Dana was doing very illegal drugs, which if got that much outta hand would have cost Sarah her scholarship or even coulda landed her in the SYSTEM.
the danger Sarah herself faced if she chose not to act is one which for some reason Raidah was rather oblivious to in her decision to jettison her “friend” 👀
Also her roommate was self-districting and possibly suicidal. Radha thinks this was fine but as a parent I would rather know that my child needed help than look back in grief and wonder why no one helped them.
About 40% of me is self-gerrymandered to support socialism. 40% for communist democracy without the fascist introductory part that Leninism and Maoism mandate (and never moved past). About 5% for wishing to become a Saiyan or Kryptonian and doing Leninist fascism into communism.
My right foot is dominated by liberal capitalism. We don’t listen to my right foot.
Also, thinking of other things Sarah could have done, like, she could have put in for a room transfer. But that wouldn’t have done Dana any good, and Sarah cared about her.
And also to remember that Sarah’s personality makes her talk about it in a way that emphasizes her personal stake (“I couldn’t study”) and de-emphasize her caring about Dana, which tends to make us see her in a worse light.
Dana was smoking pot the whole year. It’s only after her mother died and she got extremely depressed that Sarah called her mother. so no. not a false equivalence.
IIRC in addition to weed, Dana was also on substances a lot worse?
either way Sarah was that much more likely than her to be arrested for drugs found in her room because of the unfortunate reality of racism in policing
one of the biggest differences between Sarah alerting Dana’s parents and Jacob alerting Ethan’s parents is that Jacob didn’t also risk losing his entire future if he chose not to act
Ethan’s state of depression more than puts him at risk akin to Dana, but for those situations it is important to remember that the stakes to those involved were not exactly the same.
It isn’t stated anywhere she was doing anything but weed, but we do know Sarah was afraid of Dana dying if she didn’t act. Whether she meant by ODing on something else or her committing suicide is left in the air.
In both cases I think their actions are based on concern for their roomate. Jacob is worried about Ethan who we already learned earlier hasn’t been eating properly.
He is worried that Ethan is suicidal. He specifically stated in a recent (in comic time) conversation with Sarah that he’s been massively concerned that Ethan went through a stretch of not wanting to live. Sarah didn’t rat out her friend because she was using illegal drugs: she ratted her out because she was over-using illegal drugs to the point of self-destructio because she didn’t care about being alive anymore, and Jacob is worried that Ethan is in the same mental place. It’s really not a false equivalence at all.
Yeah, I think the outcome was even pretty good, tbh. It isn’t Jacob’s job to manage the adults in the lives of people he loves with at college. He did what you are supposed to do when you’re worried someone is suicidal – you call in for help from the people who care about them.
I would rather a friend be alive but mad at me forever than the opposite.
It’s not a bad thing, but that doesn’t mean Ethan isn’t going to be pissy about it. Nobody likes a snitch, even when snitching is absolutely the right choice.
eh, i see the equivalence
as in: they’re both a blatant violation of boundaries. sure you can be worried about me but that’s for you to deal with, don’t go behind me violating my privacy because you’re worried about me
that’s only going to make me distrust you more, and probably if i was in a bad place get me to a worse place
yeah, i see the equivalence in what sarah did and what jacob did, even if it’s different circumstances; neither of them should’ve done what they did
Definitely never try to intervene when someone’s in a bad place. If the worst happens, at least you’ll know you didn’t violate their privacy.
It’s a hard call and I’d say from the little we know Sarah was more justified than Jacob. Ethan seems to have been crawling out of the hole a little bit these last few days, while Dana wasn’t as far as we know.
Okay but then what should have been done? Leaving the situation as it is untenable. Not only is it a risk to Sarah’s ability to stay in school (because she was no longer sleeping) but she was also afraid Dana was going to die. She refused to see a mental health professional and her friends refused to reach out.
Ethan isn’t quite there yet but he’s not been eating to the point he’s visibly lost a ton of weight and he hasn’t been going to classes. If he was ever required to see student mental health services, clearly they have not helped and he’s isolated from his friends.
yeah even if Sarah didn’t wanna violate boundaries, her hand was forced because just drugs being in her room carried risk to her being wrongfully imprisoned and her entire future going down the toilet
systemic racism has this way of bringing the worse out of everyone; if one thing needs to be made absolutely clear, nothing about ANY of this is okay
Finding out that Jacob is actually on Sarah’s side in that whole debacle NOW is so wild to me. Dude you dated the girl who socially shunned her bc of it.
Given Joyce’s constant pitching of Sarah to Jacob, and given Raidah front-loaded it with “she punched me in the mall,” it wouldn’t surprise if the story was only ever half-explained to him and once he broke up with her and saw Ethan spiraling he went, “Ah.”
Lucy doesn’t only heard Raidah’s version too, doesn’t she. That’s one of the reasons Sarah got pissed at her cause she started giving Sarah grief about it without even asking for her side.
Lucy only heard Raidah’s version too*. That’s one of the reasons Sarah got pissed at her cause she started giving Sarah grief about it without even asking for her side.
(I don’t know why I added a bunch of “doesnt” to my comment. I was literally falling asleep as I wrote it.)
She cares about him so much she is willing to accept his identity, for now! …Which is to say she is trying, but “not perfect” is kind of an understatement on this one.
What else should Jacob have done, as a menschy bystander to some very obvious self destruction?
Ethan has been acting Very Alarming for a long time. He’s absolutely a person whom you should call the cavalry on. It’s not Jacob’s fault that the cavalry is wildly inept.
And you know what? This cavalry told Ethan she would rather he be alive and gay than dead. She wasn’t perfect but it’s a big improvement to what she told him last semester.
Worse than a crisis level of depression? When things are this bad, please take the risk.
Plus, whatever Jacob said, he said it in a way that made Naomi move towards being significantly less terrible* towards Ethan. Dude rolled a 19.
*I mean obv Naomi is still terrible. It’s just, she used to be even more terrible, and parental rejection is the biggest risk factor for making gay kids into dead kids, so, Jacob is doing the good work.
Agreeeed. People complaining about what Jacob did: Tell the class what you think he SHOULD have done. Who should he have told? What would have been actually effective? Give ideas rather than shitting on something that did actually kinda work.
And you know what? Even if there was something better he could had donde I don’t want him to had done that! I think it’s actually good and interesting that the characters make imperfect choices based on their personality rather that being ideal role models.
Well, sure, but it can be fun to debate if something would be a better option in a vacuum without that necessarily being something you’d want to happen, especially if it’s a situation that’s come up in the story before.
I dont know how much Jacob knows about Naomi, but ideally if I wanna help a friend who’s depressed as this, putting them near their bigoted parent who’s literally one the biggest reasons they wound up like this in the first place is literally the opposite of what’d I do if I knew they were like that.
It’s easy to point out what someone shouldn’t have done without giving a better option (especially one that doesn’t assume the person has all the knowledge).
jacob was aware that ethan was queer at least, and assuming a queer person’s parents are safe is an awful move. If any of my friends had tried what Jacob just did here, I likely would have been pulled out of college and forced into an even worse situation. Things are bad for ethan, but they could have absolutely gotten worse.
Would you forgive Jacob depending on the contents of the e-mails? If he told Naomi, “stop being a piece of shit, you’re killing your son,” would that change your mind? What if he said more tactfully than that?
A student with a dangerously troubled room mate can go to the university or to the parents.
The University is not more loving or more chilled out than the parents. Students can be forced to withdraw. This can lead to rather a lot of family drama. It can also impact student access to their parents health insurance. The bureaucracy doesn’t want the student to completely self destruct while at the university and what happens when the student is withdrawn is not their problem. It might be sad, but they have no liability or duty of care, so if this makes everything much worse, see the first clause of this sentence.
Have we seen Dina’s parents yet? If not, I feel like Dina would pull a Nathan Explosion about her parents (“Fuckin’ love my parents – my parents’re fuckin’ awesome.”)
I’ll wait till tomorrow to reserve judgement but it kinda depends on how much Ethan has told him about Naomi? Because if he knew she was a little scummy and did it anyway, not great on Jacob despite his concern.
If he had zero info other than ‘yeah she’s his mom, moms fix things right and I’m drowning here since I don’t know how to help him’, that’s a little better.
True. Jacob’s parents and whole extended family are apparently loving and full of human kindness. He may not have much experience with his church’s no doubt bigoted reaction to teen pregnancies or gayness.
I agree that Jacob probably did not consider that Ethan’s mother might be ill-suited to the task of helping her son with his mental health issues, but I suspect it’s from having a loving and supportive family and forgetting that’s not universal, rather than anything to do with his church. During the arc with Becky living in Leslie’s house, it was revealed Jacob’s church is canonically accepting of gay people. (Yes, the half-pun was intentional.) I guess technically we don’t have any evidence about teen pregnancies, but if the acceptance of queer congregation members os anything to go by…
I’m with Shade – if you hate core pieces of me, you do not love me. You love the idea of me that exists without those pieces (in other words, an imaginary version of me). That’s not love.
There is the concept and it works well with trying to support people with drgu addictions and the like.
When it comes to perfectly normal parts of life like being gay it fails horribly. It relies on the agreement that the thing in question is a sin and that the sinner needs love to help them stop sinning.
Jacob’s an Episcopalian. At this point in history, they’ve largely figured out that bigotry is probably not in the spirit of the Gospels. They also ordain women.
And again, for the naysayers: What should Jacob have done differently? When someone is as deep into a self-destructive spiral as Ethan has been, you’ve got two primary choices–their family, or their friends. One of Ethan’s best friends died, and the other one is arguably a bigger basket case than he is right now.
The only third option would entail trying to find someone at the school he could alert–and I can guarantee you that would’ve led to Naomi’s involvement, anyway.
Furthermore, I think there’s at least a bit of evidence that Jacob learned from Sarah’s story. The word was “emails”, plural. This wasn’t him making a desperate phone call resulting in immediate action. This was a series of contacts, likely trying to appeal to Naomi with reason and compassion, and quite possibly not pushing her to come in person until it became obvious something big needed to happen.
There are Christians who believe in the stuff Jesus actually said and don’t just use selected passages of the Bible as an excuse for their horrible prejudices? Sounds made up.
No, there aren’t. Because there aren’t accurate records of what Jesus actually said. All Christians have to negotiate with the Biblical texts through the lenses of their ideals, culture and traditions in order to find meaning in them.
Some certainly find meanings that I like better than others, but that doesn’t mean it’s really what Jesus actually meant.
It’s a difficult situation, but I understand the feeling that you need to do *something* when someone near you is spiraling, and it seems what Jacob could do on his own wasn’t working.
The “Oh, everyone hated her guts” thing is something that gives me some more respect for Jacob, interpreting as something he considered beforehand– right thing not the popular thing, right thing as a matter of perspective, blah blah blah, all that. (I got bored writing my own comment.)
I am really wondering how much of thay was a “no win” scenario, especially with pot involved. If her friends refuse to encourage and the person in question refuses to attend counseling to help, that means that you have to get other people involved. With drugs being a part of the equation, and I doubt that pot was legal in this area or at that time, it limits the school personnel you can go to. Even asking the school to have her switch to a different roommate could have been problematic due to the drugs. With Sarah’s scholarship, she definitely didn’t need to have the possibility of the drugs being blamed on her. It could also be that her roommate’s dad was the only family contact information she had. (Link https://www.dumbingofage.com/2012/comic/book-2/05-saturdays-all-right-for-slighting/bong/ for the middle of Sarah’s point of view btw).
On a different note, it could very well be that Sarah’s roommate was pulled out of school because she couldn’t concentrate on classes due to her grief, and will come back when she is feeling better. She could have even ended up at a different university, which I wouldn’t find unusual after toe dad and all the other shenanigans that went on. She could also still be upset and grieving over the death of her mom and angry at Sarah about it. Even if the end result was a better outcome for her, it still wouldn’t be unusual for her to vent some of her grief through anger at Sarah. People can be unreliable narrators, especially when they are in emotional states. She could also actually be in a worse state because her father was not a nice guy. The point is, I don’t know that Sarah personally had too many options and none that had “good” endings. It also wasn’t like Raidah and her friends were offering to have Sarah’s roommate (Dana) stay in their rooms with them to spread out the burden. If Dana’s father was actually horrible, and Sarah couldn’t handle it due to a lack of sleep, wouldn’t a true friend offer to share the load? It seemed like people were able to do a work-around with Becky. The only reason why I think that they wouldn’t offer to do this is because they actually realized how bad Dana was and wanted Sarah to be the only one to carry the burden because she was her roommate.
It reminds me of a friend’s relatives (aunts, uncles and cousins) who were all for her and her mother living with her grandparents and taking care of them. It was cheaper for them (more inheritance too) and they didn’t have to personally deal with the dementia episodes, physical violence, emotional abuse, or health issues. It was all about the “moral superiority” of we are good kids keeping mom and dad in their home, but without giving any actual help. You don’t have a right to the moral highground unless you actually put in the 24hr work. Sometimes it is even 24/7, with absolutely no breaks. That kind of situation isn’t healthy for anyone.
re: drugs, yeah there’s also the fact that there being drugs in Sarah’s room carried significant risk of HER being arrested for it because of systemic racism.
and you’re right, Sarah was forced to make an impossible choice between losing her friends and losing both Dana AND her future, this was a situation where there was no winning at all for her no matter what she decided ;-;
Especially if all of Dana’s friends end up saying that it was Sarah to protect Dana and get back at Sarah for “trying to get Dana in trouble”. I could see Raidah and her gang being petty enough to do something like that.
They also likely saw Sarah as an outsider or project that owed them for their friendship. Yes it’s always easy to be generous with someone else’s time and or money but they couldn’t even consider taking on part of the burden themselves.
She died. It’s been established already, way back in Book 7. Dana’s dead. She died by choking on a big soft pretzel her dad bought her after he picked her up from school. He knew how hard it was for her and so he took her to a ball game, her favorite thing to do with her parents, but he forgot the cheese dip and she paid the price.
Not only did she die by choking on that pretzel, but Sarah personally came to her funeral and took a big shit on the casket in front of Raidah, which is why Raidah is justified in her treatment of Sarah.
I don’t necessarily disagree with what Jacob or Sarah did, and in both cases, ignoring someone spiraling can have serious consequences, obviously.
Of course, I also understand why Ethan wouldn’t be jazzed about it, obviously, and feel betrayed. Raidah, though, can run headfirst into a woodchipper.
That’s such a mean fucking thing to say. You’re so unbelievably out of line, and I can only hope you grow as a person. That wood chipper didn’t do anything to you.
Yeah, that’s totally my bad. That was a 3:30 AM post… I legit was not thinking about that poor wood chipper and I’m very, very sorry for not giving consideration to the real victim in that suggestion.
Assuming Jacob doesn’t know the degree to which Ethan’s mom was a POS when he came out (and I mean, *I* wouldn’t tell a roommate all of that), he’s in the right considering all that he knows and doesn’t know. Ethan has clearly been in a dark place, and if Jacob doesn’t know what Naomi is like, it’s understandable to want to contact Ethan’s family about it.
Ethan is also in the right to be upset about it, since he obviously *does* know how his mom can be. As someone who also has a toxic, bigoted mother, the amount of time I want her to randomly show up in my space uninvited is… nope, it’s still zero percent of the time.
tl;dr Both of them are coming from a very understandable place here. There aren’t any bad guys in this situation (except Naomi, who–while *slightly* improving–is still pretty sucky)
AND SHE WAS RIGHT TO DO IT. I’ve never seen anyone who disagreed with what Sarah did recommend a workable course of action (I’ve mostly seen ‘student mental health services’ which Dana was refusing to see and ‘talk to your professors’ who can’t give Sarah extensions forever).
Seriously. The comment section always criticizes this but their apparent solution is just “Continue hanging around in close proximity to a person that’s clearly self-destructing, it definitely won’t get worse”
The comments always act like protecting herself, her scholarship, and her entire future is some heinous act and makes Sarah the villain. She was motivated by the fact that what Dana was doing would wreck both their lives, but somehow… how dare she?
Also remember, that unlike most people, Sarah’s more likely to downplay her concern for others and play up her worries about herself. Part of her grumpy curmudgeon persona.
Hm. Was there a reason given as to why Sarah couldn’t request a room change?
But at any rate, even if Dana’s problems weren’t affecting Sarah, she had a moral obligation to let somebody know, especially if Dana was still 17 and a minor.
Dana’s friends wouldn’t’ve been any happier with Sarah if she’d just let Dana OD.
Likely because they would take time until on was available and that was time she didn’t had if she wanted to keep her scholarship and she didn’t know if Dana would survive that long.
It also could have been (partly) that she didn’t want to abandon Dana. She was overwhelmed, but still a caring person, and I think “this way I don’t have to see it as Dana self-destructs” was a desired outcome either.
Malaya asked for a room transfer on the first day of school and it took over a month to get it. Sarah’s grades and her health were already suffering (she was no longer sleeping) and she also cared about Dana. Dana’s spiral was getting worse to the point Sarah feared Dana’s DEATH was becoming a possibility. That suggests to me that either Dana wasn’t JUST doing weed or that she was so bad Sarah feared a possibly imminent suicide. And unlike Ruth, Dana was still capable of putting on a happy face whenever anyone checked on her besides Sarah, so involuntary admission due to catatonia wasn’t likely to happen with her.
Frankly, if Sarah had been as merciless and uncompassionate as Raidah claims, Sarah would’ve reported Dana on the first day of school for keeping weed in their room. And not to Dana’s dad either, but to the school, which would keep her out for good.
According to Sarah’s story, Raidah didn’t believe Dana was that bad. The only way Raidah would be right and Sarah unreasonable is if that were actually true. If we accept Sarah’s judgment of how she was doing, as I am inclined to do, then it follows Sarah did the right thing.
Yeah, and regardless of whether Raidah believed it or not, SARAH believed that Dana’s life was on the line and she acted in accordance with that belief. There weren’t other good options involved. But IF Sarah had been purely motivated by selfish self-interest, as Raidah claims, she’d have narced on Dana on day 1 and gotten her expelled for keeping illegal drugs on campus.
I guess you could imagine that before then Sarah had been selfishly tolerating Dana because her dad runs a legal firm. I can’t help but wonder how much that figures into Raidah’s thinking, based on what we have seen, although maybe she got more mercenary since. 🙁
If Dana just let her depression and grief build until one day she just up and bye-byed herself, you know Raidah would’ve pinned the blame on Sarah somehow.
I really hope she got the help she needed off-screen, and that the secondhand report about her unhappiness with being home that we got from Raidah was half cover story and half embellishment.
If Jacob wasn’t right to do it then that’s only because Ethan’s mother is not great, not because his general instinct was bad. Ethan was in a really bad place and not getting the help he needed.
Sometimes people in this comments section struggle with the idea that there isn’t a perfect solution that doesn’t hurt anyone or impose on anyone. With the fact that life is messy, people don’t have all the info you personally do, and with the fact that causing hurt isn’t something you can fully avoid (though trying is kind).
This causes a kind of cognitive dissonance when someone they think of as “good” still messes up, which they consider “bad”. Then they start assigning blame.
People forget you can do the right thing and that can result in a bad outcome because you simply do not have the information, resources or empath abilities to tell if someone is actually a caring loving person or a POS or kind but incompetent in significant damaging ways.
Just as a good ending does not justify awful means in most cases, a bad ending doesn’t disqualify that your means were justified or the only reasonable measures you had access to in most cases either.
And people can be judgemental assholes about you doing the right thing when they’re not the ones in the thick of it drowning because why didn’t you just not drown and get better at tolerating water in your lungs.
And the choice might look bad in short term but will look good in long term. Like Dana was probably pissed at Sarah but if she reappears at some point after getting help to deal with her pain, she will be probably grateful.
Similar situation here where, for all Jacob knew, if he did nothing Ethan would die either due to neglecting his body or straight up suicide. Thanks to his intervention we Might be looking at his mother improving her attitude and Ethan getting a healthier family and support. He is bitter and angry now but no one knows what lies in the future for him.
All of this makes me think that people should have emergency contact information for some adult that they trust to give to their roommates. If that person is not a family member, then it might be even more important for the roommate to have that information, as the first person the school would probably contact would be whomever is considered your guardian. So probably the school would contact your parents.
That makes sense. This group has also been through a crazy amount, with kidnappings, violence and the like. I can’t recall any scenarios in my time as an undergrad that would have come close to requiring emergency contact information. Off campus and outside of school, on the other hand, might be a different story.
Ethan… did visibly lose a lot of weight, a lotta LBM, not a great sign for someone his age. And it’s not like Jake narced him out to the authorities, just emailed his mom to relay concerns, she was bound to see him eventually. If anything, while I think Sarah was ultimately in the right, what Jacob did was a lot less drastic. Ethan’s got a right to be resentful if that’s how he feels but I honestly respect Jacob for being strong enough to face that resentment in this situation.
Actually wait, on further inspection, Sarah didn’t narc out Dana to the authorities either, she just called Dana’s dad. Somehow I remembered it as Sarah ratting her out to the school, Mandela effect I guess.
Yeah, Sarah called her dad and he withdrew her from school. Telling the school would’ve meant them discovering the drugs (and since, in her grief, she’d started smoking in the room, it’d be VERY obvious once you went up there) and then she has a real risk of being kicked out of school or arrested because weed is not legal in Indiana outside medical reasons. Now she’s a probably wealthy white woman in a sympathetic situation so the school may not go that far, but it would still probably be worse for Dana.
Also never ask questions or try to learn because that’s demanding emotional labor. Never flirt with your boyfriend or you’re objectifying them. Never tease your friends because that makes you an asshole. Never worry about your friends because that makes you overbearing. Never sleep with a person who is single and into you because what if someone else is into them you homewrecking hussy.
Know everything and have access to perfect truth, all the time, and do nothing with that information.
I wonder if Jacob finally will realise he has been unfair to Sarah. He’s justifying here doing what she did, which proves that Sarah was right about doing it and that she can be a caring person even when she was acerbic about it… which Jacob continuously teased her about, but then reviled when she forced herself to change her attitude.
Maybe Sarah was just fine the way she was. Not everybody needs to be a Joyce.
I’d still put doing the right thing over people liking me if it meant helping someone during a possible suicidal depression.
I would have however been against it before hand because I would think his mom visiting wouldn’t be good for his mood. Fortunately it was a good encounter.
A lot of people here leaping straight to judging Jacob’s actions vs Sarah’s actions RE: their correctness or morality. What I take away from this strip is that Jacob suddenly gained a new appreciation for what Sarah has been through this past year. Underneath her crustiness and her masks, she is a deeply caring person, and when she acted on those feelings, she got slapped back hard, causing her to add more crust and more masks to protect herself.
TL;DR: If he’s not careful, Jacob may find himself respecting Sarah.
Given that Lucy also only has Raidah’s side of the Sarah-Dana story, I’m wondering if there will be fall out from that when she finds out what Jacob did with Ethan.
There must be SOMEWHERE on the internet where people talk about Dumbing of Age in terms of story and themes and plot points, instead of just moralistic passive-aggressive chiding the actions of fictional characters in a long-running soap-opera comedy.
Yeah we really tend to treat the comic like it’s a post on Am I The Asshole. I’m pretty sure the comic is meant to be an interesting portrait of characters, not a morality play.
I think the character commentary is how a lot of people analyze the strip – in the sense that a lot of it is ‘I like what X is doing in this strip, don’t like what they do in the next one’ and so on and so on. It’s hard to do larger analyses when each piece of story is so short and drip fed rather than a longer story you can get all at once – even a ten minute episode would be a lot longer. Talking about plot points in a format like this just tends to go ‘ooh, things are heating up now’ ‘this has been going for a while, I wonder when it’ll come to a head’ and that’s also not terribly fun to write over and over either.
A discord or message board would be a lot easier of a space to have chats like that since you could focus on a specific sequence of strips or a whole storyline rather than being focused on one specific strip. It CAN be done (there’s definitely talks like it here and on patreon) but I do think the format makes one easier to discuss than another.
There’s a Discord server for the comic, but their heads are even further up their own asses. Imagine twice the usual amount of agonizing over the moral implications of Sarah sneezing north instead of east, then add in an element of “something has been taken from us” and lower the average intelligence by about 40%, and you’ll get the idea.
Awww, that’s too bad. I was thinking today how fun it’d be to have a discord where we could hang out and talk about DOA (and, if we wanted, other things). Shame to hear there is one and it isn’t good.
is it really that weird for someone who’s been an adult for like a few months and hasn’t actively dealt with suicidal people with shitty parents to call someone’s parents if they’re potentially suicidal or something?
like yeah I would be mad if someone did this to me!
but a person’s health when they’re not yet independent is, ostensibly, their parents’ job to some extent (definitely in a crisis) and if you don’t know that someone’s parents are evil it’s not exactly the default assumption
it’s not reasonable to assume the characters know the tropes their universe runs on
god ive seen so many stories where the precise last sentence here is what I want to plaster over the comment section. “How could this romance comic have a misunderstanding instead of clear and immediately communicated emotions.” “This action comic keeps having fights.”
“how does this comic called Dumbing of Age have college aged adults doing not fully thought through things???
To be fair, the one about romances is more about overusing misunderstandings for cheap drama, and as someone who has read romance comics with clear communication, they are honestly really good.
Personally speaking I care a lot less about the rightness or wrongness of anyone’s actions, and rather how they will fall on the painful to hilarious scale. I’m rating this one a ‘ah, oof’.
you’re not just allowed but encouraged to worry about a strong pattern of self-destructive behavior. helping your fellow traveler carry those burdens is unquestionably above your pay grade. you call the most trustworthy authority figure you can identify, inarguably the correct play
source: some dude whose college roommate and friend fucking killed himself
This is what happens when you surround yourself with people who care and then stop talking to all of them when you’re going through a personal crisis.
Yeah, I’m blaming Ethan for setting himself up to have to deal with his mom showing up. If you’re about to go Mike and your roommate doesn’t know who in your family is safe to call, that’s on you.
It’s also harsh when you alienate people who try to help you with passive-aggressive snark to punish them for not reading your mind to know the exact right way you wanted help and you end up alone. If I was in Jacob’s place I’d think it’s time to say something out of place, to interrupt this pattern Ethan has going on where instead of talking he just shuts everyone down by making them feel bad for talking to him (or talking to his mom in this case). If he doesn’t like being told this, maybe he’ll say something?
Still, when you are in state like that you can’t really process a lot of stuff that’s going with the people around and how it affect them, your brain is literally playing against you.
But how can anyone know what state he’s in if he doesn’t talk?
I reiterate, this is the consequences of having people who care about you in your life. Would it be a better solution for Ethan to surround himself with shittier people who’ll let him self destruct without interfering? Because that’s one thing he could do differently that doesn’t require him to open up. I have trouble thinking of any more.
Well, no, that’s wildly off from the issue. You’re taking a harsh stance toward Ethan’s actions when he’s struggling, and what I think Jeremiah is saying is that it’s harsher than necessary. That’s certainly how I feel. The concept of “blame” and “that’s on you” doesn’t need to enter into it.
Ethan experienced significant trauma and it had a devastating impact on his mental health. He is lucky that he has people in his life who will care and respond to this. He might not like how Jacob responded to it, but sometimes what you do and don’t want/like when your mental health is bad gets messed up, as can your perspective on your situation.
Basically just that you don’t have to blame Ethan to support Jacob’s actions.
eh, ethan has been obviously and visibly depressed
dana managed to put on an act around her friends, or so they claim
one could rationally think sarah was at fault, especially since she came across as more concerned about her grades, or irrationally blame her because of feeling bad that their friend is gone
jacob stood to gain basically nothing from doing this
a return to fifty different dudes showing up in ethan’s bed is probably less ideal for him, even
I don’t think Jacob should be judged too harshly for this. He might have done the right thing he might not have, but he did the closest he was capable of as a human in a shitty situation. Same as I think of Sarah.
Reading these comments is really eye opening for how some folks are actually on Raidah’s side (or perhaps they’d prefer to be described on Dana’s side). If someone I SHARE A LIVING SPACE WITH is showing indisputable signs of self-harm, you’re damn right I’m calling someone that can do something about it. Ethan starved himself and stopped going to classes. Pretty clear instance of needing some kind of outside intervention to avoid the absolute worst outcome.
The only thing Jacob is guilty of is not understanding the extent of how poor Ethan’s relationship with his mother is.
I’ll add, I wish this was done for me when I was 18. I wasted thousands of dollars and nearly died many times. Someone sounding the alarm might have prevented that.
While I understand where Jacob is coming from, I don’t think emailing Ethan’s blatantly homophobic mother was the best idea. It worked out-because this is a work of fiction and Willis can make it work out-but in real life that probably just made things a hundred times worse.
Sarah did the right thing for the … neutral reasons. It was mainly out of how Dana’s behavior was affecting her ability to be in college. It wasn’t out of kindness nor to ensure she got better. Thouhh she was sure that it would ultimately result in that.
Jacob… he IS doing it for altruistic reasons.
I don’t agree with that take on Sarah’s motivations. She often describes it that way and we tend to believe her, since most people won’t describe their actions in a way that puts them in a worse light.
But this is Sarah and the facade she puts up to the world is one where she’s grumpy cynical misanthrope who doesn’t care about anyone else. Of course she’s going to describe it in terms of worrying about her own scholarship rather than caring about Dana. She’s not going to admit to caring.
Sometimes, you have to be the one that’s hated for stepping in.
I would not really consider *parents* to be a safe bet in helping my friends (unless i know they have a good relationship), but if my friend is suicidal, they need help. Ideally professional help.
It’d be nice if there was on campus school counselors to be on call , tho it’d be a lucrative business to have a therapist’s office down the street, versus ppl like booster/ other psych majors trying to weigh in (i wonder if any psych students have tried to ‘help’ and it backfiring/making things worse lol).
My issue is contacting the parents. That’s a violation of privacy imo. Contacting an actual service that will be confidential is totally different. Also it’s best to ask for consent first.
Students are adults parents don’t have a right to know their medical info.
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…WHYYYYY?
for reals tho does Jacob not see how he’s drawing a false equivalence here? :/
How so? Sarah also was concerned for her roommate who obviously needed help
Dana was doing very illegal drugs, which if got that much outta hand would have cost Sarah her scholarship or even coulda landed her in the SYSTEM.
the danger Sarah herself faced if she chose not to act is one which for some reason Raidah was rather oblivious to in her decision to jettison her “friend” 👀
Also her roommate was self-districting and possibly suicidal. Radha thinks this was fine but as a parent I would rather know that my child needed help than look back in grief and wonder why no one helped them.
*Self-destructing
Self-gerrymandering
About 40% of me is self-gerrymandered to support socialism. 40% for communist democracy without the fascist introductory part that Leninism and Maoism mandate (and never moved past). About 5% for wishing to become a Saiyan or Kryptonian and doing Leninist fascism into communism.
My right foot is dominated by liberal capitalism. We don’t listen to my right foot.
“Liberal capitalism, my foot!”
it’s good he wanted to help his friend for reals,
but like something tells me he’s either naïve or ignorant about both Naomi and what was happening with Dana
after all according to Sarah “[she] was the only one who got to see behind-the-scenes Dana”.
Also, thinking of other things Sarah could have done, like, she could have put in for a room transfer. But that wouldn’t have done Dana any good, and Sarah cared about her.
It’s also been noted in-comic that room transfers can take *months* (if they happen at all) and that wouldn’t have helped Sarah either.
And also to remember that Sarah’s personality makes her talk about it in a way that emphasizes her personal stake (“I couldn’t study”) and de-emphasize her caring about Dana, which tends to make us see her in a worse light.
Dana was smoking pot the whole year. It’s only after her mother died and she got extremely depressed that Sarah called her mother. so no. not a false equivalence.
What? How many mothers did she have?
Lol, there’s some irony here dude look at your av rn.
lol
IIRC in addition to weed, Dana was also on substances a lot worse?
either way Sarah was that much more likely than her to be arrested for drugs found in her room because of the unfortunate reality of racism in policing
one of the biggest differences between Sarah alerting Dana’s parents and Jacob alerting Ethan’s parents is that Jacob didn’t also risk losing his entire future if he chose not to act
Ethan’s state of depression more than puts him at risk akin to Dana, but for those situations it is important to remember that the stakes to those involved were not exactly the same.
as from weed, what else? reefer? maryjane? devilweed?
Ehh If she was hitting anything harder I can’t find it in the archives.
It isn’t stated anywhere she was doing anything but weed, but we do know Sarah was afraid of Dana dying if she didn’t act. Whether she meant by ODing on something else or her committing suicide is left in the air.
mainly im goin off the fact that Sarah said “my room-mate was doing illegal drugs” -> drugs *plural* meaning not just one?
…what?
In both cases I think their actions are based on concern for their roomate. Jacob is worried about Ethan who we already learned earlier hasn’t been eating properly.
He is worried that Ethan is suicidal. He specifically stated in a recent (in comic time) conversation with Sarah that he’s been massively concerned that Ethan went through a stretch of not wanting to live. Sarah didn’t rat out her friend because she was using illegal drugs: she ratted her out because she was over-using illegal drugs to the point of self-destructio because she didn’t care about being alive anymore, and Jacob is worried that Ethan is in the same mental place. It’s really not a false equivalence at all.
Right? Why is this a bad thing? Jacob was concerned for Ethan and did the only thing he could think of to try and get him help.
He was wrong, sure, but I try not to criticize people for effectiveness.
Yeah, I think the outcome was even pretty good, tbh. It isn’t Jacob’s job to manage the adults in the lives of people he loves with at college. He did what you are supposed to do when you’re worried someone is suicidal – you call in for help from the people who care about them.
I would rather a friend be alive but mad at me forever than the opposite.
Lives with*
Loves*
Loaves*
Louvres*
Laves*
It’s not a bad thing, but that doesn’t mean Ethan isn’t going to be pissy about it. Nobody likes a snitch, even when snitching is absolutely the right choice.
Possibly especially in such cases.
Cool, so it’s another reason for me to be annoyed at post-skip Ethan.
eh, i see the equivalence
as in: they’re both a blatant violation of boundaries. sure you can be worried about me but that’s for you to deal with, don’t go behind me violating my privacy because you’re worried about me
that’s only going to make me distrust you more, and probably if i was in a bad place get me to a worse place
yeah, i see the equivalence in what sarah did and what jacob did, even if it’s different circumstances; neither of them should’ve done what they did
Definitely never try to intervene when someone’s in a bad place. If the worst happens, at least you’ll know you didn’t violate their privacy.
It’s a hard call and I’d say from the little we know Sarah was more justified than Jacob. Ethan seems to have been crawling out of the hole a little bit these last few days, while Dana wasn’t as far as we know.
Really? You just let someone self destruct?
What?
I think that was sarcastic. I think.
i know lur and dm them a bunch and can confirm:
nope! lol
Okay but then what should have been done? Leaving the situation as it is untenable. Not only is it a risk to Sarah’s ability to stay in school (because she was no longer sleeping) but she was also afraid Dana was going to die. She refused to see a mental health professional and her friends refused to reach out.
Ethan isn’t quite there yet but he’s not been eating to the point he’s visibly lost a ton of weight and he hasn’t been going to classes. If he was ever required to see student mental health services, clearly they have not helped and he’s isolated from his friends.
Agreed … Oh well
yeah even if Sarah didn’t wanna violate boundaries, her hand was forced because just drugs being in her room carried risk to her being wrongfully imprisoned and her entire future going down the toilet
systemic racism has this way of bringing the worse out of everyone; if one thing needs to be made absolutely clear, nothing about ANY of this is okay
remember kids, next time a friend is in a bad way, just leave them alone and hope for the best
Finding out that Jacob is actually on Sarah’s side in that whole debacle NOW is so wild to me. Dude you dated the girl who socially shunned her bc of it.
Makes me wonder if at some point he reached out to Sarah’s old roommate and got a very different version of events then what Raidah tells people
Given Joyce’s constant pitching of Sarah to Jacob, and given Raidah front-loaded it with “she punched me in the mall,” it wouldn’t surprise if the story was only ever half-explained to him and once he broke up with her and saw Ethan spiraling he went, “Ah.”
Maybe he was not sure until he was in the situation himself
I forget, did he ever hear the story from Sarah directly, or did he only ever hear Raidah’s comic book villain version?
He’s only heard Raidah’s version, but he can now get a recap of it from Lucy any time he wants, so thers no reason to bother going and asking Sarah.
Lucy doesn’t only heard Raidah’s version too, doesn’t she. That’s one of the reasons Sarah got pissed at her cause she started giving Sarah grief about it without even asking for her side.
yuuuup
I wonder if Lucy being friends with Raidah is going to bristle some shit with Jacob
Lucy only heard Raidah’s version too*. That’s one of the reasons Sarah got pissed at her cause she started giving Sarah grief about it without even asking for her side.
(I don’t know why I added a bunch of “doesnt” to my comment. I was literally falling asleep as I wrote it.)
He did, but despite Raidah’s influence he never seemed to turn against Sarah, so it shouldn’t be too surprising he’s taking her side.
In which there was an attempt, but Jacob forgot he lives in The Universe of Terrible Parents
like does he KNOW Naomi is a piece of shit?
what in the disney channel fuck was he thinkin?
Actually it turned out OK, and Ethan knows his mom cares about him. Even if she’s not perfect, she is trying.
She cares about him so much she is willing to accept his identity, for now! …Which is to say she is trying, but “not perfect” is kind of an understatement on this one.
She’s trying alright. A real trial she is
Very trying.
What else should Jacob have done, as a menschy bystander to some very obvious self destruction?
Ethan has been acting Very Alarming for a long time. He’s absolutely a person whom you should call the cavalry on. It’s not Jacob’s fault that the cavalry is wildly inept.
And you know what? This cavalry told Ethan she would rather he be alive and gay than dead. She wasn’t perfect but it’s a big improvement to what she told him last semester.
him wanting to help is good, but getting Naomi to come was a mistake, themz a dice roll which coulda made things WORSE for him
Worse than a crisis level of depression? When things are this bad, please take the risk.
Plus, whatever Jacob said, he said it in a way that made Naomi move towards being significantly less terrible* towards Ethan. Dude rolled a 19.
*I mean obv Naomi is still terrible. It’s just, she used to be even more terrible, and parental rejection is the biggest risk factor for making gay kids into dead kids, so, Jacob is doing the good work.
Agreeeed. People complaining about what Jacob did: Tell the class what you think he SHOULD have done. Who should he have told? What would have been actually effective? Give ideas rather than shitting on something that did actually kinda work.
And you know what? Even if there was something better he could had donde I don’t want him to had done that! I think it’s actually good and interesting that the characters make imperfect choices based on their personality rather that being ideal role models.
Yes, also this. Narrative interest is often at odds with perfect choices and behavior.
Well, sure, but it can be fun to debate if something would be a better option in a vacuum without that necessarily being something you’d want to happen, especially if it’s a situation that’s come up in the story before.
I dont know how much Jacob knows about Naomi, but ideally if I wanna help a friend who’s depressed as this, putting them near their bigoted parent who’s literally one the biggest reasons they wound up like this in the first place is literally the opposite of what’d I do if I knew they were like that.
But as you say we don’t know how much Jacob knew about Ethan parents.
It’s easy to point out what someone shouldn’t have done without giving a better option (especially one that doesn’t assume the person has all the knowledge).
jacob was aware that ethan was queer at least, and assuming a queer person’s parents are safe is an awful move. If any of my friends had tried what Jacob just did here, I likely would have been pulled out of college and forced into an even worse situation. Things are bad for ethan, but they could have absolutely gotten worse.
It’s a judgment call. Jacob figured that the expectation of harm from calling Ethan’s mom was less than the expectation of harm from doing nothing.
Or perhaps he thought, “I don’t want a hundred people to ask me why I lived in the same room with the guy and did nothing, said nothing, let him die.”
Or perhaps both.
Would you forgive Jacob depending on the contents of the e-mails? If he told Naomi, “stop being a piece of shit, you’re killing your son,” would that change your mind? What if he said more tactfully than that?
A student with a dangerously troubled room mate can go to the university or to the parents.
The University is not more loving or more chilled out than the parents. Students can be forced to withdraw. This can lead to rather a lot of family drama. It can also impact student access to their parents health insurance. The bureaucracy doesn’t want the student to completely self destruct while at the university and what happens when the student is withdrawn is not their problem. It might be sad, but they have no liability or duty of care, so if this makes everything much worse, see the first clause of this sentence.
Probably the RD.
The Campus has really let down the entire group of abductees. They all need evaluations and extra help.
Have we seen Dina’s parents yet? If not, I feel like Dina would pull a Nathan Explosion about her parents (“Fuckin’ love my parents – my parents’re fuckin’ awesome.”)
We seen them and they a lot like her and seem rather chill.
Welp. I guess Jacob’s out of Ethan’s spank bank now.
Never underestimate the power of spitespank.
The Most Epic of HateWanks.
You two had the perfect gravitars for this
Everyone has perfect gravatars for this. Doctor Who fandom has been the most epic of hatewanks for decades.
I’ll wait till tomorrow to reserve judgement but it kinda depends on how much Ethan has told him about Naomi? Because if he knew she was a little scummy and did it anyway, not great on Jacob despite his concern.
If he had zero info other than ‘yeah she’s his mom, moms fix things right and I’m drowning here since I don’t know how to help him’, that’s a little better.
True. Jacob’s parents and whole extended family are apparently loving and full of human kindness. He may not have much experience with his church’s no doubt bigoted reaction to teen pregnancies or gayness.
I agree that Jacob probably did not consider that Ethan’s mother might be ill-suited to the task of helping her son with his mental health issues, but I suspect it’s from having a loving and supportive family and forgetting that’s not universal, rather than anything to do with his church. During the arc with Becky living in Leslie’s house, it was revealed Jacob’s church is canonically accepting of gay people. (Yes, the half-pun was intentional.) I guess technically we don’t have any evidence about teen pregnancies, but if the acceptance of queer congregation members os anything to go by…
There’s this concept of “hate the sin but love the sinner” and some people actually do that.
Eh, do you truly love someone if you can’t respect fundamental parts of them?
I’m with Shade – if you hate core pieces of me, you do not love me. You love the idea of me that exists without those pieces (in other words, an imaginary version of me). That’s not love.
I disagree. Sin is action, not a state of being.
Given its typically used about being gay, no.
Sure cupcake. If only I just didn’t want to ACT on who I love then I’d be okay.
Whoever taught you THAT was love is an abuser and a liar. Two-for-one!
There is the concept and it works well with trying to support people with drgu addictions and the like.
When it comes to perfectly normal parts of life like being gay it fails horribly. It relies on the agreement that the thing in question is a sin and that the sinner needs love to help them stop sinning.
There’s also this concept of “being gay isn’t a sin in the first place”
Jacob’s an Episcopalian. At this point in history, they’ve largely figured out that bigotry is probably not in the spirit of the Gospels. They also ordain women.
And again, for the naysayers: What should Jacob have done differently? When someone is as deep into a self-destructive spiral as Ethan has been, you’ve got two primary choices–their family, or their friends. One of Ethan’s best friends died, and the other one is arguably a bigger basket case than he is right now.
The only third option would entail trying to find someone at the school he could alert–and I can guarantee you that would’ve led to Naomi’s involvement, anyway.
Furthermore, I think there’s at least a bit of evidence that Jacob learned from Sarah’s story. The word was “emails”, plural. This wasn’t him making a desperate phone call resulting in immediate action. This was a series of contacts, likely trying to appeal to Naomi with reason and compassion, and quite possibly not pushing her to come in person until it became obvious something big needed to happen.
There are Christians who believe in the stuff Jesus actually said and don’t just use selected passages of the Bible as an excuse for their horrible prejudices? Sounds made up.
No, there aren’t. Because there aren’t accurate records of what Jesus actually said. All Christians have to negotiate with the Biblical texts through the lenses of their ideals, culture and traditions in order to find meaning in them.
Some certainly find meanings that I like better than others, but that doesn’t mean it’s really what Jesus actually meant.
IT WAS THE RIGHT THING TO DO THEN TOO AND ALL WE HAVE TO DO IS CALL SARAHS OLD ROOMMATE AND ASK HOW SHES DOING
cause holy shit all we need is to ASK the person how they turned out as a result of sarahs actions
It’s a difficult situation, but I understand the feeling that you need to do *something* when someone near you is spiraling, and it seems what Jacob could do on his own wasn’t working.
The “Oh, everyone hated her guts” thing is something that gives me some more respect for Jacob, interpreting as something he considered beforehand– right thing not the popular thing, right thing as a matter of perspective, blah blah blah, all that. (I got bored writing my own comment.)
Oddly enough Jacob seems to have respect for Sarah doing the right but unpopular thing. He’s just a sucker for confident and forward girls I guess.
I am really wondering how much of thay was a “no win” scenario, especially with pot involved. If her friends refuse to encourage and the person in question refuses to attend counseling to help, that means that you have to get other people involved. With drugs being a part of the equation, and I doubt that pot was legal in this area or at that time, it limits the school personnel you can go to. Even asking the school to have her switch to a different roommate could have been problematic due to the drugs. With Sarah’s scholarship, she definitely didn’t need to have the possibility of the drugs being blamed on her. It could also be that her roommate’s dad was the only family contact information she had. (Link https://www.dumbingofage.com/2012/comic/book-2/05-saturdays-all-right-for-slighting/bong/ for the middle of Sarah’s point of view btw).
On a different note, it could very well be that Sarah’s roommate was pulled out of school because she couldn’t concentrate on classes due to her grief, and will come back when she is feeling better. She could have even ended up at a different university, which I wouldn’t find unusual after toe dad and all the other shenanigans that went on. She could also still be upset and grieving over the death of her mom and angry at Sarah about it. Even if the end result was a better outcome for her, it still wouldn’t be unusual for her to vent some of her grief through anger at Sarah. People can be unreliable narrators, especially when they are in emotional states. She could also actually be in a worse state because her father was not a nice guy. The point is, I don’t know that Sarah personally had too many options and none that had “good” endings. It also wasn’t like Raidah and her friends were offering to have Sarah’s roommate (Dana) stay in their rooms with them to spread out the burden. If Dana’s father was actually horrible, and Sarah couldn’t handle it due to a lack of sleep, wouldn’t a true friend offer to share the load? It seemed like people were able to do a work-around with Becky. The only reason why I think that they wouldn’t offer to do this is because they actually realized how bad Dana was and wanted Sarah to be the only one to carry the burden because she was her roommate.
It reminds me of a friend’s relatives (aunts, uncles and cousins) who were all for her and her mother living with her grandparents and taking care of them. It was cheaper for them (more inheritance too) and they didn’t have to personally deal with the dementia episodes, physical violence, emotional abuse, or health issues. It was all about the “moral superiority” of we are good kids keeping mom and dad in their home, but without giving any actual help. You don’t have a right to the moral highground unless you actually put in the 24hr work. Sometimes it is even 24/7, with absolutely no breaks. That kind of situation isn’t healthy for anyone.
Marijuana isn’t legal in Indiana except for limited medical usage as of this writing.
re: drugs, yeah there’s also the fact that there being drugs in Sarah’s room carried significant risk of HER being arrested for it because of systemic racism.
and you’re right, Sarah was forced to make an impossible choice between losing her friends and losing both Dana AND her future, this was a situation where there was no winning at all for her no matter what she decided ;-;
Especially if all of Dana’s friends end up saying that it was Sarah to protect Dana and get back at Sarah for “trying to get Dana in trouble”. I could see Raidah and her gang being petty enough to do something like that.
They also likely saw Sarah as an outsider or project that owed them for their friendship. Yes it’s always easy to be generous with someone else’s time and or money but they couldn’t even consider taking on part of the burden themselves.
That they can still call Dana and ask how she’s doing seems to me to be a positive outcome.
I am sure the comment section will be completely normal about this strip, as they so consistently been about any plot point involving Jacob.
…or Sarah
Mega normal. The normalest.
OH MY GOD, ARE WE ACTUALLY GETTING AN UPDATE ON SARAH’S ROOMMATE?
She died. It’s been established already, way back in Book 7. Dana’s dead. She died by choking on a big soft pretzel her dad bought her after he picked her up from school. He knew how hard it was for her and so he took her to a ball game, her favorite thing to do with her parents, but he forgot the cheese dip and she paid the price.
It was a beautiful funeral, or would have been if some dingbat hadn’t started playing ‘Take Me Out To The Ballgame’ instead of the funeral march.
Not only did she die by choking on that pretzel, but Sarah personally came to her funeral and took a big shit on the casket in front of Raidah, which is why Raidah is justified in her treatment of Sarah.
We won’t know whether Sarah was right until we find out the flavor of pretzel though.
Clearly not the kind with cheese in the middle, so she’s a monster
All pretzel has cheese in the middle. It’s just a fact.
…what have you Yanks done to…
Put the fucking cheese inside the food. Don’t be a coward. The Blitz ended decades ago.
Put the cheese inside the food — that turns the Blitz into the Blintz.
BE BOLD – BE BEAUTIFUL
BE YOUNG — BE RESTLESS
Jacob: I was also really worried about my scholarship too okay
There are things worse than pulling a Sarah.
You could pull a first-month Joyce.
Or a toe dad.
I don’t necessarily disagree with what Jacob or Sarah did, and in both cases, ignoring someone spiraling can have serious consequences, obviously.
Of course, I also understand why Ethan wouldn’t be jazzed about it, obviously, and feel betrayed. Raidah, though, can run headfirst into a woodchipper.
That’s such a mean fucking thing to say. You’re so unbelievably out of line, and I can only hope you grow as a person. That wood chipper didn’t do anything to you.
It was an vile malicious woodchipper that terrorized DallyBrad daily as a youngster. One potentially good deed with Raidah doesn’t redeem its evil.
Your reaction to someone else disliking a clearly dangerous and amoral person is very interesting.
Read their comment again, they were disparaging Raidah.
Thank you.
Yeah, that’s totally my bad. That was a 3:30 AM post… I legit was not thinking about that poor wood chipper and I’m very, very sorry for not giving consideration to the real victim in that suggestion.
Right??? Do you even know the kind of damage Raidah could do to its pristine mechanisms? Do you even care???
Depending on what information Jacob has about Ethans mom him reaching out is a perfectly reasonable decision
No wants to end up like Walky, loosing a roommate.
Vindication for the Sarah method- it was the right thing to do, and I stand by that.
Assuming Jacob doesn’t know the degree to which Ethan’s mom was a POS when he came out (and I mean, *I* wouldn’t tell a roommate all of that), he’s in the right considering all that he knows and doesn’t know. Ethan has clearly been in a dark place, and if Jacob doesn’t know what Naomi is like, it’s understandable to want to contact Ethan’s family about it.
Ethan is also in the right to be upset about it, since he obviously *does* know how his mom can be. As someone who also has a toxic, bigoted mother, the amount of time I want her to randomly show up in my space uninvited is… nope, it’s still zero percent of the time.
tl;dr Both of them are coming from a very understandable place here. There aren’t any bad guys in this situation (except Naomi, who–while *slightly* improving–is still pretty sucky)
AND SHE WAS RIGHT TO DO IT. I’ve never seen anyone who disagreed with what Sarah did recommend a workable course of action (I’ve mostly seen ‘student mental health services’ which Dana was refusing to see and ‘talk to your professors’ who can’t give Sarah extensions forever).
Seriously. The comment section always criticizes this but their apparent solution is just “Continue hanging around in close proximity to a person that’s clearly self-destructing, it definitely won’t get worse”
“And let them take you with them.”
The comments always act like protecting herself, her scholarship, and her entire future is some heinous act and makes Sarah the villain. She was motivated by the fact that what Dana was doing would wreck both their lives, but somehow… how dare she?
Her motivations weren’t entirely selfless and pure so she is obviously the asshole here.
Also remember, that unlike most people, Sarah’s more likely to downplay her concern for others and play up her worries about herself. Part of her grumpy curmudgeon persona.
Hm. Was there a reason given as to why Sarah couldn’t request a room change?
But at any rate, even if Dana’s problems weren’t affecting Sarah, she had a moral obligation to let somebody know, especially if Dana was still 17 and a minor.
Dana’s friends wouldn’t’ve been any happier with Sarah if she’d just let Dana OD.
Likely because they would take time until on was available and that was time she didn’t had if she wanted to keep her scholarship and she didn’t know if Dana would survive that long.
It also could have been (partly) that she didn’t want to abandon Dana. She was overwhelmed, but still a caring person, and I think “this way I don’t have to see it as Dana self-destructs” was a desired outcome either.
Whoops, *and I DON’T think “this way…
Hate when you miss key words.
Yeah Sarah might resist, with kicking and screaming, being called a caring person but she basically adopted Joyce the second she laid her eyes on her.
Exactly. And most of the time she’d deny it in public.
I won’t say she wasn’t worried about her grades, but it’s most likely her main concern was for Dana.
Malaya asked for a room transfer on the first day of school and it took over a month to get it. Sarah’s grades and her health were already suffering (she was no longer sleeping) and she also cared about Dana. Dana’s spiral was getting worse to the point Sarah feared Dana’s DEATH was becoming a possibility. That suggests to me that either Dana wasn’t JUST doing weed or that she was so bad Sarah feared a possibly imminent suicide. And unlike Ruth, Dana was still capable of putting on a happy face whenever anyone checked on her besides Sarah, so involuntary admission due to catatonia wasn’t likely to happen with her.
Frankly, if Sarah had been as merciless and uncompassionate as Raidah claims, Sarah would’ve reported Dana on the first day of school for keeping weed in their room. And not to Dana’s dad either, but to the school, which would keep her out for good.
According to Sarah’s story, Raidah didn’t believe Dana was that bad. The only way Raidah would be right and Sarah unreasonable is if that were actually true. If we accept Sarah’s judgment of how she was doing, as I am inclined to do, then it follows Sarah did the right thing.
Yeah, and regardless of whether Raidah believed it or not, SARAH believed that Dana’s life was on the line and she acted in accordance with that belief. There weren’t other good options involved. But IF Sarah had been purely motivated by selfish self-interest, as Raidah claims, she’d have narced on Dana on day 1 and gotten her expelled for keeping illegal drugs on campus.
I guess you could imagine that before then Sarah had been selfishly tolerating Dana because her dad runs a legal firm. I can’t help but wonder how much that figures into Raidah’s thinking, based on what we have seen, although maybe she got more mercenary since. 🙁
If Dana just let her depression and grief build until one day she just up and bye-byed herself, you know Raidah would’ve pinned the blame on Sarah somehow.
I really hope she got the help she needed off-screen, and that the secondhand report about her unhappiness with being home that we got from Raidah was half cover story and half embellishment.
They will ask why she want change room, and she dont want make it official that Dana taking drugs
And Sarah was absolutely right to do it.
If Jacob wasn’t right to do it then that’s only because Ethan’s mother is not great, not because his general instinct was bad. Ethan was in a really bad place and not getting the help he needed.
Sometimes people in this comments section struggle with the idea that there isn’t a perfect solution that doesn’t hurt anyone or impose on anyone. With the fact that life is messy, people don’t have all the info you personally do, and with the fact that causing hurt isn’t something you can fully avoid (though trying is kind).
This causes a kind of cognitive dissonance when someone they think of as “good” still messes up, which they consider “bad”. Then they start assigning blame.
Is almost as even good characters can have flaws and make imperfect choices and that make a story more interesting. Imagine that.
People forget you can do the right thing and that can result in a bad outcome because you simply do not have the information, resources or empath abilities to tell if someone is actually a caring loving person or a POS or kind but incompetent in significant damaging ways.
Just as a good ending does not justify awful means in most cases, a bad ending doesn’t disqualify that your means were justified or the only reasonable measures you had access to in most cases either.
And people can be judgemental assholes about you doing the right thing when they’re not the ones in the thick of it drowning because why didn’t you just not drown and get better at tolerating water in your lungs.
And the choice might look bad in short term but will look good in long term. Like Dana was probably pissed at Sarah but if she reappears at some point after getting help to deal with her pain, she will be probably grateful.
Similar situation here where, for all Jacob knew, if he did nothing Ethan would die either due to neglecting his body or straight up suicide. Thanks to his intervention we Might be looking at his mother improving her attitude and Ethan getting a healthier family and support. He is bitter and angry now but no one knows what lies in the future for him.
People also forget that awful-tasting medicine now can help one avoid worse awfulness later.
All of this makes me think that people should have emergency contact information for some adult that they trust to give to their roommates. If that person is not a family member, then it might be even more important for the roommate to have that information, as the first person the school would probably contact would be whomever is considered your guardian. So probably the school would contact your parents.
I imagine certain people rather not give their roommate any more personal information that necessary, which is understandable.
That makes sense. This group has also been through a crazy amount, with kidnappings, violence and the like. I can’t recall any scenarios in my time as an undergrad that would have come close to requiring emergency contact information. Off campus and outside of school, on the other hand, might be a different story.
Ethan… did visibly lose a lot of weight, a lotta LBM, not a great sign for someone his age. And it’s not like Jake narced him out to the authorities, just emailed his mom to relay concerns, she was bound to see him eventually. If anything, while I think Sarah was ultimately in the right, what Jacob did was a lot less drastic. Ethan’s got a right to be resentful if that’s how he feels but I honestly respect Jacob for being strong enough to face that resentment in this situation.
Actually wait, on further inspection, Sarah didn’t narc out Dana to the authorities either, she just called Dana’s dad. Somehow I remembered it as Sarah ratting her out to the school, Mandela effect I guess.
Makes sense, to teenagers telling their parents is almost as bad as sicking FBI on them.
Yeah, Sarah called her dad and he withdrew her from school. Telling the school would’ve meant them discovering the drugs (and since, in her grief, she’d started smoking in the room, it’d be VERY obvious once you went up there) and then she has a real risk of being kicked out of school or arrested because weed is not legal in Indiana outside medical reasons. Now she’s a probably wealthy white woman in a sympathetic situation so the school may not go that far, but it would still probably be worse for Dana.
And I think she was using harder stuff than just weed?
Nobody has confirmed that yet but given Sarah’s worry for Dana’s life, it’s a distinct possibility.
Ethan had also stopped going to classes.
huh, so Jacob *does* know about what Sarah had to do her freshman year. I wondered about that.
I imagine he heard ALL about it from Raidah, the Evil Sarah version, obviously.
Look, never try to help anyone and mind your business
Also never ask questions or try to learn because that’s demanding emotional labor. Never flirt with your boyfriend or you’re objectifying them. Never tease your friends because that makes you an asshole. Never worry about your friends because that makes you overbearing. Never sleep with a person who is single and into you because what if someone else is into them you homewrecking hussy.
Know everything and have access to perfect truth, all the time, and do nothing with that information.
Sarah’s guts are OK. I have no trouble with Sarah’s guts.
I wonder if Jacob finally will realise he has been unfair to Sarah. He’s justifying here doing what she did, which proves that Sarah was right about doing it and that she can be a caring person even when she was acerbic about it… which Jacob continuously teased her about, but then reviled when she forced herself to change her attitude.
Maybe Sarah was just fine the way she was. Not everybody needs to be a Joyce.
I don’t recall him being unfair to Sarah. The only thing was asking her to be more vulnerable if she likes someone. She does it to Joyce after all.
Jacob did a Sarah and that’s a very good thing indeed!
If you want to make enemies, try to change something.
I’d still put doing the right thing over people liking me if it meant helping someone during a possible suicidal depression.
I would have however been against it before hand because I would think his mom visiting wouldn’t be good for his mood. Fortunately it was a good encounter.
A lot of people here leaping straight to judging Jacob’s actions vs Sarah’s actions RE: their correctness or morality. What I take away from this strip is that Jacob suddenly gained a new appreciation for what Sarah has been through this past year. Underneath her crustiness and her masks, she is a deeply caring person, and when she acted on those feelings, she got slapped back hard, causing her to add more crust and more masks to protect herself.
TL;DR: If he’s not careful, Jacob may find himself respecting Sarah.
I think he already does respect her, he’s just frustrated by only getting to interact with the surface persona.
I do think this will narratively feed back into his relationship with Sarah. Just not sure how yet.
Given that Lucy also only has Raidah’s side of the Sarah-Dana story, I’m wondering if there will be fall out from that when she finds out what Jacob did with Ethan.
There must be SOMEWHERE on the internet where people talk about Dumbing of Age in terms of story and themes and plot points, instead of just moralistic passive-aggressive chiding the actions of fictional characters in a long-running soap-opera comedy.
Thank you for your service
Yeah we really tend to treat the comic like it’s a post on Am I The Asshole. I’m pretty sure the comic is meant to be an interesting portrait of characters, not a morality play.
If you pay for the patreon, there are some interesting takes on it there. One person even breaks it up by frame. It’s pretty good, highly recommend.
I think the character commentary is how a lot of people analyze the strip – in the sense that a lot of it is ‘I like what X is doing in this strip, don’t like what they do in the next one’ and so on and so on. It’s hard to do larger analyses when each piece of story is so short and drip fed rather than a longer story you can get all at once – even a ten minute episode would be a lot longer. Talking about plot points in a format like this just tends to go ‘ooh, things are heating up now’ ‘this has been going for a while, I wonder when it’ll come to a head’ and that’s also not terribly fun to write over and over either.
A discord or message board would be a lot easier of a space to have chats like that since you could focus on a specific sequence of strips or a whole storyline rather than being focused on one specific strip. It CAN be done (there’s definitely talks like it here and on patreon) but I do think the format makes one easier to discuss than another.
There’s a Discord server for the comic, but their heads are even further up their own asses. Imagine twice the usual amount of agonizing over the moral implications of Sarah sneezing north instead of east, then add in an element of “something has been taken from us” and lower the average intelligence by about 40%, and you’ll get the idea.
Yikes, thanks god I don’t like chat groups.
Awww, that’s too bad. I was thinking today how fun it’d be to have a discord where we could hang out and talk about DOA (and, if we wanted, other things). Shame to hear there is one and it isn’t good.
is it really that weird for someone who’s been an adult for like a few months and hasn’t actively dealt with suicidal people with shitty parents to call someone’s parents if they’re potentially suicidal or something?
like yeah I would be mad if someone did this to me!
but a person’s health when they’re not yet independent is, ostensibly, their parents’ job to some extent (definitely in a crisis) and if you don’t know that someone’s parents are evil it’s not exactly the default assumption
it’s not reasonable to assume the characters know the tropes their universe runs on
god ive seen so many stories where the precise last sentence here is what I want to plaster over the comment section. “How could this romance comic have a misunderstanding instead of clear and immediately communicated emotions.” “This action comic keeps having fights.”
“how does this comic called Dumbing of Age have college aged adults doing not fully thought through things???
To be fair, the one about romances is more about overusing misunderstandings for cheap drama, and as someone who has read romance comics with clear communication, they are honestly really good.
Personally speaking I care a lot less about the rightness or wrongness of anyone’s actions, and rather how they will fall on the painful to hilarious scale. I’m rating this one a ‘ah, oof’.
you’re not just allowed but encouraged to worry about a strong pattern of self-destructive behavior. helping your fellow traveler carry those burdens is unquestionably above your pay grade. you call the most trustworthy authority figure you can identify, inarguably the correct play
source: some dude whose college roommate and friend fucking killed himself
This is what happens when you surround yourself with people who care and then stop talking to all of them when you’re going through a personal crisis.
Yeah, I’m blaming Ethan for setting himself up to have to deal with his mom showing up. If you’re about to go Mike and your roommate doesn’t know who in your family is safe to call, that’s on you.
I mean, I don’t “That’s on you” is really a fair thing to say about someone going through a heavy depression. Felt harsh and out of place.
It’s also harsh when you alienate people who try to help you with passive-aggressive snark to punish them for not reading your mind to know the exact right way you wanted help and you end up alone. If I was in Jacob’s place I’d think it’s time to say something out of place, to interrupt this pattern Ethan has going on where instead of talking he just shuts everyone down by making them feel bad for talking to him (or talking to his mom in this case). If he doesn’t like being told this, maybe he’ll say something?
Still, when you are in state like that you can’t really process a lot of stuff that’s going with the people around and how it affect them, your brain is literally playing against you.
But how can anyone know what state he’s in if he doesn’t talk?
I reiterate, this is the consequences of having people who care about you in your life. Would it be a better solution for Ethan to surround himself with shittier people who’ll let him self destruct without interfering? Because that’s one thing he could do differently that doesn’t require him to open up. I have trouble thinking of any more.
Well, no, that’s wildly off from the issue. You’re taking a harsh stance toward Ethan’s actions when he’s struggling, and what I think Jeremiah is saying is that it’s harsher than necessary. That’s certainly how I feel. The concept of “blame” and “that’s on you” doesn’t need to enter into it.
Ethan experienced significant trauma and it had a devastating impact on his mental health. He is lucky that he has people in his life who will care and respond to this. He might not like how Jacob responded to it, but sometimes what you do and don’t want/like when your mental health is bad gets messed up, as can your perspective on your situation.
Basically just that you don’t have to blame Ethan to support Jacob’s actions.
Thanks you put it much better that I could.
Everthing is “going to change” in this storyline. Now Jacob will be the hated one.
eh, ethan has been obviously and visibly depressed
dana managed to put on an act around her friends, or so they claim
one could rationally think sarah was at fault, especially since she came across as more concerned about her grades, or irrationally blame her because of feeling bad that their friend is gone
jacob stood to gain basically nothing from doing this
a return to fifty different dudes showing up in ethan’s bed is probably less ideal for him, even
I don’t think Jacob should be judged too harshly for this. He might have done the right thing he might not have, but he did the closest he was capable of as a human in a shitty situation. Same as I think of Sarah.
Reading these comments is really eye opening for how some folks are actually on Raidah’s side (or perhaps they’d prefer to be described on Dana’s side). If someone I SHARE A LIVING SPACE WITH is showing indisputable signs of self-harm, you’re damn right I’m calling someone that can do something about it. Ethan starved himself and stopped going to classes. Pretty clear instance of needing some kind of outside intervention to avoid the absolute worst outcome.
The only thing Jacob is guilty of is not understanding the extent of how poor Ethan’s relationship with his mother is.
I’ll add, I wish this was done for me when I was 18. I wasted thousands of dollars and nearly died many times. Someone sounding the alarm might have prevented that.
This is one of the sanest takes on today’s strip. There are some wildly worrying comments further up.
While I understand where Jacob is coming from, I don’t think emailing Ethan’s blatantly homophobic mother was the best idea. It worked out-because this is a work of fiction and Willis can make it work out-but in real life that probably just made things a hundred times worse.
Sarah did the right thing for the … neutral reasons. It was mainly out of how Dana’s behavior was affecting her ability to be in college. It wasn’t out of kindness nor to ensure she got better. Thouhh she was sure that it would ultimately result in that.
Jacob… he IS doing it for altruistic reasons.
I mean, it can be about two things, they aren’t mutually exclusive.
I don’t agree with that take on Sarah’s motivations. She often describes it that way and we tend to believe her, since most people won’t describe their actions in a way that puts them in a worse light.
But this is Sarah and the facade she puts up to the world is one where she’s grumpy cynical misanthrope who doesn’t care about anyone else. Of course she’s going to describe it in terms of worrying about her own scholarship rather than caring about Dana. She’s not going to admit to caring.
I agree with this so much. Sarah pretty much chronically cares about her friends, she’s just utterly unwilling to admit it.
Sarah is a Tsuncarer
Sometimes, you have to be the one that’s hated for stepping in.
I would not really consider *parents* to be a safe bet in helping my friends (unless i know they have a good relationship), but if my friend is suicidal, they need help. Ideally professional help.
It’d be nice if there was on campus school counselors to be on call , tho it’d be a lucrative business to have a therapist’s office down the street, versus ppl like booster/ other psych majors trying to weigh in (i wonder if any psych students have tried to ‘help’ and it backfiring/making things worse lol).
My issue is contacting the parents. That’s a violation of privacy imo. Contacting an actual service that will be confidential is totally different. Also it’s best to ask for consent first.
Students are adults parents don’t have a right to know their medical info.