“That is not perfectly anatomically correct, is it? Among mammalians the genital size and shape range include… *fifteen minutes lecture on comparable anatomy which is the completely opposite of sexy*”
Disillusionment. It doesn’t take a lot, just enough to make you feel what you used to think was hopelessly naive. A lot of people seek refuge in pessimism because it’s “safer” than further disappointment.
My guess is that a child version of Sarah would have been pretty similar to early-comic-Joyce, without the religion. Optimistic and certain. Because she thinks it’s sad but inevitable that the world will “break” Joyce.
I thought it was the situation with her former roommate, where she allowed her to get inside the “friendship” zone, turned a blind eye to drug use until she perceived it as SUPER destructive, and then reported her for drug use and got her kicked out of college and everyone blamed her for it.
If I had access to those chairs, there’s no way you could stop me from using four of them to build a little pod in which I could read with a flashlight undisturbed.
I would manage. I’m sure I could find people eager to be rid of me for an afternoon who would be glad to assist.
Also, when I eventually get out by pushing away the ones on top, I’m totally saying “Ah, after ten thousand years I’m free! It’s time to conquer earth!”
I’ve learned the easiest way to get a large object moved in the dorms is to go to the boys’ wing and shout in the hallway that you’ll buy lunch for anyone who helps you move said object.
Or at least it worked like a charm the time I needed to move my fridge from my room to my car at the end of a semester. (My dorm building had no elevator, and I lived on the third floor.) And the guys even graciously declined my offer to buy them food when they finished.
Having been on the downstairs side of such an uncoordinated move of a washer, I have to agree. Fortunately I managed to roll left at the bottom of the stairs and the washer get going straight.
I’m imagining a large box tucked off in the corner, with everyone wondering “what the hell” when faint sounds of giggling come out from between the cracks. Finally, the next day, four football players crack open the box and you come out, refreshed, with a stack of comic books and a Mag-Lite.
Not to mention a more normative girlfriend or boyfriend might make a bigger deal about her neurodivergence. I mean, look at Dina’s treatment with most of her friend circle who infantalize her on occasion, assume she couldn’t be dating, or lightly mock her “weirdness”.
Becky on the other hand doesn’t see anything “odd” and is just amazed at her smart, brave, sexy girlfriend who has awesome forbidden dinosaur facts.
Sometimes, when you’re a bit outside the norm in some respect, having a partner who is also outside the norm can help normalize your divergences and help them not feel like barriers to a good relationship.
It’s not only that normal people confuse her, it’s also a lot of what Cerberus said: Normal people refuse to respect her as an adult.
It’s hard to explain how that affects you, and it’s one of those things where you don’t know how badly you need that respect and the base assumption that you are the one best-qualified to make your own decisions until you get it. It’s very hard to explain. I’ll try to talk about how it looks in practice.
Imagine if, even as a grown adult, people around you want to make your decisions for you. They don’t trust you to make your own decisions and live your own life (including making your own screwups).
Making decisions they disapprove of is met with intense pressure and criticism to change your decision, and if you still refuse is met with either active or passive sabotage (active sabotage meaning going out of their way to make it not work out – I’ve had my folks call up places and disclose my disability and suggest rather strongly that I’m not a good fit, frex – while passive sabotage is more passive-aggressive and takes the form of trying to set you up for failure – ensuring you don’t get to work on time, leaving important things out where animals or children can get at them, that sort of thing).
Nothing you achieve is ever your achievement for this sort of a situation. It’s the infantilizer’s achievement, if they approved of it. “I knew you’d do well at that, that’s why I did [whatever]!” Like, they re-frame what you did as only being possible with their help and aren’t they just the mostest wonderfulest friend/relative/coworker for helping poor little you achieve something? If they disapproved of it, you just got lucky. It worked this time, but you really need to be more careful and your success has to do with good fortune rather than good judgement and ability.
Oh, but if you fail, it’s all your fault – specifically, the fault of your unwillingness to turn over your free will to them. Let’s say you take on a public speaking task and there’s technical difficulties and the talk is received poorly as a result. Someone like that would be all, “I knew it would turn out like this. This sort of thing just isn’t what you’re suited for. You should’ve listened to me.”
And it’s important to note that even normal relationships have that sort of thing once in a while, but this is a pattern. Every time you succeed, it’s their success more than yours. Every time you fail, it’s because you didn’t listen or heed their advice well enough. And the underlying theme is that they do not trust your ability or judgement to make your own decisions – that you’re too naive/weird/childish/impaired/whatever to be trusted.
Dina encounters that on a daily basis from most of the people she deals with. Not always to that extreme – but think about it, how many of the people there don’t try to manipulate her into decisions they think are better for her than her own decisions, even after she’s expressed resolve about said decisions, rather than accepting that she’s an adult with the ability to make decisions for herself?
There’s Becky. And sometimes Joyce. Sarah doesn’t. Amber doesn’t. Ethan doesn’t. I could go on. And Sarah and Amber and Ethan are all decent, well-meaning people, but that doesn’t mean they view Dina as an equal, much less as an adult. They view her more as a kid sister who needs them to take care of her. That’s a problem.
That condescending brand of kindness can hurt every bit as much as hatefulness and brutality. And it’s harder to confront because the other person both is genuinely trying to be nice and genuinely thinks they’re helping, a lot of the time. When you are someone with social interaction difficulties, how do you explain to a decent, kind and well-meaning person that they’re being a condescending asshole? It’s not exactly easy. Much easier, IME, is dealing with the people who laugh and point and call me r****d when I’m too tired to put up my passing mask in public. Those people I can just tell to fuck off.
Hmm. I have no idea what genre she’d like. I wonder if even she knows? If might not have occurred to her to listen to unapproved music now that she’s had the opportunity; she’s had bigger fish to fry.
Clearly it should be a band that does a little bit of everything. The scientific method is working for her & Dina in romance; trial and error should apply well to music.
At Purdue they actually banned lobby naps on the rather flimsy reasoning that someone might come through and assume the people sleeping in there are homeless rather than students.
My school banned campus centre naps. (I’m sure that if you booked a study room for a few hours you could get away with it, but be careful to not oversleep.) I believe it was more on the grounds of not wanting students to use the campus centre/gym showers combo to get away with not having housing. (In their favour, I think that this is less of a “break the bus shelters and benches” attitude, and more of a “fire the guy who refuses to wear safety glasses” one.)
Well, clearly you need to date a large sample pool of girlfriends, tracking feelings over time in terms of skipped heart beats, trailing thoughts, or number of times you stopped thinking about dinosaurs and…
Remember that, for all Sarah’s pessimism, Joyce is absolutely her best friend. And I don’t mean in a sort of default “the closest friend, regardless of how distant,” way. Joyce latched on to her first (known) big sister in a way that wore down Sarah’s walls that Sarah wasn’t ready for.
Does anyone here think Sarah would be freely chatting with Dina like this, or have even tried to get Jacob’s attention, without Joyce’s influence?
That’s very true. Sarah made the decision to close herself completely off to hide from the pain of last year, but Joyce teased out the side of Sarah that interacts with people and doesn’t just swallow all her feelings… not fully, but enough to get her to be willing to trust people.
So yeah, I think you’re definitely on to something with the whole “best friend” thing as well as how much this is hitting her because she misses how that innocent bubbliness pulled her a tiny bit out of her hermitude.
Some of us need to believe there are shinny happy people like old Joyce out there somewhere. It gives us hope. Joyce changing is like the lights going up at the end of a happy movie and you see the stuff on the floor you’ve had your feet on for 2 hours. Reality sucks.
Joyce is one of the few people Sarah likes. She has demonstrated concern for her since she was assigned the same room.
She gets exasperated with her, and has told her some harsh facts of life (the ‘haircurler” was priceless).
But Sarah likes Joyce, she’s stated before this that she hated to see the time come when the world would break her.
I dislike the ‘world breaking anyone” ref. It’s called growing up. Some have it easy and some don’t. But we all go through it.
Sarah knows Joyce is not looking forward to going home to face the family, and worries about this last step in the growing up process.
I think Joyce has had it a hell of a lot easier than …oh say Becky, Billie, Sal, Ruth and etc. But, that’s me.
On the other hand, if they’re tied tight enough and you don’t mind tossing around a bit, you can get your revenge by becoming a giant box-shaped hamster ball.
Someone did that on Youtube with sped-up scenes from Lord of the Flies and “Yakety Sax.” I’m kind of mad it worked on me, if only because I was able to do something similar with Danny Elfman’s “The Breakfast Machine” and scenes from the Saw movies.
One of them says they aren’t missing anything since Google search will list a whole page full of vaguely related YouTube videos before it list the matches on other sites. But I suspect it has more to do with getting more page/ad hits if users search on the site instead of a hit and run from a Google search.
Anyway, most internet business tactics are unrelated to common sense. 🙂
Thanks for that, I bailed on my search earlier this morning when Target started selling the Fire Emblem Fates Special Edition that I’ve been stressing over (and missing out on from every other retailer) for the past few weeks.
I’ve gone in a similar direction before, imagining some of Optimus Prime’s famous lines delivered in the style of Eeyore (Peter Cullen did both voices):
“Freedom is the right of all sentient beings… I s’pose.”
Not pessimism, legit worry of a friend for a friend, in this case. The creampuff is going home to face a harsh family reunion, and Sarah is sorry for her.
They just introduced spacepod nap chairs at my alma mater and reddit is throwing a goddamn hissyfit about PC anti-ableism taking up, like, 3/40,000 students’ annual tuition for a one-time fee.
Sarah’s in a surprisingly vulnerable place right now. She pretends to be a hard ass, but she cares a lot for Joyce now. While what happened to Sarah isn’t the same was what Joyce went through, Sarah still knows what it’s like to be lose your innocence, go through some tough shit, and come out the other end hardened. I wonder if her reflecting on that is why she isn’t wearing her signature bandana.
OH HEY I found the old strip that this one reminded me of! As for Sarah, she really does have quite a few tragedies to her. She cares, and though I know a lot of people are upset with her for what she’s said regarding Dina and Becky, it comes from a good place. That good place that makes you wanna avoid the red tape of certain emotions and be extremely rational. ‘Joyce, Becky has feelings for you, don’t bunk with her’. ‘Dina, Becky still has feelings for Joyce, don’t get too attached’. Sarah can definitely be wrong, but she’s not trying to start drama, she’s trying to avoid it.
It’s just that all of Sarah’s advice is to protect oneself from emotional danger by becoming more isolated. If you take that advice often, you’ll be pretty lonely, like she is. Balance in all things.
If you want, I can change my posting ID to Odysseus and give it a try of being your nemesis. Just an offer. This name is actually based on an old enemy of mine(damn you Shadow of Mordor’s nemesis system for producing Rukduk Ranger-Killer! Damn you!!).
(I don’t understand foot fixation, but IMO feet should have good, thick callus for, well, walking on. Form follows function.
Since she goes barefoot all the time and no one compains about her hygiene they’re probably nice and smooth.)
Douglas Adams never wore shoes when he was in college, either. In his very fascinating autobiography he talks about his college life in a chapter he called “Bare Feet Don’t Stink”. Which apparently they don’t do if you don’t close them up in shoes so they can’t breathe.
I saw a documentary with some guy who lived in a jungle somewhere who had never worn shoes in his life (he still lived a very traditional hunter-gatherer lifestyle, which doesn’t of course include things like Nikes), and he had extremely tough soles; the interviewer described it as being “like horn”. The guy seemed pretty amused at the interviewer, who of course had soft little baby feet and wouldn’t have been able to walk at all in that environment without shoes.
I suspect that Europeans developed foot coverings back when (not that they were the only ones to do so) because of cold; bare skin and snow doesn’t get along well no matter how calloused the skin is. And of course if you wear foot protection for several months the callouses go away during that time, and then your feet are now tender when it’s warm enough to walk without shoes again, so you just keep the shoes on. And so your feet never toughen up again.
I went a summer without shoes and it was great; my feet stayed smooth but did toughen up considerably; but the next Spring after wearing snowboots all winter, when I tried to walk around barefoot again, all my lovely callouses (painlessly) sloughed off, and I was back where I started with tender tootsies. :/ Never did manage to build ’em up again, alas.
She is. And yet, ironically, she looking gorgeous, even with the sad face. Sarah’s full of contradictions—that’s one of the reasons I love her.
That said, for a woman who’s roommate is gone home for the weekend, it is hard to argue you’re looking for privacy in the dorm lounge . . . . #didimentioncontradictions
You’re clearly fond of this expression, and I’m aware of its common usage… but ironically, it actually makes me a little uncomfortable in this context, considering that one party in this relationship has had to deal with (and objected to) constantly being treated as a child.
Like Dina, Becky is inexperienced in many things (and very interested in learning more about them); but she’s 18. She’s not a “baby” anything.
Hang on, hang on, aren’t you supposed to be pissy and defensive about someone objecting to your terminology, how ever minute? What kind of internet are we even having? 🙂
To be less silly: Fair point, StClair and Doopyboop (and good answer, Cerberus). I’ll be careful with that expression too.
Ah, dangit, I’m fucking up on how to internet again, aren’t I? Um… super defensive statement, double down, random rage about being called out to disguise my own embarrassment at someone having a good point… yeah, no, that all sounds exhausting.
I do have to agree with StClair here. Didn’t want to say anything because I’ve actually never seen the term used before and thought maybe there was…some other meaning to it? One I just don’t know because I’m inexperienced. This isn’t to jump down anyone’s throat, but since somebody else said it… It makes me a bit uncomfortable too. Both the baby part (though many people DO use ‘baby’ as a term of endearment) and the…other part. I’m afraid I’ve only ever seen the ‘d’ word used offensively so there’s always an instinctive flinch.
Not that I want to defend the accidental bad context I stumbled into, but I’ve always encountered that term in the lesbian community I have been exposed to* as a term for a young freshly out lesbian who’s full of lots of spunky energy and pride for being fresh out of the closet.
So basically Becky in a nutshell, so it’s the first thing I think of when I think of Becky.
That being said, I was not at all being cognizant of how that term might sound infantalizing or disrespectful, especially in the context of how Dina has been infantalized and treated like a child. So, mea culpa.
*Which might also be a generational thing or a regional thing as these were the sorts of terms that were common in the community I was a young queer in and thus are part of my formative vocabulary: https://lesbianhaven.wordpress.com/category/baby-dyke/
Oh no, it’s okay! I’m actually curious about the context, since seeing your comments and history on here, I was sure you didn’t mean it in the unfortunate way I’ve heard it. I’m 22, I live in Florida, and the majority of the people around me are very straight. Not to say I haven’t found any other LGBT people here, a lot of my childhood friends fall on the Kinsey scale somewhere, but I have yet to actually be in an LGBT environment. Most of my knowledge comes from the internet, and now I have something new to add to my collection of knowledge! Thank you for explaining the term to me, it makes more sense now!
Thankfully, I actually have some queer family members as well, and that has definitely helped! But yeeeah, it’s definitely strange. Especially in the South. Nothing like a good dose of casual homophobia when certain relatives visit! (Never directed at me, because I don’t owe THOSE people any explanation about my interests, but the usual “gays ruined rainbows” rhetoric that’s becoming popular in the South).
“Gays ruined rainbows” is a thing?! I’m a little peeved I can’t wear rainbows in public without people assuming I’m homosexual, but come on! saying “Gays ruined rainbows” is both ridiculous and horrible.
Ooh yeah, sadly that’s a thing. Basically, Void, we have a family friend from Tennessee, and during my Graduation party this past August, politics came up and so did Trump (the less said about that the better). To quote this family friend as best as I can remember, regarding the rainbow she said “the gays took something beautiful and made it into something ugly”. I suppose gays also ruined the color pink, triangles, the word ‘Pride’, parades… Those damned gays and their taking everything and making it ugly with their gay!!!
Ouch, been there too. I don’t have any involvement with the local Big Name Organizations queer community because reasons that amount to “the majority of the leadership are biphobic assholes, and that sets the tone for every time I show up.”
(It’s almost like there’s two camps in this city – one is LG, and the other is BT, and ne’er the twain shall meet. The LG has the money and the PR, and the BT just has a lot of people who’d rather be playing board games and figure if the LG types want to keep us out of their clubhouse, we’ll just go make our own, even if we don’t have the kind of dollars they do. I’ve got loads of bi and trans friends and pretty much all of us have nothing to do with Pride and what have you because the LG camp is shitty to both B and T, so we just go “fuck’em” and hang with each other and straight cis folks, who are generally very decent on the LGBT front here.).
Gays ruined rainbows? *eyeroll* Sheesh… Wait, let me try.
*Ahem* “Bloody Christians, ruining rainbows with their ‘symbol of God’s love and promise that he won’t go and wipe out humanity with a flood again’ when everyone knows rainbows are the bridge to Asgard!”
I love the idea of pushing two of those chairs together. Like building a pillow/blanket fort as a kid. We always did it with the couch and armchair in our living room and it was totally like my brother and I had sealed ourselves off from the outside world 🙂
I get that a lot of the concern is coming from how much this emotional shift really is trauma-fueled, but it’s interesting that none of Joyce’s friends except for Becky, Sal, and Dorothy are really paying attention to who Joyce could become rather than lamenting the end of what at the end of the day has not been best Joyce.
I mean, she’s changed and sadly, what they are responding to is that she’s lost a lot of her innocence and optimism and unbridled joy and has a mess of traumas and triggers, but they seem to keep pining for a Joyce that nonetheless held awful views about the world and made bad decisions like “dating a gay man to fix him” simply because that one presented a happier face to the world.
While it is never fun to see someone lose innocence or gain harrowing perspective of the world, it is a necessary part of growing up. And this side of Joyce that is coming more in to the forefront has done amazing things, punching out Toedads, standing up against parents, being able to at least share her reality of triggers with her friends instead of hiding it from them.
Yes, the Joyce that will come back won’t be the Joyce you’ve been used to. But she’s still Joyce and she’s born out of all the Joyce traits that have always made her Joyce. It’s just a Joyce who’s starting to take the hard steps of truly facing the world as it is.
This is a beautiful and accurate description. Especially because Joyce has shown that these changes haven’t been entirely negative. The core of her being, which I would say is compassion, is still intact.
“and afterwards many are stronger in the broken places”, yes. But how many of them have actually seen that? How many have only seen the Joyce that’s literally unable to walk across campus without an escort, and that after only her [i]first[/i] major trauma? And now this. I think Sarah may be wondering if she’s ever going to see Joyce again, or if history will repeat.
We’re lucky; we’ve seen her, since, standing up to her own family. I hope that, at some point, her friends will get to hear about that too.
That’s a fair point. To their perspective, Joyce is “suddenly” broken in all these complex ways even though things like the not being able to walk across campus on her own where totally happening during “happy” Joyce, they just weren’t noticing. Hopefully with her reaching out more and being more open and honest with them, more of them will be able to see the value in who Joyce is becoming rather than accidentally wishing for the Joyce who repressed and hid her pain for their comfort.
I think that is very, very true. Sarah know how she reacted to tragedy and she doesn’t want that for Joyce.
On the flip side, if Joyce can come through it all and still remain happy and optimistic, maybe there would be hope for Sarah too, and Sarah does not take well to hope.
Yeah, it seems to me like Sarah’s thing is less wanting old Joyce and more sympathy for the pain she’s going through because Sarah knows how bad she herself came out of freshman year.
Of course Sarah also has no idea how to come out the other side better instead of worse, for the same reason.
I’ve never really understood why so many people pine for the “innocence” of childhood. Maybe because IME, children can be very, very cruel without any understanding of their own cruelty.
I was used by my community to be cruel in ways that I am now very ashamed of – shit like proclaiming to victims of violence that if they’d just had a gun and “taken responsibility,” they wouldn’t be in this position now, or arguing that maybe Hitler wasn’t wrong about putting certain populations in camps (since I’ve discovered I’m bi, that memory has a bit of rueful head-shake factor for me), or arguing that disabled people shouldn’t get benefits because “the only disability is a bad attitude!” (given that I’m now chronically ill and I always was disabled? Another rueful head-shake moment) or what have you. That’s the “innocence” of childhood: lacking so much experience and understanding of the world that you can say and do the most awful things, and not understand that what you’re doing is bad, let alone how much damage you’re causing.
I don’t pine for that brand of innocence, and I have absolutely not comprehension of the folks who do. The only thing I can guess is that their innocence was not used in the same way mine was.
But ugh, there were so many people in the comments when she got her haircut essentially whining about ‘boohoo, she’s not hot to me anymore’ or ‘boohoo she didn’t get a haicut that is pleasing to my male aesthetics’ (lol as if that is of any concern to Becky), maybe not in so many words, but there was a LOT of that going on, thinly disguised or not. Like. LOL. As if women get haircuts for anyone but themselves.
There was also a lot of concern trolling about whether she should really spend some of her sparse money on a haircut (when clearly she needed the haircut to feel better about herself).
Oh man, that whole “how dare Becky spend the infinite $20 of poverty slaying” thing is one of those things that pissed me off so much that now I just find it a hilarious telling thing. Like, give a Becky hater enough time and they’ll start referencing the $20 like someone who’s never had $20 and nothing else to their name.
Seriously. People with this kind of argument make me SO angry. I am financially very unstable at the moment and I recently had a birthday and recieved some money as a present. And I took like 90% of that money to pay off some of my various bills but omg the amount of shit that I got from people because I spent the remaining 10% on ‘luxury’ items like new shoes and a movie ticket was beyond infuriating. I have not been to a movie theater in like 2 years because I can’t afford it and I love movies, so y’know? I got to do ONE NICE THING for my mental well-being and I got so much shit for it. Over like 25€ altogether (including the fucking shoes that were on sale).
Ugh, sorry for the off-topic rant. This isn’t even relevant to today’s comic. I apologize and promise to stay on topic from now on^^
Oh yeah, got that a lot myself when I was poor and being besieged with awful. Hell, even when I didn’t get myself luxuries and put everything into survival, I still got shit under the presumption that I was being wasteful and lazy in other ways to deserve my lot. This was also a time in my life where I racked up 8 or 9 various part-time jobs.
Basically I learned that there’s no way to not be blamed for being a victim, so one might as well give oneself a treat on occasion because no one else is going to bother throwing one some dignity.
And on topic, Dina pining for Becky is definitely the cutest thing. I’m such a sucker for queer love stories.
Yeah, people always make assumptions of laziness when someone is struggling financially. No one can ever really know why someone else is struggling. I wish people/society gave less of a fuck about other peoples wealth or lack thereof, y’know?
And yesss, I love Becky and Dina so much. I know Becky is still hung-up on Joyce, but I really do hope she and Dina can make it work, they’re SO CUTE :3
Thanks for sharing – that kind of attitude pisses me off so much. It’s annoying enough when people think it’s their business to tell you what to do with your money, but it’s extra infuriating when they are so incredibly bad at it, and hide their ineptness behind moral indignation.
Right? As if struggling financially wasn’t hard enough, now you also have to listen to people who really have no idea what your life is like judging you for everything you do (or don’t do). Ugh.
Oh hell yes. A few months back before I got my current job, I was really struggling financially and had been for a few years – the job before this one had shit pay, made worse by the fact that I was in school and the payroll dept kept “losing” the paperwork for months on end. Every time I got a windfall, I splurged. Even though, “objectively” speaking, it would’ve been smarter to stock up on food or set it aside for a “rainy day”.
Why?
Because 1, I was always in crisis mode for bills, anyway – it was an exercise in prioritizing which utility I needed to pay now not to lose it each month, and $20 or even $50 would not make any significant difference to that. 2, when you’ve spent over a year living on beans and rice, growing herbs and veggies in your place to avoid malnutrition and walking an hour to and from work because you can’t afford the cost of transit, let alone a car or taxi, and you have $750 a month in income but $900 a month in non-negotiable expenses and need to find some way to bridge the gap? You’re stressed and miserable. Something nice (haircut, trip to the movies, take out, whatever) is something that can relieve the stress and make you feel a bit more human (and, in the case of a haircut: If you haven’t had a haircut in over two years, not only does it make you look more professional so you have a better chance at finding a better job, but it makes you feel better about yourself in a very irrational way. Like, okay, maybe I can’t afford a cell phone or a car or a computer that isn’t threatening to die every day or transit to work or any food better than beans and rice but at least my hair looks presentable. It gives you that little ray of hope which energizes you enough to keep trying).
And I say that as someone who, now that I have a livable wage and steady paycheck in my city (I was being paid about half the estimated cost of living in this city at my old job – and the estimated cost of living assumes you take transit, rent a room in a house which is the cheapest way to live here, buy and make all your food from scratch and have cheap internet and phone. Cost of living here is quite high), has the better part of two months’ pay set aside and is saving up for the down-payment on a car and looking into buying property. I go out almost never and cook food from scratch – I don’t live a lavish lifestyle, and I never have. Hell, most of my clothes are nearing three years old, and I’m buying some new ones this week only because my work clothes are getting visibly worn and won’t look professional much longer. And I still spent “irresponsibly” because I think it served a very real need at the time. I needed a treat once in a while, just to feel better about the situation and find the will to keep pushing through.
But in some ways that makes it even more so: If you’re right on the edge, that $20 might make the difference – you might wind up $20 short on rent and be on the street or something equally bad. If you’re already over the edge, the $20 isn’t going to fix things.
And as I’ve said before, that haircut wasn’t just a simple luxury. It was a radical symbolic gesture, if one completely understated by Willis, until months of real-time later he had Toedad ranting about how her hair was her womanhood. The haircut really was important. Even in less extreme cultures, it’s a pretty common way people have of marking such major transitions.
There is, but with respect, you don’t know my situation and maybe I used the words ‘financially unstable’ because I am not homeless (though currently work is not looking so hot and health is not looking so hot either and I do depend on other people’s help a lot) and I didn’t know what words to use because sometimes idk how to express what I mean in English, which isn’t my 1st language.
I’m in no way saying I have it as bad as Becky. I’m just saying I understand and can relate to this particular circumstance in her life.
Story time! One time, my mom went to get her hair cut. It was super long, and she wanted it cut above her shoulders and the hair dresser was curious about if my mom’s “husband” (I put that in quotes because my parents have been together 20+ years and never married) was “alright” with her getting her hair cut so short. My mom’s response was pretty much “I don’t care, it’s my hair!”
Thanks! And oh god I know. Honestly, growing up with unmarried parents is…’interesting’ because everyone assumes my parents are married. Because everyone HAS to get married, right? Especially to have a CHILD. In Elementary schools, the teachers were so confused that my mom’s last name was different from mine, and it took me years to understand why. My parents are both pretty non-heteronormative too. Like this time an old man neighbor gave us a recliner he had that he no longer needed, and he thought it was going to be my dad’s favorite seat. Because men love them some recliners right? Too bad, my mom has claimed it. My dad prefers the rocking chair.
I was there at the time and never saw any such comments. I did see quite a few comments accusing people of doing so, which I (perhaps incorrectly) assumed at the time to be unwarranted aspersions on the comments I did see rather than referencing comments which had vanished… I guess Willis runs a tight ship as far as moderation goes.
It happens at least once nearly every time people are mad about Becky (which is a lot) that someone will complain how her spending that magic $20 was a sign of her lack of regard for others or proof that she’s taking advantage and abusing Joyce or the smoking gun of how deep Becky’s moral failings are or something.
Basically it’s been brought up enough that it’s probably as much of a trope now as FAAAAAAACE or Ana/Jen/Sue being the first commenter.
The new do she got is awesome though. Plus, if the apocalypse happens it will probably help her start her own lesbian biker gang that puts Mad Max Warboys to shame. “Witness Becky, the Red Queen of Idianna!”
I honestly don’t care for Becky’s haircut, but I feel like if I point that out people will jump down my throat about what a shitty person I am and I don’t need that.
Hey dude. I know it sucks when that happens. But I think it might help you if you tried to be less focused on yourself and what will happen to you and instead focus on other people and how what you say affects them.
I think it would help you be able to understand why certain things come off certain ways, and would help you find a way to say what you want without coming off in a way you didn’t intend.
Like it or not, Becky’s haircut is associated with some rather bigoted stuff. So you can’t really bring it up without acknowledging that.
My solution is to anticipate what people may say. “I don’t really like Becky’s hair. Sure, she has the right to do what she wants. And she’s doing it for herself, not for me. But I still don’t like because [insert non-bigoted reason here].”
I know I was hard on you that one time, but, believe it or not, I kinda like you. Once I realized how young you are, I started realizing you were just doing the things I would have done at your age.
I can’t expect you to already know how to navigate these minefields of people’s emotions. You do at least show that you try to make people happy with your art.
I mean, I prefer her old one. I don’t think that makes me a horrible shitty person, nor would it entitle someone here to call me a horrible shitty person (which, have they? The only time I’ve ever seen anyone gets on someone’s case about is when they go “omg how dare becky spend that magical self replicating 20$ bill on a haircut.”)
But, yeah, not liking the undercut is fine. It’s fine not to like things.
Also, it’s not the end of the world to be called out. Hell, I was called out on this very thread and was it a big deal? No, not really. I was ignorant of a context and how my words were being taken of others and now I got free education. That’s awesome.
Being called out for things is part of learning, how you learn about the experiences of others, how you learn to be a better person, how you get exposed to the stories of other people’s lives in beautiful and important ways.
And I get the cultural narrative is that getting called out is the worst thing ever and you should fight it tooth and nail, but you don’t. Few people are so assholic that they’ll treat you like shit if you try and listen and be respectful even if you don’t agree.
I think you can let yourself let go of some of the fear that everyone will hate and shun you if you dare ever get called out and maybe even let yourself see those sorts of disagreements in others as what they are instead of attacks.
Cause it really is all part of growing up and I’m grateful to the individuals in my youth who called out the toxic shit I had absorbed from my shitty shitty culture without realizing it, because that’s what helped me shed it.
I agree that being called out is important, lord knows I have said a truckload of dumb shit on this site, but “I don’t like a haircut” isn’t really something to be called out, not unless it’s just being used for backhanded, unfair snipes at Becky about how she’s such an evil mooch for daring to get a haircut, which isn’t Yoto’s point. He just doesn’t like the haircut. It’s fine not to like a haircut long as you’re not a raging douchenozzle about it to folks who have it.
Like, plenty of folks don’t like Danny, some for reasons I think are pretty silly, but it’d be kinda douchey of me to insist that the real reason they hate him is that he’s bi.
But seriously, I can see where you’re coming from, especially with where we are in this story at the moment, but I feel like Willis has been good about focusing the meat of the tragedies where they actually fall, focusing for instance on how the fallout of the rape attempt affected Joyce, focusing on Becky for the majority of the Toedad arc, focusing on Amber for the Blaine arc.
So I have no doubt that Becky and Carla will get their due time in this comic day. If only based on the sheer number of Carla preview panels that are up on the tumblr.
Yeah, I agree, it’s a very common problem, but so far Willis is handling it well in my opinion. It was very important that Becky didn’t go away in the end of her ark. She is here to stay, not as a catalyst for Joyce but as a character in her own right.
I also wonder if we’re being rope-a-doped on the ally heavy focus of the beginning of this book. Like, we’re being lead into the tropes of “how does this tragedy affect this ally” in order to really cement home how it affects the people who were directly targeted.
Like, I especially have a feeling that for all the Ruth posturing of “doing right by Carla”, the Mary situation will be more solved by Carla herself than anyone else, letting her have a similar moment of awesome as her calling out of the “perfect girl” expectation with regards to Ruth’s desire to be a savior to her. It’d also be a nice contrast to Ruth’s arc in the old universe where she sacrificed herself for another.
Sorry to be an uninformed European. What is ally angst?
Where Ruth and Carla are concerned: In this case it’s actually Ruth’s job to protect Carla from Mary’s bullshit. She failed at her job that moment and knows it. And wants to put that right, because, well, she doesn’t want to fail other people (her grandfather obviously does a good job convincing her she does always).
(on the European note: I’m starting to fear Trump will win the election and it’s a terrifying thought a man like that will have access to atomic bombs. How can it be that this man is so successful in a country that prides itself of being the pillar of liberty and democracy? He hasn’t an ounce of respect for any of it.)
“Ally angst” is when, when an ally rather than a member of an oppressed group, gets upset about the way the oppressed group (or individual members of said group) are treated, the narrative (or the focus, if it’s real life) becomes all about how upset they are, rather than about the person the bad stuff is actually happening to.
For instance, an article I read online a few days ago, about a very nice white lady at a ‘Black Lives Matter’ meeting, who was so overwhelmed by the stories of the racism others at the meeting had encountered in their lives, that she started to cry, and immediately everything was put on hold for several minutes while half the group went and comforted her, because of course the important thing there was that a white person was upset at how black people were being treated, and not the treatment itself, amirite?
So in Joyce’s case, for example, when the story focuses on her struggling to deal with Ethan’s sexuality, instead of Ethan’s struggle to deal with his sexuality, that’s “ally angst”.
–Please correct me if I’m off anywhere here, guys. 🙂
(Also re: Trump, OMG yes. D: As a Canadian, hoping for a Democrat win SO HARD. I mean, we’re RIGHT BESIDE the States… D: )
Thanks for the explanation.
Hm, so the problem is the focus shifting to (the comforting of) the ally instead of doing anything about the problem or comforting the people who actually had been treated badly.
So it needs a culture that allows the allies to connect to the pain and (occasional) shame without this becoming the focus. Because basically I think it a good thing when the connection is made but it should be reason to take more responsibility, not more focus.
I just noticed. Sarah is bandana free.
Will she be sporting braids or twists in the coming (in comic) weeks? I imagine Indiana winters are killer on Nlnatural hair.
Should be relatively simple. You’d need the base of the chair to be somewhat convex, and given a strong magnetic charge (say, negative). You’d then have a matching concave base, also magnetically charged with a matching charge. The matching polarities would repel each other, while the nested shapes would keep the chair centred in once spot (while, if rounded, allowing for some fantastic spins). If you lined it with hard drive magnets, they ought to be strong enough to support the weight of the chair and a person without bottoming out.
Of course, you wouldn’t be able to wear any metal; it would probably negatively affect pacemakers; and you wouldn’t be able to bring any tech anywhere near it without ruining it. (Cue: “NOOOOOoooooooooo!!!!”)
Alternatively, though, you could simply use compressed air. Force enough of it through a bunch of little holes in the base and you could hold the chair up and still be able to use your tablet/phone in there. Would just be noisy.
Hm. Downsides to every tech, eh? Maybe we could have the base and the chair connected around the lip of the base with heavy rubber, and completely fill that inner space between them with water. Water won’t compress so as long as the space is sealed so it can’t leak out, you wouldn’t bottom out.
Hm. Wonder if I could make a waterbed chair? You’d need separate compartments for the seat, the back, and the sides (if you didn’t want your weight on the seat to simply force the back and sides out a bunch; alternatively you could “tuft” it so they were held back in position), but that shouldn’t be too difficult.
Mmm. Heated waterbed armchair. Giant heated waterbed armchair. Now I want one…
I wonder how many people in Sarah’s life did that, leave for a few days and never really come back? The way Willis draws her in this strip makes me think that this is a real traumatic thing for her.
Sarah communicates without snark, without sarkasm, without hostility, only honest expression of her emotions… wow, she has really opened up to her little Dinosaur buddy.
I think there’s a difference in wanting happy Joyce back and wanting her bigotry back, and I don’t think losing one has to mean losing the other.
Sarah is being pessimistic, because there’s no reason this has to actually break Joyce. We see glimpses of her real self in all of this. When she’s not dealing with problems, she is her old self, minus the bad stuff.
And, yes, that doesn’t quite agree with what Sal said. Joyce just had stopped putting on her pitiful tough girl persona around Sal, so she seemed more real. That doesn’t mean that the real Joyce is mean and angry all the time, or thinks the world is fully of horribleness and pain.
So, ultimately, Sarah is wrong. This will not break Joyce. She will come back better, stronger than ever. She’s growing up, not breaking down.
I think Sarah’s view is that of any cynic; that their cynicism is reasonable and the natural conclusion of anyone who spends enough time thinking about the world. I think she’s afraid of Joyce losing the qualities that let her be happy; Sarah feels her misery comes from being the only sane person and, if Joyce shares a similar epiphany, she fears the same will happen to her.
I don’t think she’s right there, but Joyce is losing her innocence and, once that’s gone, it can never be regained. She can never look at the world simply again; never find easy answers to hard questions. As that happens, feelings of self-assurance and comfort fade away as hard questions begin to dog your steps. It gets harder to be chipper and easier to be sad.
You can grow up, become wiser, more mature, and still be rendered less happy for it. Call me a cynic if you want for saying this, but that seems to be a pretty common arc to growing up.
“She’ll come back. She just won’t be the same. She won’t ever be the way she was before again.”
————————
Boys and girls, Willis — through Sarah — has just said a mouthful.
None of us — not the characters, nor those of us reading their adventures here on a daily basis — are ever going to come back the same way we were before. I am not the same person I was yesterday, or last week, or three years ago before I first stumbled across this comic, because everything that happens to me every day combines with what has happened before to make me the person I am *AT THAT PARTICULAR MOMENT IN TIME*. And that holds for all of us.
And if there is anything, any one thing, that we should take away from this comic, this is it.
I think that Sarah has no problem with gradual and continual change; as you say, we all do it. Her concern is that the changes will be so sudden and traumatic that Joyce will become a stranger in her room-mate’s body. I can see why that would worry her.
oh sweet little sarah. not sure if she thinks that once you become depressed, you stay depressed your entire life (because that’s her experience), or if she is lamenting that joyce has had a coming of age experience and now is no longer a child? either way, it doesn’t mean joyce won’t ever be a cheerful person ever again.
it kinda looks like sarah has something written on her shoulder during the close-up? like “ON” or “OW” or something.
It’s not Joyce’s cheeriness that Sarah will miss. It’s her innocence. Imagine a kid who learned last week that Santa isn’t real. The kid might be smiling again by now, but something will be missing– the kid will be just a little bit more reluctant to trust people from now on.
Joyce’s willingness to see the best in people is one of her greatest aspects, and this is exactly what would come under attack in this case. She’s already been betrayed twice: Ryan and Ross. We’ve already seen the impact that Ryan’s had on her: all strangers are now viewed as potential Ryans. Now imagine having all her friends and family become potential Rosses… She wouldn’t be able to see the best in people anymore. All she’ll see is Ryans and Rosses. This is what Sarah fears.
If you look at it in terms of Doctor Who, Joyce is ‘regenerating’.
The Joyce Sarah and everyone met at the beginning is gone physically, but she still exists as part of this ‘new’ Joyce. It’s like going from Matt Smith’s Doctor to Peter Capaldi-they both share the same memories but are radically different as well.
Matt’s Doctor said (paraphrasing here) that ‘change is good; you have to keep moving forward and into a new person as long as you don’t forget the versions of yourself that came before’.
The big question will the new Joyce, however she comes out of this trip home, be able to remember what she was like before and keep those best qualities in her new incarnation and in the future when she ‘changes’ again.
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“in fact, would you like some privacy? just pull up a chair”
*introduces Dina to Other Jacob*
I don’t think she’s ready for that.
“Oh, I collect those. I name mine after various theropods.”
Wait, THERAPODS?
That doesn’t make sense.
Shouldn’t she be naming them after Ornithischia instead?
“This one I call Triceratops… for obvious reasons… this one’s Stegosaurus… this one’s Anklyosauros…”
I wonder how many people don’t understand the “Other Jacob” reference and instead imagine a Jacob RealDoll with button eyes.
Most commenters are probably familiar with it, if not all. It gets brought up pretty often.
For whatever reason I was convinced it was the same few people.
I figured it out when someone was nice enough to link back to the comic. As long as they do that every so often, it’s fine.
Just for the record (see the strip), here’s the first usage of the term that I can find. (Alas, there is no “other jacob” tag.)
“That is not perfectly anatomically correct, is it? Among mammalians the genital size and shape range include… *fifteen minutes lecture on comparable anatomy which is the completely opposite of sexy*”
I do wonder what Sarah’s family situation is in this universe.
Seriously, what made her so freaking pessimistic?
Disillusionment. It doesn’t take a lot, just enough to make you feel what you used to think was hopelessly naive. A lot of people seek refuge in pessimism because it’s “safer” than further disappointment.
My guess is that a child version of Sarah would have been pretty similar to early-comic-Joyce, without the religion. Optimistic and certain. Because she thinks it’s sad but inevitable that the world will “break” Joyce.
I thought it was the situation with her former roommate, where she allowed her to get inside the “friendship” zone, turned a blind eye to drug use until she perceived it as SUPER destructive, and then reported her for drug use and got her kicked out of college and everyone blamed her for it.
If I had access to those chairs, there’s no way you could stop me from using four of them to build a little pod in which I could read with a flashlight undisturbed.
what if they’re like 100 lbs each (but on coasters so they scoot)
I would manage. I’m sure I could find people eager to be rid of me for an afternoon who would be glad to assist.
Also, when I eventually get out by pushing away the ones on top, I’m totally saying “Ah, after ten thousand years I’m free! It’s time to conquer earth!”
I Will not make a Majin Buu reference, I will not make a Majin Buu reference
So is somebody gonna have to recruit a group of 5 teenagers with attitude?
Or the Warners.
This was already done by the producers of every boy bad ever.
Cure worse than the disease.
But if you let 4 teenagers do their thing, you get The Cure… And The Cure is awesome.
Sorry power ranger ref not DBZ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkpS2Sdu2io
I think that idea has been used a lot
I’ve learned the easiest way to get a large object moved in the dorms is to go to the boys’ wing and shout in the hallway that you’ll buy lunch for anyone who helps you move said object.
Or at least it worked like a charm the time I needed to move my fridge from my room to my car at the end of a semester. (My dorm building had no elevator, and I lived on the third floor.) And the guys even graciously declined my offer to buy them food when they finished.
Lifting heavy stuff is fun! Nice of you to offer food, though.
Except when a two person effort gets uncoordinated, especially when stairs are involved.
Having been on the downstairs side of such an uncoordinated move of a washer, I have to agree. Fortunately I managed to roll left at the bottom of the stairs and the washer get going straight.
I honestly thought you would say something like “Ten thousand years will give you such a crick in the neck”
Then you get a snuggly friend to help!
Bigger on the inside?
If you had enough you could build a fort!
An improvement on Krieger’s Fort Kickass!
But would the fort be indestructible and of DOOM?
I’m imagining a large box tucked off in the corner, with everyone wondering “what the hell” when faint sounds of giggling come out from between the cracks. Finally, the next day, four football players crack open the box and you come out, refreshed, with a stack of comic books and a Mag-Lite.
You’d only really need two and a sheet. Fort time.
‘Excessive deviations?’ Sounds like Becky to me.
I think Becky would need to become more normal for Dina to stop liking her. Which makes sense, normal people confuse her.
Not to mention a more normative girlfriend or boyfriend might make a bigger deal about her neurodivergence. I mean, look at Dina’s treatment with most of her friend circle who infantalize her on occasion, assume she couldn’t be dating, or lightly mock her “weirdness”.
Becky on the other hand doesn’t see anything “odd” and is just amazed at her smart, brave, sexy girlfriend who has awesome forbidden dinosaur facts.
Sometimes, when you’re a bit outside the norm in some respect, having a partner who is also outside the norm can help normalize your divergences and help them not feel like barriers to a good relationship.
“Forbidden Dinosaur Facts” is my new elecronica band name, thanks for that
It’s not only that normal people confuse her, it’s also a lot of what Cerberus said: Normal people refuse to respect her as an adult.
It’s hard to explain how that affects you, and it’s one of those things where you don’t know how badly you need that respect and the base assumption that you are the one best-qualified to make your own decisions until you get it. It’s very hard to explain. I’ll try to talk about how it looks in practice.
Imagine if, even as a grown adult, people around you want to make your decisions for you. They don’t trust you to make your own decisions and live your own life (including making your own screwups).
Making decisions they disapprove of is met with intense pressure and criticism to change your decision, and if you still refuse is met with either active or passive sabotage (active sabotage meaning going out of their way to make it not work out – I’ve had my folks call up places and disclose my disability and suggest rather strongly that I’m not a good fit, frex – while passive sabotage is more passive-aggressive and takes the form of trying to set you up for failure – ensuring you don’t get to work on time, leaving important things out where animals or children can get at them, that sort of thing).
Nothing you achieve is ever your achievement for this sort of a situation. It’s the infantilizer’s achievement, if they approved of it. “I knew you’d do well at that, that’s why I did [whatever]!” Like, they re-frame what you did as only being possible with their help and aren’t they just the mostest wonderfulest friend/relative/coworker for helping poor little you achieve something? If they disapproved of it, you just got lucky. It worked this time, but you really need to be more careful and your success has to do with good fortune rather than good judgement and ability.
Oh, but if you fail, it’s all your fault – specifically, the fault of your unwillingness to turn over your free will to them. Let’s say you take on a public speaking task and there’s technical difficulties and the talk is received poorly as a result. Someone like that would be all, “I knew it would turn out like this. This sort of thing just isn’t what you’re suited for. You should’ve listened to me.”
And it’s important to note that even normal relationships have that sort of thing once in a while, but this is a pattern. Every time you succeed, it’s their success more than yours. Every time you fail, it’s because you didn’t listen or heed their advice well enough. And the underlying theme is that they do not trust your ability or judgement to make your own decisions – that you’re too naive/weird/childish/impaired/whatever to be trusted.
Dina encounters that on a daily basis from most of the people she deals with. Not always to that extreme – but think about it, how many of the people there don’t try to manipulate her into decisions they think are better for her than her own decisions, even after she’s expressed resolve about said decisions, rather than accepting that she’s an adult with the ability to make decisions for herself?
There’s Becky. And sometimes Joyce. Sarah doesn’t. Amber doesn’t. Ethan doesn’t. I could go on. And Sarah and Amber and Ethan are all decent, well-meaning people, but that doesn’t mean they view Dina as an equal, much less as an adult. They view her more as a kid sister who needs them to take care of her. That’s a problem.
That condescending brand of kindness can hurt every bit as much as hatefulness and brutality. And it’s harder to confront because the other person both is genuinely trying to be nice and genuinely thinks they’re helping, a lot of the time. When you are someone with social interaction difficulties, how do you explain to a decent, kind and well-meaning person that they’re being a condescending asshole? It’s not exactly easy. Much easier, IME, is dealing with the people who laugh and point and call me r****d when I’m too tired to put up my passing mask in public. Those people I can just tell to fuck off.
Well said! Also *appropriate gesture of support*
That would be great on a t-shirt. Or possibly as a band name.
Now I want Becky to play in a band.
Hmm. I have no idea what genre she’d like. I wonder if even she knows? If might not have occurred to her to listen to unapproved music now that she’s had the opportunity; she’s had bigger fish to fry.
Clearly it should be a band that does a little bit of everything. The scientific method is working for her & Dina in romance; trial and error should apply well to music.
Electronic post-punk with influences of jazz and blues?
Sounds about right. I was thinking start with blues and work up to power metal.
Looks like ol’ Sarah’s waiting for the hammer to fall!
Here we stand
And here we fall
History won’t care at all…
Make the bed, light the light
Lady Mercy won’t be home tonight.
They’re wide enough they could probably be used for cuddling.
Especially if you put two together.
Well, it’s difficult to cuddle alone.
Dina truly does care about Becky.
‘Tis a damn shame, Dallas.
Didn’t I say to leave me out of this yesterday?
Let ‘im have his fun, Dallas. Better this than Tuesday’s murder spree.
What is the deal with these clowns?
They’re the characters from Payday
Even hardened criminals like David Willis’ Work.
Wait, didn’t we confiscate your phone, Wolf?
We did. Is he using Jacket’s phone?
I’ve never actually seen one of those chairs before in my life.
Trust me. You aren’t missing out.
Those chairs… more uncomfortable than whatever you can come up with.
I want to put two of them facing each other and a mattress inside. OPTIMAL LOBBY NAPS!
At Purdue they actually banned lobby naps on the rather flimsy reasoning that someone might come through and assume the people sleeping in there are homeless rather than students.
As opposed to using the rule to potentially chase out homeless people?
They could pin their student IDs to… whichever side of their shirts would be facing up while they slept…? I got nothin’.
Purdue banned lobby naps. Seriously?
Guess it’s time to fall back on tradition and sleep in lecture halls, then!
TO THE LECTURARIUM!!! *needs a Farnsworth profile pic*
My school banned campus centre naps. (I’m sure that if you booked a study room for a few hours you could get away with it, but be careful to not oversleep.) I believe it was more on the grounds of not wanting students to use the campus centre/gym showers combo to get away with not having housing. (In their favour, I think that this is less of a “break the bus shelters and benches” attitude, and more of a “fire the guy who refuses to wear safety glasses” one.)
We didn’t have those chairs though.
How do you measure standard deviations in a girlfriend?
Well, clearly you need to date a large sample pool of girlfriends, tracking feelings over time in terms of skipped heart beats, trailing thoughts, or number of times you stopped thinking about dinosaurs and…
those scientific enough find a way…to measure everything in a girlfriend! o_o
Kinky.
With scientific tools and stuff.
Did I hear standard deviations?
Dina is missing her statistically significant other
Oh, I like that one.
Sarah will not have dinosaurs invading her cocoon.
She will complete her metamorphosis then she’ll start invading other worlds.
I’m surprised that Sarah cares so much about Joyce not changing.
And how much change is reasonable to expect? It’s not like she’s going to return as the Hulk or something.
Wanna bet?
“Becky SMASH puny Zhenyuanlong Suni!“
Remember that, for all Sarah’s pessimism, Joyce is absolutely her best friend. And I don’t mean in a sort of default “the closest friend, regardless of how distant,” way. Joyce latched on to her first (known) big sister in a way that wore down Sarah’s walls that Sarah wasn’t ready for.
Does anyone here think Sarah would be freely chatting with Dina like this, or have even tried to get Jacob’s attention, without Joyce’s influence?
That’s very true. Sarah made the decision to close herself completely off to hide from the pain of last year, but Joyce teased out the side of Sarah that interacts with people and doesn’t just swallow all her feelings… not fully, but enough to get her to be willing to trust people.
So yeah, I think you’re definitely on to something with the whole “best friend” thing as well as how much this is hitting her because she misses how that innocent bubbliness pulled her a tiny bit out of her hermitude.
That’s adorable!
…and sad.
“Wakey, wakey!” this morning. Does Sarah miss Joyce?
My irony detector is running really slow today. With a dorm room to herself, Sarah comes down to the lobby to complain about lack of privacy.
Some of us need to believe there are shinny happy people like old Joyce out there somewhere. It gives us hope. Joyce changing is like the lights going up at the end of a happy movie and you see the stuff on the floor you’ve had your feet on for 2 hours. Reality sucks.
“This isn’t even my final form!”
Joyce is one of the few people Sarah likes. She has demonstrated concern for her since she was assigned the same room.
She gets exasperated with her, and has told her some harsh facts of life (the ‘haircurler” was priceless).
But Sarah likes Joyce, she’s stated before this that she hated to see the time come when the world would break her.
I dislike the ‘world breaking anyone” ref. It’s called growing up. Some have it easy and some don’t. But we all go through it.
Sarah knows Joyce is not looking forward to going home to face the family, and worries about this last step in the growing up process.
I think Joyce has had it a hell of a lot easier than …oh say Becky, Billie, Sal, Ruth and etc. But, that’s me.
@alt text: Stack two more on top and you got yourself a chair fort.
Needs arrow slits.
The top two can have a six inch gap between them.
but then it lets in the light
Easily solved by wedging a hoodie in when not fending off sieges.
Don’t let anyone carrying rope or ratchet straps get close. Nobody can hear your screams in the couch fort.
On the other hand, if they’re tied tight enough and you don’t mind tossing around a bit, you can get your revenge by becoming a giant box-shaped hamster ball.
Sarah, your pessimism is wearing thin. Lighten up for once.
I’m gonna try imagining her with Eeyore’s voice, to see if it’s funny.
…It’s funny! Yay!
Everything is better with funny voices. Everything.
Out=\-of-place dubbing improves just about anything! For example, here’s Chewbacca screaming like he’s in Psycho.
Someone did that on Youtube with sped-up scenes from Lord of the Flies and “Yakety Sax.” I’m kind of mad it worked on me,
if only because I was able to do something similar with Danny Elfman’s “The Breakfast Machine” and scenes from the Saw movies.Somebody did one with Trump filtered to sound like Donald Duck, (of course). Truly terrifying!
Apparently my Google skills are awful tonight because I can’t find that.
I saw it on TV. They didn’t say where it came from. Sorry. And several YouTube competitors block Google from indexing them since Google owns YouTube.
” And several YouTube competitors block Google from indexing them since Google owns YouTube”
wahu?
“You own our competitor therefor we wont let people on your service find our stuff!”
That’s….interesting…business tactics that.
One of them says they aren’t missing anything since Google search will list a whole page full of vaguely related YouTube videos before it list the matches on other sites. But I suspect it has more to do with getting more page/ad hits if users search on the site instead of a hit and run from a Google search.
Anyway, most internet business tactics are unrelated to common sense. 🙂
Was it this here?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsAcPBtFdho
Thanks for that, I bailed on my search earlier this morning when Target started selling the Fire Emblem Fates Special Edition that I’ve been stressing over (and missing out on from every other retailer) for the past few weeks.
That’s not the one I saw, but it’s as good (or bad?). I’m surprised there aren’t dozens ’cause it so obvious.
I’ve gone in a similar direction before, imagining some of Optimus Prime’s famous lines delivered in the style of Eeyore (Peter Cullen did both voices):
“Freedom is the right of all sentient beings… I s’pose.”
“One shall stand, one shall fall… probably me.”
Fun to imagine it the other way around, too.
“Good afternoon, Spike. If it is a good afternoon, which I doubt.”
“It’s not much of a trailer, but I’m sort of attached to it”
Not pessimism, legit worry of a friend for a friend, in this case. The creampuff is going home to face a harsh family reunion, and Sarah is sorry for her.
They just introduced spacepod nap chairs at my alma mater and reddit is throwing a goddamn hissyfit about PC anti-ableism taking up, like, 3/40,000 students’ annual tuition for a one-time fee.
I really want two of those chairs.
Same.
Sarah’s in a surprisingly vulnerable place right now. She pretends to be a hard ass, but she cares a lot for Joyce now. While what happened to Sarah isn’t the same was what Joyce went through, Sarah still knows what it’s like to be lose your innocence, go through some tough shit, and come out the other end hardened. I wonder if her reflecting on that is why she isn’t wearing her signature bandana.
Sarah’s tragedy is that, despite herself, she cares.
I think *not* caring might be more tragic, tho.
Sadly, too much of the internet would disagree with that statement.
But yes, I would very much agree that not caring is far far worse.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-1/05-media-rumble/break/
OH HEY I found the old strip that this one reminded me of! As for Sarah, she really does have quite a few tragedies to her. She cares, and though I know a lot of people are upset with her for what she’s said regarding Dina and Becky, it comes from a good place. That good place that makes you wanna avoid the red tape of certain emotions and be extremely rational. ‘Joyce, Becky has feelings for you, don’t bunk with her’. ‘Dina, Becky still has feelings for Joyce, don’t get too attached’. Sarah can definitely be wrong, but she’s not trying to start drama, she’s trying to avoid it.
It’s just that all of Sarah’s advice is to protect oneself from emotional danger by becoming more isolated. If you take that advice often, you’ll be pretty lonely, like she is. Balance in all things.
Can’t get hurt if you never let people in, it’s SO easy!
But yeah, that’s where her advice is flawed. That, and she tends to assume the worse in others anyway.
The problem is that doing that leaves you trapped with the person with the most potential to hurt you yourself.
Agree.
Someone made a reference to Sierra having sexy feet
I did no such thing.
Guess it was no one then.
I do hope some guy who’s kinda a jerk, with the name “No One” shows up so that I can have an arch enemy
I’m pretty sure No One is Polyphemus’ arch enemy.
If you want, I can change my posting ID to Odysseus and give it a try of being your nemesis. Just an offer. This name is actually based on an old enemy of mine(damn you Shadow of Mordor’s nemesis system for producing Rukduk Ranger-Killer! Damn you!!).
You lack the evil factor, but I suppose you’d make a good friendly enemy
I need to stop posting on an iPad
Also while tired
but those are the best posts.
(I will also accept “drunk”.)
I worry I broke the site.
Could be worse. Some people look like total jerks when they post while tired.
Was your nemesis only screaming and grinding his teeth? Those are the worst, in special when they scream, sends the chills down my spine.
Sure
I will defeat you!
“arch enemy” — was that a reference to Sierra’s sexy feet?
Doesn’t seem that way since a series of foot puns didn’t follow.
She’s my sole enemy
Thats all I can think of
Someone nailed it.
Toes are all we got, folks!
(Dust, judging by the avatar, we assume your feet are toasty.)
Will no one win or will someone win? Wait … if no one wins then who wins? And who’s on first?
(Must … resist … urge to write more. Could end up in a recursive loop and explode.)
If I had the possibility to go ice fishing I’d bring Sierra along with me. She can use her to break the ice. Profit.
*feet
Sierra has to be careful when she walks, our she’ll ruin the floor
“Wow, Sierra, that was a great Triple Lutz. What kind of ice skates are those?”
“Skates?”
These feet are made for walking!
And that’s just what they’ll do.
See, now if that didn’t get my penis’ attention, I wouldn’t be dating all these martial artists.
(I don’t understand foot fixation, but IMO feet should have good, thick callus for, well, walking on. Form follows function.
Since she goes barefoot all the time and no one compains about her hygiene they’re probably nice and smooth.)
Douglas Adams never wore shoes when he was in college, either. In his very fascinating autobiography he talks about his college life in a chapter he called “Bare Feet Don’t Stink”. Which apparently they don’t do if you don’t close them up in shoes so they can’t breathe.
I saw a documentary with some guy who lived in a jungle somewhere who had never worn shoes in his life (he still lived a very traditional hunter-gatherer lifestyle, which doesn’t of course include things like Nikes), and he had extremely tough soles; the interviewer described it as being “like horn”. The guy seemed pretty amused at the interviewer, who of course had soft little baby feet and wouldn’t have been able to walk at all in that environment without shoes.
I suspect that Europeans developed foot coverings back when (not that they were the only ones to do so) because of cold; bare skin and snow doesn’t get along well no matter how calloused the skin is. And of course if you wear foot protection for several months the callouses go away during that time, and then your feet are now tender when it’s warm enough to walk without shoes again, so you just keep the shoes on. And so your feet never toughen up again.
I went a summer without shoes and it was great; my feet stayed smooth but did toughen up considerably; but the next Spring after wearing snowboots all winter, when I tried to walk around barefoot again, all my lovely callouses (painlessly) sloughed off, and I was back where I started with tender tootsies. :/ Never did manage to build ’em up again, alas.
Yeah, maintaining calluses through the winter months is nearly impossible in regions with harsh winters.
Sarah was right. She really is sad about this world breaking Joyce.
She is. And yet, ironically, she looking gorgeous, even with the sad face. Sarah’s full of contradictions—that’s one of the reasons I love her.
That said, for a woman who’s roommate is gone home for the weekend, it is hard to argue you’re looking for privacy in the dorm lounge . . . . #didimentioncontradictions
Yes, to all this.
Dina’s got it bad for her little baby dyke.
Doooooooooooofus 🙂
You’re clearly fond of this expression, and I’m aware of its common usage… but ironically, it actually makes me a little uncomfortable in this context, considering that one party in this relationship has had to deal with (and objected to) constantly being treated as a child.
Like Dina, Becky is inexperienced in many things (and very interested in learning more about them); but she’s 18. She’s not a “baby” anything.
IMO. :/
That’s… totally a fair point I hadn’t considered. I’ll refrain from using the expression in the future.
Thank you for your consideration and understanding.
(I was very anxious about saying anything, what with being possibly the last person with any “standing” to do so.)
Hang on, hang on, aren’t you supposed to be pissy and defensive about someone objecting to your terminology, how ever minute? What kind of internet are we even having? 🙂
To be less silly: Fair point, StClair and Doopyboop (and good answer, Cerberus). I’ll be careful with that expression too.
Ah, dangit, I’m fucking up on how to internet again, aren’t I? Um… super defensive statement, double down, random rage about being called out to disguise my own embarrassment at someone having a good point… yeah, no, that all sounds exhausting.
Replacement for the top:
Dina’s got it bad for her Radasaurus rex.
+1
And you need to apologize to all us dooofusses.
Dofoooofus pride!!!
I do have to agree with StClair here. Didn’t want to say anything because I’ve actually never seen the term used before and thought maybe there was…some other meaning to it? One I just don’t know because I’m inexperienced. This isn’t to jump down anyone’s throat, but since somebody else said it… It makes me a bit uncomfortable too. Both the baby part (though many people DO use ‘baby’ as a term of endearment) and the…other part. I’m afraid I’ve only ever seen the ‘d’ word used offensively so there’s always an instinctive flinch.
Not that I want to defend the accidental bad context I stumbled into, but I’ve always encountered that term in the lesbian community I have been exposed to* as a term for a young freshly out lesbian who’s full of lots of spunky energy and pride for being fresh out of the closet.
So basically Becky in a nutshell, so it’s the first thing I think of when I think of Becky.
That being said, I was not at all being cognizant of how that term might sound infantalizing or disrespectful, especially in the context of how Dina has been infantalized and treated like a child. So, mea culpa.
*Which might also be a generational thing or a regional thing as these were the sorts of terms that were common in the community I was a young queer in and thus are part of my formative vocabulary:
https://lesbianhaven.wordpress.com/category/baby-dyke/
Oh no, it’s okay! I’m actually curious about the context, since seeing your comments and history on here, I was sure you didn’t mean it in the unfortunate way I’ve heard it. I’m 22, I live in Florida, and the majority of the people around me are very straight. Not to say I haven’t found any other LGBT people here, a lot of my childhood friends fall on the Kinsey scale somewhere, but I have yet to actually be in an LGBT environment. Most of my knowledge comes from the internet, and now I have something new to add to my collection of knowledge! Thank you for explaining the term to me, it makes more sense now!
Oof, I’ve been there. Being one of only a few out queer people in a location is rough.
Thankfully, I actually have some queer family members as well, and that has definitely helped! But yeeeah, it’s definitely strange. Especially in the South. Nothing like a good dose of casual homophobia when certain relatives visit! (Never directed at me, because I don’t owe THOSE people any explanation about my interests, but the usual “gays ruined rainbows” rhetoric that’s becoming popular in the South).
*rough, not strange!
“Gays ruined rainbows” is a thing?! I’m a little peeved I can’t wear rainbows in public without people assuming I’m homosexual, but come on! saying “Gays ruined rainbows” is both ridiculous and horrible.
Ooh yeah, sadly that’s a thing. Basically, Void, we have a family friend from Tennessee, and during my Graduation party this past August, politics came up and so did Trump (the less said about that the better). To quote this family friend as best as I can remember, regarding the rainbow she said “the gays took something beautiful and made it into something ugly”. I suppose gays also ruined the color pink, triangles, the word ‘Pride’, parades… Those damned gays and their taking everything and making it ugly with their gay!!!
Ouch, been there too. I don’t have any involvement with the local Big Name Organizations queer community because reasons that amount to “the majority of the leadership are biphobic assholes, and that sets the tone for every time I show up.”
(It’s almost like there’s two camps in this city – one is LG, and the other is BT, and ne’er the twain shall meet. The LG has the money and the PR, and the BT just has a lot of people who’d rather be playing board games and figure if the LG types want to keep us out of their clubhouse, we’ll just go make our own, even if we don’t have the kind of dollars they do. I’ve got loads of bi and trans friends and pretty much all of us have nothing to do with Pride and what have you because the LG camp is shitty to both B and T, so we just go “fuck’em” and hang with each other and straight cis folks, who are generally very decent on the LGBT front here.).
Gays ruined rainbows? *eyeroll* Sheesh… Wait, let me try.
*Ahem* “Bloody Christians, ruining rainbows with their ‘symbol of God’s love and promise that he won’t go and wipe out humanity with a flood again’ when everyone knows rainbows are the bridge to Asgard!”
Did I do it right? XD
Sarah might be speaking from personal experience.
Only this time go back home won’t be the solution to Joyce’s problem but the cause unlike her last room mate. Wonder how she’ll handle it this time.
My college had rainbow couches, but moreover, womb chairs. Like the spheroid ones from the 1970s. It was the best thing.
We had some gigantic, green monstrosities, big enough to sleep in if you didn’t mind crumpling up your spine. Good times.
Those both sound amazing.
We have, um… A padded bench. Oh, and some great oak trees!
I love the idea of pushing two of those chairs together. Like building a pillow/blanket fort as a kid. We always did it with the couch and armchair in our living room and it was totally like my brother and I had sealed ourselves off from the outside world 🙂
I get that a lot of the concern is coming from how much this emotional shift really is trauma-fueled, but it’s interesting that none of Joyce’s friends except for Becky, Sal, and Dorothy are really paying attention to who Joyce could become rather than lamenting the end of what at the end of the day has not been best Joyce.
I mean, she’s changed and sadly, what they are responding to is that she’s lost a lot of her innocence and optimism and unbridled joy and has a mess of traumas and triggers, but they seem to keep pining for a Joyce that nonetheless held awful views about the world and made bad decisions like “dating a gay man to fix him” simply because that one presented a happier face to the world.
While it is never fun to see someone lose innocence or gain harrowing perspective of the world, it is a necessary part of growing up. And this side of Joyce that is coming more in to the forefront has done amazing things, punching out Toedads, standing up against parents, being able to at least share her reality of triggers with her friends instead of hiding it from them.
Yes, the Joyce that will come back won’t be the Joyce you’ve been used to. But she’s still Joyce and she’s born out of all the Joyce traits that have always made her Joyce. It’s just a Joyce who’s starting to take the hard steps of truly facing the world as it is.
This is a beautiful and accurate description. Especially because Joyce has shown that these changes haven’t been entirely negative. The core of her being, which I would say is compassion, is still intact.
“and afterwards many are stronger in the broken places”, yes. But how many of them have actually seen that? How many have only seen the Joyce that’s literally unable to walk across campus without an escort, and that after only her [i]first[/i] major trauma? And now this. I think Sarah may be wondering if she’s ever going to see Joyce again, or if history will repeat.
We’re lucky; we’ve seen her, since, standing up to her own family. I hope that, at some point, her friends will get to hear about that too.
(gah, wish I could edit)
* will repeat, and she’s never coming back from this “visit” home.
That’s a fair point. To their perspective, Joyce is “suddenly” broken in all these complex ways even though things like the not being able to walk across campus on her own where totally happening during “happy” Joyce, they just weren’t noticing. Hopefully with her reaching out more and being more open and honest with them, more of them will be able to see the value in who Joyce is becoming rather than accidentally wishing for the Joyce who repressed and hid her pain for their comfort.
This is true. I do wonder, though, if Sarah’s specific concern isn’t just that Joyce changes…but that Joyce becomes more like her.
I think that is very, very true. Sarah know how she reacted to tragedy and she doesn’t want that for Joyce.
On the flip side, if Joyce can come through it all and still remain happy and optimistic, maybe there would be hope for Sarah too, and Sarah does not take well to hope.
Yeah, it seems to me like Sarah’s thing is less wanting old Joyce and more sympathy for the pain she’s going through because Sarah knows how bad she herself came out of freshman year.
Of course Sarah also has no idea how to come out the other side better instead of worse, for the same reason.
“Never let this place change you”
(…)
“I’m so glad it has”
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-5/01-when-somebody-loved-me/sleepover/
Yeah.
I’ve never really understood why so many people pine for the “innocence” of childhood. Maybe because IME, children can be very, very cruel without any understanding of their own cruelty.
I was used by my community to be cruel in ways that I am now very ashamed of – shit like proclaiming to victims of violence that if they’d just had a gun and “taken responsibility,” they wouldn’t be in this position now, or arguing that maybe Hitler wasn’t wrong about putting certain populations in camps (since I’ve discovered I’m bi, that memory has a bit of rueful head-shake factor for me), or arguing that disabled people shouldn’t get benefits because “the only disability is a bad attitude!” (given that I’m now chronically ill and I always was disabled? Another rueful head-shake moment) or what have you. That’s the “innocence” of childhood: lacking so much experience and understanding of the world that you can say and do the most awful things, and not understand that what you’re doing is bad, let alone how much damage you’re causing.
I don’t pine for that brand of innocence, and I have absolutely not comprehension of the folks who do. The only thing I can guess is that their innocence was not used in the same way mine was.
We need a Dumbing of Age fighting game.
DINA FINISHING MOVE: T-REX ATTACK!
SARAH FINISHING MOVE: OTHER JACOB SLASH!
JOYCE FINISHING MOVE: BIBLICAL SMACKDOWN!
WALKY FINISHING MOVE: I GIVE IT TO YOU!
SAL FINISHING MOVE: MOTORCYCLE SMASH!
Becky finishing move: making dudebros uncomfortable with a haircut!
Are they fucking kidding?!
Me before the haircut: Meh, she looks fine.
Me after the haircut: Fuck! She’s hot!
I totally agree.
But ugh, there were so many people in the comments when she got her haircut essentially whining about ‘boohoo, she’s not hot to me anymore’ or ‘boohoo she didn’t get a haicut that is pleasing to my male aesthetics’ (lol as if that is of any concern to Becky), maybe not in so many words, but there was a LOT of that going on, thinly disguised or not. Like. LOL. As if women get haircuts for anyone but themselves.
There was also a lot of concern trolling about whether she should really spend some of her sparse money on a haircut (when clearly she needed the haircut to feel better about herself).
Be glad you missed that or don’t remember that^^
Oh man, that whole “how dare Becky spend the infinite $20 of poverty slaying” thing is one of those things that pissed me off so much that now I just find it a hilarious telling thing. Like, give a Becky hater enough time and they’ll start referencing the $20 like someone who’s never had $20 and nothing else to their name.
kick it again, it ain’t dead yet.
Seriously. People with this kind of argument make me SO angry. I am financially very unstable at the moment and I recently had a birthday and recieved some money as a present. And I took like 90% of that money to pay off some of my various bills but omg the amount of shit that I got from people because I spent the remaining 10% on ‘luxury’ items like new shoes and a movie ticket was beyond infuriating. I have not been to a movie theater in like 2 years because I can’t afford it and I love movies, so y’know? I got to do ONE NICE THING for my mental well-being and I got so much shit for it. Over like 25€ altogether (including the fucking shoes that were on sale).
Ugh, sorry for the off-topic rant. This isn’t even relevant to today’s comic. I apologize and promise to stay on topic from now on^^
Oh yeah, got that a lot myself when I was poor and being besieged with awful. Hell, even when I didn’t get myself luxuries and put everything into survival, I still got shit under the presumption that I was being wasteful and lazy in other ways to deserve my lot. This was also a time in my life where I racked up 8 or 9 various part-time jobs.
Basically I learned that there’s no way to not be blamed for being a victim, so one might as well give oneself a treat on occasion because no one else is going to bother throwing one some dignity.
And on topic, Dina pining for Becky is definitely the cutest thing. I’m such a sucker for queer love stories.
Yeah, people always make assumptions of laziness when someone is struggling financially. No one can ever really know why someone else is struggling. I wish people/society gave less of a fuck about other peoples wealth or lack thereof, y’know?
And yesss, I love Becky and Dina so much. I know Becky is still hung-up on Joyce, but I really do hope she and Dina can make it work, they’re SO CUTE :3
Thanks for sharing – that kind of attitude pisses me off so much. It’s annoying enough when people think it’s their business to tell you what to do with your money, but it’s extra infuriating when they are so incredibly bad at it, and hide their ineptness behind moral indignation.
Right? As if struggling financially wasn’t hard enough, now you also have to listen to people who really have no idea what your life is like judging you for everything you do (or don’t do). Ugh.
<3
Oh hell yes. A few months back before I got my current job, I was really struggling financially and had been for a few years – the job before this one had shit pay, made worse by the fact that I was in school and the payroll dept kept “losing” the paperwork for months on end. Every time I got a windfall, I splurged. Even though, “objectively” speaking, it would’ve been smarter to stock up on food or set it aside for a “rainy day”.
Why?
Because 1, I was always in crisis mode for bills, anyway – it was an exercise in prioritizing which utility I needed to pay now not to lose it each month, and $20 or even $50 would not make any significant difference to that. 2, when you’ve spent over a year living on beans and rice, growing herbs and veggies in your place to avoid malnutrition and walking an hour to and from work because you can’t afford the cost of transit, let alone a car or taxi, and you have $750 a month in income but $900 a month in non-negotiable expenses and need to find some way to bridge the gap? You’re stressed and miserable. Something nice (haircut, trip to the movies, take out, whatever) is something that can relieve the stress and make you feel a bit more human (and, in the case of a haircut: If you haven’t had a haircut in over two years, not only does it make you look more professional so you have a better chance at finding a better job, but it makes you feel better about yourself in a very irrational way. Like, okay, maybe I can’t afford a cell phone or a car or a computer that isn’t threatening to die every day or transit to work or any food better than beans and rice but at least my hair looks presentable. It gives you that little ray of hope which energizes you enough to keep trying).
And I say that as someone who, now that I have a livable wage and steady paycheck in my city (I was being paid about half the estimated cost of living in this city at my old job – and the estimated cost of living assumes you take transit, rent a room in a house which is the cheapest way to live here, buy and make all your food from scratch and have cheap internet and phone. Cost of living here is quite high), has the better part of two months’ pay set aside and is saving up for the down-payment on a car and looking into buying property. I go out almost never and cook food from scratch – I don’t live a lavish lifestyle, and I never have. Hell, most of my clothes are nearing three years old, and I’m buying some new ones this week only because my work clothes are getting visibly worn and won’t look professional much longer. And I still spent “irresponsibly” because I think it served a very real need at the time. I needed a treat once in a while, just to feel better about the situation and find the will to keep pushing through.
To be fair, there’s a difference between “financially unstable” and “homeless, jobless, and living off the goodwill of friends”.
But in some ways that makes it even more so: If you’re right on the edge, that $20 might make the difference – you might wind up $20 short on rent and be on the street or something equally bad. If you’re already over the edge, the $20 isn’t going to fix things.
And as I’ve said before, that haircut wasn’t just a simple luxury. It was a radical symbolic gesture, if one completely understated by Willis, until months of real-time later he had Toedad ranting about how her hair was her womanhood. The haircut really was important. Even in less extreme cultures, it’s a pretty common way people have of marking such major transitions.
There is, but with respect, you don’t know my situation and maybe I used the words ‘financially unstable’ because I am not homeless (though currently work is not looking so hot and health is not looking so hot either and I do depend on other people’s help a lot) and I didn’t know what words to use because sometimes idk how to express what I mean in English, which isn’t my 1st language.
I’m in no way saying I have it as bad as Becky. I’m just saying I understand and can relate to this particular circumstance in her life.
Story time! One time, my mom went to get her hair cut. It was super long, and she wanted it cut above her shoulders and the hair dresser was curious about if my mom’s “husband” (I put that in quotes because my parents have been together 20+ years and never married) was “alright” with her getting her hair cut so short. My mom’s response was pretty much “I don’t care, it’s my hair!”
Love this story. And ugh @ that hairdresser’s assumption, which is a) uncalled for and b) also heteronormative.
Thanks! And oh god I know. Honestly, growing up with unmarried parents is…’interesting’ because everyone assumes my parents are married. Because everyone HAS to get married, right? Especially to have a CHILD. In Elementary schools, the teachers were so confused that my mom’s last name was different from mine, and it took me years to understand why. My parents are both pretty non-heteronormative too. Like this time an old man neighbor gave us a recliner he had that he no longer needed, and he thought it was going to be my dad’s favorite seat. Because men love them some recliners right? Too bad, my mom has claimed it. My dad prefers the rocking chair.
I was there at the time and never saw any such comments. I did see quite a few comments accusing people of doing so, which I (perhaps incorrectly) assumed at the time to be unwarranted aspersions on the comments I did see rather than referencing comments which had vanished… I guess Willis runs a tight ship as far as moderation goes.
Go back to the haircut comic and the ones following it and you will find quite a few comments to that effect.
It happens at least once nearly every time people are mad about Becky (which is a lot) that someone will complain how her spending that magic $20 was a sign of her lack of regard for others or proof that she’s taking advantage and abusing Joyce or the smoking gun of how deep Becky’s moral failings are or something.
Basically it’s been brought up enough that it’s probably as much of a trope now as FAAAAAAACE or Ana/Jen/Sue being the first commenter.
Radness Overload!
The new do she got is awesome though. Plus, if the apocalypse happens it will probably help her start her own lesbian biker gang that puts Mad Max Warboys to shame. “Witness Becky, the Red Queen of Idianna!”
Mad Becky: Fury Road. Imperator Beckyosa.
I honestly don’t care for Becky’s haircut, but I feel like if I point that out people will jump down my throat about what a shitty person I am and I don’t need that.
Hey dude. I know it sucks when that happens. But I think it might help you if you tried to be less focused on yourself and what will happen to you and instead focus on other people and how what you say affects them.
I think it would help you be able to understand why certain things come off certain ways, and would help you find a way to say what you want without coming off in a way you didn’t intend.
Like it or not, Becky’s haircut is associated with some rather bigoted stuff. So you can’t really bring it up without acknowledging that.
My solution is to anticipate what people may say. “I don’t really like Becky’s hair. Sure, she has the right to do what she wants. And she’s doing it for herself, not for me. But I still don’t like because [insert non-bigoted reason here].”
I know I was hard on you that one time, but, believe it or not, I kinda like you. Once I realized how young you are, I started realizing you were just doing the things I would have done at your age.
I can’t expect you to already know how to navigate these minefields of people’s emotions. You do at least show that you try to make people happy with your art.
I mean, I prefer her old one. I don’t think that makes me a horrible shitty person, nor would it entitle someone here to call me a horrible shitty person (which, have they? The only time I’ve ever seen anyone gets on someone’s case about is when they go “omg how dare becky spend that magical self replicating 20$ bill on a haircut.”)
But, yeah, not liking the undercut is fine. It’s fine not to like things.
What trlkly and Spencer said.
Also, it’s not the end of the world to be called out. Hell, I was called out on this very thread and was it a big deal? No, not really. I was ignorant of a context and how my words were being taken of others and now I got free education. That’s awesome.
Being called out for things is part of learning, how you learn about the experiences of others, how you learn to be a better person, how you get exposed to the stories of other people’s lives in beautiful and important ways.
And I get the cultural narrative is that getting called out is the worst thing ever and you should fight it tooth and nail, but you don’t. Few people are so assholic that they’ll treat you like shit if you try and listen and be respectful even if you don’t agree.
I think you can let yourself let go of some of the fear that everyone will hate and shun you if you dare ever get called out and maybe even let yourself see those sorts of disagreements in others as what they are instead of attacks.
Cause it really is all part of growing up and I’m grateful to the individuals in my youth who called out the toxic shit I had absorbed from my shitty shitty culture without realizing it, because that’s what helped me shed it.
I agree that being called out is important, lord knows I have said a truckload of dumb shit on this site, but “I don’t like a haircut” isn’t really something to be called out, not unless it’s just being used for backhanded, unfair snipes at Becky about how she’s such an evil mooch for daring to get a haircut, which isn’t Yoto’s point. He just doesn’t like the haircut. It’s fine not to like a haircut long as you’re not a raging douchenozzle about it to folks who have it.
Like, plenty of folks don’t like Danny, some for reasons I think are pretty silly, but it’d be kinda douchey of me to insist that the real reason they hate him is that he’s bi.
MIKE FINISHING MOVE:YOUR MOM AND A NICKLE!
Ethan finishing move: Inspire uncomfortable self-realization!
RUTH FINISHING MOVE: FEMURE REMOVAL
CURSE MY STRANGE INABILITY TO SPELL BASIC WORDS!
DANNY FINISHING MOVE: DANNED IT INTO THE GROUND
It’s a suplex.
CARLA FINISHING MOVE: SKATER STOMP!!
Danny Hibiki.
Am I the only one noticing how when something happens to a gay person, we immediately focus on the ally angst? Anyone?
You are not the only one noticing that. Willis is aware of the trend and has promised more Carla comics to come.
She’s all over the preview panels, with a wide variety of emotions. It’s going to be a rollercoaster ride of rollerskates and bigotry.
But ally suffering is all that matters, right…?
But seriously, I can see where you’re coming from, especially with where we are in this story at the moment, but I feel like Willis has been good about focusing the meat of the tragedies where they actually fall, focusing for instance on how the fallout of the rape attempt affected Joyce, focusing on Becky for the majority of the Toedad arc, focusing on Amber for the Blaine arc.
So I have no doubt that Becky and Carla will get their due time in this comic day. If only based on the sheer number of Carla preview panels that are up on the tumblr.
Yeah, I agree, it’s a very common problem, but so far Willis is handling it well in my opinion. It was very important that Becky didn’t go away in the end of her ark. She is here to stay, not as a catalyst for Joyce but as a character in her own right.
I also wonder if we’re being rope-a-doped on the ally heavy focus of the beginning of this book. Like, we’re being lead into the tropes of “how does this tragedy affect this ally” in order to really cement home how it affects the people who were directly targeted.
Like, I especially have a feeling that for all the Ruth posturing of “doing right by Carla”, the Mary situation will be more solved by Carla herself than anyone else, letting her have a similar moment of awesome as her calling out of the “perfect girl” expectation with regards to Ruth’s desire to be a savior to her. It’d also be a nice contrast to Ruth’s arc in the old universe where she sacrificed herself for another.
Sorry to be an uninformed European. What is ally angst?
Where Ruth and Carla are concerned: In this case it’s actually Ruth’s job to protect Carla from Mary’s bullshit. She failed at her job that moment and knows it. And wants to put that right, because, well, she doesn’t want to fail other people (her grandfather obviously does a good job convincing her she does always).
(on the European note: I’m starting to fear Trump will win the election and it’s a terrifying thought a man like that will have access to atomic bombs. How can it be that this man is so successful in a country that prides itself of being the pillar of liberty and democracy? He hasn’t an ounce of respect for any of it.)
Combination of blind stupidity and the exploitation of anger at the current system.
“Ally angst” is when, when an ally rather than a member of an oppressed group, gets upset about the way the oppressed group (or individual members of said group) are treated, the narrative (or the focus, if it’s real life) becomes all about how upset they are, rather than about the person the bad stuff is actually happening to.
For instance, an article I read online a few days ago, about a very nice white lady at a ‘Black Lives Matter’ meeting, who was so overwhelmed by the stories of the racism others at the meeting had encountered in their lives, that she started to cry, and immediately everything was put on hold for several minutes while half the group went and comforted her, because of course the important thing there was that a white person was upset at how black people were being treated, and not the treatment itself, amirite?
So in Joyce’s case, for example, when the story focuses on her struggling to deal with Ethan’s sexuality, instead of Ethan’s struggle to deal with his sexuality, that’s “ally angst”.
–Please correct me if I’m off anywhere here, guys. 🙂
(Also re: Trump, OMG yes. D: As a Canadian, hoping for a Democrat win SO HARD. I mean, we’re RIGHT BESIDE the States… D: )
Thanks for the explanation.
Hm, so the problem is the focus shifting to (the comforting of) the ally instead of doing anything about the problem or comforting the people who actually had been treated badly.
So it needs a culture that allows the allies to connect to the pain and (occasional) shame without this becoming the focus. Because basically I think it a good thing when the connection is made but it should be reason to take more responsibility, not more focus.
Ally angst?
Wasn’t that already subverted here?
Oh. So that’s what that dream was about.
“Why didn’t you save us, Max?”
I just noticed. Sarah is bandana free.
Will she be sporting braids or twists in the coming (in comic) weeks? I imagine Indiana winters are killer on Nlnatural hair.
No, Sarah’s going to go to Becky’s haircut to distract Dina. 🙂
Imitations of loved ones usually don’t work out. The Monarch knows this all too well.
“Have I mentioned I have a rad girlfirend?”
“Not within the last five minutes, no”
Dina is such a lovestruck doofus 🙂
Ok enough for the honeymoon phase every relationship in DoA has issues it’s about time to put Dina and Becky through the ringer
The whole dad-with-a-gun-thing wasn’t enough for you? Maaaaan, give them a break 🙂
Becky has already been through the ringer.
But the ringer craves Becky-flesh.
And suddenly I can hear Barbra Streisand singing “The way we were”.
(southpark) “Damn your black heart Barbra Streisand!” (/southpark)
Sarah did say she’d be sad when the world broke Joyce, but she didn’t realise HOW sad she’d be. 🙁
Actually these chairs look like they’re built to be magnets. Am I the only one who sees that?
Not anymore, no.
Can’t unsee it.
I’m trying to figure out if there is a magnet chair configuration that allows for hovering magnet chair.
Keep up that kind of thinking and you will be very rich one day!
…or possible very poor but in the possession of a hovering magnetic hair.
Should be relatively simple. You’d need the base of the chair to be somewhat convex, and given a strong magnetic charge (say, negative). You’d then have a matching concave base, also magnetically charged with a matching charge. The matching polarities would repel each other, while the nested shapes would keep the chair centred in once spot (while, if rounded, allowing for some fantastic spins). If you lined it with hard drive magnets, they ought to be strong enough to support the weight of the chair and a person without bottoming out.
Of course, you wouldn’t be able to wear any metal; it would probably negatively affect pacemakers; and you wouldn’t be able to bring any tech anywhere near it without ruining it. (Cue: “NOOOOOoooooooooo!!!!”)
Alternatively, though, you could simply use compressed air. Force enough of it through a bunch of little holes in the base and you could hold the chair up and still be able to use your tablet/phone in there. Would just be noisy.
Hm. Downsides to every tech, eh? Maybe we could have the base and the chair connected around the lip of the base with heavy rubber, and completely fill that inner space between them with water. Water won’t compress so as long as the space is sealed so it can’t leak out, you wouldn’t bottom out.
Hm. Wonder if I could make a waterbed chair? You’d need separate compartments for the seat, the back, and the sides (if you didn’t want your weight on the seat to simply force the back and sides out a bunch; alternatively you could “tuft” it so they were held back in position), but that shouldn’t be too difficult.
Mmm. Heated waterbed armchair. Giant heated waterbed armchair. Now I want one…
I wonder how many people in Sarah’s life did that, leave for a few days and never really come back? The way Willis draws her in this strip makes me think that this is a real traumatic thing for her.
I think it is more the other way, that Sarah left and never came back (i.e., she was changed for worse in her own opinion)
I feel EXCRUCIATINGLY sorry for anyone who does not have a gravatar and gets Mary as their icon, tbh.
Awwwww
Don’t be mean to Dina, Dina is friend.
There are no chairs, only quarters to the box that is chair-ville.
Sarah communicates without snark, without sarkasm, without hostility, only honest expression of her emotions… wow, she has really opened up to her little Dinosaur buddy.
I think there’s a difference in wanting happy Joyce back and wanting her bigotry back, and I don’t think losing one has to mean losing the other.
Sarah is being pessimistic, because there’s no reason this has to actually break Joyce. We see glimpses of her real self in all of this. When she’s not dealing with problems, she is her old self, minus the bad stuff.
And, yes, that doesn’t quite agree with what Sal said. Joyce just had stopped putting on her pitiful tough girl persona around Sal, so she seemed more real. That doesn’t mean that the real Joyce is mean and angry all the time, or thinks the world is fully of horribleness and pain.
So, ultimately, Sarah is wrong. This will not break Joyce. She will come back better, stronger than ever. She’s growing up, not breaking down.
I think Sarah’s view is that of any cynic; that their cynicism is reasonable and the natural conclusion of anyone who spends enough time thinking about the world. I think she’s afraid of Joyce losing the qualities that let her be happy; Sarah feels her misery comes from being the only sane person and, if Joyce shares a similar epiphany, she fears the same will happen to her.
I don’t think she’s right there, but Joyce is losing her innocence and, once that’s gone, it can never be regained. She can never look at the world simply again; never find easy answers to hard questions. As that happens, feelings of self-assurance and comfort fade away as hard questions begin to dog your steps. It gets harder to be chipper and easier to be sad.
You can grow up, become wiser, more mature, and still be rendered less happy for it. Call me a cynic if you want for saying this, but that seems to be a pretty common arc to growing up.
So, hey, there’s this in the news today.
Willis storylines come true.
Guy kinda looks like toedad too…
http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2016/02/26/father-holds-daughter-at-gunpoint-after-she-comes-out-as-lesbian/
Wow. What a dick. Glad she’s safe.
Neighbours complain about bi-woman’s garden being tooooo gay
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/woman-criticised-by-christian-neighbours-for-having-a-relentlessly-gay-garden-is-crowdfunding-to-10328310.html
“Relentlessly gay”.
Because children might be traumatized by seeing differently-colored glass jars.
“She’ll come back. She just won’t be the same. She won’t ever be the way she was before again.”
————————
Boys and girls, Willis — through Sarah — has just said a mouthful.
None of us — not the characters, nor those of us reading their adventures here on a daily basis — are ever going to come back the same way we were before. I am not the same person I was yesterday, or last week, or three years ago before I first stumbled across this comic, because everything that happens to me every day combines with what has happened before to make me the person I am *AT THAT PARTICULAR MOMENT IN TIME*. And that holds for all of us.
And if there is anything, any one thing, that we should take away from this comic, this is it.
You can never step in the same river twice
http://existentialcomics.com/comic/97
I never put my foot in the same river twice
I don’t like getting wet
You take the good
You take the bad
You take it all
And that is all you get
I think that Sarah has no problem with gradual and continual change; as you say, we all do it. Her concern is that the changes will be so sudden and traumatic that Joyce will become a stranger in her room-mate’s body. I can see why that would worry her.
oh sweet little sarah. not sure if she thinks that once you become depressed, you stay depressed your entire life (because that’s her experience), or if she is lamenting that joyce has had a coming of age experience and now is no longer a child? either way, it doesn’t mean joyce won’t ever be a cheerful person ever again.
it kinda looks like sarah has something written on her shoulder during the close-up? like “ON” or “OW” or something.
It’s not Joyce’s cheeriness that Sarah will miss. It’s her innocence. Imagine a kid who learned last week that Santa isn’t real. The kid might be smiling again by now, but something will be missing– the kid will be just a little bit more reluctant to trust people from now on.
Joyce’s willingness to see the best in people is one of her greatest aspects, and this is exactly what would come under attack in this case. She’s already been betrayed twice: Ryan and Ross. We’ve already seen the impact that Ryan’s had on her: all strangers are now viewed as potential Ryans. Now imagine having all her friends and family become potential Rosses… She wouldn’t be able to see the best in people anymore. All she’ll see is Ryans and Rosses. This is what Sarah fears.
If you look at it in terms of Doctor Who, Joyce is ‘regenerating’.
The Joyce Sarah and everyone met at the beginning is gone physically, but she still exists as part of this ‘new’ Joyce. It’s like going from Matt Smith’s Doctor to Peter Capaldi-they both share the same memories but are radically different as well.
Matt’s Doctor said (paraphrasing here) that ‘change is good; you have to keep moving forward and into a new person as long as you don’t forget the versions of yourself that came before’.
The big question will the new Joyce, however she comes out of this trip home, be able to remember what she was like before and keep those best qualities in her new incarnation and in the future when she ‘changes’ again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QX6j7Os8XN4
the first 45 seconds is the part I’m paraphrasing
am i the only one who sees something written on Sarah’s shoulder in the 3rd panel?
I think it’s text for Dina’s response: “Oh.” except without a speech balloon placed behind it. Maybe a mistake?
Sometime in the last 20 minutes, it got fixed!
Cher is currently singing If I Could Turn Back Time in my overcrowded head.
Hey, she’s not wearing anything on her head today.
I think Joyce is gonna eventually regain her optimism. And that’s gonna leave Sarah wondering how Joyce could do it but she couldn’t.
Willis’ little faces are SO CUTE!