate for Jennifer is so exaggerated to highlight how she’s the one with big personal problems, I’d like to know more about that. Jennifer shows admirable calm with this crazy girl. Brava! I wonder if this meeting with Mary will be the beginning of a long flashbacks.
lol i’d love to see how ppl would react if they’ve been reading all the other walkyverse comics for years with a new strip of mary being ‘likeable’/good/etc (i haven’t ready anything else other than shortpacked so idk if mary’s actually more realistically/evenly balanced in any other works)
. . . wow.
Wow, I hadn’t realized it’s been over a year since we’ve seen Mary.
Those were blessed times.
It’s s*** like this that makes me glad I’m not this age anymore.
i mean, i can imagine some ppl being 45 and acting similar, even if they don’t use the same words but hopefully they aren’t coworkers you’re stuck with (or shitty politicians cough but we don’t need to poen that can of worms)
Hell yeah! Mary’s back at last!
God I hate her. Give me MORE.
damn and here I thought we got lucky and she died in a snow storm during the time skip, by she didn’t so now we’re still stuck with her disgusting bigoted ass dirtying up the story.
she’s like, the LEAST memorable villain
she has like, the WORST fucking vibes
we all know she’s a massive homophobic bongo but she just smells like a racist too
She already appeared post-skip, but was swifty HOMPK!‘d away before she could do too much damage.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2021/comic/book-11/04-hompk/wrought/
you’d think after this mary would avoid antagonizing more ppl but some ppl don’t change that easily i suppose
Seems like an appropriate time to ask, since she made an appearance…
There’s a bonus strip with Lester (the dirty cop who offed Blaine) that says his surname is the same as Mary’s: Bradford.
Are they related, or is it just a coincidence?
Coincidence, I wager. Willis has said that Mary’s parents are pretty great people, which I’m pretty sure excludes “dirty cop on the mob’s payroll”. Or “dirty cop”. Or just “cop” in general.
Hey, be nice to cops. It’s gotta be really hard to always be the person in power in any given daily encounter, yet still be a nervous wreck paralysed with absolute terror from the thought of somebody doing exactly what you say out of fear for their life. That must be really difficult for them, being so simultaneously tough and also complete chicken-shit cowards at all times.
I’ve always said, people who hate cops don’t have the balls to be the guys who will break into an unarmed, innocent Black person’s apartment and shoot them in the face while they’re sleeping, then the very next day stand around outside a school waiting for an active shooter to get the urge to machine gun kids out of his system.
You’re right, it takes a lot of courage to deliberately induce a particularly violent case of Cynophobia in themselves and then continuously walk into buildings they know have dogs inside. And unarmed civilians can be scary at the best of times, so maybe I’m being too harsh on cops for wanting to play deadly games of Red Light, Green Light with people who were just minding their own business. Thanks for this wake-up call.
He could still be an uncle or something.
That’s the worst part of all.
Uncle Bradford had a farm, E-I-E-I-O
And to that farm we sent Mary, E-I-E-I-O
Her bigoted shit here and her bigoted shit there,
Here a shit, there a shit
Everywhere a bigoted shit
We sent Mary to the farm, E-I-E-I-O.
Lmao Omg I completely forgot about Mary and was confused as to who this stranger was..and then I read her dialog
….XD Welp!
“Pay attention to meeeeee!” – Mary
Yeah, Mary. Screaming about how cool you are is what cool people do.
What the fuck is this?
Just Mary, being her usual super cool self
(In case it’s unclear, nothing about Mary is actually cool. She’s fascist garbage, the sarcasm around ‘super cool’ is intended to be immense.)
Mary being a stupid asshole as usual.
Like, nobody even asked her to remember anything, she’s just flying off the handle about literally nothing that anybody but her has said. I guess that’s all Her Sort tend to do, though.
How many years ago IRL must I remember to have any context about what the character’s conversation is about?
I think the events Mary is eager to reference are from…2016 or 2017? So 5-6 years IRL time, give or take.
What am I, the TVA? Mary’s a freak, who even knows what her problem is right now?
I’d like to apologize to anyone I accidentally report in my attempts to hit the reply button. I did not realize my fingers were so fat.
Almost just did that myself.
i assume willis self moderates it rather than having a bot or so look over it, or maybe even having a couple private moderators helping out, so i wouldn’t worry too much
I’ve done it a couple times. Almost did it again actually when I went to reply here, lol.
Ah yes. After so long dealing with complicated characters that, no matter how hard readers try and stretch things, are neither absolute villains or paragons, it is comforting to deal with someone who is just blatant garbage.
Mary is such an utterly generic-looking person that she probably assumes she’s the protagonist by default. She’s even an art student.
lol mary sure is set off easily. weird to see someone call themselves cool, but i keep forgetting these kids are still in their young 20s (not that there wouldn’t be immature 50 year olds that might think this lol)
Seems like she’d be too easily moody to stay with her bf for long if they’re still together unless her religious views makes her stick it through in the long run lol
Most of them aren’t even 20 yet. It’s just Ruth, Rachel, Sarah, possibly Carla.
well, not in public but it does feel like i still have temper tantrums if i’m upset enough at home, guess anger isn’t a thing that really goes away but i consider most college students to be “in their 20s” since a couple years doesn’t make too much of a diff other than being allowed to suddenly drink/smoke/etc(other than the ‘sheer power of youth/being untraumatized’ i’m surprised more ppl made it outta college without looking more aged/starting to grey but i suppose it varies lol)
Lmao. Really took her all of 30 seconds to fuck up being Cooly Smug And Mean huh.Someone just. Not caring her opinion or what she thinks is her kryptonite.
She tripped and fell down 10 flights of stairs mid conversation.
Impressive
Oh Mary, such a tryhard…
This is some main campus kind of culture/drama. The only thing where you would live on a branch campus mattered was ease of access to different things. Everyone was basically always around everyone.