Boys and girls of Dumbing of Age
Wouldn’t you like to see Amber rage?
Come with us and you will see
This, our ruined dorm party
This was Halloween, this was Halloween
Ex-pals fought in the dorm of Joyce
This was Halloween, everybody made a scene
All silence ’til the booers gone and raised their voice
All aghast, everybody scream
In this dorm on Halloween
Mike is the one Walky says is not dead
Nickels brought and moms in his bed
Sal is the one to do Malaya harm
Scowling like mad and spider on her arm
This was Halloween, this was Halloween
Halloween, Halloween
Halloween, Halloween
In this dorm, we stared, pale
Every jaw dropped to the Walky’s tale
In this dorm, don’t we hate it now?
Everybody’s waiting for the next shoe drop
‘Round that corner: Mike, hiding in the trash (sike)
Walky’s whining now to joke and Amber SCREAM
This was Halloween, poor in taste, and quite obscene
Aren’t you MAD? Well, that’s just fine
Have a snack, have some punch
Take some cookies home for lunch
Ride with the Sal (if she had her bike)
Everybody scream, everybody scream
In our dorm on Halloween
Dina’s the Rex with the angry hat face
ROAR in a flash and gone without a trace
Becky’s the lesbian who calls, “I AM!”
Ruth is the one running femur scams
Dan is the Kermit, ukulele loon
Filling your head to the brim with tunes
This was Halloween, this was Halloween
Halloween, Halloween
Halloween, Halloween
Halloween, Halloween
Tender manchilds cooling his heels
Life’s no fun with all these bad feels
That’s the past, Mike unseen
In this dorm on Halloween
In this dorm, don’t we hate it now?
Everybody is waiting for the next shoe drop
Skeleton Sarah will give you a scare
And she’ll scream like a banshee
Because she’s NOT having fun
This was Halloween, everybody scream
Won’t you please make way to show Walky to the door
Dorothy is Dinkley to the max
Everyone hail to the future prez now
This was Halloween, this was Halloween
Halloween, Halloween
Halloween, Halloween
In this dorm Joyce calls home
Everyone bail ‘cuz this party’s blown
La lala la lala Halloween Halloween
La lala la lala Halloween Halloween
La lala la lala Halloween Halloween
La lala la la la, WIIGIIIIIII
I’m pretty sure most people who don’t have to listen to recordings of their own voice on the regular (so have to get used to it by necessity) get weirded out by hearing the sound of their own voice.
I used to think that very same thing. But then I found out about VD and was like, “wait, this isn’t something that happens to everybody? And i had this all this time and it has a name too? Damn.”
Usually its people who hear themselves in recordings frequently
What you hear when you speak is not what you sound like to others, because the bones in your face carry lower frequencies much better than air does, so your own idea of what your voice is does not necessarily match reality
Its not quite a dysphoria, but just about everyone goes “wait, THAT’S my voice?” The first time they hear themselves in a recording
Yeah, it’s an everybody thing. You hear your own voice differently than the rest of the world does, because, to you, the sounds are conducted through the bones of your skull as well as through the air, and the mismatch feels kind of uncanny.
But is that really what Wellerman &/or Arioch are talking about? I studied sound engineering when I was 20 and we recorded our own voices all the time for exercises and such, and it was weird and unpleasant at first but i got used to hearing it pretty soon.
I’ve known people who, from the first time the heard themselves recorded, liked the sound of their recorded voice better than how they heard it not recorded.
What gets me is they were all booking Halloween specifically as a day of trial for relationships. When Becky asked why they broke up Walky said “Halloween happened.” Like it was a big deal. But it turns out it wasn’t “Halloween” they were just assholes, which you can be any day of the weeks. It’s no surprise Becky and Dina “survived” Halloween. They don’t treat each other like shit and actually care about their relationship.
It makes sense that Walky would describe the fight as being about Halloween since he’s trying not to think about Mike or being sad or any feelings at all.
It’s conceptual shorthand, and there’s a specific word for it that I’ve forgotten. But it’s the same thing as when we refer to the Executive branch of U.S. government as “the White House”, where the place name stands in for the larger and less concrete entity.
“Halloween happened” pretty clearly means “the events of Halloween happened” or “the way we behaved on Halloween”. It makes sense, especially if Halloween ends up being especially eventful, with multiple couple breaking up in a dramatic way.
I still don’t get it. Walky warns “There will always be more Halloweens as if the day has some significance to his breakup but it really doesn’t beyond it happening on that day. Is Halloween a day people are more likely to say something stupid as a joke? Did Ruth decide to breakup with Billie on Halloween because it’s more acceptable or easier to do in costume? They just broke up on Halloween but Halloween isn’t why they broke up.
He’s still using it euphemisticly. Walky is correct that there are more years ahead with halloween celebrations, but what he _means_ is that there will be more days ahead where shit happens.
To consider: what is special about 9/11? In every year before 2001, nothing is. But in 2001 the big attack happened and now 9/11 happened and that date is inextricably embedded in the american psyche. People us the date as a stand-in for saying all of everything that happened on 2001-September-11.
Walky is not *blaming* halloween, any more than people blame the 11th day of september. He’s just referencing the stuff that happened on that particular day, using the title of the day as a shorthand reference.
Okay that makes more sense. It was confusing to me because even in today’s strip Walky is saying “It’s Halloween!” Like that’s a big deal and I don’t get what he means by saying it here.
I think what Walky means by “there will always be more Halloweens” is that there will always be more events in the future that destabilize things that feel normal right now. Their last Halloween apparently involved multiple unexpected dramatic, upsetting events. That can happen any time! Therefore nothing can be taken for granted and nothing is actually safe.
(I don’t remember the exact strip where Walky invoked the idea of future Halloweens, so I might be off-base here. He might just have been being superstitious, or been being performatively superstitious—where you pretend to blame all your problems on one specific thing, and keep pretending even though you don’t believe it, until you have half-convinced yourself you really do believe it. That sounds really Walky, to me.)
Metonymy is where you use something as a reference for a thing it is closely associated with but not actually part of: “the White House” for “the presidential administration.” Synecdoche is where you use a part of the thing as a stand in for the entire thing: “fifty head” for “fifty cattle.”
I would say that 9-11/nine-eleven for the September 11, 2001 attacks is metonymy. It’s a tricky distinction, but metonymy uses one word of phrase to conceptually stand in for another idea. Generally, I believe using the phrase of a date that refers to an event that took place on a date is metonymy. The date isn’t *inherent* to the event; it’s just happenstance. If the same events had happened on April 1, we’d probably refer to them as the April Fool’s Attacks. Or we might use different term of reference that had nothing to do with dates at all.
“Let’s break out the bubbles!” = “let’s open a bottle of bubbly wine aka Champagne” is synecdoche. “I can’t skip leg day!” = “I can’t skip the part of my exercise routine that involves exercising my leg muscles” is synecdoche.
“The Kremlin” to refer to the Russian government is metonymy. “Kremlin” isn’t in the name of the Russian government at all. But the buildings are so closely associated with the idea of that power that they can conceptually stand in for the idea of the Russian government itself.
While there’s a lot I don’t like about Becky, I have always loved seeing how much her and Dina value and try to be good to each other. Those two going about their relationship has been one of the most enjoyable parts of this comic for me.
well it was still a party to have fun more or less , though surprised he wouldn’t take a more amber like approach and immerse himself more in cartoons/fandom stuff, other than not wanting to be shut in to his dorm
I obviously get why Amber and Joyce were pissed off, but I also get where Walky’s coming from. He just really should have internalized that and let the moment of silence pass, and odds are, the rest of the night would have largely gone by as the escapism he sought. Benefit of hindsight, granted.
Yeah, Walky is an asshole here, but Dorothy is clearly meant to be a bit of one, too–this was ultimately a self-aggrandizing action. Willis seems to be doing more to emphasize her flaws lately, which I appreciate, even if it definitely feels very harsh for her.
When is Wally not an asshole? Meh. Maybe that’s a little harsh. He seems to be trying to be a good boyfriend—lately, that is—not during this flashback period. flashback
Likewise, when is Dorothy not self-aggrandizing? Okay, granted, she occasionally tries to check herself—but she does not try very hard. Or succeed.
I dunno. Dorothy’s toast seemed like a perfectly appropriate addition to a Halloween celebration to me. I always spend Halloween honoring departed friends and family. It would seem strange not to.
For context: I often attend a summer conference. One year, it took place right after a particularly horrible mass shooting, and the plenary session (usually a humorous talk) started with a solemn moment of silence. I found that very appropriate.
The very next year, there was another horrible mass shooting right before the conference, which hit even closer to home. That year, there was no moment of silence — just jokes and laughing, same as every year, as if nothing horrible had just happened. I was so offended I walked out and made a complaint to the administration for the lack of respect to the victims. (I know, I know, “Can I speak to the manager?” Make your ‘Karen’ jokes now…)
All I’m saying is, I think it’s important to show respect and honor to those we have lost, even when feelings about them are complicated, and even when we are singing and dancing and laughing. Sometimes that’s the best time to honor them.
I think your comment Laura is a good example of people having different connections to things and different opinions of what is appropriate.
For many people Halloween is about costumes and silliness and having fun and regardless of the skeleton decorations, not at all about mourning. They have their own, perhaps private, ways of remembering the people they have lost. Some people find public impersonal displays of mourning (such as moments of siliences) disrespectful. Some people find them helpful. Neither opinion is wrong.
If it was day of the dead or something, I could see it, but not a Halloween party. Starting something with a moment of silence is also a lot different than doing it part of the way through. It also sounds like it was pre-planned to have one normally at your party. Dorothy brought up something without planning it with others (and therefore giving people time to leave and miss it if it would affect them emotionally and ruin their “night off” of constantly thinking about it so to say). Something pre-planned at the start gives people a chance to be there early for that if they want to, or be there late if they don’t while also not doing a sudden mood swing in the middle of everything. Also better than doing it at the end, especially if alcohol is involved, as the party can end on a happy and fun note rather than a sad and somber one.
It’s also best to remember that everyone grieves differently and there is no perfect way. Some grieve with singing and dancing while others with somber and quiet moments. Just because someone doesn’t want to remember their grief (no matter the strength of it) while having fun, doesn’t mean that they don’t respect the dead any less than someone who does. There’s a difference between showing respect for the dead in your own way and forcing others to participate and getting mad when they don’t want to. I’m not saying that some people can’t be disrespectful, but normally that is either through bad jokes, bad comments, or forcing someone else to grieve their way. They can’t tell you not to grieve just as much as you can’t tell them to grieve. It might very well be that they excluded the moment of silence because the grief was still too close to some people and it would have caused them to break down and not have any more fun that night. It would have been possible to still have it earlier and just come later, but even the thought of it might have been too hard for some people who really just wanted a break from it and a couple hours to put aside something that is so very difficult to put aside. Of course, when anything with that much emotional weight is involved, it can be extremely difficult to think of other perspectives than what you are currently going through.
You have a very good point that people process death and trauma differently, and can be bringing different expectations to what they want out of an event or party that takes place after a recent death or tragedy. My experiences are much more in line with Laura’s, where *not* acknowledging a recent commonly-experienced death would not only be unusual, but would definitely offend some people. But I get that’s not necessarily universal.
Walky’s still behaving inappropriately, though. Even if he did not want to come here and be reminded about Mike, and felt blindsided by it, the best way to handle that would have been to step out of the room or just leave the party entirely, not to make a big scene and double-down on it even when it was clear that everyone else’s feelings were more in line with Dorothy’s than his own, and that people felt he was mocking Mike’s death (because, well, he was, even if pain and not contempt was what was fueling it).
I’m not calling him a monster—this is Walky, this is how Walky tends to handle depressing subjects, he’s 18 or 19 at best, without a ton of life experience, and he is not particularly emotionally mature—and Amber’s reaction to HIM is much, much worse than his reaction to Dorothy. But his behavior here was not okay, and people are upset with him for a reason. You can acknowledge that his feelings are valid and still criticize him for valuing those feelings over everyone else’s.
(Also, I don’t think it’s weird to do the moment of silence partway through the event—not everyone shows up to a party at the same time; parties often do not have a firmly fixed “start” time. And the point of public acknowledgement is for people to be there. Doing it at the “beginning”, when only a few people are there, is when it starts to feel performative, like you’ve only done it to say that you did it, and not because it actually had meaning for anyone.)
I’d feel ambushed if I went to a party that was not a funeral or a wake and found out the host had decided everyone had to stand up and give a sincere speech about what a recently deceased person person meant to me, personally. (Hell, I’d feel encroached upon if I went to a funeral or a wake and was pushed to make a speech when I didn’t want to! I have absolutely been to ceremonies like that where I couldn’t bring myself to say anything, or just didn’t have anything *to* say.) But I really have to push back on the idea I keep seeing here that just *mentioning* something that, again, everyone in this room recently experienced together, even something as upsetting as death, is akin to Dorothy verbally assaulting people, on the grounds that they didn’t agree to it ahead of time. A moment of silence is a passive thing where all you have to do is….nothing. Literally nothing. It’s like protesting by not singing the National Anthem at a ballgame. In the privacy of your own mind, you are welcome to think about tacos, rather than about the sad thing—no one will no!
Expecting people not to even *mention* extremely recent and relevant events in their life is bizarre, and invoking the language of sexual assault to condemn them for when they do it is weird and gross. (You didn’t, but other people have, repeatedly.)
Thank you, Kimi and Hazel. I appreciate hearing your points of view. They make a lot of sense. Thank you for sharing your opinions with me — they are helpful.
Yeah like obviously he did this in the worst possible way, but I also understand that sitting in a room by yourself when there’s SUPPOSED to be someone else there, but they will never be again, can never be again…. thats the quietest of quiet. I feel like we have some conflict of grieving styles here, mixed in with too much trauma.
I also think people are a little too eager in these comments sections to forget that Dumbing of Age is a comedy comic that makes use of a lot of exaggeration and hyperbole. Walky’s behavior would be cartoonishly unforgivable IRL, but I’m not sure we’re supposed to read it quite as heavily–just like how Dorothy’s dialogue a couple comics ago reads as hyperoblivious if you take it totally literally.
this is the perfect comment. i want to pin this comment to the top of the comments section on every strip for all time. i want everyone to have to read the phrase “people are a little too eager in these comments sections to forget that Dumbing of Age is a comedy comic that makes use of a lot of exaggeration and hyperbole” before they post for the rest of time.
But he and Amber were still doomed. Walky needs a distraction from Mike and dating Mike’s best friend would just be painful for him. And Amber needs someone to help her sort through all her complicated feelings, and being around someone desperate to change the subject to something trivial would likewise be problematic. Amber and Walky were right for each other in Book 9, but their needs have changed since they provess trauma differently. And that’s okay!
I don’t think they were ever actually right for each other. Their problem was that this was always a relationship of convenience and attraction. Nothing wrong with that, but there was no substance there beyond dry humping and enabling their dry humping by saying how “trash” they were for it. Amber even said that being with Walky wasn’t supposed to be serious, which is why she’s chosen to bail now, because it suddenly got more serious and having an actual conversation with him about his mistake is too much work for what she wanted.
It doesn’t need to be about finding a distraction from Mike, Mike was alive when they started hooking up, nor is it about Amber needing someone more capable of emotional support. They just never had much to start with.
I always thought they were good for each other. When Amber was freaking out about Sal, Walky came after her and cheered her up with taco bell jokes. Walky understood that Amber and Amazi-girl were different people, and was sensitive to the way Amber feels inferior to Amazi-girl. I think AntJ is right that it won’t work anymore, but I felt like they had potential.
This is kind of their friend group. I think if most of the cast had friends outside the group we’d see them by now. The only one that comes to mind as operating even slightly outside the main cast group is Marcie. Jennifer, I guess technically rolls with a new group of people, but again we know them, and they don’t get much time in comic.
Idk what kind of social group you belonged to, but I have never had more than 5-10 friends/people I choose to associate with at once, and frequently been as low as 3 decently close friends. On top of that, I have been peripheral (but not a part of) other people’s close-knit groups, that do everything together and barely interact outside of the group, consisting of around 5-10 people…
If you’re not the ‘chugging at a frat house’ kind of person, and especially if you are at all introverted, it’s super-easy to have less than 5 people that you do things with.
Very few of the main cast came to IU without someone else from their own school that they were already friends with living in the same dorm and taking the same classes, and when you have “home” that close, it’s easy to just stick with the familiar and hang with them and whoever ends up filtering into your group due to proximity. Plus, their non-IU friends might be at other schools, possibly out of state, or have jobs that make it hard to find times when all parties are available. (Before Ross got bailed out, Joyce went home for the weekend and realised the people she’d hoped to see hadn’t come home the same weekend.)
When I was in college, most of my friends were in my dorm, because they were who I saw all the time, and the ones I had outside of it were in band, because you spend A Lot of time together when you’re part of a group like that, especially marching band.
And for friends they might have at home, aside from Marcie, Sal had separated from her local friends, and any she made at boarding school are likely out of state. Walky has some strong indicators of having ADHD, and being kind of ‘out of sight, out of mind’ with regards to people is something else that it can cause. Jennifer’s HS friend group probably dropped her, much like Alice, due to the whole ‘causing a wreck while drunk’ thing. We’ve seen Joyce is friends with Sara’s sister, but her home friend group, along with Becky’s, were part of the church who thought bailing Ross out was a Good Idea.
All this to say, I can easily understand how a bunch of people living on campus for college would end up just spending time with the people around them in their dorm.
Kind of a chicken and the egg situation. If the characters had people that they interacted with on a regular basis outside the established cast, those people would also become part of the cast. (e.g., Becky was just Joyce’s friend from home, separate from the IU storylines, but then she started appearing regularly, and is now part of the cast.)
There are a number of characters who don’t have much to do with the main storyline. Jacob, Sierra, Agatha, both Rachels, etc. Divorced from the Walkyverse context, Jacob’s just some guy who Joe works out with and Joyce had (has?) a crush on.
I see my HS friends weren’t the only people who took Halloween *way* too seriously. For some reason lots of people think the costumes mean they can act out in a way they normally wouldn’t. Must be the convenient excuse.
He was also Walky’s roommate, and I read this as Walky being in pain and confusion and trying to avoid dealing with it at a fun party. That’s not to say his behavior is okay, but as an audience, I think we can extend some sympathy to him that his friends won’t have the spoons to grant at the moment.
Yeah he was his roommate and thus if HE was in his feelings about it he should have KNOWN that Amber, who was much closer to Mike, would probably be even worse.
I suspect his mistake was thinking that his way of coping would work for the rest of the group, too – when really, for them it would be a step backwards.
Walky is 100% entitled to have his own upsetting feelings about his *roommate’s death*, even if yes, other people were closer to said roommate and can be expected to have even heavier feelings about that loss.
The problem is that his coping mechanism, or at least this stage of it, is very out of line with how the other people in this room are feeling/handling Mike’s death, and because he’s Walky, he kept pushing instead of responding to the very clear indicators to that effect when he started this bit.
I would also say that you could apply most of those points to Dorothy too, So i can see why that happening would cause him to be upset and lash out.
They both did something that was inconsiderate of other people’s feelings as a way of coping with the death of someone they knew, the only difference in my mind is that Walky actually knew Mike pretty well, and that his method is something the guy probably would have actually found funny.
He definitely has my sympathy. I think he was acting in an incredibly insensitive way, but I can understand where he’s coming from. Which is more or less my opinion on Dorothy right now too, so I feel like that’s just This Arc.
So I guess this confirms that Wally wasn’t actually in denial but was attempting (in the worst possible way) to lighten the mood/trying to escape from the downer mood.
I was about to blame Dorothy for bringing up such recent trauma for everyone, but then I remembered Willis established in the previous strips that she’s not exactly coping well either. She probably is desperately trying to figure out what she SHOULD be doing to handle what happened – what is the “right” thing to do – and came up with “acknowledge it.”
She’s definatly using her presidential identity as a coping mechanism and that is understandable. Though I hope she will eventually acknowledge that people reacting badly to her speech here isn’t solely the fault of her audience. Her first reaction here is to blame her audience for not acting the way she wants.
Sorry, got flag when I wanted to hit reply.
Yes, I think Dorothy feels she should find a way to help everyone with getting over what happened – she wants to be the president, she needs to be able to deal with stuff like this, right?, right?! Sadly, she is really bad with emotions.
Why Sarah pushed her to „say a few words“ I will never understand though..
Sarah didn’t push her to go though, Dorothy came up to her and said she should give a speech which Sarah didn’t want to do. In retrospect I think Dorothy knew Sarah wouldn’t and used is as an opening to say she was giving a speech. Also worth noting Sarah had no idea what Dorothy would say.
“In retrospect I think Dorothy knew Sarah wouldn’t and used is as an opening to say she was giving a speech.”
I’m reasonably certain this is true, otherwise Dorothy would have had that conversation with Joyce, with whom she’s MUCH closer with and would be far more likely to take her up on the idea of saying a few words.
Damn, the first panel is making me hate Dorothy.
And honestly, I think this strip 100% proves what myself and other commenters were saying two days ago: Dorothy was over the line with her “ahem ahem, let’s talk about something awful because I decided this was a good time.”
This here? This is what happens when you force people into uncomfortable topics they’re not ready to address. I’m not saying Walky’s response is healthy, but he was pushed.
People need to be in the right space (mentally and sometimes physically) to address things like death. If you push them or force them, they’re going to lash out.
Dorothy has no right to be surprised or hurt that this is the reaction she provoked.
Yeah, so far I think the comments have been pretty measured–Walky is being shitty, but he’s coming from a painful place. Dorothy is being shitty, but she’s been unsure what to do with herself lately and, well, she’s kind of bad at engaging naturally with people. They both are at fault here, but they’re also kind of dumb messed-up people trying their best.
The thought that crossed my mind when reading this strip was “poor kids”. No villains in the room, just a bunch of stressed out teens making fumbling inappropriate choices that hurt each other.
Nobody is ever in the right space to address death. It just goes ahead and happens. One of the reasons it upsets people is that it’s absolute proof the universe isn’t just about them.
Yeah its a bit reductive and armchair-therapist-y.
I agree with the first sentence and the overall sentiment though.
Death destroys more than an individual life. The damage ripples around in unpredictable ways.
Idk, I can’t super blame her for her initial reaction. I agree that the whole moment of silence was in incredibly bad taste and wtf was she thinking, but she probably saw this and thought “oh, walky’s being emotionally insensitive and amber’s getting violent, here we go again.” I have a feeling that, now that it’s clear how much he’s hurt by it, she’s going to realize it was a bad idea
I think that might be a bit harsh. I read the first panel as her also trying to diffuse the situation with a joke. It wasn’t a great idea here, but I don’t think she was doing anything malicious or self-centred or whatnot.
Honestly Dorothy is one of the LEAST qualified people in the room to bring up Mike , even if his death affects her. She was not his friend, roommate, were they even classmates?
Doesn’t social etiquette dictate that the people closest to the dead person are the ones setting the how the public mourning will be handled? If Amber, Ethan and Walky are not saying anything, Dorothy is the one committing a faux pas bringing it up.
I agree with this point, Dorothy might be trying to cope in her own way here but it doesn’t give her a pass to speak for Mike’s actual friends. As Walky and Amber demonstrate here, it’s a well meaning act that ends up ignoring those most affected by the tragedy.
True, dorothy knew Mike a lot less than Amber, Mike, even Joyce.
But, she has also been going to counseling a long time (even before Mike’s death and the kidnapping). That might help her see the value in communications. (Because, let’s face it, Amber, mike, etc. Were train wrecks even before Mike’s death, so what they were doing wasn’t working either)
“Moments of silence” are not communicating, though. They’re pretty much the opposite. And even if they were, springing them in an unrelated event without warning to the participants is no bueno.
He’s not wrong. “on this day of ghosts and skellingtons, let’s take a very sincere and somber moment of silence” is an inappropriate thing to spring on people during a halloween party.
well, it doesn’t excuse it but it does explain it. but it’d probably would’ve been best for dorothy to ask sarah and joyce what she planned to say ahead of time so they can give their permission
Also ngl kind of hoping Walky gets to enjoy some extra special Halloween nightmares with that attitude. Smug-ass “make me feel uncomfortable for half a second and I’ll say literally anything, no matter how hurtful, to stop you” is the conversational equivalent of bringing a knife to a pillow fight.
I mean they are all kind of dumb teenagers. It’s literally in the title. This is about as much as I expect from all of them. Could you imagine how less complicated things would be if even one character was emotionally mature or able to read a room?
Idk, that seems unfair. I agree what he said was totally out of line, but if we’re using your pillow fight analogy, that would imply that this situation was for talking about Mike and he took it too far. It wasn’t. It’s a party. And he’s well within his rights to say “I don’t want to talk about my recently dead roommate at a party,” even if he doesn’t have the emotional maturity to express it in a way that doesn’t involve lashing out
I lost my best friend to coronavirus in 2020. As far as the medical people could tell, he died on Christmas Eve 2020 (his mother called emergency services after he’d been out of touch for several weeks). I am not over his death and I will NEVER be over it for as long as I live.
I get where Walky is coming from here. I too experienced the bargaining, the anger, and the denial (i.e., the stages of grief). I know it wasn’t always comfortable for my family and loved ones to be around me when I was very actively upsetted. I also share Walky’s frustration about “performative” grieving. I think Dorothy has very good intentions, and Halloween (Samhain) is a time when the veil is thinner (IMHO), but well-intentioned stuff can actually make grief worse.
It hit me hard when Walky said “I came here to escape” because that’s how I feel in my grief but you CAN’T escape it. In my experience (and I’ve had people I love die before, but no one who was as close to me) all you can do is sit with it and try not to let it break you. It NEVER fully goes away.
I’m sorry for my very depressing comment; this storyline obviously hit a nerve with me!
My best friend died in October 2019. It took me several weeks to even be able to say out loud what happened.
I guess I just came to say… I know your pain. Internet hugs?
I agree with getting where Walky is coming from, I get where Dorothy and Amber and Joyce are coming from too, because at the end of the day these are 18/19yo kids dealing with the hardest thing in life. The inescapable truth that no one you love is guaranteed to still be there in an hour.
A really close friend of mine passed away in 2005. That’s a literal lifetime ago for some of the people in this comments section. I was just graduated from high school, and it hit me like a truck. There is a strong line of Before and After the day I woke up to that phone call. Grief just kind of rips through you and reshapes you…sometimes it hurts so bad while that happens that it makes you a terrible person to be around. Sometimes hurt people hurt people, as the saying goes.
That was seventeen years ago, almost to the month, and I’m still not over it entirely. It hurts less most of the time, I have dealt with it and packaged the trauma into something easier to look at, but sometimes I’ll find him in an old picture of mine, or I’ll say something I know I got from him… and it just hurts all over again.
Thank you all so much and I’m really sorry for everyone’s losses.
Nova, a neighbour friend of mine died in a small plane crash literally the day I graduated high school. His father was flying him to Nantucket and something went wrong with the plane. (I REFUSE to fly in small planes, EVER.) We weren’t as close as my best friend who recently died, but we kind of had a mutual low-key crush on each other and I don’t know what could have developed from that. I’m not over that either and never will be.
These days I often think of that line from “WandaVision:” What is grief if not love persevering?”
Thank you for sharing such personal stories. We are all listening and caring for you, Nova and Jaime and Masumi.
I often need to take breaks from this comment section, because everyone is dealing with their own fresh, raw traumas and the strip just stirs everything up, and that makes folks so prickly and sensitive that it’s easy to accidentally rub each other the wrong way. Trauma works like that. Everything hurts more, startles more, scares more, offends more, enrages more, when one is on edge from thinking about trauma.
But there’s value in the interactions of this big pile of bouncing prickle balls, all the same. We can be here for each other, and make mistakes and (hopefully) eventually forgive each other our mistakes, even in our own prickly ways.
Because we’re all dealing with this pain together. And this art helps us to acknowledge it and share it. And understand and analyze it through the Rorschach blog of a common project in literary analysis, watching a work of art unfold together, with our comments becoming a permanent part of its opus.
“Pain shared can be relieved. Joy shared can be multiplied.”
Jaime, when I lost a friend some months back my brother said (paraphrasing someone I think?) That when we mourn someone what we are really mourning is our relationship to them. It sounds super obvious but it really helped me. Or as Elton John said, “Love lies bleeding”.
I’ve had bad luck trying to include links in comments, but everyone should search YouTube for “The Sound of Silence Disturbed,” which is one of the best covers I’ve ever heard. I am clinically depressed (and even more so after the death of my best friend) and that song is basically how I feel inside my head.
At least IMHO anger is the flip side of depression. I vascillate between the two. Honestly, I prefer being angry, because at least I have ENERGY then. Depression is just…at least for me…grey and boring. But I’ve been depressed much more often than angry lately because, well, EVERYTHING. *gesturing vaguely at the entire world*
JBento: I agree 100% that it’s better than the original; I usually don’t like covers! Laura: no worries! I love kittehs, especially eldritch kittehs.
I think Disturbed’s SoS is the only cover I’ve heard that I think is BETTER than the original, too. The way the vocalist tones “‘Fools’, said I, ‘you do not know'” gives me life every time.
I found that anger was a short term “cure” for depression, because at least I was feeling something. But it has corrosive negative effects over the long term. Or the short term if it gets you to do something stupid.
“And in the naked light I saw
10,000 kitties, maybe more.
Kitties twitching their nine long tails.
Cats with wings and horns and with scales.
Rising from the dead, with voices from beyond.
I was too fond
of your mewing,
not the sound
of silence.”
(From the song, “Hello Kitty, Hello Clone.” Speaking of Halloween and eldritch horrors.)
Nope (I’ll check that out) but I’m pretty sure I owned a “Hello Cathulhu: t-shirt at one point! (Big Lovecraft fan here with the disclaimer that I an NOT a fan of his racism/sexism/anti-Semitism/elitism/overall bigotry.)
… Okay I’ll bite.
I feel like people exaggerate or maybe misunderstand his bigotry? I know that mental illness is not an excuse but that guy was Severely mentally ill. His list of phobias goes for miles. It wasn’t just other people he was afraid of but also stuff like temperatures below freezing, invertebrates, great spans of time, monumental architecture, deserts, oceans, rats, dogs. And we all know how “effective” mental health care was back then, he was lucky they didn’t lobotomize him.
Like, cut the poor guy some slack, he did also put in the effort to become a better person later in life.
I do wonder what that guy woulda been like if he had access to mental healthcare and probably also didn’t live in a house alone with… I wanna say 12-15 stray cats (plus his own terribly-named pet). He definitely had some issues.
Short answer: Read “The Horror at Red Hook.” That’s one of his stories I just can’t read any more.
Long answer: Yes, Lovecraft may have been mentally ill, especially because mental health treatment was still in its infancy when he was alive. However, he was racist even by the standards of his time; he basically thought that blue-eyed, white-skinned, blond-haired Europeans were the “superior race” and maintained a lot of hatred for the “mongrel hordes” (his words NOT mine!) of Black and Brown immigrants to the U.S. You can see this attitude in a lot of his stories besides “Red Hook,” including “The Call of Cthulhu” (in which a sailor has “hateful Negroid lips”), “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath” with the “fat Black” slaves, “Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and his Family” with just…cringe stuff about Africa. His letters, as well, show a lot of evidence of his bigotry, which was excessive even for his time. I’ve no doubt that his attitude partially stemmed from the fact that he came from a once-prosperous WASP New England family but most of his family’s money and prestige was gone by the time he lived. But that’s not an excuse!
I stongly suggest reading Bobby Derrie’s blog or books on Lovecraft; he addresses Lovecraft’s various -isms very well. Derrie is up there with S. T. Joshi and Donocan Loucks when it comes to Lovecraft scholars.
For what it’s worth, I feel like there WAS a decent person somewhere inside Lovecraft’s various predjudices; I’ve read the text of many of his letters (and seen some of the originals in the library at Brown University; he doodled adorable pictures, often of cats, in the margins!). I can understand why he had so many correspondants and why they (like August Derleth, although IMHO he COMPLETELY misunderstood Lovecraft’s mythos (but I must given Derleth credit for starting Arkham House)) were so devoted.
I think it’s fair to say that Lovecraft’s work might not have been so powerful and so terrifying (I once read “The Colour Out of Space” and “The Whisperer in Darkness” back-to-back in an empty dorm room and when my roomate got back from a night clubbing, she found ALL THE LIGHTS IN THE ROOM TURNED ON and me sitting bolt-upright on my bed!) without his encompassing fear of the “Other.” Unfortunately, for Lovecraft the “Other” was often other human beings who didn’t look like or didn’t have the same skin colour as him.
I also recommend Victor Lavalle’s novel “The Ballad of Black Tom” as a good, anti-racist retelling of “The Horror at Red Hook” and, of course, “Lovecraft Country” by Matt Ruff (the book is better than the TV series).
One thing I’ve never quite been sure how to tie to his racism is what seemed be nearly equal disgust for basically normal rural white people. Isolated rural groups keep turning back to worshiping evil gods or moving underground and turning into hordes of monsters.
being in a group and dealing with it together might help them all communicate with each other better, but prolly best to do one on one and given advice so no one blurts out stuff as insensitive as walky just now
And here I thought the reason why Amber and Walky no longer fucked with each other was going to not live up to the hype of our imaginations going wild while Willis set it up. Holy cow, that’s a pretty valid reason to not want to get back into it with somebody.
Walky really went all the way past scorched Earth into scorched universe.
I am praying to a God that Willis no longer believes in that the Ruth/Billie breakup is at least far less drama than this. Because I just can’t handle two huge melodrama bombs within days.
My interpretation: Amber’s line puts emphasis is on the past tense. It WAS Halloween. Things WERE lighthearted fun between friends. And now it is not. The party is over, at least for Amber, Walky, and probably Amber+Walky.
I read, “It WAS Halloween” to mean, “It was horrific.” Halloween = horror. Being told that the death of one of her two best friends was a fake visited horrors upon her mind.
Or, in the alternative, “It WAS Halloween,” as in, “It WAS the day when the dead return to earth and are more present with us than usual.” HeadMike is strong and loud, banging around inside her brain, at this point.
I was taking the word “WAS” to mean, “this was truly,” as opposed to meaning, “it was once but is not anymore”.
“it was halloween” = “it was horrific” feels like a stretch to me, I feel like it’s more of a “today was going to be Halloween, and now it’s another day where we all feel the trauma and don’t have any kind of fun” (which yes, is not just Walky’s fault, but he certainly brought the attention on himself)
Interesting, and blows my take out of the water, which was:
Walky was all “come on, guys, let’s pretend nothing happened”.
Amber responded with “this is life and shit happens whether you want it to be a fun holiday or not”
Important to note that while Walky might not have been as close to Mike as Ethan or Amber he’s probably the one who is directly confronted with Mike’s absence the most right now.
Though really I shouldn’t need to say anything to justify anybody’s behavior. If you’re looking for someone to blame in a situation like this you’re not thinking it through enough. They’re all victims.
Wow im suprised that Walky explain his emotion so clear, almost at therapeutic level
But My pain is bigger than yours contest began. Whos win whose next you decide! epic rap battles of grieveeeeee
I get why everyone is pissed off. I ALSO get that Walky is wondering why the fuck someone would bring up their friend who was murdered (felony murdered certainly) at a party after they’ve all been kidnapped by the same people. That’s a definite literal trigger for some people and Dorothy making a moment of it was in extreme poor taste.
Yeah. Well-meaning doesn’t always translate to good idea – it doesn’t even usually, honestly. She definitely could have gone and like, talked to a few people who are directly affected, it’s not that big of a party, after all.
That being said, she might have forgotten Walky even then? I know I was blindsided by this, even though it makes sense.
She *could* have talked quietly with a few people to organize a separate event the next day for those who would appreciate it. Halloween is for snapping our fingers at Death; All Saints’ Day is for remembering.
I definitely think Dorothy picked a really inappropriate time to do her “moment of silence”, and she could’ve asked if everyone else wanted to do it beforehand instead of just kinda springing it on them. I find Walky’s reasoning relatable, I’d go to a Halloween party to have fun for a few hours, not to feel sad about people I knew who died.
It’s funny that Walky complains about wanting to forget about it for “one goddamn minute” because really if he had been quiet for one minute he would’ve had a whole night of the escapism he wanted.
This only works is Walky’s willing to acknowledge pain, which he isn’t. Everyone has sore shins and Walky’s like “hey, you guys, if y’all acknowledge your pain I have to acknowledge mine so why don’t we pretend Mike’s not dead instead.” And he could’ve well and truly done that for the rest of the night if he had been quiet for one minute but instead he decided not to.
I love when characters from this comic do fairly rational if dumb things (Dorothy thinking maybe it was a good time to bring everyone together for a moment of silence) (Walky lashing out because his grief isn’t being fixed by that, it’s actually making him worse) (Amber resorting straight to violence as a gut reflex from abuse/her time as Amazi girl) and everyone in the comments plays it out like it’s a Dangan Ronpa murder trial and we need to choose one person to be responsible for the events
Amber was not resorting straight to violence as a gut reflex from her time as Amazigirl. Amber has always had a streak of uncontrolled violence and anger which frightened her. Amazigirl was the one who could safely and usefully channel this urge to violence by strict adherence to a comic book code of ethics. When Amber gave way to violence she could hurt people who didn’t really deserve it. When attacked by a bro with a phone knife, Amazigirl would have used a minimum of force to safely subdue. Amber sliced him up like he deserved. Giving in to sudden violence is all Amber. And yeah, father and trauma in the background.
Everybody in this strip hiding their faces to some extent (behind glasses, shades, domino mask . . .) but none more so than Walky. I doubt it was intentional, but it strikes. Especially if you consider their openness in this moment to be proportionally inverse to their level of concealment.
Danny is wearing a hood with an open face because he feels no real grief about Mike and has nothing to be open about because he already said it to Ethan.
Compare it to Dorothy who has a similar relationship to Mike that Danny has, has a similar amount of openness to express regarding him, and has a similarly uncovered face with her costume.
The interpretation still works.
And this, kids, is why you don’t spring traumatic memories on people unannounced, no matter how much you want to make yourself the center of every gathering*.
*(anyone else asked themselves why Dorothy prompted “you should say a few words” to Sarah and not Joyce, whose dorm room this also is and with whom she0s much closer with? Just me? Ah well)
I feel like people are missing a a few key things here. This comic whether directly or indirectly, focuses on the college life of very young kids. Granted, they are in college and have been through some hard-core shit, but these are 18-20 year Olds going through it by themselves and learning.
And I don’t know about you guys, but all the dumbest things I ever did was in my very early college days. I’m not excusing anyone’s behavior but being a dumb kid going through serious shit alone won’t do anyone any favors.
Same as most of us it seems, this arc is hitting a nerve with me, and i was a callous dick a couple days ago and i’m sorry about that.
i think one thing we can relate to in each other’s antagonistic takes maybe, is the underlying anger at our personal needs being disrespected in times of grief. But grief is inherently messy, i think. Grief *wants* to lash out at the living.
It helped me a lot when someone told me that trauma could be thought of as grief. Something awful happened, and things will never be the same, and dealing with that is fucking hard and unfair. You mourn the you before you got damaged. Your sense of trust, of justice, and security is shattered. it *wants* to be shattered. Because that’s how the world feels now, like shit.
And everyone’s like, “look we all suffer, get over it” and you know it in your brain, sure, pain is banal, grief is the common lot. but really, all you want is to scream and break stuff and get in people’s faces and startle them out of them complacency, because what, you’re just supposed to roll over and accept that “that’s life”?? like fuck!
Whether it’s lashing out at oneself in the form of guilt, self-destruction, nihilism, or lashing out at others in the form of blame, physical violence, or distance, those are for the most part unavoidable aspects of coping with trauma or grief, i think.
In fact the comment section actually reflects the narrative strikingly. All the characters in this interaction and all the real people seething at each other down here are having to do something about their big spiky feelings and they’re just exploding all over the place and shooting shards at everyone, because this is the sort of heavy personal shit that immediately reaches into the darkest parts of your psyche and makes your kill-kill-kill chemicals shoot up and shut everything else out.
Grief is messy like that. It *wants* to be messy. Of course we can always argue that this or that person is doing something *especially* fucked up because we’re still moral beings, we still need to be held to account for our actions.
But on a deeper level, what i’m feeling now is, everyone’s behaving in the best way they know how, and sometimes there simply will be casualties no matter what. Because grief will not be reasoned away. it wants blood.
Thank you Milu.
Thank you very much.
That was very profound.
Sometimes I wonder whether I find the comments section hurtful because I grew up in a pre-Internet generation. Maybe I just don’t get how the “digital native” generation talks.
But you encapsulated it more truly: it’s because grief and trauma are messy, and we deal with mess messily. And that’s not generational: that’s human.
I got pretty freaked out by the comments section a little while back, had to take some time off.
I’m trying to be more gentle now, for myself and others, and keep things into perspective. 🙂
Yes, Reverie is amazing. I adore her music. I’m still not completely sure about her latest album, but i definitely i need to give it a couple more spins. she took her esthetic in a new direction, but she’s still an incredible lyricist.
The album Carrie & Lowell, by Sufjan Stevens which “Fourth of July” is from, is one that i just can’t stop returning to, for years now. it’s just so rich and, as you say, haunting. “Fourth of July” is the song that speaks most directly about grief, but the album on the whole expresses his feelings following the death of his mother, Carrie. (I’m not a fan of all of Sufjan’s work, but this one album is just an absolute gem.)
I really like “Sail” too! Very good recommendation.
Alas i discovered that song on the British show Fleabag (which i can not recommend enough, it’s short, it’s witty, and it’s so fresh, it’s like nothing else i’ve ever seen) and in that show the track is used for comedic effect… and so, unfortunately i think that association is now way too ingrained for me and i can’t really experience it as it was meant anymore =/
Another song I thought about sharing here, that was and remains my theme track for the recent loss of my friend Nora, is “Des Fins” by french rapper Virus. It’s devastating, but i’m afraid the lyrics are fairly important, so, i’m linking it here but well. it’s in french.
Oh, gah, rip my heart out! I absolutely love that song. WOW.
For those who don’t speak French well, the lyrics are in the description below the video. Google Translate and Bing Translator are both ready to help. 🙂
A while back, I made a mashup of “Sail” with “Try” by P!nk, kind of in honor of my grandparents.
It’s good to take songs you love and make them your own, put them into new contexts, and honor the dearly departed through music. Helps us grieve and celebrate those who have made us what we are.
nooooo wait you mean you knew it? how???
yeah, it’s… it’s something. i tear up every time i listen to it. and that is many times.
A while back, I made a mashup of “Sail” with “Try” by P!nk, kind of in honor of my grandparents.
wow very cool! is it online somewhere? How does it relate to your grandparents, are those songs they like(d)?
funny you mention “taking a song you love and making it your own”. these last few weeks i’ve been obsessed with a song called “To Agalma” by this astonishingly versatile Greek singer, Semeli (she also dabbles in old-school rebetiko, as well as hip hop, she kills every time, she is SO talented), and recently i decided to learn it, then recorded a couple versions of it, i might end up with a proper cover but for now i’ve just been messing with synth tones and vocal harmonies.
it’s also a song about grief, as it happens. this one about a relationship ending though. with the interesting twist that the narrator talks about the mistakes made by the other person. i love that there’s a song that’s both “you fucked up, so i had to leave” but also “this is so sad and so hard for me”.
It’s just… ugh. here’s a link to the lyrics with translations, but i’m afraid the site is down atm, so um.
Listen, i could talk about music i love, alllll day night =) (it’s 1am where i live) ^^
and i love love love recommendations, so do not hesitate to pile them up =)
I just listened to that Greek song you recommended. It’s lovely.
I didn’t know that particular song, but I do love French rap and listen to it as often as I can. Have performed French rap for most of my life. So I loved it when I played it at your recommendation.
No, the mashup was just something I performed in a few small circles of friends, at online open mics. The songs just reminded me of my grandparents’ relationships with each other, and the trials they went through during World War Two and its aftermath.
re: anonymity (the other message) oh, i see. fair enough.
thanks for the link! the mix sounds nice =)
i love the tape-warp effects they use in lofi hip hop sometimes, when the pitch just moves up or down by a quarter-tone or so. hmmm such a mood…
I do love French rap and listen to it as often as I can. Have performed French rap for most of my life.
!!!
of course, i’m massively curious. i hope you will share some of your faves, when you feel like =)
i wish you a pleasant rest and… i will follow your cue actually. i just put on a sickly sweet romcom i’ve seen before, just to wind down… but i feel my eyes taking longer and longer to blink haha.
Damn you Willis for being able to write characters that are messy and all experience emotions and deal with things in different ways that causes conflicts amongst each other! *shakes fist*
It’s interesting to see so many people jump down Dorothy’s throat about the moment of silence, completely ignoring that the only one who seems to have had a problem with it was Walky, and his reasoning for ruining it is inherently selfish.
I get that he’s allowed to grieve in his own way, but when you grieve in a way that directly interferes with the grief of others, you’ve crossed a line. If Walky hadn’t absolutely demolished what Dorothy was setting up, judging by the reactions of the other characters people would have considered it at the very worst to be good-intentioned. Dorothy, Joyce, Amber, Sal, and Sarah all seemed at the very least to be okay with the moment of silence, if not on-board. Of course, we don’t have much to go on with the absolutely nuclear fallout of Walky’s actions overshadowing things.
I just found it striking how many people lept to “Dorothy’s being an Asshole” when all appearances indicate everyone else was into, or at least tolerating, her idea (save Walky).
I mean, if her idea is something that has no negative effects on anyone except the person who lived with the guy for months, it’s not really having no negative effects? Even if Walky hadn’t caused a scene, spending an entire minute in silence thinking about his dead friend that he’s trying to escape from would probably have been too much for him in some way.
I’m not saying dorothy is an evil person or that her idea was ill-intentioned, but personally the moment she brought it up it was obvious to me that ‘Bringing up that person that you were close to that died with no warning’ was going to make someone upset.
And yet the people who have as much (if not more) call to be upset about this were fine with it. Either everyone’s grief counts or it’s The Grief Olympics, but either way Walky’s being selfish here.
In my view, if everyone in a group is grieving one way, and one person is grieving another, it is the responsibility of the one to step away.
That said, I’m not upset at the characters here (they’re a bunch of dumb teens, no one should expect them to process any of this well), I just continually marvel at how the comments love to vilify a single party for minor mistakes as if they’re gaping character flaws.
But this wasn’t a grieving event. Walky was invited to a party, an event that, by definition, was about having fun. And then he got blindsided by literally “hey, here’s some more of what’s been triggering you”, the very thing he was told he could come here to get away from.
Like, imagine you were allergic to peanuts. And someone invites you to a peanuts-free event. And then you’re there, and suddenly someone goes, “and now we’ll shower everyone in peanuts”. It doesn’t matter that everyone else isn’t allergic to peanuts; in fact, everyone else loves peanuts. It’s their favourite snack. You’re still fucked. That’s what’s happening here.
When my Grandfather died weeks before Christmas, we had a moment of silence in the middle of our Christmas party to remember him. If I had cracked jokes or explained my wild denial theories as to how he’s not dead after all, I would 100% be the asshole.
Moments of silence are quite common, even at parties. Expecting everyone else to cater to your avoidance of grief is selfish.
We don’t know everyone else was “fine” with it. They might have been stood there internally rolling their eyes at Dorothy, or be upset that she brought up Mike. Just because Walky was the only one to say something doesn’t mean that no-one else agrees with him.
Of course, we can reverse this. The default state was “party.” The party was helping Walky grieve, or at least giving him metal reprieve. How come blindsiding Walky with “and now we shall have a minute of silence to think about Mike” isn’t interfering with Walky’s grieving, a dude that’s going to live the rest of the semester in a room made silent because Mike died?
So because Walky’s grief requires no one else around him grieve in any visible way, they are automatically assholes because they do? Dorothy’s got (to my mind) as much (if not more) reason to be upset here and she’s not upset at Dorothy, she’s upset at Walky.
He could have left when that happened without shitting all over the people around him who WERE ALSO GRIEVING and seem to be into the moment of silence.
When the one requires the sacrifice of the many, it crosses a line. If the group weren’t all seemingly okay with the moment of silence, this would be a different matter.
Man, no. This idea that one should sacrifice the self for the group, regardless of the stances of the self and the group and the situation involved, is just no.
Walky could have just left. The problem in my view is his explanation (that he came to the party to avoid his grief) requires that everyone at the party never give any space to his grief, and one single minute of that silence was unacceptable to him. He didn’t have to “sacrifice himself” but he sure was ready to sacrifice the others at the party.
If he left, people would rag on that too. “Oh, he’s so immature that he can’t process his emotions” or something like that, I guarantee it. Hell, I think he’d probably catch flak for going along with this dumbass moment of silence, somehow.
Nobody woulda cared if Walky had left. Someone might have followed him and asked him what’s wrong.
Nobody calls someone walking away from an uncomfortable situation “immature”, because that’s actually a very mature thing to do. And I do think the majority of people would recognize this?
Maybe we’ve been noticing different comments, but whenever Walky does basically anything, somebody down here gets on his ass for it. In-story, maybe they woulda followed him and checked in. Here? Not a chance.
@RedCat: If Walky has just walked out of the room after Dorothy called for a moment of silence over Mike, people would DEFINITELY give him shit over it.
Someone last page deadass was like, when Walky is responding to a death of a peer badly it’s “going through a major life trauma” and when Dorothy does it it’s ” baffling combination of entitlement, misplaced sense of authority” and she has a “massive ego”. Like, OK. I don’t even have anything more to add there, it just visualizes what’s been bothering me about the comment section when Dorothy fucks up for a while.
Calling for a moment of silence in an unrelated party isn’t Dorothy grieving, it’s Dorothy trying to put the spotlight on Dorothy. This is a similar situation to when Dorothy tried to take over things after Jennifer got Joyce to go to the doctor.
I’m not about to get into how you obviously paint her fuckup in one of the worse ways possible, and how her process of grieving or trauma could absolutely entail her trying to Do The Right Thing For Everyone Else – and even if it’s not, it’s much more likely that she’s just Trying To Do The Right Thing. Which of course doesn’t always translate to being it going well or even being a good idea in the first place.
But also, this is again what I meant a few pages ago.
I would like to point out that we don’t know if anyone else has a problem with Dorothy doing this. We didn’t get time to see anyone’s reaction but Walky’s and Walky’s reaction immediately focused all attention and annoyance on him.
The only other person we’ve seen react to Dorothy was Sarah, who was very much exasperated with her wanting Sarah to say a few words. The “go ahead” that Sarah gave read, to me, as resignation instead of genuine consent.
I think it’s complicated. Dorothy created this situation, and Walky reacted badly to it. Both is (can be) understandable. Dorothy probably meant well, and Walky probably didn’t know how to react – I admit I’m not sure what kinda thought-process happened there, and it doesn’t help that we can’t see his face, but like… it’s understandable, even if he could have handled it better.
Like Dorothy could have handled her idea better.
Like Amber could have handled her anger at Walky better.
But people – especially teenagers – fuck up sometimes.
Let’s brace for Ruth (probably) fucking up.
I still don’t know where Dorothy gets off starting this debacle. Sure, have your precious moment of silence, but maybe don’t do it right at the exact start of the party? Maybe save it for later on, after people have had a chance to acclimate and maybe clear their heads of stuff before the inevitable return of Bad Feelings?
Like, who the fuck put her in charge of everyone else’s emotional state? They have no fucking recourse here except to leave if they don’t wanna be part of it, and that’s just shitty. It fucking sucks. “If you don’t wanna stop having fun at this party after I’ve sidelined you with fresh trauma, get the fuck out and begone.” What, one person gets to make every single decision for everyone, at a whim, just because they wanted to? Again, have your stupid-ass moment of silence, but give people even a little bit of warning first and save it for later.
Sure, you could just as easily say “Everyone else in the room can get over themselves and suck it up and let her get it over with and move on afterward”, but that’s not better. It’s still one busybody dictating how everyone else gets to think and act just because she put herself in charge. I get it, I fucking get it, she’s not doing well either, but if Walky doing poorly isn’t an excuse, it can’t be one for her either.
I’ve hated reading all the comments saying it’s Fine, Actually that she can just pull this out of nowhere. Maybe some of the other characters were fine with it, maybe some appreciated it, but I guess fuck anyone who doesn’t want to be constantly reminded about somebody’s death. There is no escape, you must feel bad at all times, no exceptions, and you have to be fine with whoever brought it up otherwise you’re in the wrong.
Like, I’m not saying Dorothy is Literally Satan, but the absolute quantity of pushback against the slightest hint that she’s maybe acting a little poorly is disgusting. It gives the impression that some of y’all really do think it’s fine if a single person sidelines an entire room with a bothersome topic, simply because “they’ll have to deal with it eventually anyway”. Like, okay??? So that gives everyone else the right to decide for them when “eventually” is?? Fuck off with that, it’s nasty and just as selfish as somebody saying “Nobody gets to talk about something uncomfortable ever”.
I dunno, maybe I’m just being an asshole by saying this, but I really do think Dorothy should have at least timed this better and maybe warned the people who actually had a connection to Mike. Maybe come up them separately and say “Hey, I kinda wanna talk about Mike real quick even if it’s just addressing the elephant in the room, is that gonna bother you?” and then give them a chance to make up their own mind whether or not to leave for a minute. They are not strangers. She knows how a lot of them are and how they might react, and could easily make an assumption that they were worth checking with first. Basic communication, I don’t know.
Again, because I know some people might just skim this, Dorothy is not the physical reincarnation of Super Hitler and Double Satan’s unholy fuckchild, but I do think she’s at least as wrong as Walky is for suddenly springing it on everyone with zero warning. “Can I have your attention” is not warning, because it doesn’t contain any words related to why she wants their attention. It’s weird how averse people are to letting this just be an inappropriate thing to do in this specific context and with this exact timing.
I am also not saying Walky’s response is justified. He’s being ridiculous too. He’s not who I’m currently on about at this individual moment.
This moment of silence isn’t actually about Mike. It’s about Dorothy. Which is why she directed “maybe you should say a few words” prompt (a prompt, you’ll note, which mentioned Mike at no point) at Sarah, who she knew wouldn’t do it (because she’s, well, Sarah), and not at Joyce, who Dorothy is much closer to, because Joyce might very well do it.
This whole thing started because Dorothy wanted to put the spotlight on Dorothy.
JB, don’t you think you may be painting Dorothy’s motivations in the most selfish possible light?
When she approached Sarah and said someone should say a few words, that was not necessarily a strategic ploy to get the gig and steal the show. Maybe she didn’t want to offer Joyce the gig because she felt that she’d been through enough or whatever. She and Sarah are both mom-type friends, hence plausibly why she turned to Sarah not Joyce.
She may have genuinely, and with the best of intentions, felt that, well, someone ought to acknowledge the recent traumatic events they’d all been through, and rightly or wrongly, when Sarah declined, decided she was as qualified as anyone to do this.
Were her intentions pure? I don’t know, but is that necessarily damning? Maybe she believes that she’s good with public talking, *and* also sincerely felt that someone, even if not her, should say something. Maybe she didnt think it through enough, but that’s not to say she hasn’t thought about it ethically at all. I’m sure we can all relate to doing something because (we believe) it needs to be done, but also enjoying it because as it happens, we also like doing the thing.
Seeing her motivations slightly more charitably doesnt have to stop you from thinking that was a terrible thing to do for all the reasons you’ve laid out.
When talking to Sarah, Dorothy doesn’t mention what the speech will be about. She just says Sarah should get people’s attention and say a few words. Additionally, these are things she (and everyone else) knows Sarah doesn’t want to do, ever. It’s like having the last piece of chocolate cake, and, having two options, asking the diabetic if they want it over the one with the sweet tooth. And then going, “welp, I asked, guess I can eat the slice.”
Maybe. But if I accepted your metaphor, the last piece of cake would have to be something that’s bugging Dorothy to no end and she finds it hard to think about anything else, *and* she assumes (rightly or wrongly) (well, wrongly it turns out) that basically every one in the room feels the same way and is just waiting for *someone* to have the courage to finish it.
I’m not sure about the fact that she doesn’t mention Mike, I can easily see that fact (and the fact that Sarah doesn’t explicitly ask what she feels someone should make a speech about) as pointing to the fact that Mike’s death and the overall insanity of the last couple weeks are the obvious thing to mention here. As thejeff said, “the elephant in the room”.
Again, I think a more charitable read is available.
The commentariat regularly turns Joyce into a supervillain over the dumb teenager shit she says as a dumb teenager. Charitable readings aren’t popular here.
Also, regardless of your personal feelings I’m sure you can see that Willis set this scene up with the strip of Dorothy smiling slightly manically like “I’m doing sooo fine”. Her coping mechanism seems to involve intervening, like she was antsy to do some adulting.
Incidentally while this would tend to confirm your suspicion that she went to Sarah on purpose because she knew full well Sarah wouldn’t want to be the one to talk publicly, it paints her intentions in a less sinister light I think?
I don’t think Dorothy is being particularly sinister – I actually think this is far LESS egregious than when she jumped on Joyce’s doctor appointment after Jennifer did all the work and took all the risk of Joyce blowing up in her face, even though this particular instance has had far worse consequences.
Hard agree. I think what Dorothy did is completely understandable given her mental state and all, but that doesn’t mean it was acceptable. Definitely should have checked with everyone first, and probably shouldn’t have taken Sarah’s exasperation with her as genuine permission to do this kind of thing without warning.
Dorothy put herself in charge, because she knows she should be in charge. She knows what’s best for everyone. She understands people.
And someday, the people will see that, and elect her as President. So she can do what’s best for everyone.
It’s so simple, really.
Grief is complicated. Too often in media, despite death being used often as sympathy, motivation, or what have you, we don’t usually get to see things like this. We get a timeskip to bypass it and get to the ‘healing’ or ‘acceptance’ phase. We completely miss these things. The messy side of grief. The part of grief that lashes out, or grieves in an unhealthy way. Everyone in this room is dealing with a very fucked up situation that happened. Either they were kidnapped, or they were friends to those that were kidnapped, or they had a friend/family member die during this event. Even if they were not directly kidnapped, someone like Sal might have a survivor’s guilty, seeing how her TWIN BROTHER had been kidnapped. There’s probably a part of her thinking ‘if I had been there, I could have protected him’.
I can understand where Walky’s coming from, because my mom died in 2021 and after she died, the house felt so quiet and empty. My dad and I both kept to ourselves, and both kept feeling like she would walk in the house at any moment, or call during what used to be her ‘riding home from work’ time. The silence is a constant reminder. Nobody else has to deal with this, everybody else may have their own dorm room as a shelter or escape from what happened. Not Walky. That doesn’t excuse Walky’s actions, but it makes it understandable why he’d react badly to being reminded of what happened during what is supposed to be a fun party.
I also think the timing for this storyline is important. Aside from getting clarity on the Ruth and Billie/Jennifer break up, this is also after Dorothy refuses to consider she’s could be autistic because she ‘understands people’. And here we have a storyline where the tipping point to things going to pot, is Dorothy. Now, I love Dorothy. She’s a really good character. I love that we’re seeing her flaws. And here is one of them. Dorothy’s thought process seems to be “at events post-someone dying, it is appropriate to mention the death and have a moment of silence”. But there’s nuances, and reading the room. If the event relates to the passing, or to the person in particular, that’d be a good reason to do as much. If we ever got the indication, say, that Mike absolutely loved Halloween and it was the only time he smiled or something, it would be appropriate to do a moment of silence in his memory at a Halloween party.
But as it stands… this is a Halloween party. Hosted by Sarah and Joyce. Neither of which were close to Mike. Neither hosted this party due to Mike, or because Mike died. Therefore… it’s not really needed or appropriate to hold a moment of silence. Dorothy doesn’t “understand people” as well as she thinks, she knows social norms and rules but cannot always put them into practice in social settings. In no way do I mean to say “see, see, Dorothy is autistic because blank”, I only say this to say that this flashback proves that Dorothy’s assertion that she understands people and cannot ever be anything other than “normal” (for whatever such a word would mean) is inherently false. I think someone in the next few storylines is going to bring up this event with Dorothy. And Dorothy will have to sit and ponder herself.
This is also not a post designating any bad guys or good guys. Dorothy and Walky both are going through stuff. That’s all.
Have you ever been in a situation where people are being so calm and reasonable about something and it just takes all your strength not to scream,
“what the fuck is wrong with you people??? Can’t you see this is not OK and it will never be OK??? how can you just stand here and talk seriously about this situation as though it’s just a thing that happens??? This whole situation blows so hard I don’t even have words, and you guys being all aloof and smooth about it is just fucking me up, and the only thing I hate more than feeling like this is that as far as I can tell, no one else fucking does??”
And sometimes, that feeling is too powerful for you to keep under control on it and foom, nuclear mushroom.
Yes. Commonly. It comes right after the beat where I go “this is terrible” and then I look around and nobody’s batting an eye.
In fact, I’m now having flashbacks to when nobody batted an eye while a right-wing government decided to tell and subsidise people who wanted to replace indigenous trees with eucalyptus. And now half the country spends half the year on fire, because eucalyptus are actual firebombs and our fire departments aren’t manned, equipped, or trained to deal with the ridiculous extra flammability.
I can’t wait to have flashbacks about how nobody batted an eye when a centrist government decided it’d be a good idea to penalise family doctor salaries if their patients have an abortion or their female patients test positive for STDs. On the other hand, this country is majority catholic, so maybe the fuckers are just pretending to not understand the consequences while helping theocracy along.
“Oh, JBento, why would you or anyone be a misanthrope?”, people ask me. I dunno, take a fucking guess.
I am so sorry, JBento.
I hate eucalyptus trees too. They’re matchsticks, and we all suffer.
Part of my national service year I spent clear-cutting Eucalyptus/Mellaleuca trees and spraying herbicide on the stumps, replanting native trees in their place, during/after a massive wildfire. Whole state was on fire, seemed like.
Eucalyptus trees give me the creeps. My condolences for the **** you have to go through. What’s happening to the doctors and their patients— it’s awful, all around.
Ah. I was thinking of Brazil, JBento. That was where I had heard about the wildfires from Eucalyptus being planted and outcompeting native trees. (That and in East Africa as well. And Florida. And California. And…) But… now I see it’s in Portugal too.
Dang tea tree oil! Substance should be banned, unless it comes from someplace where the trees have natural competitors to keep their population in check.
Hey, that’s a lot of places. It’s almost as if eucalyptus evolved specifically to burn easy, fast, and expansively, who knew? If only there was an entire country with extensive experience on the things that we could have learned from. Alas.
Here I think get planted mostly for timber for the paper industry.
for real. C&H was my introduction to comics, and it never got old. i’m sitting and reading an album right now, is how i ran into this especially topical strip.
Thanks, folks. No, I’m from the USA, but I’ve lived in places all over the world. USA has a national service program. It’s voluntary, but you can do a year of national service, similar to military but non-combat, and get a little money for college. Lots of states have similar programs. I did mine at 17. Mostly forestry and construction, some wildfire restoration. Some teaching and disaster relief. A bunch of stuff.
Well, thanks. But then I became permanently disabled while performing that work (and too young and dumb and easily exploited to seek compensation for it). Now there’s really not a lot I can do, that I used to be able to do.
Thanks, JBento. I’m trying to put myself back together, find ways to be of service. Some days it works, some days it doesn’t. Thank you for your support.
Making music helps. If I didn’t have to work for money, I’d be a performer all the time, just tell stories and sing and act.
ahah, i posted the same question up there =)
yayyy let’s start some sort of club… of… attempts? at stuff?
i make music too. i’ve been too lazy to really polish anything to upload-worthy levels, but…
my sympathies about both your health and your compulsory employment, Laura <3
…oh and by the way, i immensely appreciate your contributions around here. you are one of the most consistently empathetic and soothing and helpful commenters here.
no wonder you get burned out after a while. it’s good that you know to take breaks, as you say this place gets so intense and the feelings being expressed can be pretty raw. yay for self-care! and for good people like you on the board doing their best to listen and acknowledge the daily heartache. you’re a star <3
Awww, shucks! *Blushes, twinkles, sparkles…*
Thank you for your kind words, milu and JBento. Thank you for being so sweet.
I perform in online video chat circles. Long ago I did a lot of live performing. Singing mostly, some spoken word, a very tiny bit of instrumental stuff. Used to do a little digital music editing, back when my injuries weren’t so bad.
I do get a little cagey divulging details of my own life, even though I want to speak from experience with such a nice group of supportive readers. A while back I had a lot of media exposure and it was very traumatic. I try to keep everything I do as anonymous and offline as possible, now.
…Kind of contradictory for an artist. Part of why I couldn’t make money at it — could never do the work of “getting the name out there.” I don’t want the name to be out there. I’m much more happy behind the scenes.
…Gotta sign off now for the rest of the night. Head injury’s acting up…
anyway yeah, blowing up and/or ending up hating everyone is not so unreasonable when behaving in a “reasonable” way feels so… grotesque.
feel you. <3
i still hope we can do something with these feelings that so many of us are having, other than (cathartic but) futile individual demonstrations of anger and desperation, seething nihilism and self-destruction.
i think the answer is political, that is to say, collective, organised, utopian *and* pragmatic. (those last two words are sides of the same coin, not polar opposites as cynics would have us believe.)
“i still hope we can do something with these feelings that so many of us are having”
I fire up Grim Dawn and spend a couple of hours murderising mobs. Many cthonians and aetherials died for the sake of my blood pressure in the days following the Dobbs leak. Serves the fuckers right. Actually managed to do some decent writing after those murder sessions.
Lametrature. I mostly do it because I need to get my brain to shut up and it’ll only do that if I get the words out of it and into the… well, into the text processor, I guess?
Right now, my brain’s been coming up with fanfic for the characters of a match-3 superhero game.
i assume “lametrature”?
the present page must not yet have been indexed =)
JBento means literature, they’re just self-deprecating. anything online then JB?
I am befudled, because I thought it was an obvious enough portmanteau that plenty of people would’ve used it by now.
“anything online then JB?”
Trick question. I write it directly on Word Online in onedrive, so TECHNICALLY everything’s online. I haven’t published it on a blog or whatever it is people use these days, because I mostly write it to get the words out of my brain. Granted, that just makes my brain come up with words for further ahead, but at least they’re new words and the whole thing goes from “annoying and repetitive” to merely “annoying”. One takes improvement where one finds it.
I can give you a link once I’m done with this chapter. Like I said below, there’s scenes in it I’m not happy with how they flow, but am coming up blank on how to make them better.
That’s really cool. I’m glad you do it. I hope you’ll share some of your writing with us sometime, if that’s something you might want to do and feel comfortable doing. (If not, no worries!)
If you want, I can give you a link when I wrap up the current chapter. Could use some eyes on this chapter especially, because there’s scenes that I’m particularly not pleased with but I’m coming up blank on how to improve them.
On the upside, looking at them for a longer time than usual has made my brain come up with plot developments for further ahead that I quite like, so, y’know, mixed results.
i’m also up for it, if you’d like me to! (no hard feelings otherwise, obvs. you choose your beta readers.)
is it just me, or there’s this weird pleasure at reading/listening to/etc something you yourself have made? and you’re like, “wow. this came out of my brain? wtf. but also, damn.” =D
Ironically, the reason I write is because otherwise I don’t stop hearing the words. Getting them out of my brain is the only way to make my brain stop repeating them to me whenever it’s not otherwise engaged.
Link when I’m done with this chapter, heavens know when THAT’S gonna be.
Well, I don’t think I’d be so good as a beta reader, and I can’t promise my brain will be working well enough to read when the chapter comes out, but… I do look forward to that link.
OH! “Lame Literature” See, I thought “maaaaybe?” but didn’t want to assume it wasn’t just an established formal writing style with a non-obvious pronunciation like “La-MET-richer” or something like that. My second guess was “L.A. Metropolitan Literature” for some reason. Hence the search and this the confusion.
Dorothy has a closer relationship with Mike than people think.
Joyce certainly had a close relationship with Mike: she walked with him to class every day and chatted with him, and he even chaperoned her first date. He seemed to be genuinely involved in her growth as a person.
And Dorothy — well, the last time they were all together at a party (Sarah’s and Dina’s birthday) two men with weapons came to do them harm. They went home safe from that party because Mike drew the attackers away and sacrificed himself and died while trying to fight one of them off.
That’s an extremely close connection. “Greater love has no one than this, than that they lay down their life for their friends,” level close. (Sorry for the Biblical reference — no offense intended!)
Later, Dorothy and her friends were kidnapped by the same two that had caused Mike’s death. Dorothy watched and even (verbally) participated in the confrontation between the two kidnappers that culminated in the murder of Becky’s father. And Dorothy used the distraction of that murder to orchestrate their escape. Dorothy was right outside and heard the shot when Amber’s father was murdered (IIRC).
So we’ve got 3 traumatic, violent deaths in close succession, one of which Dorothy was intimately involved in, multiple kidnappings of people whom Dorothy is close to, and a young man who was part of their social group who gave his life to protect her and her friends.
I’d say Mike’s death hit Dorothy pretty darn hard. I’d say she has every right to grieve, even through public commemoration. She’s trying to find ways to make what happened to her make some sense, fit expectations, so she can wrap her head around it.
If I were Dorothy I would be pretty weirded out going to a fun Halloween party with scary deathy costumes and decorations and being expected not to address the common trauma they had all just survived, which Mike was a key part of.
I agree completely, and feel that she did it in a respectful way, too.
This is all no one’s fault, you know? Walky felt triggered and reacted with his usual trauma response, Amber felt triggered by Walky’s trauma response and then reacted with her usual trauma response. Dorothy did nothing wrong, but likely would have acted differently if she’d known this would happen. This is the sort of situation that people learn and grow from.
…Plus there’s the fact that Mike kept trying to actively sabotage her relationship with Walky, and his every attempt just brought them closer. So in a way they have Mike to thank, partially, for how they fell in love.
Personally, I just find it sorta fucked up that Walky’s response to a moment of silence is to share made-up conspiracy theories about the deceased.
Like everyone’s debating the appropriateness of Dorothy’s and Walky’s actions here, but think of it this way.
Who would you be more upset by if you where there?
For me, Dorothy’s surprise request would annoying at worst (depending on my mood), but Walky’s response would be offensive.
Make no mistake, Walky is waaaay over the line here and definitely is the worse of the two (like that matters), but people can be bothered by multiple things at once without contradiction.
Also although I wouldn’t exactly call it Dorothy’s fault, Walky wouldn’t be talking about it if Dorothy hadn’t decided to pull that.
(well, not her fault that Walky reacted in SUCH an uncomfortable way, that trivializes the feelings of others around him. I would say it IS her fault for not thinking through bringing that up and thereby triggering someone into a big reaction. like why would you do this?)
He’s being a jerk but I feel bad for him. It’s clear from the dialogue that he reacted this way because he’s having a hard time, not because he wants to hurt anyone. If I were in Amber’s position I wouldn’t feel sorry though.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with what was up with Dorothy. Saying a few words when people show up to a party is a pretty normal “polite” thing to do and Dorothy does put stock in those. And Sarah, the actual host, didn’t want to. Joyce lives here, but Dorothy is close enough to her to know this isn’t her party, not really. Normally those few words go “Hey everyone, thanks for coming. This day is Significant for X, Y and Z reasons. Have fun everyone,” and, yeah, when someone in the group has recently died, a lot of people will throw in something about that. “We all miss them”, moment of silence, blah blah blah.
Frankly, I’d say that when a group is having a party and a member has recently died (as in, they died ten days ago and the funeral was a few days ago at best) and it’s the first gathering since the funeral, it’d be foolish not to expect someone to say something. Hell, if Dorothy had been hanging around and said out loud “I miss Mike” and someone got mad at her, they’d unambiguously be being an asshole. This isn’t that different. I get not everyone wants to be reminded of it, but that doesn’t make it reasonable to expect NOBODY to bring it up in any context, even if she didn’t go up to everyone and ask individually if they wanted to first.
THAT SAID, I get Walky is not in a place for something like this. He wanted to get away. That’s perfectly normal too and he shouldn’t feel bad for that either. This isn’t a great way to handle that (he could have ignored them and went off to get more candy, taken a bathroom break, politely said “I’m not feeling up for this, can we just have fun?”, etc.) but grief’s a hell of a drug. I don’t really expect him to be acting perfectly.
tl;dr – I don’t think Dorothy is doing anything wrong but I don’t think Walky’s really doing anything wrong either so much as having a poor reaction to something running up to his own grief that he really doesn’t wanna acknowledge.
Loading ...
Boys and girls of Dumbing of Age
Wouldn’t you like to see Amber rage?
Come with us and you will see
This, our ruined dorm party
This was Halloween, this was Halloween
Ex-pals fought in the dorm of Joyce
This was Halloween, everybody made a scene
All silence ’til the booers gone and raised their voice
All aghast, everybody scream
In this dorm on Halloween
Mike is the one Walky says is not dead
Nickels brought and moms in his bed
Sal is the one to do Malaya harm
Scowling like mad and spider on her arm
This was Halloween, this was Halloween
Halloween, Halloween
Halloween, Halloween
In this dorm, we stared, pale
Every jaw dropped to the Walky’s tale
In this dorm, don’t we hate it now?
Everybody’s waiting for the next shoe drop
‘Round that corner: Mike, hiding in the trash (sike)
Walky’s whining now to joke and Amber SCREAM
This was Halloween, poor in taste, and quite obscene
Aren’t you MAD? Well, that’s just fine
Have a snack, have some punch
Take some cookies home for lunch
Ride with the Sal (if she had her bike)
Everybody scream, everybody scream
In our dorm on Halloween
Dina’s the Rex with the angry hat face
ROAR in a flash and gone without a trace
Becky’s the lesbian who calls, “I AM!”
Ruth is the one running femur scams
Dan is the Kermit, ukulele loon
Filling your head to the brim with tunes
This was Halloween, this was Halloween
Halloween, Halloween
Halloween, Halloween
Halloween, Halloween
Tender manchilds cooling his heels
Life’s no fun with all these bad feels
That’s the past, Mike unseen
In this dorm on Halloween
In this dorm, don’t we hate it now?
Everybody is waiting for the next shoe drop
Skeleton Sarah will give you a scare
And she’ll scream like a banshee
Because she’s NOT having fun
This was Halloween, everybody scream
Won’t you please make way to show Walky to the door
Dorothy is Dinkley to the max
Everyone hail to the future prez now
This was Halloween, this was Halloween
Halloween, Halloween
Halloween, Halloween
In this dorm Joyce calls home
Everyone bail ‘cuz this party’s blown
La lala la lala Halloween Halloween
La lala la lala Halloween Halloween
La lala la lala Halloween Halloween
La lala la la la, WIIGIIIIIII
+1
OK this is pretty fucking sweet, great work Ana!!! 🤩
…if the sound of my own voice on recordings didn’t aggressively displease me I would totally record myself singing this.
Sorry to hear that. Do you think you might have vocal dysphoria?
I’m pretty sure most people who don’t have to listen to recordings of their own voice on the regular (so have to get used to it by necessity) get weirded out by hearing the sound of their own voice.
I used to think that very same thing. But then I found out about VD and was like, “wait, this isn’t something that happens to everybody? And i had this all this time and it has a name too? Damn.”
Wait. Hold up. Other people don’t get messed up by the sound of their own voice? …. I may need to lie down….
Usually its people who hear themselves in recordings frequently
What you hear when you speak is not what you sound like to others, because the bones in your face carry lower frequencies much better than air does, so your own idea of what your voice is does not necessarily match reality
Its not quite a dysphoria, but just about everyone goes “wait, THAT’S my voice?” The first time they hear themselves in a recording
Yeah, it’s an everybody thing. You hear your own voice differently than the rest of the world does, because, to you, the sounds are conducted through the bones of your skull as well as through the air, and the mismatch feels kind of uncanny.
But is that really what Wellerman &/or Arioch are talking about? I studied sound engineering when I was 20 and we recorded our own voices all the time for exercises and such, and it was weird and unpleasant at first but i got used to hearing it pretty soon.
“vocal dysphoria” sounds like a different thing.
Yes it’s a real thing that usually happens to trans people, but in my case it’s mostly down to my neurodivergence.
I’ve known people who, from the first time the heard themselves recorded, liked the sound of their recorded voice better than how they heard it not recorded.
I sound normal to myself, but then I hear my voice played back and I’m squeaky.
Great work!
*APPLAUDS WILDLY* WOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Well done.
*Clap Clap Clap Clap Clap*
Brava.
Amazing! Full length parody, on cadence, with Turtle Power levels of plot recap!
A+++!
I almost hit “flag” and then I remembered that it was not meant as “flag if awesome.”
I give up, I’ve been staring at it for 20 minutes and I can’t make it fit anything I know.
What’s the reference? (preparing to kick myself when it turns out to be something I do know)
“This is Halloween” from The Nightmare Before Christmas
I can’t believe I didn’t get that reference this whole freaking time. 😅
All good then, never seen it.
The title of the chapter itself is a reference to that song.
I didn’t remember the song very well so I went and listened to it while reading Ana’s lyrics.
That was scary good Ana!
You… nailed it (like a coffin, yeah?)
It was …dead-on!
OK that’ll do
Utterly amazing!
*applause*
Definitely above and beyond the call of duty.
ROFL!
Amazing!
+11 Internets!
Well. Done.
I mean Halloween doesn’t really have much to do with anything here besides being a day, but go off kids, I guess.
They’re wearing costumes while eating snacks and talking about death; that’s gotta count for something.
What gets me is they were all booking Halloween specifically as a day of trial for relationships. When Becky asked why they broke up Walky said “Halloween happened.” Like it was a big deal. But it turns out it wasn’t “Halloween” they were just assholes, which you can be any day of the weeks. It’s no surprise Becky and Dina “survived” Halloween. They don’t treat each other like shit and actually care about their relationship.
It makes sense that Walky would describe the fight as being about Halloween since he’s trying not to think about Mike or being sad or any feelings at all.
It’s conceptual shorthand, and there’s a specific word for it that I’ve forgotten. But it’s the same thing as when we refer to the Executive branch of U.S. government as “the White House”, where the place name stands in for the larger and less concrete entity.
“Halloween happened” pretty clearly means “the events of Halloween happened” or “the way we behaved on Halloween”. It makes sense, especially if Halloween ends up being especially eventful, with multiple couple breaking up in a dramatic way.
I still don’t get it. Walky warns “There will always be more Halloweens as if the day has some significance to his breakup but it really doesn’t beyond it happening on that day. Is Halloween a day people are more likely to say something stupid as a joke? Did Ruth decide to breakup with Billie on Halloween because it’s more acceptable or easier to do in costume? They just broke up on Halloween but Halloween isn’t why they broke up.
He’s still using it euphemisticly. Walky is correct that there are more years ahead with halloween celebrations, but what he _means_ is that there will be more days ahead where shit happens.
To consider: what is special about 9/11? In every year before 2001, nothing is. But in 2001 the big attack happened and now 9/11 happened and that date is inextricably embedded in the american psyche. People us the date as a stand-in for saying all of everything that happened on 2001-September-11.
Walky is not *blaming* halloween, any more than people blame the 11th day of september. He’s just referencing the stuff that happened on that particular day, using the title of the day as a shorthand reference.
Okay that makes more sense. It was confusing to me because even in today’s strip Walky is saying “It’s Halloween!” Like that’s a big deal and I don’t get what he means by saying it here.
Halloween is normally a happy day of parties and whatnot, and Walky wants it to be that because he’s grieving and needs a respite, and now he can’t.
I think what Walky means by “there will always be more Halloweens” is that there will always be more events in the future that destabilize things that feel normal right now. Their last Halloween apparently involved multiple unexpected dramatic, upsetting events. That can happen any time! Therefore nothing can be taken for granted and nothing is actually safe.
(I don’t remember the exact strip where Walky invoked the idea of future Halloweens, so I might be off-base here. He might just have been being superstitious, or been being performatively superstitious—where you pretend to blame all your problems on one specific thing, and keep pretending even though you don’t believe it, until you have half-convinced yourself you really do believe it. That sounds really Walky, to me.)
Is it metonymy or synecdoche? I can never remember which is which.
Metonymy is where you use something as a reference for a thing it is closely associated with but not actually part of: “the White House” for “the presidential administration.” Synecdoche is where you use a part of the thing as a stand in for the entire thing: “fifty head” for “fifty cattle.”
Got it. Thanks!
So, “9-11,” as a reference for the attacks on September 11, 2001… which one would that be?
Or, “Halloween,” for “the fight that happened at the Halloween party last year.” Not sure which one that would be.
The date is not actually part of the things that occurred on that date, just associated with it.
I would say that 9-11/nine-eleven for the September 11, 2001 attacks is metonymy. It’s a tricky distinction, but metonymy uses one word of phrase to conceptually stand in for another idea. Generally, I believe using the phrase of a date that refers to an event that took place on a date is metonymy. The date isn’t *inherent* to the event; it’s just happenstance. If the same events had happened on April 1, we’d probably refer to them as the April Fool’s Attacks. Or we might use different term of reference that had nothing to do with dates at all.
“Let’s break out the bubbles!” = “let’s open a bottle of bubbly wine aka Champagne” is synecdoche. “I can’t skip leg day!” = “I can’t skip the part of my exercise routine that involves exercising my leg muscles” is synecdoche.
“The Kremlin” to refer to the Russian government is metonymy. “Kremlin” isn’t in the name of the Russian government at all. But the buildings are so closely associated with the idea of that power that they can conceptually stand in for the idea of the Russian government itself.
Yeah, I really effing hate those two words.
It was metonymy! I was gonna look it up, but I moved a lot of my books around recently and I couldn’t find the one I wanted.
Synecdoche?
While there’s a lot I don’t like about Becky, I have always loved seeing how much her and Dina value and try to be good to each other. Those two going about their relationship has been one of the most enjoyable parts of this comic for me.
well it was still a party to have fun more or less , though surprised he wouldn’t take a more amber like approach and immerse himself more in cartoons/fandom stuff, other than not wanting to be shut in to his dorm
I obviously get why Amber and Joyce were pissed off, but I also get where Walky’s coming from. He just really should have internalized that and let the moment of silence pass, and odds are, the rest of the night would have largely gone by as the escapism he sought. Benefit of hindsight, granted.
Yeah, Walky is an asshole here, but Dorothy is clearly meant to be a bit of one, too–this was ultimately a self-aggrandizing action. Willis seems to be doing more to emphasize her flaws lately, which I appreciate, even if it definitely feels very harsh for her.
When is Wally not an asshole? Meh. Maybe that’s a little harsh. He seems to be trying to be a good boyfriend—lately, that is—not during this flashback period. flashback
Likewise, when is Dorothy not self-aggrandizing? Okay, granted, she occasionally tries to check herself—but she does not try very hard. Or succeed.
Why are people calling Walky an asshole when he’s making perfectly good sense?
I dunno. Dorothy’s toast seemed like a perfectly appropriate addition to a Halloween celebration to me. I always spend Halloween honoring departed friends and family. It would seem strange not to.
For context: I often attend a summer conference. One year, it took place right after a particularly horrible mass shooting, and the plenary session (usually a humorous talk) started with a solemn moment of silence. I found that very appropriate.
The very next year, there was another horrible mass shooting right before the conference, which hit even closer to home. That year, there was no moment of silence — just jokes and laughing, same as every year, as if nothing horrible had just happened. I was so offended I walked out and made a complaint to the administration for the lack of respect to the victims. (I know, I know, “Can I speak to the manager?” Make your ‘Karen’ jokes now…)
All I’m saying is, I think it’s important to show respect and honor to those we have lost, even when feelings about them are complicated, and even when we are singing and dancing and laughing. Sometimes that’s the best time to honor them.
I didn’t find Dorothy self-aggrandizing at all.
I think your comment Laura is a good example of people having different connections to things and different opinions of what is appropriate.
For many people Halloween is about costumes and silliness and having fun and regardless of the skeleton decorations, not at all about mourning. They have their own, perhaps private, ways of remembering the people they have lost. Some people find public impersonal displays of mourning (such as moments of siliences) disrespectful. Some people find them helpful. Neither opinion is wrong.
If it was day of the dead or something, I could see it, but not a Halloween party. Starting something with a moment of silence is also a lot different than doing it part of the way through. It also sounds like it was pre-planned to have one normally at your party. Dorothy brought up something without planning it with others (and therefore giving people time to leave and miss it if it would affect them emotionally and ruin their “night off” of constantly thinking about it so to say). Something pre-planned at the start gives people a chance to be there early for that if they want to, or be there late if they don’t while also not doing a sudden mood swing in the middle of everything. Also better than doing it at the end, especially if alcohol is involved, as the party can end on a happy and fun note rather than a sad and somber one.
It’s also best to remember that everyone grieves differently and there is no perfect way. Some grieve with singing and dancing while others with somber and quiet moments. Just because someone doesn’t want to remember their grief (no matter the strength of it) while having fun, doesn’t mean that they don’t respect the dead any less than someone who does. There’s a difference between showing respect for the dead in your own way and forcing others to participate and getting mad when they don’t want to. I’m not saying that some people can’t be disrespectful, but normally that is either through bad jokes, bad comments, or forcing someone else to grieve their way. They can’t tell you not to grieve just as much as you can’t tell them to grieve. It might very well be that they excluded the moment of silence because the grief was still too close to some people and it would have caused them to break down and not have any more fun that night. It would have been possible to still have it earlier and just come later, but even the thought of it might have been too hard for some people who really just wanted a break from it and a couple hours to put aside something that is so very difficult to put aside. Of course, when anything with that much emotional weight is involved, it can be extremely difficult to think of other perspectives than what you are currently going through.
You have a very good point that people process death and trauma differently, and can be bringing different expectations to what they want out of an event or party that takes place after a recent death or tragedy. My experiences are much more in line with Laura’s, where *not* acknowledging a recent commonly-experienced death would not only be unusual, but would definitely offend some people. But I get that’s not necessarily universal.
Walky’s still behaving inappropriately, though. Even if he did not want to come here and be reminded about Mike, and felt blindsided by it, the best way to handle that would have been to step out of the room or just leave the party entirely, not to make a big scene and double-down on it even when it was clear that everyone else’s feelings were more in line with Dorothy’s than his own, and that people felt he was mocking Mike’s death (because, well, he was, even if pain and not contempt was what was fueling it).
I’m not calling him a monster—this is Walky, this is how Walky tends to handle depressing subjects, he’s 18 or 19 at best, without a ton of life experience, and he is not particularly emotionally mature—and Amber’s reaction to HIM is much, much worse than his reaction to Dorothy. But his behavior here was not okay, and people are upset with him for a reason. You can acknowledge that his feelings are valid and still criticize him for valuing those feelings over everyone else’s.
(Also, I don’t think it’s weird to do the moment of silence partway through the event—not everyone shows up to a party at the same time; parties often do not have a firmly fixed “start” time. And the point of public acknowledgement is for people to be there. Doing it at the “beginning”, when only a few people are there, is when it starts to feel performative, like you’ve only done it to say that you did it, and not because it actually had meaning for anyone.)
I’d feel ambushed if I went to a party that was not a funeral or a wake and found out the host had decided everyone had to stand up and give a sincere speech about what a recently deceased person person meant to me, personally. (Hell, I’d feel encroached upon if I went to a funeral or a wake and was pushed to make a speech when I didn’t want to! I have absolutely been to ceremonies like that where I couldn’t bring myself to say anything, or just didn’t have anything *to* say.) But I really have to push back on the idea I keep seeing here that just *mentioning* something that, again, everyone in this room recently experienced together, even something as upsetting as death, is akin to Dorothy verbally assaulting people, on the grounds that they didn’t agree to it ahead of time. A moment of silence is a passive thing where all you have to do is….nothing. Literally nothing. It’s like protesting by not singing the National Anthem at a ballgame. In the privacy of your own mind, you are welcome to think about tacos, rather than about the sad thing—no one will no!
Expecting people not to even *mention* extremely recent and relevant events in their life is bizarre, and invoking the language of sexual assault to condemn them for when they do it is weird and gross. (You didn’t, but other people have, repeatedly.)
Thank you, Cerusee. I appreciate hearing your thoughtful words. Thank you for putting so much thought into sharing this important perspective.
Thank you, Kimi and Hazel. I appreciate hearing your points of view. They make a lot of sense. Thank you for sharing your opinions with me — they are helpful.
Yeah like obviously he did this in the worst possible way, but I also understand that sitting in a room by yourself when there’s SUPPOSED to be someone else there, but they will never be again, can never be again…. thats the quietest of quiet. I feel like we have some conflict of grieving styles here, mixed in with too much trauma.
I also think people are a little too eager in these comments sections to forget that Dumbing of Age is a comedy comic that makes use of a lot of exaggeration and hyperbole. Walky’s behavior would be cartoonishly unforgivable IRL, but I’m not sure we’re supposed to read it quite as heavily–just like how Dorothy’s dialogue a couple comics ago reads as hyperoblivious if you take it totally literally.
this is the perfect comment. i want to pin this comment to the top of the comments section on every strip for all time. i want everyone to have to read the phrase “people are a little too eager in these comments sections to forget that Dumbing of Age is a comedy comic that makes use of a lot of exaggeration and hyperbole” before they post for the rest of time.
sorry about doubling up on “for all time” and “for the rest of time.” i got excited.
I completely agree.
Strongly Agree!
Yeah
I had intended to say more than this but you know what this’ll do
I fail to see why Walky’s behavior would be cartoonishly unforgivable IRL.
But he and Amber were still doomed. Walky needs a distraction from Mike and dating Mike’s best friend would just be painful for him. And Amber needs someone to help her sort through all her complicated feelings, and being around someone desperate to change the subject to something trivial would likewise be problematic. Amber and Walky were right for each other in Book 9, but their needs have changed since they provess trauma differently. And that’s okay!
I don’t think they were ever actually right for each other. Their problem was that this was always a relationship of convenience and attraction. Nothing wrong with that, but there was no substance there beyond dry humping and enabling their dry humping by saying how “trash” they were for it. Amber even said that being with Walky wasn’t supposed to be serious, which is why she’s chosen to bail now, because it suddenly got more serious and having an actual conversation with him about his mistake is too much work for what she wanted.
It doesn’t need to be about finding a distraction from Mike, Mike was alive when they started hooking up, nor is it about Amber needing someone more capable of emotional support. They just never had much to start with.
I always thought they were good for each other. When Amber was freaking out about Sal, Walky came after her and cheered her up with taco bell jokes. Walky understood that Amber and Amazi-girl were different people, and was sensitive to the way Amber feels inferior to Amazi-girl. I think AntJ is right that it won’t work anymore, but I felt like they had potential.
Thus re-ignites my age-old pondering,
“Does the cast not have any outside friends?”
Gaslighting someone’s sorrow doesn’t justify it, Walkerton
Now you crashed to the ground before the sugar crash kicked in
I don’t think that’s what gaslighting is. I think it’s just called lying, what Walky said.
This is kind of their friend group. I think if most of the cast had friends outside the group we’d see them by now. The only one that comes to mind as operating even slightly outside the main cast group is Marcie. Jennifer, I guess technically rolls with a new group of people, but again we know them, and they don’t get much time in comic.
Becky was outside, but then she enrolled
Idk what kind of social group you belonged to, but I have never had more than 5-10 friends/people I choose to associate with at once, and frequently been as low as 3 decently close friends. On top of that, I have been peripheral (but not a part of) other people’s close-knit groups, that do everything together and barely interact outside of the group, consisting of around 5-10 people…
If you’re not the ‘chugging at a frat house’ kind of person, and especially if you are at all introverted, it’s super-easy to have less than 5 people that you do things with.
Am introvert, can confirm.
5-10 friends, look at mister extrovert over here. I got, like, 1 IRL friend and maybe 5 online.
Very few of the main cast came to IU without someone else from their own school that they were already friends with living in the same dorm and taking the same classes, and when you have “home” that close, it’s easy to just stick with the familiar and hang with them and whoever ends up filtering into your group due to proximity. Plus, their non-IU friends might be at other schools, possibly out of state, or have jobs that make it hard to find times when all parties are available. (Before Ross got bailed out, Joyce went home for the weekend and realised the people she’d hoped to see hadn’t come home the same weekend.)
When I was in college, most of my friends were in my dorm, because they were who I saw all the time, and the ones I had outside of it were in band, because you spend A Lot of time together when you’re part of a group like that, especially marching band.
And for friends they might have at home, aside from Marcie, Sal had separated from her local friends, and any she made at boarding school are likely out of state. Walky has some strong indicators of having ADHD, and being kind of ‘out of sight, out of mind’ with regards to people is something else that it can cause. Jennifer’s HS friend group probably dropped her, much like Alice, due to the whole ‘causing a wreck while drunk’ thing. We’ve seen Joyce is friends with Sara’s sister, but her home friend group, along with Becky’s, were part of the church who thought bailing Ross out was a Good Idea.
All this to say, I can easily understand how a bunch of people living on campus for college would end up just spending time with the people around them in their dorm.
Well, Jennifer has that mafia connected guy Asher.
Cant say thats a step up though.
And teeechnically, I guess Becky is friends with that congress person and maybe her former boss Galazzo?
Kind of a chicken and the egg situation. If the characters had people that they interacted with on a regular basis outside the established cast, those people would also become part of the cast. (e.g., Becky was just Joyce’s friend from home, separate from the IU storylines, but then she started appearing regularly, and is now part of the cast.)
There are a number of characters who don’t have much to do with the main storyline. Jacob, Sierra, Agatha, both Rachels, etc. Divorced from the Walkyverse context, Jacob’s just some guy who Joe works out with and Joyce had (has?) a crush on.
I see my HS friends weren’t the only people who took Halloween *way* too seriously. For some reason lots of people think the costumes mean they can act out in a way they normally wouldn’t. Must be the convenient excuse.
So that’s your excuse for making fun of the person who was the childhood friend of who was supposed to be your girlfriend.
He was also Walky’s roommate, and I read this as Walky being in pain and confusion and trying to avoid dealing with it at a fun party. That’s not to say his behavior is okay, but as an audience, I think we can extend some sympathy to him that his friends won’t have the spoons to grant at the moment.
Yeah he was his roommate and thus if HE was in his feelings about it he should have KNOWN that Amber, who was much closer to Mike, would probably be even worse.
I suspect his mistake was thinking that his way of coping would work for the rest of the group, too – when really, for them it would be a step backwards.
Thaaaaaaat’s it.
Walky is 100% entitled to have his own upsetting feelings about his *roommate’s death*, even if yes, other people were closer to said roommate and can be expected to have even heavier feelings about that loss.
The problem is that his coping mechanism, or at least this stage of it, is very out of line with how the other people in this room are feeling/handling Mike’s death, and because he’s Walky, he kept pushing instead of responding to the very clear indicators to that effect when he started this bit.
I would also say that you could apply most of those points to Dorothy too, So i can see why that happening would cause him to be upset and lash out.
They both did something that was inconsiderate of other people’s feelings as a way of coping with the death of someone they knew, the only difference in my mind is that Walky actually knew Mike pretty well, and that his method is something the guy probably would have actually found funny.
That’s fair!
Sure, cause when you’re depressed and sad you’re fully capable of thinking about other people. You’re kind of a selfish ass, aren’t you?
He definitely has my sympathy. I think he was acting in an incredibly insensitive way, but I can understand where he’s coming from. Which is more or less my opinion on Dorothy right now too, so I feel like that’s just This Arc.
…as expected eh
So I guess this confirms that Wally wasn’t actually in denial but was attempting (in the worst possible way) to lighten the mood/trying to escape from the downer mood.
And completely aware that his words would have different resonances with different people.
Sometimes, when in pain, it’s easier to just burn it all down.
Yuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuup.
I was about to blame Dorothy for bringing up such recent trauma for everyone, but then I remembered Willis established in the previous strips that she’s not exactly coping well either. She probably is desperately trying to figure out what she SHOULD be doing to handle what happened – what is the “right” thing to do – and came up with “acknowledge it.”
She’s definatly using her presidential identity as a coping mechanism and that is understandable. Though I hope she will eventually acknowledge that people reacting badly to her speech here isn’t solely the fault of her audience. Her first reaction here is to blame her audience for not acting the way she wants.
I think she just wants them to stop fighting? Maybe I’m being too understanding here, idk.
Sorry, got flag when I wanted to hit reply.
Yes, I think Dorothy feels she should find a way to help everyone with getting over what happened – she wants to be the president, she needs to be able to deal with stuff like this, right?, right?! Sadly, she is really bad with emotions.
Why Sarah pushed her to „say a few words“ I will never understand though..
Sarah didn’t push her to go though, Dorothy came up to her and said she should give a speech which Sarah didn’t want to do. In retrospect I think Dorothy knew Sarah wouldn’t and used is as an opening to say she was giving a speech. Also worth noting Sarah had no idea what Dorothy would say.
“In retrospect I think Dorothy knew Sarah wouldn’t and used is as an opening to say she was giving a speech.”
I’m reasonably certain this is true, otherwise Dorothy would have had that conversation with Joyce, with whom she’s MUCH closer with and would be far more likely to take her up on the idea of saying a few words.
Damn, the first panel is making me hate Dorothy.
And honestly, I think this strip 100% proves what myself and other commenters were saying two days ago: Dorothy was over the line with her “ahem ahem, let’s talk about something awful because I decided this was a good time.”
This here? This is what happens when you force people into uncomfortable topics they’re not ready to address. I’m not saying Walky’s response is healthy, but he was pushed.
People need to be in the right space (mentally and sometimes physically) to address things like death. If you push them or force them, they’re going to lash out.
Dorothy has no right to be surprised or hurt that this is the reaction she provoked.
Yeah, so far I think the comments have been pretty measured–Walky is being shitty, but he’s coming from a painful place. Dorothy is being shitty, but she’s been unsure what to do with herself lately and, well, she’s kind of bad at engaging naturally with people. They both are at fault here, but they’re also kind of dumb messed-up people trying their best.
The thought that crossed my mind when reading this strip was “poor kids”. No villains in the room, just a bunch of stressed out teens making fumbling inappropriate choices that hurt each other.
Nobody is ever in the right space to address death. It just goes ahead and happens. One of the reasons it upsets people is that it’s absolute proof the universe isn’t just about them.
If it isn’t just about me, why does it keep killing people I care about?
“What do you mean it happens to the best of us? He was a massive jerk!”
This reads like “Grief is the same thing as Main Character Syndrome” and that sits weird.
Yeah its a bit reductive and armchair-therapist-y.
I agree with the first sentence and the overall sentiment though.
Death destroys more than an individual life. The damage ripples around in unpredictable ways.
Idk, I can’t super blame her for her initial reaction. I agree that the whole moment of silence was in incredibly bad taste and wtf was she thinking, but she probably saw this and thought “oh, walky’s being emotionally insensitive and amber’s getting violent, here we go again.” I have a feeling that, now that it’s clear how much he’s hurt by it, she’s going to realize it was a bad idea
I think that might be a bit harsh. I read the first panel as her also trying to diffuse the situation with a joke. It wasn’t a great idea here, but I don’t think she was doing anything malicious or self-centred or whatnot.
No, that’s not possible. Dorothy understands people.
/s
Honestly Dorothy is one of the LEAST qualified people in the room to bring up Mike , even if his death affects her. She was not his friend, roommate, were they even classmates?
Doesn’t social etiquette dictate that the people closest to the dead person are the ones setting the how the public mourning will be handled? If Amber, Ethan and Walky are not saying anything, Dorothy is the one committing a faux pas bringing it up.
Hm. Good point.
I agree with this point, Dorothy might be trying to cope in her own way here but it doesn’t give her a pass to speak for Mike’s actual friends. As Walky and Amber demonstrate here, it’s a well meaning act that ends up ignoring those most affected by the tragedy.
True, dorothy knew Mike a lot less than Amber, Mike, even Joyce.
But, she has also been going to counseling a long time (even before Mike’s death and the kidnapping). That might help her see the value in communications. (Because, let’s face it, Amber, mike, etc. Were train wrecks even before Mike’s death, so what they were doing wasn’t working either)
She was speaking in an unofficial capacity.
“Moments of silence” are not communicating, though. They’re pretty much the opposite. And even if they were, springing them in an unrelated event without warning to the participants is no bueno.
This one is Dorothy’s fault.
So, Walky’s outburst was in direct response to Dorothy acknowledging it.
I’m sorry, bro, but other people are allowed feelings.
Yeah. They are.
He’s not wrong. “on this day of ghosts and skellingtons, let’s take a very sincere and somber moment of silence” is an inappropriate thing to spring on people during a halloween party.
The conflict of grieving styles continues.
well, it doesn’t excuse it but it does explain it. but it’d probably would’ve been best for dorothy to ask sarah and joyce what she planned to say ahead of time so they can give their permission
Dorothy and Walky both making their goddamn bullshit eeeeveeryone else’s problem…
Also ngl kind of hoping Walky gets to enjoy some extra special Halloween nightmares with that attitude. Smug-ass “make me feel uncomfortable for half a second and I’ll say literally anything, no matter how hurtful, to stop you” is the conversational equivalent of bringing a knife to a pillow fight.
I mean they are all kind of dumb teenagers. It’s literally in the title. This is about as much as I expect from all of them. Could you imagine how less complicated things would be if even one character was emotionally mature or able to read a room?
It would kind of bust the whole premise of the strip.
A better reading expetience
For you. I’m enjoying it just fine as-is, so maybe you’re not the exact target audience for the strip. That’s okay, there are loads of others.
This is hopelessly condescending.
I didn’t write it with condescension in mind. I can’t help what you read it as.
People often don’t. I’ll take your word for it, though.
Seems perfectly reasonable to me. Don’t be so sensitive. You’ll live longer.
Kind of went over your head didn’t you?
Hmm?
Idk, that seems unfair. I agree what he said was totally out of line, but if we’re using your pillow fight analogy, that would imply that this situation was for talking about Mike and he took it too far. It wasn’t. It’s a party. And he’s well within his rights to say “I don’t want to talk about my recently dead roommate at a party,” even if he doesn’t have the emotional maturity to express it in a way that doesn’t involve lashing out
I lost my best friend to coronavirus in 2020. As far as the medical people could tell, he died on Christmas Eve 2020 (his mother called emergency services after he’d been out of touch for several weeks). I am not over his death and I will NEVER be over it for as long as I live.
I get where Walky is coming from here. I too experienced the bargaining, the anger, and the denial (i.e., the stages of grief). I know it wasn’t always comfortable for my family and loved ones to be around me when I was very actively upsetted. I also share Walky’s frustration about “performative” grieving. I think Dorothy has very good intentions, and Halloween (Samhain) is a time when the veil is thinner (IMHO), but well-intentioned stuff can actually make grief worse.
It hit me hard when Walky said “I came here to escape” because that’s how I feel in my grief but you CAN’T escape it. In my experience (and I’ve had people I love die before, but no one who was as close to me) all you can do is sit with it and try not to let it break you. It NEVER fully goes away.
I’m sorry for my very depressing comment; this storyline obviously hit a nerve with me!
My best friend died in October 2019. It took me several weeks to even be able to say out loud what happened.
I guess I just came to say… I know your pain. Internet hugs?
I am so sorry, Masumi and Jaime.
We’re here for you.
We’re a big old ball of snark, but we’re still here for you.
🥲
I agree with getting where Walky is coming from, I get where Dorothy and Amber and Joyce are coming from too, because at the end of the day these are 18/19yo kids dealing with the hardest thing in life. The inescapable truth that no one you love is guaranteed to still be there in an hour.
A really close friend of mine passed away in 2005. That’s a literal lifetime ago for some of the people in this comments section. I was just graduated from high school, and it hit me like a truck. There is a strong line of Before and After the day I woke up to that phone call. Grief just kind of rips through you and reshapes you…sometimes it hurts so bad while that happens that it makes you a terrible person to be around. Sometimes hurt people hurt people, as the saying goes.
That was seventeen years ago, almost to the month, and I’m still not over it entirely. It hurts less most of the time, I have dealt with it and packaged the trauma into something easier to look at, but sometimes I’ll find him in an old picture of mine, or I’ll say something I know I got from him… and it just hurts all over again.
Even this comment hurt to write.
Well not “kids”… I should have said “Teenagers” But they are definitely adult teens.
ah, thank you Nova, you said it much better than i did down there.
take care
Thank you all so much and I’m really sorry for everyone’s losses.
Nova, a neighbour friend of mine died in a small plane crash literally the day I graduated high school. His father was flying him to Nantucket and something went wrong with the plane. (I REFUSE to fly in small planes, EVER.) We weren’t as close as my best friend who recently died, but we kind of had a mutual low-key crush on each other and I don’t know what could have developed from that. I’m not over that either and never will be.
These days I often think of that line from “WandaVision:” What is grief if not love persevering?”
That’s a lovely line, Jaime.
Thank you for sharing such personal stories. We are all listening and caring for you, Nova and Jaime and Masumi.
I often need to take breaks from this comment section, because everyone is dealing with their own fresh, raw traumas and the strip just stirs everything up, and that makes folks so prickly and sensitive that it’s easy to accidentally rub each other the wrong way. Trauma works like that. Everything hurts more, startles more, scares more, offends more, enrages more, when one is on edge from thinking about trauma.
But there’s value in the interactions of this big pile of bouncing prickle balls, all the same. We can be here for each other, and make mistakes and (hopefully) eventually forgive each other our mistakes, even in our own prickly ways.
Because we’re all dealing with this pain together. And this art helps us to acknowledge it and share it. And understand and analyze it through the Rorschach blog of a common project in literary analysis, watching a work of art unfold together, with our comments becoming a permanent part of its opus.
“Pain shared can be relieved. Joy shared can be multiplied.”
Thank you for sharing. Always.
Rorschach “blot”. Not “blog”. Darn you, autocorrect! But “blog” works too, oddly.
Haha yes! It is kind of sweet to think of this daily wall of comments as a Rohrschach blog about the comic =)
Lovely words Laura, thank you!
Jaime, when I lost a friend some months back my brother said (paraphrasing someone I think?) That when we mourn someone what we are really mourning is our relationship to them. It sounds super obvious but it really helped me. Or as Elton John said, “Love lies bleeding”.
They should bow and pray to the Neon God.
I’ve had bad luck trying to include links in comments, but everyone should search YouTube for “The Sound of Silence Disturbed,” which is one of the best covers I’ve ever heard. I am clinically depressed (and even more so after the death of my best friend) and that song is basically how I feel inside my head.
Is this what you were looking for, Jaime?
https://youtu.be/u9Dg-g7t2l4
I’ve seen YouTube promoting it a lot, but this is the first time I’ve actually listened to it. Thank you for pointing it out. It’s lovely.
(Sorry for the goofy post below… guess I’m kind of like Walky, turning to bizarre Halloweenisms just to be off-the-wall…)
Disturbed’s version of the song is better than the original, imo, because it turns the S&G’s melancholy into pissed-off anger, and it’s great.
At least IMHO anger is the flip side of depression. I vascillate between the two. Honestly, I prefer being angry, because at least I have ENERGY then. Depression is just…at least for me…grey and boring. But I’ve been depressed much more often than angry lately because, well, EVERYTHING. *gesturing vaguely at the entire world*
JBento: I agree 100% that it’s better than the original; I usually don’t like covers! Laura: no worries! I love kittehs, especially eldritch kittehs.
I think Disturbed’s SoS is the only cover I’ve heard that I think is BETTER than the original, too. The way the vocalist tones “‘Fools’, said I, ‘you do not know'” gives me life every time.
I found that anger was a short term “cure” for depression, because at least I was feeling something. But it has corrosive negative effects over the long term. Or the short term if it gets you to do something stupid.
“And in the naked light I saw
10,000 kitties, maybe more.
Kitties twitching their nine long tails.
Cats with wings and horns and with scales.
Rising from the dead, with voices from beyond.
I was too fond
of your mewing,
not the sound
of silence.”
(From the song, “Hello Kitty, Hello Clone.” Speaking of Halloween and eldritch horrors.)
Ever heard of the webcomic Hello Cthulhu?
Nope (I’ll check that out) but I’m pretty sure I owned a “Hello Cathulhu: t-shirt at one point! (Big Lovecraft fan here with the disclaimer that I an NOT a fan of his racism/sexism/anti-Semitism/elitism/overall bigotry.)
… Okay I’ll bite.
I feel like people exaggerate or maybe misunderstand his bigotry? I know that mental illness is not an excuse but that guy was Severely mentally ill. His list of phobias goes for miles. It wasn’t just other people he was afraid of but also stuff like temperatures below freezing, invertebrates, great spans of time, monumental architecture, deserts, oceans, rats, dogs. And we all know how “effective” mental health care was back then, he was lucky they didn’t lobotomize him.
Like, cut the poor guy some slack, he did also put in the effort to become a better person later in life.
Username checks out.
I do wonder what that guy woulda been like if he had access to mental healthcare and probably also didn’t live in a house alone with… I wanna say 12-15 stray cats (plus his own terribly-named pet). He definitely had some issues.
Definitely better off, that’s for sure. The horror aspect of his writing would probably suffer though but that’s a sacrifice I’m fine with.
Short answer: Read “The Horror at Red Hook.” That’s one of his stories I just can’t read any more.
Long answer: Yes, Lovecraft may have been mentally ill, especially because mental health treatment was still in its infancy when he was alive. However, he was racist even by the standards of his time; he basically thought that blue-eyed, white-skinned, blond-haired Europeans were the “superior race” and maintained a lot of hatred for the “mongrel hordes” (his words NOT mine!) of Black and Brown immigrants to the U.S. You can see this attitude in a lot of his stories besides “Red Hook,” including “The Call of Cthulhu” (in which a sailor has “hateful Negroid lips”), “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath” with the “fat Black” slaves, “Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and his Family” with just…cringe stuff about Africa. His letters, as well, show a lot of evidence of his bigotry, which was excessive even for his time. I’ve no doubt that his attitude partially stemmed from the fact that he came from a once-prosperous WASP New England family but most of his family’s money and prestige was gone by the time he lived. But that’s not an excuse!
I stongly suggest reading Bobby Derrie’s blog or books on Lovecraft; he addresses Lovecraft’s various -isms very well. Derrie is up there with S. T. Joshi and Donocan Loucks when it comes to Lovecraft scholars.
For what it’s worth, I feel like there WAS a decent person somewhere inside Lovecraft’s various predjudices; I’ve read the text of many of his letters (and seen some of the originals in the library at Brown University; he doodled adorable pictures, often of cats, in the margins!). I can understand why he had so many correspondants and why they (like August Derleth, although IMHO he COMPLETELY misunderstood Lovecraft’s mythos (but I must given Derleth credit for starting Arkham House)) were so devoted.
I think it’s fair to say that Lovecraft’s work might not have been so powerful and so terrifying (I once read “The Colour Out of Space” and “The Whisperer in Darkness” back-to-back in an empty dorm room and when my roomate got back from a night clubbing, she found ALL THE LIGHTS IN THE ROOM TURNED ON and me sitting bolt-upright on my bed!) without his encompassing fear of the “Other.” Unfortunately, for Lovecraft the “Other” was often other human beings who didn’t look like or didn’t have the same skin colour as him.
I also recommend Victor Lavalle’s novel “The Ballad of Black Tom” as a good, anti-racist retelling of “The Horror at Red Hook” and, of course, “Lovecraft Country” by Matt Ruff (the book is better than the TV series).
That’s fair
One thing I’ve never quite been sure how to tie to his racism is what seemed be nearly equal disgust for basically normal rural white people. Isolated rural groups keep turning back to worshiping evil gods or moving underground and turning into hordes of monsters.
So, can we get the entire cast into therapy? Like, group therapy? No? Didn’t think so.
OMG they would all need YEARS of therapy at this point!
“No amount of therapy will make this okay”.
— Timmy Turner
To be fair, so do most people.
Agreed – especially right now.
being in a group and dealing with it together might help them all communicate with each other better, but prolly best to do one on one and given advice so no one blurts out stuff as insensitive as walky just now
Let’s all have a moment of silence, for the moment of silence, done in by Walky.
And here I thought the reason why Amber and Walky no longer fucked with each other was going to not live up to the hype of our imaginations going wild while Willis set it up. Holy cow, that’s a pretty valid reason to not want to get back into it with somebody.
Walky really went all the way past scorched Earth into scorched universe.
I am praying to a God that Willis no longer believes in that the Ruth/Billie breakup is at least far less drama than this. Because I just can’t handle two huge melodrama bombs within days.
I don’t really get what the last panel means. Like, emotionally, I mean.
My interpretation: Amber’s line puts emphasis is on the past tense. It WAS Halloween. Things WERE lighthearted fun between friends. And now it is not. The party is over, at least for Amber, Walky, and probably Amber+Walky.
Interesting take.
I read, “It WAS Halloween” to mean, “It was horrific.” Halloween = horror. Being told that the death of one of her two best friends was a fake visited horrors upon her mind.
Or, in the alternative, “It WAS Halloween,” as in, “It WAS the day when the dead return to earth and are more present with us than usual.” HeadMike is strong and loud, banging around inside her brain, at this point.
I was taking the word “WAS” to mean, “this was truly,” as opposed to meaning, “it was once but is not anymore”.
“it was halloween” = “it was horrific” feels like a stretch to me, I feel like it’s more of a “today was going to be Halloween, and now it’s another day where we all feel the trauma and don’t have any kind of fun” (which yes, is not just Walky’s fault, but he certainly brought the attention on himself)
Interesting, and blows my take out of the water, which was:
Walky was all “come on, guys, let’s pretend nothing happened”.
Amber responded with “this is life and shit happens whether you want it to be a fun holiday or not”
I really like that your take is just as plausible while being the opposite of mine
Important to note that while Walky might not have been as close to Mike as Ethan or Amber he’s probably the one who is directly confronted with Mike’s absence the most right now.
Though really I shouldn’t need to say anything to justify anybody’s behavior. If you’re looking for someone to blame in a situation like this you’re not thinking it through enough. They’re all victims.
You get it, fellow Danny.
Wow im suprised that Walky explain his emotion so clear, almost at therapeutic level
But My pain is bigger than yours contest began. Whos win whose next you decide! epic rap battles of grieveeeeee
Considering this chapter is called This Was Halloween, does this count as a title drop?
I get why everyone is pissed off. I ALSO get that Walky is wondering why the fuck someone would bring up their friend who was murdered (felony murdered certainly) at a party after they’ve all been kidnapped by the same people. That’s a definite literal trigger for some people and Dorothy making a moment of it was in extreme poor taste.
Yeah. Well-meaning doesn’t always translate to good idea – it doesn’t even usually, honestly. She definitely could have gone and like, talked to a few people who are directly affected, it’s not that big of a party, after all.
That being said, she might have forgotten Walky even then? I know I was blindsided by this, even though it makes sense.
She *could* have talked quietly with a few people to organize a separate event the next day for those who would appreciate it. Halloween is for snapping our fingers at Death; All Saints’ Day is for remembering.
Yeah he just wanted to have some fun, forget about it if only for a couple of hours and then Dotty just grabs him and drags him back to Trauma Centre.
I definitely think Dorothy picked a really inappropriate time to do her “moment of silence”, and she could’ve asked if everyone else wanted to do it beforehand instead of just kinda springing it on them. I find Walky’s reasoning relatable, I’d go to a Halloween party to have fun for a few hours, not to feel sad about people I knew who died.
Dorothy knows what’s best for everyone. That’s why she should be in charge.
She definitely should have come dressed as Hermione.
Sadly Dotty’s future is to eventually be imprisoned for stealing nuclear documents and storing them in her Florida hotel basement.
…
I needed to state that because that is ridiculous for a web comic, let alone reality.
In retrospect, both Walky and Dorothy have the SAME reaction to the kidnapping/death, but are coming at it from different angles.
Both want to force everyone to be at the same level of trauma response that they are.
no one else agreed on a moment of silence
It’s funny that Walky complains about wanting to forget about it for “one goddamn minute” because really if he had been quiet for one minute he would’ve had a whole night of the escapism he wanted.
Have someone kick you in the already sore shin and see if you won’t yell out in pain. Same thing but an emotional trigger instead of physical one.
This only works is Walky’s willing to acknowledge pain, which he isn’t. Everyone has sore shins and Walky’s like “hey, you guys, if y’all acknowledge your pain I have to acknowledge mine so why don’t we pretend Mike’s not dead instead.” And he could’ve well and truly done that for the rest of the night if he had been quiet for one minute but instead he decided not to.
I skip reading this comic for ONE day and everything goes to &ell.
That’s what you get.
I love when characters from this comic do fairly rational if dumb things (Dorothy thinking maybe it was a good time to bring everyone together for a moment of silence) (Walky lashing out because his grief isn’t being fixed by that, it’s actually making him worse) (Amber resorting straight to violence as a gut reflex from abuse/her time as Amazi girl) and everyone in the comments plays it out like it’s a Dangan Ronpa murder trial and we need to choose one person to be responsible for the events
Maybe the commenters around here just need more opportunities to get this kind of singular blame-game energy out of their systems.
You should all play more video games. 😛🎮
We should all play more Dangan Ronpa.
I totally read that as “danger roombas”.
Then my mind went to that QC strip.
Alexa play “welcome to the jungle”
Nope, nobody’s doing that.
I’ve seen one comment who definitely kinda was like that, yes lol
Preach.
Amber was not resorting straight to violence as a gut reflex from her time as Amazigirl. Amber has always had a streak of uncontrolled violence and anger which frightened her. Amazigirl was the one who could safely and usefully channel this urge to violence by strict adherence to a comic book code of ethics. When Amber gave way to violence she could hurt people who didn’t really deserve it. When attacked by a bro with a
phoneknife, Amazigirl would have used a minimum of force to safely subdue. Amber sliced him up like he deserved. Giving in to sudden violence is all Amber. And yeah, father and trauma in the background.[FUNKY MYSTERY MUSIC]
Everybody in this strip hiding their faces to some extent (behind glasses, shades, domino mask . . .) but none more so than Walky. I doubt it was intentional, but it strikes. Especially if you consider their openness in this moment to be proportionally inverse to their level of concealment.
But then what would that say about Danny? (Just noticed him. Interpretation gone to trash).
Danny is wearing a hood with an open face because he feels no real grief about Mike and has nothing to be open about because he already said it to Ethan.
Compare it to Dorothy who has a similar relationship to Mike that Danny has, has a similar amount of openness to express regarding him, and has a similarly uncovered face with her costume.
The interpretation still works.
I think Danny’s just happy that he isn’t one Dannying it up the most at this party.
What about Joyce?
Eh, Joyce pretty much wears her heart on her sleeve on anything that isn’t her atheism.
And this, kids, is why you don’t spring traumatic memories on people unannounced, no matter how much you want to make yourself the center of every gathering*.
*(anyone else asked themselves why Dorothy prompted “you should say a few words” to Sarah and not Joyce, whose dorm room this also is and with whom she0s much closer with? Just me? Ah well)
Well, Joyce might have done it. And then Dorothy couldn’t. Sara definitely wouldn’t.
Ah, so he’s in the anger phase
I feel like people are missing a a few key things here. This comic whether directly or indirectly, focuses on the college life of very young kids. Granted, they are in college and have been through some hard-core shit, but these are 18-20 year Olds going through it by themselves and learning.
And I don’t know about you guys, but all the dumbest things I ever did was in my very early college days. I’m not excusing anyone’s behavior but being a dumb kid going through serious shit alone won’t do anyone any favors.
There’s a reason the comic is titled “Dumbing of Age”
It rhymes?
it spells “Dead On Arrival”?
I wonder if walky positing the idea that Mike is alive is what triggered Amber to start hallucinating him?
She was halucinating him when Amazi Girl was the only one who knew he was injured.
mic check, mic check.
Sufjan Stevens – Fourth of July
right. take two, lovelies.
Same as most of us it seems, this arc is hitting a nerve with me, and i was a callous dick a couple days ago and i’m sorry about that.
i think one thing we can relate to in each other’s antagonistic takes maybe, is the underlying anger at our personal needs being disrespected in times of grief. But grief is inherently messy, i think. Grief *wants* to lash out at the living.
It helped me a lot when someone told me that trauma could be thought of as grief. Something awful happened, and things will never be the same, and dealing with that is fucking hard and unfair. You mourn the you before you got damaged. Your sense of trust, of justice, and security is shattered. it *wants* to be shattered. Because that’s how the world feels now, like shit.
And everyone’s like, “look we all suffer, get over it” and you know it in your brain, sure, pain is banal, grief is the common lot. but really, all you want is to scream and break stuff and get in people’s faces and startle them out of them complacency, because what, you’re just supposed to roll over and accept that “that’s life”?? like fuck!
Whether it’s lashing out at oneself in the form of guilt, self-destruction, nihilism, or lashing out at others in the form of blame, physical violence, or distance, those are for the most part unavoidable aspects of coping with trauma or grief, i think.
In fact the comment section actually reflects the narrative strikingly. All the characters in this interaction and all the real people seething at each other down here are having to do something about their big spiky feelings and they’re just exploding all over the place and shooting shards at everyone, because this is the sort of heavy personal shit that immediately reaches into the darkest parts of your psyche and makes your kill-kill-kill chemicals shoot up and shut everything else out.
Grief is messy like that. It *wants* to be messy. Of course we can always argue that this or that person is doing something *especially* fucked up because we’re still moral beings, we still need to be held to account for our actions.
But on a deeper level, what i’m feeling now is, everyone’s behaving in the best way they know how, and sometimes there simply will be casualties no matter what. Because grief will not be reasoned away. it wants blood.
comments welcome, and take care out there <3
Reverie – Give It Time
Thank you Milu.
Thank you very much.
That was very profound.
Sometimes I wonder whether I find the comments section hurtful because I grew up in a pre-Internet generation. Maybe I just don’t get how the “digital native” generation talks.
But you encapsulated it more truly: it’s because grief and trauma are messy, and we deal with mess messily. And that’s not generational: that’s human.
Wow thank you Laura, that’s very generous of you. I’m glad my words reaonated with you.
Thanks, friend. <3
I got pretty freaked out by the comments section a little while back, had to take some time off.
I’m trying to be more gentle now, for myself and others, and keep things into perspective. 🙂
O.M.G. that song by Reverie is AMAZING. I had never heard her work before! Thank you for introducing me to such an amazing artist.
I’m listening now to the Surfjan Stevens song you mentioned. Hauntingly beautiful!!!
I was thinking of “Sail” by AWOLNation. All our hurty songs…
So glad you like both songs =)
Yes, Reverie is amazing. I adore her music. I’m still not completely sure about her latest album, but i definitely i need to give it a couple more spins. she took her esthetic in a new direction, but she’s still an incredible lyricist.
The album Carrie & Lowell, by Sufjan Stevens which “Fourth of July” is from, is one that i just can’t stop returning to, for years now. it’s just so rich and, as you say, haunting. “Fourth of July” is the song that speaks most directly about grief, but the album on the whole expresses his feelings following the death of his mother, Carrie. (I’m not a fan of all of Sufjan’s work, but this one album is just an absolute gem.)
I really like “Sail” too! Very good recommendation.
Alas i discovered that song on the British show Fleabag (which i can not recommend enough, it’s short, it’s witty, and it’s so fresh, it’s like nothing else i’ve ever seen) and in that show the track is used for comedic effect… and so, unfortunately i think that association is now way too ingrained for me and i can’t really experience it as it was meant anymore =/
Another song I thought about sharing here, that was and remains my theme track for the recent loss of my friend Nora, is “Des Fins” by french rapper Virus. It’s devastating, but i’m afraid the lyrics are fairly important, so, i’m linking it here but well. it’s in french.
Oh, gah, rip my heart out! I absolutely love that song. WOW.
For those who don’t speak French well, the lyrics are in the description below the video. Google Translate and Bing Translator are both ready to help. 🙂
A while back, I made a mashup of “Sail” with “Try” by P!nk, kind of in honor of my grandparents.
It’s good to take songs you love and make them your own, put them into new contexts, and honor the dearly departed through music. Helps us grieve and celebrate those who have made us what we are.
nooooo wait you mean you knew it? how???
yeah, it’s… it’s something. i tear up every time i listen to it. and that is many times.
A while back, I made a mashup of “Sail” with “Try” by P!nk, kind of in honor of my grandparents.
wow very cool! is it online somewhere? How does it relate to your grandparents, are those songs they like(d)?
funny you mention “taking a song you love and making it your own”. these last few weeks i’ve been obsessed with a song called “To Agalma” by this astonishingly versatile Greek singer, Semeli (she also dabbles in old-school rebetiko, as well as hip hop, she kills every time, she is SO talented), and recently i decided to learn it, then recorded a couple versions of it, i might end up with a proper cover but for now i’ve just been messing with synth tones and vocal harmonies.
it’s also a song about grief, as it happens. this one about a relationship ending though. with the interesting twist that the narrator talks about the mistakes made by the other person. i love that there’s a song that’s both “you fucked up, so i had to leave” but also “this is so sad and so hard for me”.
It’s just… ugh. here’s a link to the lyrics with translations, but i’m afraid the site is down atm, so um.
Listen, i could talk about music i love, alllll
daynight =) (it’s 1am where i live) ^^and i love love love recommendations, so do not hesitate to pile them up =)
Thanks, friend.
I just listened to that Greek song you recommended. It’s lovely.
I didn’t know that particular song, but I do love French rap and listen to it as often as I can. Have performed French rap for most of my life. So I loved it when I played it at your recommendation.
No, the mashup was just something I performed in a few small circles of friends, at online open mics. The songs just reminded me of my grandparents’ relationships with each other, and the trials they went through during World War Two and its aftermath.
Here’s what I’m listening to right now…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTHmZkjROU8
OK, now I REALLY cannot type anymore. Head hurts too much. Must – stop – looking – at – screen . . .
re: anonymity (the other message) oh, i see. fair enough.
thanks for the link! the mix sounds nice =)
i love the tape-warp effects they use in lofi hip hop sometimes, when the pitch just moves up or down by a quarter-tone or so. hmmm such a mood…
I do love French rap and listen to it as often as I can. Have performed French rap for most of my life.
!!!
of course, i’m massively curious. i hope you will share some of your faves, when you feel like =)
i wish you a pleasant rest and… i will follow your cue actually. i just put on a sickly sweet romcom i’ve seen before, just to wind down… but i feel my eyes taking longer and longer to blink haha.
Damn you Willis for being able to write characters that are messy and all experience emotions and deal with things in different ways that causes conflicts amongst each other! *shakes fist*
David Willis is an incredible writer.
It’s interesting to see so many people jump down Dorothy’s throat about the moment of silence, completely ignoring that the only one who seems to have had a problem with it was Walky, and his reasoning for ruining it is inherently selfish.
I get that he’s allowed to grieve in his own way, but when you grieve in a way that directly interferes with the grief of others, you’ve crossed a line. If Walky hadn’t absolutely demolished what Dorothy was setting up, judging by the reactions of the other characters people would have considered it at the very worst to be good-intentioned. Dorothy, Joyce, Amber, Sal, and Sarah all seemed at the very least to be okay with the moment of silence, if not on-board. Of course, we don’t have much to go on with the absolutely nuclear fallout of Walky’s actions overshadowing things.
I just found it striking how many people lept to “Dorothy’s being an Asshole” when all appearances indicate everyone else was into, or at least tolerating, her idea (save Walky).
I mean, if her idea is something that has no negative effects on anyone except the person who lived with the guy for months, it’s not really having no negative effects? Even if Walky hadn’t caused a scene, spending an entire minute in silence thinking about his dead friend that he’s trying to escape from would probably have been too much for him in some way.
I’m not saying dorothy is an evil person or that her idea was ill-intentioned, but personally the moment she brought it up it was obvious to me that ‘Bringing up that person that you were close to that died with no warning’ was going to make someone upset.
And yet the people who have as much (if not more) call to be upset about this were fine with it. Either everyone’s grief counts or it’s The Grief Olympics, but either way Walky’s being selfish here.
In my view, if everyone in a group is grieving one way, and one person is grieving another, it is the responsibility of the one to step away.
That said, I’m not upset at the characters here (they’re a bunch of dumb teens, no one should expect them to process any of this well), I just continually marvel at how the comments love to vilify a single party for minor mistakes as if they’re gaping character flaws.
But this wasn’t a grieving event. Walky was invited to a party, an event that, by definition, was about having fun. And then he got blindsided by literally “hey, here’s some more of what’s been triggering you”, the very thing he was told he could come here to get away from.
Like, imagine you were allergic to peanuts. And someone invites you to a peanuts-free event. And then you’re there, and suddenly someone goes, “and now we’ll shower everyone in peanuts”. It doesn’t matter that everyone else isn’t allergic to peanuts; in fact, everyone else loves peanuts. It’s their favourite snack. You’re still fucked. That’s what’s happening here.
When my Grandfather died weeks before Christmas, we had a moment of silence in the middle of our Christmas party to remember him. If I had cracked jokes or explained my wild denial theories as to how he’s not dead after all, I would 100% be the asshole.
Moments of silence are quite common, even at parties. Expecting everyone else to cater to your avoidance of grief is selfish.
And quite honestly, Halloween is way more fitting a time for this kind of moment than Christmas.
Yeah. I can’t really fault Dorothy THAT MUCH, because Halloween is about remembering the dead and cherishing life.
this is definitley not a universal thing. I don’t think i’ve ever had halloween be a time where people think about dead people
No it’s not, and I have no idea why you would think that.
We don’t know everyone else was “fine” with it. They might have been stood there internally rolling their eyes at Dorothy, or be upset that she brought up Mike. Just because Walky was the only one to say something doesn’t mean that no-one else agrees with him.
Of course, we can reverse this. The default state was “party.” The party was helping Walky grieve, or at least giving him metal reprieve. How come blindsiding Walky with “and now we shall have a minute of silence to think about Mike” isn’t interfering with Walky’s grieving, a dude that’s going to live the rest of the semester in a room made silent because Mike died?
So because Walky’s grief requires no one else around him grieve in any visible way, they are automatically assholes because they do? Dorothy’s got (to my mind) as much (if not more) reason to be upset here and she’s not upset at Dorothy, she’s upset at Walky.
He could have left when that happened without shitting all over the people around him who WERE ALSO GRIEVING and seem to be into the moment of silence.
Oh, I’m sorry, so NOW people who’re grieving in a way that directly interferes with the grieving of other aren’t crossing a line?
When the one requires the sacrifice of the many, it crosses a line. If the group weren’t all seemingly okay with the moment of silence, this would be a different matter.
Man, no. This idea that one should sacrifice the self for the group, regardless of the stances of the self and the group and the situation involved, is just no.
Walky could have just left. The problem in my view is his explanation (that he came to the party to avoid his grief) requires that everyone at the party never give any space to his grief, and one single minute of that silence was unacceptable to him. He didn’t have to “sacrifice himself” but he sure was ready to sacrifice the others at the party.
If he left, people would rag on that too. “Oh, he’s so immature that he can’t process his emotions” or something like that, I guarantee it. Hell, I think he’d probably catch flak for going along with this dumbass moment of silence, somehow.
This feels sort of like when Becky asked Joyce if she believed her dead mum was watching them: there’s no good way out of the situation.
Nobody woulda cared if Walky had left. Someone might have followed him and asked him what’s wrong.
Nobody calls someone walking away from an uncomfortable situation “immature”, because that’s actually a very mature thing to do. And I do think the majority of people would recognize this?
Maybe we’ve been noticing different comments, but whenever Walky does basically anything, somebody down here gets on his ass for it. In-story, maybe they woulda followed him and checked in. Here? Not a chance.
@RedCat: If Walky has just walked out of the room after Dorothy called for a moment of silence over Mike, people would DEFINITELY give him shit over it.
Amber, I meant Amber’s got as much reason. Distracted typing is dangerous
Yeah, no worries, it clear who you meant from context.
Someone last page deadass was like, when Walky is responding to a death of a peer badly it’s “going through a major life trauma” and when Dorothy does it it’s ” baffling combination of entitlement, misplaced sense of authority” and she has a “massive ego”. Like, OK. I don’t even have anything more to add there, it just visualizes what’s been bothering me about the comment section when Dorothy fucks up for a while.
Calling for a moment of silence in an unrelated party isn’t Dorothy grieving, it’s Dorothy trying to put the spotlight on Dorothy. This is a similar situation to when Dorothy tried to take over things after Jennifer got Joyce to go to the doctor.
I’m not about to get into how you obviously paint her fuckup in one of the worse ways possible, and how her process of grieving or trauma could absolutely entail her trying to Do The Right Thing For Everyone Else – and even if it’s not, it’s much more likely that she’s just Trying To Do The Right Thing. Which of course doesn’t always translate to being it going well or even being a good idea in the first place.
But also, this is again what I meant a few pages ago.
I would like to point out that we don’t know if anyone else has a problem with Dorothy doing this. We didn’t get time to see anyone’s reaction but Walky’s and Walky’s reaction immediately focused all attention and annoyance on him.
The only other person we’ve seen react to Dorothy was Sarah, who was very much exasperated with her wanting Sarah to say a few words. The “go ahead” that Sarah gave read, to me, as resignation instead of genuine consent.
I think it’s complicated. Dorothy created this situation, and Walky reacted badly to it. Both is (can be) understandable. Dorothy probably meant well, and Walky probably didn’t know how to react – I admit I’m not sure what kinda thought-process happened there, and it doesn’t help that we can’t see his face, but like… it’s understandable, even if he could have handled it better.
Like Dorothy could have handled her idea better.
Like Amber could have handled her anger at Walky better.
But people – especially teenagers – fuck up sometimes.
Let’s brace for Ruth (probably) fucking up.
I still don’t know where Dorothy gets off starting this debacle. Sure, have your precious moment of silence, but maybe don’t do it right at the exact start of the party? Maybe save it for later on, after people have had a chance to acclimate and maybe clear their heads of stuff before the inevitable return of Bad Feelings?
Like, who the fuck put her in charge of everyone else’s emotional state? They have no fucking recourse here except to leave if they don’t wanna be part of it, and that’s just shitty. It fucking sucks. “If you don’t wanna stop having fun at this party after I’ve sidelined you with fresh trauma, get the fuck out and begone.” What, one person gets to make every single decision for everyone, at a whim, just because they wanted to? Again, have your stupid-ass moment of silence, but give people even a little bit of warning first and save it for later.
Sure, you could just as easily say “Everyone else in the room can get over themselves and suck it up and let her get it over with and move on afterward”, but that’s not better. It’s still one busybody dictating how everyone else gets to think and act just because she put herself in charge. I get it, I fucking get it, she’s not doing well either, but if Walky doing poorly isn’t an excuse, it can’t be one for her either.
I’ve hated reading all the comments saying it’s Fine, Actually that she can just pull this out of nowhere. Maybe some of the other characters were fine with it, maybe some appreciated it, but I guess fuck anyone who doesn’t want to be constantly reminded about somebody’s death. There is no escape, you must feel bad at all times, no exceptions, and you have to be fine with whoever brought it up otherwise you’re in the wrong.
Like, I’m not saying Dorothy is Literally Satan, but the absolute quantity of pushback against the slightest hint that she’s maybe acting a little poorly is disgusting. It gives the impression that some of y’all really do think it’s fine if a single person sidelines an entire room with a bothersome topic, simply because “they’ll have to deal with it eventually anyway”. Like, okay??? So that gives everyone else the right to decide for them when “eventually” is?? Fuck off with that, it’s nasty and just as selfish as somebody saying “Nobody gets to talk about something uncomfortable ever”.
I dunno, maybe I’m just being an asshole by saying this, but I really do think Dorothy should have at least timed this better and maybe warned the people who actually had a connection to Mike. Maybe come up them separately and say “Hey, I kinda wanna talk about Mike real quick even if it’s just addressing the elephant in the room, is that gonna bother you?” and then give them a chance to make up their own mind whether or not to leave for a minute. They are not strangers. She knows how a lot of them are and how they might react, and could easily make an assumption that they were worth checking with first. Basic communication, I don’t know.
Again, because I know some people might just skim this, Dorothy is not the physical reincarnation of Super Hitler and Double Satan’s unholy fuckchild, but I do think she’s at least as wrong as Walky is for suddenly springing it on everyone with zero warning. “Can I have your attention” is not warning, because it doesn’t contain any words related to why she wants their attention. It’s weird how averse people are to letting this just be an inappropriate thing to do in this specific context and with this exact timing.
I am also not saying Walky’s response is justified. He’s being ridiculous too. He’s not who I’m currently on about at this individual moment.
This moment of silence isn’t actually about Mike. It’s about Dorothy. Which is why she directed “maybe you should say a few words” prompt (a prompt, you’ll note, which mentioned Mike at no point) at Sarah, who she knew wouldn’t do it (because she’s, well, Sarah), and not at Joyce, who Dorothy is much closer to, because Joyce might very well do it.
This whole thing started because Dorothy wanted to put the spotlight on Dorothy.
JB, don’t you think you may be painting Dorothy’s motivations in the most selfish possible light?
When she approached Sarah and said someone should say a few words, that was not necessarily a strategic ploy to get the gig and steal the show. Maybe she didn’t want to offer Joyce the gig because she felt that she’d been through enough or whatever. She and Sarah are both mom-type friends, hence plausibly why she turned to Sarah not Joyce.
She may have genuinely, and with the best of intentions, felt that, well, someone ought to acknowledge the recent traumatic events they’d all been through, and rightly or wrongly, when Sarah declined, decided she was as qualified as anyone to do this.
Were her intentions pure? I don’t know, but is that necessarily damning? Maybe she believes that she’s good with public talking, *and* also sincerely felt that someone, even if not her, should say something. Maybe she didnt think it through enough, but that’s not to say she hasn’t thought about it ethically at all. I’m sure we can all relate to doing something because (we believe) it needs to be done, but also enjoying it because as it happens, we also like doing the thing.
Seeing her motivations slightly more charitably doesnt have to stop you from thinking that was a terrible thing to do for all the reasons you’ve laid out.
When talking to Sarah, Dorothy doesn’t mention what the speech will be about. She just says Sarah should get people’s attention and say a few words. Additionally, these are things she (and everyone else) knows Sarah doesn’t want to do, ever. It’s like having the last piece of chocolate cake, and, having two options, asking the diabetic if they want it over the one with the sweet tooth. And then going, “welp, I asked, guess I can eat the slice.”
Maybe. But if I accepted your metaphor, the last piece of cake would have to be something that’s bugging Dorothy to no end and she finds it hard to think about anything else, *and* she assumes (rightly or wrongly) (well, wrongly it turns out) that basically every one in the room feels the same way and is just waiting for *someone* to have the courage to finish it.
I’m not sure about the fact that she doesn’t mention Mike, I can easily see that fact (and the fact that Sarah doesn’t explicitly ask what she feels someone should make a speech about) as pointing to the fact that Mike’s death and the overall insanity of the last couple weeks are the obvious thing to mention here. As thejeff said, “the elephant in the room”.
Again, I think a more charitable read is available.
The commentariat regularly turns Joyce into a supervillain over the dumb teenager shit she says as a dumb teenager. Charitable readings aren’t popular here.
Also, regardless of your personal feelings I’m sure you can see that Willis set this scene up with the strip of Dorothy smiling slightly manically like “I’m doing sooo fine”. Her coping mechanism seems to involve intervening, like she was antsy to do some adulting.
Incidentally while this would tend to confirm your suspicion that she went to Sarah on purpose because she knew full well Sarah wouldn’t want to be the one to talk publicly, it paints her intentions in a less sinister light I think?
I don’t think Dorothy is being particularly sinister – I actually think this is far LESS egregious than when she jumped on Joyce’s doctor appointment after Jennifer did all the work and took all the risk of Joyce blowing up in her face, even though this particular instance has had far worse consequences.
Dorothy is selfish, though. She’s emotionally selfish, no matter how much she helps others.
Hard agree. I think what Dorothy did is completely understandable given her mental state and all, but that doesn’t mean it was acceptable. Definitely should have checked with everyone first, and probably shouldn’t have taken Sarah’s exasperation with her as genuine permission to do this kind of thing without warning.
Dorothy put herself in charge, because she knows she should be in charge. She knows what’s best for everyone. She understands people.
And someday, the people will see that, and elect her as President. So she can do what’s best for everyone.
It’s so simple, really.
Grief is complicated. Too often in media, despite death being used often as sympathy, motivation, or what have you, we don’t usually get to see things like this. We get a timeskip to bypass it and get to the ‘healing’ or ‘acceptance’ phase. We completely miss these things. The messy side of grief. The part of grief that lashes out, or grieves in an unhealthy way. Everyone in this room is dealing with a very fucked up situation that happened. Either they were kidnapped, or they were friends to those that were kidnapped, or they had a friend/family member die during this event. Even if they were not directly kidnapped, someone like Sal might have a survivor’s guilty, seeing how her TWIN BROTHER had been kidnapped. There’s probably a part of her thinking ‘if I had been there, I could have protected him’.
I can understand where Walky’s coming from, because my mom died in 2021 and after she died, the house felt so quiet and empty. My dad and I both kept to ourselves, and both kept feeling like she would walk in the house at any moment, or call during what used to be her ‘riding home from work’ time. The silence is a constant reminder. Nobody else has to deal with this, everybody else may have their own dorm room as a shelter or escape from what happened. Not Walky. That doesn’t excuse Walky’s actions, but it makes it understandable why he’d react badly to being reminded of what happened during what is supposed to be a fun party.
I also think the timing for this storyline is important. Aside from getting clarity on the Ruth and Billie/Jennifer break up, this is also after Dorothy refuses to consider she’s could be autistic because she ‘understands people’. And here we have a storyline where the tipping point to things going to pot, is Dorothy. Now, I love Dorothy. She’s a really good character. I love that we’re seeing her flaws. And here is one of them. Dorothy’s thought process seems to be “at events post-someone dying, it is appropriate to mention the death and have a moment of silence”. But there’s nuances, and reading the room. If the event relates to the passing, or to the person in particular, that’d be a good reason to do as much. If we ever got the indication, say, that Mike absolutely loved Halloween and it was the only time he smiled or something, it would be appropriate to do a moment of silence in his memory at a Halloween party.
But as it stands… this is a Halloween party. Hosted by Sarah and Joyce. Neither of which were close to Mike. Neither hosted this party due to Mike, or because Mike died. Therefore… it’s not really needed or appropriate to hold a moment of silence. Dorothy doesn’t “understand people” as well as she thinks, she knows social norms and rules but cannot always put them into practice in social settings. In no way do I mean to say “see, see, Dorothy is autistic because blank”, I only say this to say that this flashback proves that Dorothy’s assertion that she understands people and cannot ever be anything other than “normal” (for whatever such a word would mean) is inherently false. I think someone in the next few storylines is going to bring up this event with Dorothy. And Dorothy will have to sit and ponder herself.
This is also not a post designating any bad guys or good guys. Dorothy and Walky both are going through stuff. That’s all.
Thank you Doopyboop. That was helpful.
Another thought.
Have you ever been in a situation where people are being so calm and reasonable about something and it just takes all your strength not to scream,
“what the fuck is wrong with you people??? Can’t you see this is not OK and it will never be OK??? how can you just stand here and talk seriously about this situation as though it’s just a thing that happens??? This whole situation blows so hard I don’t even have words, and you guys being all aloof and smooth about it is just fucking me up, and the only thing I hate more than feeling like this is that as far as I can tell, no one else fucking does??”
And sometimes, that feeling is too powerful for you to keep under control on it and foom, nuclear mushroom.
Definitely!
I wish there were an upvote button.
It’s okay, you can say “American healthcare”.
I do agree though. Much as I think Walky shoulda kept his fool mouth shut, he’s definitely not been in a mindset conducive to that.
I’m not american =)
“Should” is… a word. That I try to use as sparingly as I can. But sure, I know what you mean.
Don’t gotta be American to make jabs at America. Country’s a laughing stock.
Yes. Commonly. It comes right after the beat where I go “this is terrible” and then I look around and nobody’s batting an eye.
In fact, I’m now having flashbacks to when nobody batted an eye while a right-wing government decided to tell and subsidise people who wanted to replace indigenous trees with eucalyptus. And now half the country spends half the year on fire, because eucalyptus are actual firebombs and our fire departments aren’t manned, equipped, or trained to deal with the ridiculous extra flammability.
I can’t wait to have flashbacks about how nobody batted an eye when a centrist government decided it’d be a good idea to penalise family doctor salaries if their patients have an abortion or their female patients test positive for STDs. On the other hand, this country is majority catholic, so maybe the fuckers are just pretending to not understand the consequences while helping theocracy along.
“Oh, JBento, why would you or anyone be a misanthrope?”, people ask me. I dunno, take a fucking guess.
I am so sorry, JBento.
I hate eucalyptus trees too. They’re matchsticks, and we all suffer.
Part of my national service year I spent clear-cutting Eucalyptus/Mellaleuca trees and spraying herbicide on the stumps, replanting native trees in their place, during/after a massive wildfire. Whole state was on fire, seemed like.
Eucalyptus trees give me the creeps. My condolences for the **** you have to go through. What’s happening to the doctors and their patients— it’s awful, all around.
If I google “national service year”, I get UK hits. Is that where you’re from, if that’s ok to ask?
i want to say Australia or NZ, Britain doesn’t have “states”.
JB you said you’re from a majority catholic country, where are you from?
Portugal.
Ah. I was thinking of Brazil, JBento. That was where I had heard about the wildfires from Eucalyptus being planted and outcompeting native trees. (That and in East Africa as well. And Florida. And California. And…) But… now I see it’s in Portugal too.
Dang tea tree oil! Substance should be banned, unless it comes from someplace where the trees have natural competitors to keep their population in check.
D-:<
Hey, that’s a lot of places. It’s almost as if eucalyptus evolved specifically to burn easy, fast, and expansively, who knew? If only there was an entire country with extensive experience on the things that we could have learned from. Alas.
Here I think get planted mostly for timber for the paper industry.
So true. Folks don’t realize that, but they should.
https://wildfiretoday.com/2014/03/03/eucalyptus-and-fire/
There are ecosystems that get regenerated by fire, and others that get destroyed by it. Invasive exotic species cause so much damage.
Eucalyptus are the lionfish of the plant world, truly.
Hobbes: “Sometimes it’s a source of personal pride not to belong to the human race.”
Watterson retiring is one of the great losses of the human race.
for real. C&H was my introduction to comics, and it never got old. i’m sitting and reading an album right now, is how i ran into this especially topical strip.
Thanks, folks. No, I’m from the USA, but I’ve lived in places all over the world. USA has a national service program. It’s voluntary, but you can do a year of national service, similar to military but non-combat, and get a little money for college. Lots of states have similar programs. I did mine at 17. Mostly forestry and construction, some wildfire restoration. Some teaching and disaster relief. A bunch of stuff.
Man, you’re basically a survival game protagonist, with that set of skills. Kudos to you.
Well, thanks. But then I became permanently disabled while performing that work (and too young and dumb and easily exploited to seek compensation for it). Now there’s really not a lot I can do, that I used to be able to do.
Still trying, though.
Oh, that sucks, I’m sorry. 8(
I hope that you found something to do that brings you joy, even if you can’t put those skills to work.
Thanks, JBento. I’m trying to put myself back together, find ways to be of service. Some days it works, some days it doesn’t. Thank you for your support.
Making music helps. If I didn’t have to work for money, I’d be a performer all the time, just tell stories and sing and act.
Oh, you make music? Vocals, instrumental, or both? Do you post it on YouTube or something like that?
ahah, i posted the same question up there =)
yayyy let’s start some sort of club… of… attempts? at stuff?
i make music too. i’ve been too lazy to really polish anything to upload-worthy levels, but…
my sympathies about both your health and your compulsory employment, Laura <3
…oh and by the way, i immensely appreciate your contributions around here. you are one of the most consistently empathetic and soothing and helpful commenters here.
no wonder you get burned out after a while. it’s good that you know to take breaks, as you say this place gets so intense and the feelings being expressed can be pretty raw. yay for self-care! and for good people like you on the board doing their best to listen and acknowledge the daily heartache. you’re a star <3
Awww, shucks! *Blushes, twinkles, sparkles…*
Thank you for your kind words, milu and JBento. Thank you for being so sweet.
I perform in online video chat circles. Long ago I did a lot of live performing. Singing mostly, some spoken word, a very tiny bit of instrumental stuff. Used to do a little digital music editing, back when my injuries weren’t so bad.
I do get a little cagey divulging details of my own life, even though I want to speak from experience with such a nice group of supportive readers. A while back I had a lot of media exposure and it was very traumatic. I try to keep everything I do as anonymous and offline as possible, now.
…Kind of contradictory for an artist. Part of why I couldn’t make money at it — could never do the work of “getting the name out there.” I don’t want the name to be out there. I’m much more happy behind the scenes.
…Gotta sign off now for the rest of the night. Head injury’s acting up…
Take care of yourself, and sleep tight.
Thank you, milu and JBento. Take good care.
anyway yeah, blowing up and/or ending up hating everyone is not so unreasonable when behaving in a “reasonable” way feels so… grotesque.
feel you. <3
i still hope we can do something with these feelings that so many of us are having, other than (cathartic but) futile individual demonstrations of anger and desperation, seething nihilism and self-destruction.
i think the answer is political, that is to say, collective, organised, utopian *and* pragmatic. (those last two words are sides of the same coin, not polar opposites as cynics would have us believe.)
“i still hope we can do something with these feelings that so many of us are having”
I fire up Grim Dawn and spend a couple of hours murderising mobs. Many cthonians and aetherials died for the sake of my blood pressure in the days following the Dobbs leak. Serves the fuckers right. Actually managed to do some decent writing after those murder sessions.
That’s wonderful, JBento. What kind of writing do you do?
Lametrature. I mostly do it because I need to get my brain to shut up and it’ll only do that if I get the words out of it and into the… well, into the text processor, I guess?
Right now, my brain’s been coming up with fanfic for the characters of a match-3 superhero game.
Never gotten a search back with 0 results before.
What did you search for? O_o
i assume “lametrature”?
the present page must not yet have been indexed =)
JBento means literature, they’re just self-deprecating. anything online then JB?
I am befudled, because I thought it was an obvious enough portmanteau that plenty of people would’ve used it by now.
“anything online then JB?”
Trick question. I write it directly on Word Online in onedrive, so TECHNICALLY everything’s online. I haven’t published it on a blog or whatever it is people use these days, because I mostly write it to get the words out of my brain. Granted, that just makes my brain come up with words for further ahead, but at least they’re new words and the whole thing goes from “annoying and repetitive” to merely “annoying”. One takes improvement where one finds it.
I can give you a link once I’m done with this chapter. Like I said below, there’s scenes in it I’m not happy with how they flow, but am coming up blank on how to make them better.
That’s really cool. I’m glad you do it. I hope you’ll share some of your writing with us sometime, if that’s something you might want to do and feel comfortable doing. (If not, no worries!)
If you want, I can give you a link when I wrap up the current chapter. Could use some eyes on this chapter especially, because there’s scenes that I’m particularly not pleased with but I’m coming up blank on how to improve them.
On the upside, looking at them for a longer time than usual has made my brain come up with plot developments for further ahead that I quite like, so, y’know, mixed results.
i’m also up for it, if you’d like me to! (no hard feelings otherwise, obvs. you choose your beta readers.)
is it just me, or there’s this weird pleasure at reading/listening to/etc something you yourself have made? and you’re like, “wow. this came out of my brain? wtf. but also, damn.” =D
Ironically, the reason I write is because otherwise I don’t stop hearing the words. Getting them out of my brain is the only way to make my brain stop repeating them to me whenever it’s not otherwise engaged.
Link when I’m done with this chapter, heavens know when THAT’S gonna be.
Well, I don’t think I’d be so good as a beta reader, and I can’t promise my brain will be working well enough to read when the chapter comes out, but… I do look forward to that link.
Thank you.
OH! “Lame Literature” See, I thought “maaaaybe?” but didn’t want to assume it wasn’t just an established formal writing style with a non-obvious pronunciation like “La-MET-richer” or something like that. My second guess was “L.A. Metropolitan Literature” for some reason. Hence the search and this the confusion.
Dorothy has a closer relationship with Mike than people think.
Joyce certainly had a close relationship with Mike: she walked with him to class every day and chatted with him, and he even chaperoned her first date. He seemed to be genuinely involved in her growth as a person.
And Dorothy — well, the last time they were all together at a party (Sarah’s and Dina’s birthday) two men with weapons came to do them harm. They went home safe from that party because Mike drew the attackers away and sacrificed himself and died while trying to fight one of them off.
That’s an extremely close connection. “Greater love has no one than this, than that they lay down their life for their friends,” level close. (Sorry for the Biblical reference — no offense intended!)
Later, Dorothy and her friends were kidnapped by the same two that had caused Mike’s death. Dorothy watched and even (verbally) participated in the confrontation between the two kidnappers that culminated in the murder of Becky’s father. And Dorothy used the distraction of that murder to orchestrate their escape. Dorothy was right outside and heard the shot when Amber’s father was murdered (IIRC).
So we’ve got 3 traumatic, violent deaths in close succession, one of which Dorothy was intimately involved in, multiple kidnappings of people whom Dorothy is close to, and a young man who was part of their social group who gave his life to protect her and her friends.
I’d say Mike’s death hit Dorothy pretty darn hard. I’d say she has every right to grieve, even through public commemoration. She’s trying to find ways to make what happened to her make some sense, fit expectations, so she can wrap her head around it.
If I were Dorothy I would be pretty weirded out going to a fun Halloween party with scary deathy costumes and decorations and being expected not to address the common trauma they had all just survived, which Mike was a key part of.
I agree completely, and feel that she did it in a respectful way, too.
This is all no one’s fault, you know? Walky felt triggered and reacted with his usual trauma response, Amber felt triggered by Walky’s trauma response and then reacted with her usual trauma response. Dorothy did nothing wrong, but likely would have acted differently if she’d known this would happen. This is the sort of situation that people learn and grow from.
Wow yeah, those are important points re: Dorothy’s connection to Mike. Well put.
Thank you, milu and Joy.
…Plus there’s the fact that Mike kept trying to actively sabotage her relationship with Walky, and his every attempt just brought them closer. So in a way they have Mike to thank, partially, for how they fell in love.
That makes so much sense. Thank you.
Thanks, Nicoleandmaggie.
Oh yes this absolutely. You summed it up so nicely.
There’s gonna be a lot of pain here….
Welp, that’s one down.
Personally, I just find it sorta fucked up that Walky’s response to a moment of silence is to share made-up conspiracy theories about the deceased.
Like everyone’s debating the appropriateness of Dorothy’s and Walky’s actions here, but think of it this way.
Who would you be more upset by if you where there?
For me, Dorothy’s surprise request would annoying at worst (depending on my mood), but Walky’s response would be offensive.
Make no mistake, Walky is waaaay over the line here and definitely is the worse of the two (like that matters), but people can be bothered by multiple things at once without contradiction.
Also although I wouldn’t exactly call it Dorothy’s fault, Walky wouldn’t be talking about it if Dorothy hadn’t decided to pull that.
(well, not her fault that Walky reacted in SUCH an uncomfortable way, that trivializes the feelings of others around him. I would say it IS her fault for not thinking through bringing that up and thereby triggering someone into a big reaction. like why would you do this?)
tldr walky did the worse thing, but dorothy was the catalyst and it could have been anyone there that she set off
He’s being a jerk but I feel bad for him. It’s clear from the dialogue that he reacted this way because he’s having a hard time, not because he wants to hurt anyone. If I were in Amber’s position I wouldn’t feel sorry though.
He still would have been the jerk in this moment but imagine how much better Walky would have faired if he started with this point
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with what was up with Dorothy. Saying a few words when people show up to a party is a pretty normal “polite” thing to do and Dorothy does put stock in those. And Sarah, the actual host, didn’t want to. Joyce lives here, but Dorothy is close enough to her to know this isn’t her party, not really. Normally those few words go “Hey everyone, thanks for coming. This day is Significant for X, Y and Z reasons. Have fun everyone,” and, yeah, when someone in the group has recently died, a lot of people will throw in something about that. “We all miss them”, moment of silence, blah blah blah.
Frankly, I’d say that when a group is having a party and a member has recently died (as in, they died ten days ago and the funeral was a few days ago at best) and it’s the first gathering since the funeral, it’d be foolish not to expect someone to say something. Hell, if Dorothy had been hanging around and said out loud “I miss Mike” and someone got mad at her, they’d unambiguously be being an asshole. This isn’t that different. I get not everyone wants to be reminded of it, but that doesn’t make it reasonable to expect NOBODY to bring it up in any context, even if she didn’t go up to everyone and ask individually if they wanted to first.
THAT SAID, I get Walky is not in a place for something like this. He wanted to get away. That’s perfectly normal too and he shouldn’t feel bad for that either. This isn’t a great way to handle that (he could have ignored them and went off to get more candy, taken a bathroom break, politely said “I’m not feeling up for this, can we just have fun?”, etc.) but grief’s a hell of a drug. I don’t really expect him to be acting perfectly.
tl;dr – I don’t think Dorothy is doing anything wrong but I don’t think Walky’s really doing anything wrong either so much as having a poor reaction to something running up to his own grief that he really doesn’t wanna acknowledge.