Yes! Didn’t even see the material part at first…
but I guess she’d be more of a material girl than she’d think a black male could be relationship material
I was about to mention that too. i’m guessing that it’s supposed to represent her natural roots showing, but it just looks like she had chocolate pudding dumped on her head.
It’s long enough on the sides I’d expect it to be longer in the front if it were that. I think it’s just a style that doesn’t translate well to the two-dimensional cell-shaded medium.
Maybe nice overall, but we’re seeing her in a situation where a dressing down is halfway appropriate, so she might come off as mean.
Or she might take the “suicidal” part seriously, in which case…. she’s probably got her shit together, since she likely trains the RAs in how to deal with suicidal students.
I will bet you real money that she also knows from experience that RAs are not immune to suicidal thoughts. She’s probably handled situations like that before.
I’m hoping she spills the beans on that right now in a final “I’m going down, might as well try and hurt SOMEONE” attempt, only since Billie moved back into her room, there’s no evidence and Mary fails again.
Not sure how Chloe could hear about the hate speech. Carla is allergic to authority and Ruth won’t have the energy to tell Chloe, and no one else but Mary is a witness.
Unless Mary is stupid or righteous enough to repeat it in front of an authority figure she knows will not approve.
Y’know, the chances of that last one should be zero, but given Mary’s track record of hole-digging, I wouldn’t put it past her to drop that bomb herself if Rachel were to bring up the blackmail.
Truuuuuue, but I’m assuming she’s about to hear about the homophobic blackmail, and her reaction to that will get around.
(I’m also thinking: these aren’t static characters, and seeing Chloe in action could have the effect on Carla that Hank’s having on Joyce. I’m also also thinking: what’s going on in Amber’s room?)
My guess would be that if none of us remember her, she’s probably from the pay-to-read Joyce & Walky strips. Either that or she’s one of the bazillion incidental SEMME characters.
Willis has mentioned that Hooper is based on a real person, and so isn’t going to appear in DoA. (This is also true of a few other characters, notably Ninja Rick.)
I’m fairly sure Mike is well and truly his own character. Willis has said that Mike’s creation was inspired by a guy he knew called Mike, but who was an incredibly pleasant fellow. I think it’s safe to say that Mike was probably never supposed to actually be based on the RL Mike (at the very least in personality) and that he’s definitely evolved into a character of his own by now.
Your comment about her being from Joyce and Walky paid strips implies that we didn’t all buy access to those. I’ve read that section several times as well.
Fortunately, the mystery was solved below as “condom woman”. And here I was trying to place her name.
I saw someone say she was a convenience store clerk. And Willis saying on twitter that he was wondering why no one has remembered her, or something like that.
Someone further down said:
“It’s snarky convenience store clerk from the end of IW!
I’ve been waiting for her to show up.
Now just need unimpressed coed… ”
That how very, very, very, very little any of this has to do with her at all, and if she wasn’t so much of a nobody her life would be at least twice the hell it is already, and all of that extra half being self-inflicted?
Ruth mentioned in one of her first appearances that she’s good at keeping things in line and thereby satisfying her bosses. Things getting this hectic are a relatively new development that she’s apparently managed to keep from being too obvious until now, perhaps through earning respect through her previous work.
I don’t think I’ve had a bad RA in my 5 years of living on-campus. Granted, that simply be because I rarely felt the need to call on them, other than times when the neighbors were having loud parties.
There is the kind of uberboss who, if the boss prevents problems from making it to uberboss’s level, regards boss as a success, regardless of how much of a POS boss actually is. We might find that the other RAs are comparitively well-regarded by their charges in that they actually deal with things and call in RM’s help as needed, rather than simply keep an iron lid on.
Right? I mean, who wants to babysit a bunch of freshmen drunk on the first real freedom in their lives (and also frequently regular drunk too), especially when you are like one or two years older than them tops.
Aww, I wanted to see Walky’s crushing disappointment at not being able to kick the door down, hiding the secret relief that his leg would probably have broken before the door.
Huh. so maybe Ruth won’t lose her job after all, trouble with the other R.A’s and the sex stuff is just hear say at this point. maybe things will be better than expected
Which wouldn’t even be a suspension, as it’d just be considered sick leave in any other job.
If Chloe’s assessment of Ruth vs her other RAs motivates her in the direction of “We want to keep you, let’s get you well and take the pressure off until you’re ready again,” then, shit, New Best Friend.
Side consideration: if someone in the dorm (Rachel? I’d pick Agatha, but she’s not seeing this go down) sees sanity from Chloe dealing with the consequences of a Mary-struck relationship, then there could be a good chance of a conversation starting with: “So, one of my dorm-mates is friends with the girl caught up in the shooting last week, who is now homeless for being gay. Something needs to be done, can you suggest anything?”
That does seem to be the direction that’s going. Though, she’s also going through detox at the same moment and the woman hugging her right now is likely a little bit in the bottle, so that could throw a monkey wrench in things as in my experience underaged drinking tends to be dealt with more regularly by school officials than “sexual misconduct”.
Did anyone know of the alcohol other than Ruth and Billie themselves? It could well have been Chloe who wrote the note for Asma back on the first day, but potential for drinking isn’t the same as these-two-are-drinking.
I’m thinking more that Ruth will be presenting symptoms of alcohol withdrawal and Billie may actually have scotch on her breath, given her track record in these things.
I think Ruth is just 20, I can swear there was a mention of her also having to acquire her alcohol illegally. And yes, IU is a dry campus, a fact that was introduced in strip 3, together with Billie.
Billie has not shown any detox symptoms unlike the last time she went off alcohol for a day, so I’m gonna guess she’s drank recently enough to still be noticeable.
OTOH, while I haven’t seen a combination of detox and depression I’ve seen both, and I’d buy that she’s gone dry with the effects being masked to outsiders by the depression.
Dammit. I want these kids to get well. I’m reading the right strip for that, right?
I got the impression that had no withdrawal because she never actually stopped long enough to have them, and then she pretended to have them to keep Ruth from finding out
Fart Captor- Indeed. In fact the only day she tried detoxing was the one she began catatonic in Walky’s bed and vomited on his chicken strips after encountering Alice. Every other day she’s been drinking.
Seeing Chloé just saw Mary trying to lie about a floor problem, Rachel would be a sorta more like candidate (but no again, it’s gotta be someone older, and neither Carla nor Sarah could ever want anything to do with that)
In dorms, yeah. They can start fires and college kids aren’t exactly responsible. I got a microwave with a “grill” built in so I could make real food without getting caught.
Hell that was true when I was in college 18 years ago, I’d be surprised if it’d changed. Hotplates and toaster ovens were a staple of dorm life until the late ’80s as I understand it but they started being banned as a fire risk in the ’90s. Last I heard it was all minifridges, microwaves and electric kettles in actual dorm rooms with some campuses offering kitchenettes in the dorm public spaces.
The college I attended actually had a couple student lounge areas around campus with a coffeepot, minifridge, hotplate, microwave and a CCTV camera to monitor they didn’t become an issue. I was one of three people I knew of who ever even used them and last I heard they no longer have them.
They’re banned on my campus as well, but one of the dorm buildings gives people closets, which most people living there use to hide hotplates, toaster ovens, and crockpots.
At this point I’m positive that the other RA’s that always get mentioned aren’t messed up people, they just couldn’t deal with babysitting grown ass adults all day every day and decided to book it.
Speaking of, I only know of two times of the top of my head when the door had to be fixed: once when Billie knocked it down, and once when Ruth, necessarily, asked to have the locks redone. What about the other four?
I think y’all are being generous to Mary in saying she wants blackmail material. When she learns that Ruth is suicidal, her first urge is to make sure nobody gets told. Seems to me like she wants the “heathen” to kill herself.
I just really, really don’t get how any of this is anyone else’s business. Especially that they’re fucking, so what? Also the suicidal part is just a guess as far as Rachel knows. Immediately calling for an adult with some authority is the weirdest shit to me here. They’re legally adults, like come on.
The RA is in something of a position of power over her students. These days people tend to frown on sex given unequal power relations like that, especially on modern university campuses.
Yeee, what Drs said. Ruth and Billie’s entire relationship is a /really/ good example of why dating your RA is a terrible idea. hell, it started with sexual assault and only snowballed into a relationship because both of them were desperate and Ruth had the power to keep sneaking into Billie’s room.
Also, someone with a locked door and suicidal intentions, even if you’re unsure, is definitely a case in which to call someone who has authority and a key. I’ve been there too many times. Rachel came out, saw a bunch of people swarming around the door looking deer-eyed and saying something about suicide, and jumped to action. She’s a champ.
She really is. And she sussed out the blackmail to boot. Rachel has got a fierce deductive brain going on and is my darkhorse to replace Ruth if Ruth does end up being permanently relieved of the position.
Yeah, Rachel absolutely did the right thing. That Ruth is suicidal isn’t a guess at all, when Carla shouted it earlier, half the floor probably heard it. That alone should have warraed action, and Billie frantically running in there and locking the door only adds a sense of urgency. If it turned out to be completely false, its not like men in white coats are going to come drag her off to an asylum. Nothing they might do to make sure she isn’t going to kill herself would be worse than an inconvenience, so its far better to err on the side of caution.
Where I went to school, I’m pretty sure they could have sidestepped this issue by having Billie switch to a different dorm. Even if that isn’t the case here, there are almost certainly options like moving off-campus that would have allowed them to continue their relationship without breaking university policies. I could be wrong, though, depending on the extent to which RAs are treated like faculty in this regard.
Even if Ruth isn’t leveraging her authority in their relationship, its sufficiently problematic that she could. I feel that they’re on pretty equal footing emotionally, but then I probably wouldn’t recognize anything more subtle than ”touch my hoo-ha or you’ll get kicked out if the dorms”. You also need to remember that Billie and Carla are the only ones on the floor who know Ruth as anything more than Ruthless, the mean RA who has gotten into multiple physical altercations in public with the student she is sleeping with. Based on what she knew, Rachel had every reason to assume the worst and report it to the university.
+1 to all these responses. If you encounter a person who is probably feeling suicidal, please do not mind your own business. Please get somebody who can assess the situation before you peace out.
I think Carla announced it to the floor. And while they’re technically adults, possible policy violations, as well as health concerns are in play here, not to mention the shrewy way Mary was acting. Best to call in one with experience.
Ruth is an RA, so her sleeping with billie can be considered an abuse of power. in addition, there have been several incidents involving them which could be considered disruptive, plus Mary thinking she has something over Ruth has led her to trying to take over the floor, which no one want to pretend is happening even for a second.
also, if you have fair reason to believe that someone is suicidal and your response isn’t to get someone to make sure they can get the help they need you’re probably in the wrong.
Also consider what the relationship must look like from outside. As far as any off these girls know, Ruth has been tormenting Billie the whole year. The fake fights they’ve been staging just keep that impression going. From outside this doesn’t look like it turned into a real (if not very healthy) relationship, but an abusive one, if Ruth isn’t just forcing her.
Oh shit, that’s a good point. If someone brings that up then Billie would have to spill the beans about everything just to clear that Ruth wasn’t pressuring her into sex.
I’m kind of actually hoping they’ll use that to lie and say they’ve not been together long (and therefor weren’t sure if it was time to talk about moving Billie yet). Of course the violence still makes Ruth look bad, but not in as much of an abusive relationship way.
Also, Chloe’s reaction in panel five seems more sympathetic to me than angry, perhaps her concern is more Ruth is suicidal and less sleeping with a charge.
Any now for the 13th (I think) DOA Tournament Battle!
Danny runs through a field of flowers and tall grass, around him he can see figures in the distance, a young Sal, Blaine, a young Ethan, and others. Memories flash by him, like the projection of a movie screen.
Danny: Amber!
Danny finally comes across Amber, chained, sitting of a stone slab. She looks up weakly.
Amber: Danny you have to leave.
Danny: Not without you.
Amber: She’ll kill you.
Danny: Who?
Amber: Amazi-Girl.
Amazi-Girl steps into existence. She takes bold steps towards Danny.
Amazi-Girl: Hello, Wilcox.
Danny: Get away from her.
Amazi-Girl: Amber doesn’t need you Danny, she needs me. I will protect her.
Danny: C’mon then.
Danny and Amazi-Girl run at each other, Amazi-Girl grabs Danny and tosses him into a tree.
Danny leaps back up and throws a flying punch at Amazi-Girls face. She doesn’t even seem to feel it, and picks Danny up by the wrist
Amazi-Girl: You cannot defeat me, because she will not allow you to.
Amber: No! Please!
Danny: Dammit, how am I supposed to beat you.
Amazi-Girl: You can’t, no one can.
Amazi-Girl slams Danny into the ground.
Danny: Tell me Amazi-Girl, all those time we were together, who was I truly with?
Amazi-Girl: Amber had not truly given in yet, she merely thought she was Amazi-Girl.
She lifts him up again.
Amazi-Girl: Because she had too much connection with people like you!
Danny: You’re scared.
Amazi-Girl: What!
Danny drops to the ground and rolls. He gets up and walks towards Amazi-Girl.
Danny: That’s all you are, a representation of Amber’s fears. Your just as much a part of her soul as the Amber chained to that rock.
Amazi-Girl: I AM NOT SCARED!
Danny: You’ve been scared this whole time, of something that was no longer around.
Amazi-Girl: I’LL KILL YOU!
Amazi-Girl throws a punch at Danny, which he easily blocks.
Danny: I’m not going to hurt you.
Danny lays a hand over Amazi-Girls face, and looks into her eyes.
Danny: When this is over, lets kill spiders together.
Danny smiles warmly
Danny: Okay!
Amazi-Girl: But Sal.
Danny: Sal is trying to save you.
Amazi-Girl: My father.
Danny: Trust me, we’ll stop him.
Amazi-Girls body starts to fade away.
Amazi-Girl: Thank-you for everything.
A small light comes from Amazi-Girl, and enters into Amber; the chains around Amber fall away.
Danny rushes in and catches her.
Danny: It’s time to go now Amber.
Amber smiles at him, as Danny takes her hand and leads her out of a doorway made of shining white light.
Danny and Amber both gasp as they awake, and look around to see a massive battle going on around them.
This is…interesting. I just got back from a ten day trip back home from Michigan and then a boathouse a couple of hours ago, so I’ve been doing a little mini binge. And I have to say, this is best turn of events that could have happened at this point.
Either that she’s secretly an albino who goes through great pains to hide the fact by dyeing her hair and smearing cosmetic cream on her entire body, or that she’s the host to a demon. Or she just happens to have a little mutation that makes her irises slightly see-through, but that’s not as dramatic or fun as the other options.
They are the same shade of brown as the top of her hair. I used to think they were red, when she first appeared, too. The scarf is burgundy, so you can see the difference. (monitor color off, a bit?)
But, it does fit her evil character
Half the men and a couple women in my family are color-blind. As for myself, I only have a small problem with the greens. High five for movement adapted eyes!
I thought Ruth was the one RA who had her shit together.”
Unless I’m forgetting something, this is the first and only time we’ve ever seen the Residence Manager in the… however many months have supposedly gone by since Joyce moved in so very long ago.
… which is fitting, because if she’d ever actually spent any time on this floor, there’s no way she could possibly think what she just said is true.
Ruth claimed long ago that “She ran a tight ship. Nice and quiet”.
She’s certainly got a lot of problems as RA, but as long as she kept it under control enough that there weren’t complaints I can easily see the officials thinking she had it together.
As long as Chloe didn’t come up when she was passed out drunk or actually witness her earlier abuse of Billie, why would she think anything was wrong? Other than the door, of course. 🙂
The other RAs probably keep harassing her with petty things they don’t know how to handle. Ruth didn’t, because she didn’t want to rock the boat and give Chloe a reason to look closer.
I didn’t say she was a great RA. I meant it would be easy for Chloe to not realize the problems. Especially if she’s constantly harassed by minor problems from the other RAs.
Why there is going to be a cover-up: Ms Bishara has just admitted that she’s ignored all indications that Ruth was suffering from mental illness simply because she wanted a quiet life. This is a serious embarrassment for the administration and I suspect that they won’t want to tell the world that they dropped the ball so totally in terms of one of its students.
I’m not sure I read Chloe’s actions in that light. More, that the “signs” didn’t infringe enough on her duties as RA to flood to her attention and there were enough other crises to deal with that things like the broken door didn’t get followed up with because they assumed that “Ruth had this”.
But she is aware now and enough RAs have been in bad states that this isn’t exactly scandalous or out of the ordinary. And so Ruth’s job is probably at the very least gonna be put under increased scrutiny if not terminated out right.
We also know that “half a dozen times” is an exaggeration. It was like twice: once when Billie broke down the door and once when Ruth changed the locks.
And a broken door isn’t “all indications of mental illness”. Ruth has been aggressively covering up her depression and alcoholism until now. It’s been steadily getting worse since the start of the school year and the relationship with Billie added new complications to it, which is the only reason it’s coming out at all. Ruth was doing her best to make sure there WERE no signs (or as few as possible).
The higher-ups haven’t just been deliberately ignoring problems with her behavior/on her floor because they didn’t want to deal with them; there WEREN’T problems being reported until now. It was directly established in-comic that until now, Ruth has kept a handle on things. She kept the floor under control enough that no one ever felt the need to go to a higher authority until now.
Mary: I love how thoroughly her attempt to just grant herself universal power over the person with actual power is straight up ignored. Like, not even shot down, just ignored as if it couldn’t be less important to the person with actual power. And you can see how in the last panel that utterly devastates her.
Walky: Walky understands the rule that adding man- to most any word makes it instantly funny.
Rachel: She’s scary on the ball, texting the Residence Manager immediately, putting together the blackmail clues, making sure that the RM has the most relevant facts and emphasizing the suicidal ideation. If Ruth is going down here, she’s definitely my favored candidate for who should replace her.
Chloe: Okay, I’m kinda loving this character so far. I love how she straight up ignores Mary’s little tantrum like the pathetic childish show that it is. I love the way her face is very firm when she’s investigating the allegation that Ruth slept with a charge but it softens once she has the full facts and hears about the suicidal state.
I love her lamentation that Ruth doesn’t actually have her shit together because you can feel the weariness that accompanies it and how many horror stories she’s had to intervene on. And it really does make one hope that Ruth may actually get through this as her peers are somehow even worse than she is.
And I love that last line. “Maybe I should’ve investigated that” indeed.
And it also means that whatever her response to Ruth is going to be, it’s going to come with a lot of empathy and care and that’s exactly what Ruth needs (even if she’s getting fired).
The thing that got me is the way that, not only did Mary immediately behave like she spoke for everyone, it is also clear that she considered that her natural role that would be accepted by authority figures without question. There is no real response to Chloe ignoring her in favour of talking to Rachel simply because being ignored has knocked her brain off of the rails. She simply isn’t able to function in a world where her assumptions about her social position at the head of the queue are not respected by others.
I feel that is the central pillar of Mary’s Maryness. She believes she has the scoop on what is right and that her ideas about the world and people should be regarded as more important and be rewarded with power because of who she is and what she was born as.
She doesn’t just hate people like Carla or Roz or Ruth. She thinks she’s inherently worth more than them. That she is fundamentally better and that her natural place should be above them. And every moment of them as equals or worse, superiors incenses her and offends her very idea of what is “right”.
I’m now imagining her as an evangelical preacher / political movement leader, claiming she speaks for everyone and doing it with a presumption as natural to her as breathing.
I love how the RM utterly ignores Mary who tries to take control of the situation rapidly slipping through her fingers. Like she’s either sure the RM will take her word for it or just desperate enough to try and it’s amusing that it doesn’t even get a /reaction/.
OMG!
Mary is getting worse by the day. She was always one of the worst, but man, it’s like she reached the bottom of the barrel and is still digging furiously to get to absolutely disgusting hateland.
Two things immediately jump out at me from my time serving in Chloe’s capacity here:
1. Students call their RMs Ms./Mr. [last name]? Everyone just called me by my first name as a rule. Most had a nickname for me (an affectionate one, not those behind-the-back-I-hate-that-guy sort of nickname I’m sure they also had for me but never used to my face). Even the professionals above me were known by their first names.
2. If Chloe’s had to deal with crap from all of her RAs, man, I feel super lucky that my whole staff was amazing. I just turned them loose without a second thought because I knew I could trust them. I would have started going grey much sooner than I did had that not been the case.
OMG. OMGOMGOMG. Does this mean that Ruth is gonna get help? That she may, yes, lose her job but not lose all support or at least her case be handled in a way that doesn’t worsen her situation? DARE I HOPE?
Go listen to Emerson, Lake, and Palmer’s version. The LP one, not the single. Then you’ll have the sound of Keith Emerson making a 50 grand(in 1977 dollars) Yamaha GX1 synthesizer sound like a wheezing elephant running through your head.
Everybody is so happy about this and I dunno maybe it’s just because her grandfather sounds a bit like my mum but I don’t really see this as a happy thing. People are saying that she’ll get help but medication and therapy cost money and it kinda seems to me like all she’ll actually GET from her grandfather is more abuse for being a whiny loser who can’t handle things and losing her RA job (because that’s how those kind of people see depression).
I mean, maybe Billie will pay for it? But that’s. I don’t even know. A heavy debt to get into for someone who’s already feeling like a burden.
Sidenote: this whole arc is making me really sad and incoherent.
I don’t know if it’s the same in the states, but I remember in Puerto Rico you couldn’t be in the dorms unless you had insurance and if you didn’t have any, the college had insurance you could sign with.
I think that might be something all public universities do. That sounds exactly like what they did at the University of Minnesota when I went, at least.
I’m sure IU must st least offer insurance, since when Amber had to get new glasses, she mentioned instance through the u.
I’d be pleasantly surprised if it actually covered mental health though, beyond prescription coverage
Depends on whether she winds up leaving school or not. “Sir” is not going to be helpful, but if Chloe steers her to therapy & the other resources on campus and there’s a way to keep her in school, it could be a good thing.
Yeah, this is what I’m worried about, enough so that I’m actually commenting instead of lurking like usual.
content warning: discussion of suicidal thoughts
I went to my university’s Counseling Services in my junior year because I was experiencing suicidal ideation. It wasn’t my first time having those kinds of thoughts (I have a long history of clinical depression and anxiety; thankfully I’m doing much, much better now) but it was the first time I went to university counseling about it. I was looking for someone just to talk to, but in the end they sent me home for two weeks.
I didn’t really have a choice. I tried to argue against that because I was afraid of missing two weeks of class; I kept telling them that I’d been through this before, that I shouldn’t even have come to their office, and that I could have dealt with it on my own. The deciding factor seemed to be that I told them I had a plan. It’s kind of a hazy memory, due to the stress surrounding it and the fact that it was two years ago, so I don’t know if I would have had the choice to be hospitalized instead, but they definitely weren’t going to let me walk out of that office alone. When I went to pack some clothes and stuff to take home, they had someone walk over to my dorm room with me. I went home for two weeks, caught my breath, set up regular Skype sessions with my therapist (who lives in my hometown), and recovered.
So it depends on a lot of things, really: obviously, my university’s policy may not be identical to IU’s. If it’s similar, it might come down to whether it seems even a little likely that she’ll act on her thoughts. it depends somewhat on if Ruth has a plan – and if Ruth tells someone in a position to help her that she has a plan, or if she’s even just entertained notions of a plan. She may not be willing or even able to talk to anyone other than Billie about what she’s experiencing. She might lie or try to downplay the seriousness of it all.
And if they do want to send her home, I worry that she wouldn’t resist that, due to any number of convoluted paths of distorted reasoning the depressed brain considers “logical thought.” I’d trust Billie to jump in at that point, but what happens if the deciding conversation happens behind closed doors? I know Willis has definitively said he’s not going to kill anyone off, but has anything been said about a character leaving the comic, even temporarily?
…yeah, it’s a lot of “what if”s and “maybe”s. I just hope that Ruth can get the help she needs in a healthy environment (i.e., not with Sir). And as a side note, it’s probably been said hundreds of times, but I’ve gotta say that the way this comic portrays things I’ve been through and things family and friends have been through with such depth and empathy that it’s a goddamn joy to read, even when it’s ripping my heart into tiny little shreds.
TL;DR: I wish I could bake a cake filled with rainbows and smiles and everyone would eat and be happy.
That sounds like a Nice and Accurate summation of the problems.
Hopefully, they can arrange for treatment on campus, hospitalized or not, especially if Ruth can make it clear that her grandfather is a large part of the problem. But, even if policy isn’t to send her home, contacting the family is likely to be a first step.
And with Ruth in the throes of depression she’s not likely going to be able exert much effort to change that, even if there are other options.
I had a (casual) college friend who was suicidal after his girlfriend had an abortion. They kicked him out of his dorm for being “disruptive.” Fortunately, he was part of a fraternity that allowed him to live at the sorta frat house to finish out the semester. (He had already planned to transfer.)
And, note, it was not the type of frat you hear about on TV. It is closer to a professional organization for the students’ particular major. Hence “sorta frat house.” It think it was just a house that a bunch of the members got together and rented. Sorta like Malaya’s situation.
To be fair, I only have the story from his perspective. But it still soured me on that college so much.
Malaya’s dorming with Lucy. Whose only appearance has been to gush about comics while Malaya (and Marcie who is only there because she likes Malaya) are around to ignore her. So it’s not surprising it’s hard to remember XD
To me she looks more shocked and sad, as if she’s trying to wrap get head around the idea that someone can actually be as callous and hateful as Mary, and its not going well.
Yesterday she looked clearly disgusted and angry at Mary, but now she just seems sad
Not sure why people are being upset with Mary right now. It looks to me like she’s defending Ruth, and attempting to diffuse the situation with the residence manager?
Yeah, she’s trying to defuse the situation in order to blackmail her later.
Let’s get this in perspective. There’s a suicidal woman, locked in a room with another possibly suicidal woman and Mary wants to take advantage of her to blackmail her later.
Even if staving off the RM was the right thing (and I’m not fully convinced of that, especially as we’re now seeing her empathy), she’s doing it for the hella wrong reasons and that matters a lot.
…friend, ruth is suicidal, depressed in a horrible position all around, and the RA is the best person to get help for her, even if it will probably cost her her job.
oh geeze, I took her at her word when she said she wasn’t looking for blackmail. In my reading Mary was taking on a task for which she was OBVIOUSLY (to everyone except her) unprepared which is like some kind of? spiritual guide to her wing of the dorm which Yeah would have been dumb and not worked but is also hard for me to take as malicious in intention.
It does kind of take a bit of suspension of disbelief though to assume like I did that Mary had a sudden change of heart when she saw how serious the situation was, and I get why not everyone came to that conclusion.
I went to college in the Midwest for a few months and saw some shit in that time, and might be projecting.
I was on track with you. I thought maybe Mary is cutting the bullshit now that she sees what’s going down. Because that seems more realistic to me then carrying on this stupid plan.
That was maybe possible earlier. But the second she said what she did to Walky–and no apology in the next strip for overreacting–it was clear she had not had any sort of realization.
I’m surprised Rachel was the one to tell the RM. Perhaps she intended to subvert Mary’s plans to blackmail Ruth and get Ruth and Billie some real help.
I love how Rachel is the pragmatic, drama-free zone in this situation whose first instinct was to actually do the responsible thing. Yes, this could cost Ruth her job — but if it also gets her help? Better her job than her life.
And Mary’s realization that she’s lost that little bit of power she thought she had over the floor? That she’s so unimportant that the authority figure isn’t even giving a nod to her bullshit? Is a beautiful thing.
no offense to Ruth, but she’s been absolutely crap as an RA (really, threatening to take femurs? That’s how you welcome a bunch of new, scared freshmen?). I hope there’s another way to keep her around and get her help but she’s not been doing her job and it’s not fair for everyone else to suffer :\
I think it’s a Yiddish saying that goes:
If one person calls you a donkey, ignore it.
If two people call you a donkey, think about it.
If three people call you a donkey, go out and buy a saddle.
I’m GLAD Ruth is about to be fired, for everyone’s sake, including her own.
For one, Ruth is a horrible, horrible RA. Whether this is a result of her own mental health problems or just of her, well, Ruthness, is yet to be determined, but she’s clearly unfit for the position.
For two, she needs time (and help) to work through her problems without having to deal with floor complaints, whether they’re real issues or just blown-out drama.
As long as it actually leads to her getting that time and help. If she winds up unable to stay at school without the free room & board and stuck home with her abusive grandfather, then she’ll likely just get worse.
This seems… unlikely, from a PR point of view. I mean, they just had “christian nutjob dad shoots up campus in order to ‘reform’ gay daughter.” I can’t imagine anyone on the board wanting to follow that up with “University kicks suicidal girl out because of depression.”
Then again, you lot are probably getting President Trump, seeing as Clinton seems determined to throw the race, so I can tell non-awfulness isn’t really trending on the USA.
I didn’t notice until I posted that the addressing pronoun on the second paragraph is based on the assumption that you’re USAmerican. My apologies. Kindly replace “you lot” with “USAmericans.”
IIRC, they wouldn’t have to kick Ruth out of school. The RA position is the only way she has enough money to attend. If she loses that, rightfully though it may be, she’s out of school.
Unfortunately that happens often enough to not really be newsworthy whereas “blackmailed queer student commits suicide” might actually make news. I can definitely see the campus staff “encouraging” her to take a semester off “for her mental health and recovery”.
Which might actually be a good plan in a case where it was the stress and pressure of school and being removed from her support structure at home was the problem.
When the problem is more closely tied to family abuse …
As Jezi suggests and as I directly said, if she leaves because she’s unable to cover room & board, that’s when she’s in trouble.
I’m not sure what her options would be even for loans as a dependent of someone likely unwilling to co-sign. Especially in the middle of the semester. They may simply not be bureaucratically willing to house her or to arrange for it fast enough to matter.
More importantly she’s already cripplingly depressed, so unless someone else can arrange matters and get the paperwork set up, she’s likely to fall through the cracks and wind up back home.
Why struggle? It’s what she deserves anyway.
That said, I don’t expect that to happen. Doesn’t work narratively for Ruth to drop out of the story and go home.
As for Trump, I am from the US, but while there certainly is a spike in awfulness that Trump is both amplifying and taking advantage of, the Democratic convention was a nice antidote to that. I expect a good size polling bounce for Clinton, leaving her nicely poised to win. As she really has been all along. The prediction markets have her at about 70% to win.
That attitude (regarding Trump) continues to worry me. People keep underestimating how well Trump will do, and then being wrong. A lot of people are sufficiently angry about sufficiently vague issues that there is far too real chance he could get elected.
I for one do not look forward to the election of President ToeMonster
Disenfranchised people getting angry over vague issues and voting en masse for something really stupid? It’ll never happen. It didn’t happen here in Britain and it won’t- oh, wait.
Right.
It’s politics. Anything is possible.
In the primaries, the polling supported Trump winning as did the prediction markets fairly early on. People & pundits dismissed on grounds that it was just too crazy.
Let’s not make the same mistake in the other direction: The best data currently shows the odds are against him. If that changes, I’ll start to panic.
Meanwhile, do something about it. Vote. Organize. Volunteer.
The odds are against him, but not by as much as they were. Trump was on an uptick even before the convention. He started at 20% and now is around 40%, even with the convention bump factored out. That’s more than a 1 in 3 chance, which happen, well, 1 out of every 3 times.
I don’t want you to panic either, but don’t dismiss him. For some reason, the relatively small things against Clinton seem to stick while Trump’s much worse things are not. People support Trump in the same breath they call Clinton a corrupt liar, despite the former being a corrupt business man who lied more than he told the truth for his entire campaign.
Trump is not nearly as noncompetitive as he seemed earlier this month. He got upticks both with FBI announcement and when he chose Pence.
It’s not so much “kick her out”, as it is “stop paying her to be RA” which forces her to leave. She’s not fit to be RA by any standards (threatening to break femurs, for one, is in no way cool). But I hope she’s able to stay in school post-RA
I think that I discovered DoA after It’s Walky was an active concern. So given that I am not a spring chicken who can pull all-nighters anymore, how difficult would it be to go back and read in mini-binges? Are we talking about hundreds of comics or a couple of thousand? Thanks!
Quite a few, but it’s being rerun (with commentary) at It’s Walky. Probably wouldn’t take too long to catch up to that and then you could just follow along.
The early quality is pretty uneven. Especially in Roomies. It’s worth reading though and a lot of the later Walky is pretty awesome. As are parts of Shortpacked!
I’ve read Roomies and Shortpacked but only the start of It’s Walky. The comments on Shortpacked and this comic kind of spoiler so much of It’s Walky that I almost feel like I have read it.
Potential spoilers for those reading the IW reposts….
..
..
..
.
She’s the convenience store clerk who sold Walky and Joyce a super-sized box of condoms during a very very very awkward sequence once they finally got down and busy with it.
But I’d guess that Ruth’s going to get fired and/or suspended, and Chloe will have to take over supervision personally until she can either hire a replacement (complete with application process, interviews, background checks, and training) or decide that Ruth’s well enough to resume her duties. Alternatively, some poor schmuck is going to get tasked with watching too floors.
…. but if they ARE hiring people from the hall, my vote is for Rachael. She’s level-headed, doesn’t put up with bullshit, and Chloe’s got cause to be moderately impressed with her.
What’s going on with Mary’s face in the last panel? She looks spooked. Could it be Walky’s rush of testosterone, or the revelation Chloe already knew something was up? Nah, I’m guessing it’s the keys. Mary is this frightened of losing her blackmail window. She doesn’t have any idea what a fucking creepy figure she’s cutting here, right in front of everyone, while they’re worried about their near-catatonic suicidally depressed friend. She’s just in complete panic over watching her opportunity to abuse the people around her slip away.
The odds of Mary being thrown out a window in the near future are rising I think. And that makes me happy.
No one has spoken to or even looked at her in this strip, so I suspect it’s a creeping feeling of powerlessness.
She might also be shocked at how nobody is obeying her OR angrily arguing with her. Either of those responses would fit neatly into her worldview, but she doesn’t know what to make of people simply ignoring her.
Carla and Billie were loudly talking about how Ruth is suicidal, and then they saw Billie rush into her room. Rachel decided it was probably for the best to get an authority figure to intervene.
Actually, that’s got me thinking. Walkyverse!Rachel isn’t an abductee, right? Because she built Ultra Car and two giant robots with Joe in like a weekend IIRC.
Willis has made it pretty clear that the abductee thing didn’t happen in this universe. Which makes sense–none of them come across as superspies. Just typical college students (for comics, anyways.)
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NO SALVAGING THIS SHIPWRECK
“wait WHAT ship??”
the, uh, Mary x Blackmail Material ship
Someboy draw this ship!
What would blackmail look like?
Probably a boxing glove? I keep seeing it as an old timey robber with boxing gloves.
How do you
typeship with boxing gloves on?Huh? Wouldn’t you illustrate blackmail with, ya know, a black envelope? Like, the original meaning of the word?
here you go. http://theanonyomusguy.deviantart.com/art/S-s-Blackmail-for-DoA-joke-624637326?ga_submit_new=10%253A1469765921
YESSSSSSS
(that was legit fast)
something quick and simple, I hope you like it?
Well done! +1
+5 more
Made me smile, so job well done.
There are half a dozen Gordon Lightfoot songs fighting it out to be on the hacked Muzak. :/
Which of course immediately reminds me of this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utp2XYEPnYY
Yesterday, I got this song in my head for Mary B. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFlEH0icnTA
Hmmmn, makes me think of HMS Pumpkin Pie :p Lost with all hands, terribly sad.
No, I don’t think Mary would go for a black male. http://www.instantrimshot.com
She’s not black male material??
Yes! Didn’t even see the material part at first…
but I guess she’d be more of a material girl than she’d think a black male could be relationship material
Door opens, Billie and Ruth are sitting opposite each other, discussing their Gender Studies homework.
They look up, confused. The Residence Manager apologises, after a couple of minutes and walks off, glaring at Rachel.
Mary implodes.
Someone gives Other Rachel and Sierra more to do in future strips.
Hopefully, Billie is hearing all the commotion in the hall, and quickly gets up to just look concerned, talking to Ruth.
I just assumed the reason Dorothy has disappeared is to duck in and warn them, from an adjoining room.
Ruth’s room (and Carla’s, incidentally) don’t have adjoining rooms. There bathrooms are single-serve.
yes please
I’d think doing homework for a class neither of them is enrolled in would tip people off that something was wrong.
Her hair makes me want one of these.
What the hell is going on there?
Ah, deliciousness. Simple, but still. Moving on.
AND JIGGLY!
(And now a bunch of people who weren’t going to click on the link, do.)
I was about to mention that too. i’m guessing that it’s supposed to represent her natural roots showing, but it just looks like she had chocolate pudding dumped on her head.
That’s not pudding.
It does start with p, though.
Dammit, now I want pudding.
It’s long enough on the sides I’d expect it to be longer in the front if it were that. I think it’s just a style that doesn’t translate well to the two-dimensional cell-shaded medium.
saame
Oh good that’s all I’m seeing now, too.
I was expecting this…
(Her hair looks a lot more like a creme caramel than chocolate pudding.)
She looks like a scoop of vanilla ice cream with some Hershey’s syrup on top.
That’s a compliment if I ever heard one!
No it ain’t. They put spoiled milk in hershey’s chocolate.
Indeed it is!
Maybe it’s Magic Shell?
That’s what I was thinking actually!
plus walky is kinda weak when it comes to door destruction anyway.
Where’s Joyce when you need her?
not church.
She’s on her way now! Damn, don’t gotta be so pushy.
Pudding lady is the RA???
No, Ruth is the RA. Pudding lady is the boss of the RAs.
Ok i meant RM, damn these mispelling fingers
Pudding lady? Are you talking about her hair..?
Yeah it looks like one of those japanese yellow pudding with brown tops
Those are strictly Japanese?! What a night of revelations.
I dunno. Only seen them in those intriguing japanese commercials as far as I know.
They are the japanese definition of pudding. Real (British pudding) looks like
It kindof looks like American pudding (traditionally a plastic cup full of a shelf-stable, yellow or brown dairy-related substance).
They’re not, but as far as I know, only the Japanese call them puddings. (They’re creme caramels in English.)
You mean it looks like flan. The Residence Flanager.
I googled it and wow good pun
If only I could give you a Like. Have an Internet instead.
Delicious pun-nage.
Now Chloe and Billie will fight over who gets to take care of Ruth. A custardy battle.
Hey, if you got it, flan it.
Oh my God, that’s brilliant.
I wish there was a way for me to use that in real life, but I can’t imagine it will ever come up.
She’s a flaneur who happened to be in the vicinity.
YES
So it’s like Custard’s last stand?
But isn’t it pronounced to rhyme with “don” and not “man”? You know, “flahhhhn”.
HOLY CRAP YOU’RE RIGHT! Is this what happens when you eat too much pudding?!
https://youtu.be/u955Zw1y7_Q
This happens when you eat too much pudding, yes
Japan is lost.
WHY IS SEATTLE IN THAT COMMERCIAL?
This? Seattle.
https://youtu.be/u955Zw1y7_Q?t=1m15s
You can’t take that exact picture anymore because of new construction, but this is as close as you can get with Google Street View.
https://goo.gl/maps/Fgb4UekFwCQ2
Do you mean Crème caramel ?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cr%C3%A8me_caramel
Delicious French pudding.
cheese dammit now i’m craving for pudding
Ok, as a French person I’m kinda weirded out you call that “pudding”
In germany, it’s legit. They don’t remember it comes from “boudin”.
It has Germanic roots as well. In the Westcountry, butchers still make hog’s puddings, which resemble the description in the first paragraph:
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=pudding
The Normans let the Saxons keep some of their words in order to mark the lower classes out. Still works today.
Pudding somehow made it to the sweet side of things.
Resident Manager. Boss to whom the RAs are minibosses.
She looks harmless enough now, but when she’s down to 50% health, she unleashes her second form.
1st form: pudding boss lady
2nd form: actual pudding
3rd form: half eaten larger pudding
You joke, but I’ve played enough D&D to know that puddings can be a serious threat.
And in Final Fantasy. Especially FFXII, where the Flans actually are topped with caramel.
It could be worse; what if her ultimate form is a gazebo?
In the wilds of Virginia one day, I had a wandering monster encounter with a gazebo.
It’s a wicked GM that sets such a terrifying foe on any adventurer. I hope you at least gained a level.
In which of this forms does she get to eat Chicago?
probably when she evolves into her giga pudding form
Harmless? She is over 95% charged up for her Special Attack Mode!
That brown blob on her is her power status light. It’s dark brown, so yeah.
This can only end well, I can feel it. Definitely nothing bad. Nosiree
I actually feel like it’s going to end a lot better than it could have.
I have no feelings either way.
All I know is that my gut says maybe
Well it’s taken the wind out of Mary’s sails, that’s always a good thing.
Mary is totally panicking.
You mean overwhelming evidence that her irrelevance alone is enough to make her a stark failure as a professional prig, much less anything else?
Chloe seems nice
I HOPE
I was just coming down here to say, I like Chloe. Until she shows me otherwise, I trust her to take care of this.
This is how I feel about people in general.
As a consequence I am a very unhappy person.
Maybe nice overall, but we’re seeing her in a situation where a dressing down is halfway appropriate, so she might come off as mean.
Or she might take the “suicidal” part seriously, in which case…. she’s probably got her shit together, since she likely trains the RAs in how to deal with suicidal students.
I will bet you real money that she also knows from experience that RAs are not immune to suicidal thoughts. She’s probably handled situations like that before.
Nice people will fire you, too. Hell, once I was fired so nicely I was halfway through cleaning out my desk before it hit me.
And all of Mary’s influence comes crashing down. Oh, that feels so good.
Yeah… but what’s gonna happen with Becky since Mary knew about THAT too?
I’m hoping she spills the beans on that right now in a final “I’m going down, might as well try and hurt SOMEONE” attempt, only since Billie moved back into her room, there’s no evidence and Mary fails again.
Joyce finds out and unleashes her full fury on her?
“A friend’s stayed over a couple of times and is dining elsewhere? Fine by me. Now, what was this I heard about hate speech?”
Not sure how Chloe could hear about the hate speech. Carla is allergic to authority and Ruth won’t have the energy to tell Chloe, and no one else but Mary is a witness.
Unless Mary is stupid or righteous enough to repeat it in front of an authority figure she knows will not approve.
Y’know, the chances of that last one should be zero, but given Mary’s track record of hole-digging, I wouldn’t put it past her to drop that bomb herself if Rachel were to bring up the blackmail.
Truuuuuue, but I’m assuming she’s about to hear about the homophobic blackmail, and her reaction to that will get around.
(I’m also thinking: these aren’t static characters, and seeing Chloe in action could have the effect on Carla that Hank’s having on Joyce. I’m also also thinking: what’s going on in Amber’s room?)
Amber’s checked out for Amazi-Girl again after Sal was talking outside of her room, last we saw.
I’m imagining Carla saying it to Mary… or everyone in the hall… and not giving a damn that Chloe overhears.
Well, she’s horrible at hiding how she’s, psychologically speaking, an unstable time-bomb, and if that never got anyone’s attention before….
Oh, this still isn’t going to go well. But at least it will go poorly for Mary as well as for Ruth and Billie.
Yup. And that’s what makes me happy about this upcoming shit-show.
I knew it. Chloe’s the RA!
I mean RM. Nuts…
So, wait, is Chloe ported from the Walkyverse? I don’t recognize her, and I reread IW! like last week.
No idea either. To the Walky wiki!
I just checked the Walkypedia. Apparently she doesn’t have an entry. Now, I’m really curious.
And I just character searched It’s Walky and she didn’t appear yet, but that just might mean she’s in later comics than the ones being reposted.
Damn, can someone with a memory not like a sieve give a shout to her other-universe counterpart?
My guess would be that if none of us remember her, she’s probably from the pay-to-read Joyce & Walky strips. Either that or she’s one of the bazillion incidental SEMME characters.
…Whatever happened to Hooper?
I was just wondering about him too.
My question is
WHERES THE BEEF?
He’s a football jock. We saw him bullying Danny and a few other places early on.
Willis has mentioned that Hooper is based on a real person, and so isn’t going to appear in DoA. (This is also true of a few other characters, notably Ninja Rick.)
Ninja Rick is based on a real person? Hahaha, wow!
Hooper’s based off a real guy that Willis knows (and who I’ve interacted with on the Transformers Wiki a bit).
So Willis decided keeping writing him as a character felt weird.
Yeah, but so is Mike, if I remember correctly. It’s all a matter of whether Willis feels comfortable ‘characterizing’ them, or not.
I’m fairly sure Mike is well and truly his own character. Willis has said that Mike’s creation was inspired by a guy he knew called Mike, but who was an incredibly pleasant fellow. I think it’s safe to say that Mike was probably never supposed to actually be based on the RL Mike (at the very least in personality) and that he’s definitely evolved into a character of his own by now.
Your comment about her being from Joyce and Walky paid strips implies that we didn’t all buy access to those. I’ve read that section several times as well.
Fortunately, the mystery was solved below as “condom woman”. And here I was trying to place her name.
I saw someone say she was a convenience store clerk. And Willis saying on twitter that he was wondering why no one has remembered her, or something like that.
Boom. http://www.joyceandwalky.com/d/20040807.html
But… her name isn’t spelled with an H.
Her employer may have misspelled her name on her badge. I, for one, have never seen Chloe spelled ‘Cloe’.
Phew, thanks for the hard work!
Someone further down said:
“It’s snarky convenience store clerk from the end of IW!
I’ve been waiting for her to show up.
Now just need unimpressed coed… ”
Willis was pleased someone remembered.
Yeah, can someone let us know who she is? I read all of It’s Walky and Shortpacked multiple times, but I don’t remember her offhand.
Poor, poor Mary.
Not.
Well, Dorothy did say the best response is pity.
That response is more satisfying the more pitiable her circumstances are.
Gotta love Mary slowly realizing she’s the bad guy here.
I wish. She’s just freaking out over losing control.
Yeah, it’s gonna be a bit longer for her to have any chance at self-realization.
Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if she never gets there. Plenty of people just like her stay that way forever.
Well, eventually they get old and die.
Or go into politics and run for president.
[Pictures Willis’s grandchildren drawing strips about the bitter presidential race between Mary and Dorothy.]
That how very, very, very, very little any of this has to do with her at all, and if she wasn’t so much of a nobody her life would be at least twice the hell it is already, and all of that extra half being self-inflicted?
I like how this implies that all the other R.A.s are a fountain of issues too.
Seriously. That they present worse than Ruth is kind of incredible.
Ruth mentioned in one of her first appearances that she’s good at keeping things in line and thereby satisfying her bosses. Things getting this hectic are a relatively new development that she’s apparently managed to keep from being too obvious until now, perhaps through earning respect through her previous work.
This. And it’s implied that she has a year’s worth of experience at that.
Also, RAs being a fountain of issues tends to be the default for RAs. If they aren’t useless and absent, they tend to be terrible.
My RA was a great guy. Though the RM didn’t know about the pot sharing…
My first RA got fired for that. He was waaayyyy to obvious about it though.
….. so they fired his grass?
Go to your room.
I don’t think I’ve had a bad RA in my 5 years of living on-campus. Granted, that simply be because I rarely felt the need to call on them, other than times when the neighbors were having loud parties.
*may simply be because
There is the kind of uberboss who, if the boss prevents problems from making it to uberboss’s level, regards boss as a success, regardless of how much of a POS boss actually is. We might find that the other RAs are comparitively well-regarded by their charges in that they actually deal with things and call in RM’s help as needed, rather than simply keep an iron lid on.
Chloe’s parenthetical at the end might, *might* signify she’s the sort of uberboss who prefers the underbosses don’t bring their problems to her.
I think Ruth just never brought problems to the RM. So she was the good one.
That means Ruth might keep her job as a RA, or that line is specifically a false hope created by Willis to give us that idea.
Don’t be silly. Willis would never give us reason to hope – false or otherwise.
Of course he would. How can he dash hope that is not there?
Maybe because nobody sane would want the job?
Right? I mean, who wants to babysit a bunch of freshmen drunk on the first real freedom in their lives (and also frequently regular drunk too), especially when you are like one or two years older than them tops.
…. but also free room, board, a great line on the resume, and the power to crush souls.
That moment when you realize that the other RA’s weren’t messed up people, they just knew when to get the hell out when the gettin’ was good.
I love how Mary is just jackshit ignored.
“the proper response is pity”
Yup. Chloe just doesn’t even give her bullshit the time of day. And you know that’s got to sting Mary’s ego almost as much as the Carla laser show.
More. Mary doesn’t want Carla’s respect. Just her fear, pain, and/or absence.
The establishment, though. Mary WANTS that.
She looks like she brushed the top of her head on some wet paint and never realized it.
Aww, I wanted to see Walky’s crushing disappointment at not being able to kick the door down, hiding the secret relief that his leg would probably have broken before the door.
Depends on what the doors are made of.
Neutronium?
Neutronium would actually decay quickly, allowing easy access to Ruth’s room provided that it hadn’t already killed everyone.
Myriads of ding-dong drawings and painting-overs.
Plotpointium. A door made from it will only give way if it advances the story by doing so.
How dis Jennifer break it in the fire alarm scene, again ?
Head Cheerleader. Problem Solver. (but seriously, Billie’s got some pretty strong legs)
Aww, Mary’s face collapsing as everyone ignores her. It’s making me feel all warm inside.
Mary is a giant us.
?
Mary is a giant them. Those two.
WAIT A MINUTE, I’m not a gerund I’m a free man!
I was still confused, then I got what you were saying. Thanks.
Ooh, I hadn’t even noticed. Thank you for pointing out the Mary-pain! >:D
What’s wrong with her hair?
It’s dyed blonde and she’s a blonde, and its grown out. I like it, but uuuh, you are welcome to think it is wrong.
whoops, I meant she’s a brunette, which is why her hair is brown at the top.
IT LOOKS DELICIOUS, THAT’S WHAT
In Japan, there are women known as Christmas Cakes, what we got here is a Christmas Pudding.
The English have Christmas pudding. So if we cut her open we’ll find little prizes inside?
Looks to me like she has brown hair with just the bangs dyed blond.
A new character?! not from any of your previous comics! yay!!
Check the hovertext
Nope. Apparently reused.
Anyone convinced that Walky’s “man-kickers” have every actually kicked men? Not me.
Ugh, ever, not every. Once more I request an edit function!
Joyce is more of a certified man-kicker honestly, according to Mike.
I’m pretty sure “man-kickers” is like “man-handling”: they don’t kick men, they kick like men.
oh. OH. I read that as man-knickers. I read it three times trying to figure out what I’d missed.
So long as they provide proper coverage and any needed support, they work.
Semprini?
OUT!
Man-knockers?
Walky will need to put on the Freshman 15 for those to appear.
Not in this universe.
Huh. so maybe Ruth won’t lose her job after all, trouble with the other R.A’s and the sex stuff is just hear say at this point. maybe things will be better than expected
I think she’ll be suspended from her job until she gets cleared by a therapist.
though as I said, better than expected, at least she’s not gonna break through the door and fire her on the spot.
Which wouldn’t even be a suspension, as it’d just be considered sick leave in any other job.
If Chloe’s assessment of Ruth vs her other RAs motivates her in the direction of “We want to keep you, let’s get you well and take the pressure off until you’re ready again,” then, shit, New Best Friend.
Side consideration: if someone in the dorm (Rachel? I’d pick Agatha, but she’s not seeing this go down) sees sanity from Chloe dealing with the consequences of a Mary-struck relationship, then there could be a good chance of a conversation starting with: “So, one of my dorm-mates is friends with the girl caught up in the shooting last week, who is now homeless for being gay. Something needs to be done, can you suggest anything?”
That does seem to be the direction that’s going. Though, she’s also going through detox at the same moment and the woman hugging her right now is likely a little bit in the bottle, so that could throw a monkey wrench in things as in my experience underaged drinking tends to be dealt with more regularly by school officials than “sexual misconduct”.
Did anyone know of the alcohol other than Ruth and Billie themselves? It could well have been Chloe who wrote the note for Asma back on the first day, but potential for drinking isn’t the same as these-two-are-drinking.
I’m thinking more that Ruth will be presenting symptoms of alcohol withdrawal and Billie may actually have scotch on her breath, given her track record in these things.
I thought Billie was sober here -and Ruth’s potentially old enough to drink legally -is IU a dry campus?
It is.
I think Ruth is just 20, I can swear there was a mention of her also having to acquire her alcohol illegally. And yes, IU is a dry campus, a fact that was introduced in strip 3, together with Billie.
Billie has not shown any detox symptoms unlike the last time she went off alcohol for a day, so I’m gonna guess she’s drank recently enough to still be noticeable.
Ooooh. Ooooh. Yeah, that’s nasty.
OTOH, while I haven’t seen a combination of detox and depression I’ve seen both, and I’d buy that she’s gone dry with the effects being masked to outsiders by the depression.
Dammit. I want these kids to get well. I’m reading the right strip for that, right?
Wasn’t Billie lying about having symptoms at all?
I got the impression that had no withdrawal because she never actually stopped long enough to have them, and then she pretended to have them to keep Ruth from finding out
Fart Captor- Indeed. In fact the only day she tried detoxing was the one she began catatonic in Walky’s bed and vomited on his chicken strips after encountering Alice. Every other day she’s been drinking.
They are supposedly both “dry” and all evidences of alcohol supposedly have been cleared up.
Ugh, I just had a horrifying idea: Ruth is replaced by Mary!
Not gonna happen.
Seeing Chloé just saw Mary trying to lie about a floor problem, Rachel would be a sorta more like candidate (but no again, it’s gotta be someone older, and neither Carla nor Sarah could ever want anything to do with that)
Rachel may be older. Carla was talking to her when complaining about building mindshare among the new freshmen.
Who is this strange new character whose head looks like a plate of pudding?
The Pudding Princess.
The Pudding Manager.
The Resident Pudding?
We know her parents call her Pudding.
The Joker?
Tags name her ‘Chloe’. Apparently, she’s a one-off character from near the end of W&J.
Panel One: Maybe I can do something.
Panel Two: Oh no.
Panel Three: Maybe I can do something.
Panel Five: Oh no.
Panel Six: Maybe I should run.
Any ideas on Panel Four?
Panel Four: internal Why are you ignoring me!
I like it.
Panel Four: days of our lives turns into gossip girls.
I read that as Gilmore Girls at first.
Wait, what have the OTHER RAs gotten into?!
Smuggling in illegal hot plates.
Are hot plates illegal?
In dorms, yeah. They can start fires and college kids aren’t exactly responsible. I got a microwave with a “grill” built in so I could make real food without getting caught.
My roomie in USAF had a plug-in coffee pot that we’d make Mac N Cheese in.
My college doesn’t allow them. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s true of most institutions.
Hell that was true when I was in college 18 years ago, I’d be surprised if it’d changed. Hotplates and toaster ovens were a staple of dorm life until the late ’80s as I understand it but they started being banned as a fire risk in the ’90s. Last I heard it was all minifridges, microwaves and electric kettles in actual dorm rooms with some campuses offering kitchenettes in the dorm public spaces.
The college I attended actually had a couple student lounge areas around campus with a coffeepot, minifridge, hotplate, microwave and a CCTV camera to monitor they didn’t become an issue. I was one of three people I knew of who ever even used them and last I heard they no longer have them.
They’re banned on my campus as well, but one of the dorm buildings gives people closets, which most people living there use to hide hotplates, toaster ovens, and crockpots.
At DoA IU, that gets you radioactive appliances.
*gasp* The dastards!
Something slipshine worthy?
Abused their RA powers?
At this point I’m positive that the other RA’s that always get mentioned aren’t messed up people, they just couldn’t deal with babysitting grown ass adults all day every day and decided to book it.
They aren’t “grown ass adults”, that’s the problem. They’re children in mostly-full-grown bodies.
Teenagers then. EVEN WORSE!
Actually trying to deal with situations on their floors and seeking help/advice from the RM as needed?
Hah, Mary loses, I’m satisfied
Rachel narced!
Yup. That’s what she was doing with her phone, two strips back.
Seeing a faculty member in DoA is like seeing a unicorn.
Leslie’s a unicorn?
Actually, I’d guess Ms. Bishara is administrative staff, not faculty.
Robin probably thinks so. At least after eating Cadbury Cream Eggs.
A real rarity to be sure.
Hopefully she’ll be able to Remedy things.
I’m more surprised that she isn’t speaking in Peanuts Warble.
This is how this had to go down. Unfortunately I’m still pretty sure Ruth’s story is going to end badly. =/
respect to…uh…rachel? yeah, sure, rachel. she has the right idea (if she’s the right rachel)!
And Walky so wanted to kick down that door. Not like he could accomplish it most likely but still…
It’s his misplaced ideas of machismo striking again.
“maybe I should’ve investigated that”
YA THINK!?!?? >.>
Speaking of, I only know of two times of the top of my head when the door had to be fixed: once when Billie knocked it down, and once when Ruth, necessarily, asked to have the locks redone. What about the other four?
A tale for which the Web is not yet prepared.
Probably something to do with femurs.
Slipshine. Or at least Patreon. I’m just guessing.
Hmmm… I think I know what we need to ask Willis for in the next Patreon strip poll. The precedent has been set, after all.
I think y’all are being generous to Mary in saying she wants blackmail material. When she learns that Ruth is suicidal, her first urge is to make sure nobody gets told. Seems to me like she wants the “heathen” to kill herself.
I don’t think so because I don’t think Mary is actually smart enough to think ahead like that.
I don’t remember Chloe from the Walkyverse.
Mary is about to lose so much power
… wait, what happened to her door?
Six Times?
Is this another as yet unwritten Slipshine episode?
Billie and Ruth Bust a Door
I just really, really don’t get how any of this is anyone else’s business. Especially that they’re fucking, so what? Also the suicidal part is just a guess as far as Rachel knows. Immediately calling for an adult with some authority is the weirdest shit to me here. They’re legally adults, like come on.
The RA is in something of a position of power over her students. These days people tend to frown on sex given unequal power relations like that, especially on modern university campuses.
Yeee, what Drs said. Ruth and Billie’s entire relationship is a /really/ good example of why dating your RA is a terrible idea. hell, it started with sexual assault and only snowballed into a relationship because both of them were desperate and Ruth had the power to keep sneaking into Billie’s room.
Also, someone with a locked door and suicidal intentions, even if you’re unsure, is definitely a case in which to call someone who has authority and a key. I’ve been there too many times. Rachel came out, saw a bunch of people swarming around the door looking deer-eyed and saying something about suicide, and jumped to action. She’s a champ.
She really is. And she sussed out the blackmail to boot. Rachel has got a fierce deductive brain going on and is my darkhorse to replace Ruth if Ruth does end up being permanently relieved of the position.
Yeah, Rachel absolutely did the right thing. That Ruth is suicidal isn’t a guess at all, when Carla shouted it earlier, half the floor probably heard it. That alone should have warraed action, and Billie frantically running in there and locking the door only adds a sense of urgency. If it turned out to be completely false, its not like men in white coats are going to come drag her off to an asylum. Nothing they might do to make sure she isn’t going to kill herself would be worse than an inconvenience, so its far better to err on the side of caution.
Where I went to school, I’m pretty sure they could have sidestepped this issue by having Billie switch to a different dorm. Even if that isn’t the case here, there are almost certainly options like moving off-campus that would have allowed them to continue their relationship without breaking university policies. I could be wrong, though, depending on the extent to which RAs are treated like faculty in this regard.
Even if Ruth isn’t leveraging her authority in their relationship, its sufficiently problematic that she could. I feel that they’re on pretty equal footing emotionally, but then I probably wouldn’t recognize anything more subtle than ”touch my hoo-ha or you’ll get kicked out if the dorms”. You also need to remember that Billie and Carla are the only ones on the floor who know Ruth as anything more than Ruthless, the mean RA who has gotten into multiple physical altercations in public with the student she is sleeping with. Based on what she knew, Rachel had every reason to assume the worst and report it to the university.
+1 to all these responses. If you encounter a person who is probably feeling suicidal, please do not mind your own business. Please get somebody who can assess the situation before you peace out.
I think Carla announced it to the floor. And while they’re technically adults, possible policy violations, as well as health concerns are in play here, not to mention the shrewy way Mary was acting. Best to call in one with experience.
Ruth is an RA, so her sleeping with billie can be considered an abuse of power. in addition, there have been several incidents involving them which could be considered disruptive, plus Mary thinking she has something over Ruth has led her to trying to take over the floor, which no one want to pretend is happening even for a second.
also, if you have fair reason to believe that someone is suicidal and your response isn’t to get someone to make sure they can get the help they need you’re probably in the wrong.
Also consider what the relationship must look like from outside. As far as any off these girls know, Ruth has been tormenting Billie the whole year. The fake fights they’ve been staging just keep that impression going. From outside this doesn’t look like it turned into a real (if not very healthy) relationship, but an abusive one, if Ruth isn’t just forcing her.
Oh shit, that’s a good point. If someone brings that up then Billie would have to spill the beans about everything just to clear that Ruth wasn’t pressuring her into sex.
I’m kind of actually hoping they’ll use that to lie and say they’ve not been together long (and therefor weren’t sure if it was time to talk about moving Billie yet). Of course the violence still makes Ruth look bad, but not in as much of an abusive relationship way.
The entire point of this plotline has been that it’s against the rules for them to have a relationship. It’s been spelled out basically since day one.
Ah yes Day One, that was….six years ago.
Well, day one of the relationship, which was only tw…uh…three years ago?
LOOK, DECOMPRESSION IS A VALID STORYTELLING TECHNIQUE
I just realized we’re not on Namek.
We never left Kami’s Lookout.
Are we even there yet?
Also, Chloe’s reaction in panel five seems more sympathetic to me than angry, perhaps her concern is more Ruth is suicidal and less sleeping with a charge.
getting Ruth suspended? Moving Billie elsewhere? Giant clusterfuck? No, Chloe doesn’t want a load of paperwork if this can be handled without it.
Is rachel telling the residence manager about ruth sleeping with someone something that we saw happen (and i forgot about it) or was it “off-screen”?
She whipped out her phone and started texting as soon as Mary started doing her thing.
She said they should get the RM, then was shown using her phone right after that. Presumably she texted her.
Carla: Ruth, get your shit together so I can hate you without feeling guilty!
Any now for the 13th (I think) DOA Tournament Battle!
Danny runs through a field of flowers and tall grass, around him he can see figures in the distance, a young Sal, Blaine, a young Ethan, and others. Memories flash by him, like the projection of a movie screen.
Danny: Amber!
Danny finally comes across Amber, chained, sitting of a stone slab. She looks up weakly.
Amber: Danny you have to leave.
Danny: Not without you.
Amber: She’ll kill you.
Danny: Who?
Amber: Amazi-Girl.
Amazi-Girl steps into existence. She takes bold steps towards Danny.
Amazi-Girl: Hello, Wilcox.
Danny: Get away from her.
Amazi-Girl: Amber doesn’t need you Danny, she needs me. I will protect her.
Danny: C’mon then.
Danny and Amazi-Girl run at each other, Amazi-Girl grabs Danny and tosses him into a tree.
Danny leaps back up and throws a flying punch at Amazi-Girls face. She doesn’t even seem to feel it, and picks Danny up by the wrist
Amazi-Girl: You cannot defeat me, because she will not allow you to.
Amber: No! Please!
Danny: Dammit, how am I supposed to beat you.
Amazi-Girl: You can’t, no one can.
Amazi-Girl slams Danny into the ground.
Danny: Tell me Amazi-Girl, all those time we were together, who was I truly with?
Amazi-Girl: Amber had not truly given in yet, she merely thought she was Amazi-Girl.
She lifts him up again.
Amazi-Girl: Because she had too much connection with people like you!
Danny: You’re scared.
Amazi-Girl: What!
Danny drops to the ground and rolls. He gets up and walks towards Amazi-Girl.
Danny: That’s all you are, a representation of Amber’s fears. Your just as much a part of her soul as the Amber chained to that rock.
Amazi-Girl: I AM NOT SCARED!
Danny: You’ve been scared this whole time, of something that was no longer around.
Amazi-Girl: I’LL KILL YOU!
Amazi-Girl throws a punch at Danny, which he easily blocks.
Danny: I’m not going to hurt you.
Danny lays a hand over Amazi-Girls face, and looks into her eyes.
Danny: When this is over, lets kill spiders together.
Danny smiles warmly
Danny: Okay!
Amazi-Girl: But Sal.
Danny: Sal is trying to save you.
Amazi-Girl: My father.
Danny: Trust me, we’ll stop him.
Amazi-Girls body starts to fade away.
Amazi-Girl: Thank-you for everything.
A small light comes from Amazi-Girl, and enters into Amber; the chains around Amber fall away.
Danny rushes in and catches her.
Danny: It’s time to go now Amber.
Amber smiles at him, as Danny takes her hand and leads her out of a doorway made of shining white light.
Danny and Amber both gasp as they awake, and look around to see a massive battle going on around them.
Next time: Battle against Blaine!
Yay! Amber/AG integration makes this AU even better!
It’s been, like, two weeks right?
Don’t worry Mr. Willis, you’ll run out of characters to repurpose eventually. Or is that a bad thing?
So can we assume Mary will get in some form of trouble for her clear attempt to distract the residence manager from an important issue like this?
If anything, she’s more likely to get in trouble for the blackmail and harassing Carla, and even those are unlikely.
IT’S FLAN HAIR WOMAN
This is…interesting. I just got back from a ten day trip back home from Michigan and then a boathouse a couple of hours ago, so I’ve been doing a little mini binge. And I have to say, this is best turn of events that could have happened at this point.
Since what, the first day? It’s been a month at least, there was a time skip.
Two timeskips, actually!
She doesn’t just look like any old pudding, she looks like caramel pudding, Walky better watch out.
It’s snarky convenience store clerk from the end of IW! I’ve been waiting for her to show up.
Now just need unimpressed coed…
FINALLY SOMEONE REMEMBERS
Yeah, seriously, you’d think she only appeared in one page ever or something.
Are we talking before or after the Martians?
Oh! Found her! Here!
Yay! Thanks!
Who knows… Maybe she’ll run out of doors?
I’m sorry Ms. Jackson (oooh), I am for real
I never meant to make your R.A. cry
Fixed her door a dozen times
I keep reading man kickers as man knockers, and then I imagine walky trying to knock down the door with sudden glorious man boob.
i read it as man “knickers”, so i imagine walky in a thong…
C’mon I want to see Walky bounce off the door!
Then bounce off a door across from Ruth’s, then bounce back… Let’s play Walky Ping Pong!
By the way, has Mary always had red eyes? And what does it mean?
Either that she’s secretly an albino who goes through great pains to hide the fact by dyeing her hair and smearing cosmetic cream on her entire body, or that she’s the host to a demon. Or she just happens to have a little mutation that makes her irises slightly see-through, but that’s not as dramatic or fun as the other options.
They are the same shade of brown as the top of her hair. I used to think they were red, when she first appeared, too. The scarf is burgundy, so you can see the difference. (monitor color off, a bit?)
But, it does fit her evil character
Don’t expect good color information out me, regardless of monitors, I color-blind (severe red-green). Mutant and Proud!
Half the men and a couple women in my family are color-blind. As for myself, I only have a small problem with the greens. High five for movement adapted eyes!
Appropriate avatar since Dina could no doubt tell us all the current theories about dinosaurs and color vision.
I believe vampirisim was suggested way back when, but never definitively proven.
How does this residence manager have the same family name as me?? O:
Sorcery.
I guess you must be related. Are you aware of any relatives of yours that happen to be fictional?
I thought they all were D:
So many things going the right direction. A few maybe not so much.
Ruth will get her help now, one way or the other.
Walky is going to pay attention to Billie at this point at least.
Mary has had the worst thing happen to her, she’s being ignored.
Who is the RA? Don’t remember her. And Ruth is ‘one R.A. with her shit together”?
And the residence manager just completely ignores Mary and her dissembling bullshit.
Good instinct.
I love Mary slowly losing it in the background. That’s right Mary it can only get worst for you from here and nobody but you is upset about that.
BIG ad for ‘The KIlling Joke’ on todays page
( joker takes your picture of you cursor over . )
They sure know their audience.
/sarcasm
Pudd’nhead Chloe.
I thought Ruth was the one RA who had her shit together.”
Unless I’m forgetting something, this is the first and only time we’ve ever seen the Residence Manager in the… however many months have supposedly gone by since Joyce moved in so very long ago.
… which is fitting, because if she’d ever actually spent any time on this floor, there’s no way she could possibly think what she just said is true.
Ruth is a rubbish RA and needs help.
A month and change. 6 weeks, maybe? We’re sometime in October, now.
Sounds about right.
At this rate I figure we’ll get to Christmas break sometime around 2026, haha
Ruth claimed long ago that “She ran a tight ship. Nice and quiet”.
She’s certainly got a lot of problems as RA, but as long as she kept it under control enough that there weren’t complaints I can easily see the officials thinking she had it together.
As long as Chloe didn’t come up when she was passed out drunk or actually witness her earlier abuse of Billie, why would she think anything was wrong? Other than the door, of course. 🙂
The other RAs probably keep harassing her with petty things they don’t know how to handle. Ruth didn’t, because she didn’t want to rock the boat and give Chloe a reason to look closer.
Mussolini ran a tight ship. I hear the trains were always on time. 😛
I didn’t say she was a great RA. I meant it would be easy for Chloe to not realize the problems. Especially if she’s constantly harassed by minor problems from the other RAs.
Mary is going to get CLOCKED
Why there is going to be a cover-up: Ms Bishara has just admitted that she’s ignored all indications that Ruth was suffering from mental illness simply because she wanted a quiet life. This is a serious embarrassment for the administration and I suspect that they won’t want to tell the world that they dropped the ball so totally in terms of one of its students.
I’m not sure I read Chloe’s actions in that light. More, that the “signs” didn’t infringe enough on her duties as RA to flood to her attention and there were enough other crises to deal with that things like the broken door didn’t get followed up with because they assumed that “Ruth had this”.
But she is aware now and enough RAs have been in bad states that this isn’t exactly scandalous or out of the ordinary. And so Ruth’s job is probably at the very least gonna be put under increased scrutiny if not terminated out right.
We also know that “half a dozen times” is an exaggeration. It was like twice: once when Billie broke down the door and once when Ruth changed the locks.
And a broken door isn’t “all indications of mental illness”. Ruth has been aggressively covering up her depression and alcoholism until now. It’s been steadily getting worse since the start of the school year and the relationship with Billie added new complications to it, which is the only reason it’s coming out at all. Ruth was doing her best to make sure there WERE no signs (or as few as possible).
The higher-ups haven’t just been deliberately ignoring problems with her behavior/on her floor because they didn’t want to deal with them; there WEREN’T problems being reported until now. It was directly established in-comic that until now, Ruth has kept a handle on things. She kept the floor under control enough that no one ever felt the need to go to a higher authority until now.
Comic Reactions:
Mary: I love how thoroughly her attempt to just grant herself universal power over the person with actual power is straight up ignored. Like, not even shot down, just ignored as if it couldn’t be less important to the person with actual power. And you can see how in the last panel that utterly devastates her.
Walky: Walky understands the rule that adding man- to most any word makes it instantly funny.
Rachel: She’s scary on the ball, texting the Residence Manager immediately, putting together the blackmail clues, making sure that the RM has the most relevant facts and emphasizing the suicidal ideation. If Ruth is going down here, she’s definitely my favored candidate for who should replace her.
Chloe: Okay, I’m kinda loving this character so far. I love how she straight up ignores Mary’s little tantrum like the pathetic childish show that it is. I love the way her face is very firm when she’s investigating the allegation that Ruth slept with a charge but it softens once she has the full facts and hears about the suicidal state.
I love her lamentation that Ruth doesn’t actually have her shit together because you can feel the weariness that accompanies it and how many horror stories she’s had to intervene on. And it really does make one hope that Ruth may actually get through this as her peers are somehow even worse than she is.
And I love that last line. “Maybe I should’ve investigated that” indeed.
And it also means that whatever her response to Ruth is going to be, it’s going to come with a lot of empathy and care and that’s exactly what Ruth needs (even if she’s getting fired).
Thank the gods for Rachael Jackson.
The thing that got me is the way that, not only did Mary immediately behave like she spoke for everyone, it is also clear that she considered that her natural role that would be accepted by authority figures without question. There is no real response to Chloe ignoring her in favour of talking to Rachel simply because being ignored has knocked her brain off of the rails. She simply isn’t able to function in a world where her assumptions about her social position at the head of the queue are not respected by others.
I feel that is the central pillar of Mary’s Maryness. She believes she has the scoop on what is right and that her ideas about the world and people should be regarded as more important and be rewarded with power because of who she is and what she was born as.
She doesn’t just hate people like Carla or Roz or Ruth. She thinks she’s inherently worth more than them. That she is fundamentally better and that her natural place should be above them. And every moment of them as equals or worse, superiors incenses her and offends her very idea of what is “right”.
I’m now imagining her as an evangelical preacher / political movement leader, claiming she speaks for everyone and doing it with a presumption as natural to her as breathing.
All of this. It’s a logical consequence when somebody strongly believes that they have a monopoly on the truth.
Agreed. Rachel and Chloe are both handling this situation very, very well.
I love how the RM utterly ignores Mary who tries to take control of the situation rapidly slipping through her fingers. Like she’s either sure the RM will take her word for it or just desperate enough to try and it’s amusing that it doesn’t even get a /reaction/.
OMG!
Mary is getting worse by the day. She was always one of the worst, but man, it’s like she reached the bottom of the barrel and is still digging furiously to get to absolutely disgusting hateland.
She’s a straight-up Gachnar.
(oooh, contains spoilers for those who haven’t caught up, but c’mon, S4 of Buffy was 1999 fer pity’s sake)
…
That’s a yellow card for making me feel old.
is it still tacky to taunt her?
(also thank god i wasn’t spoiled. I only watched that last year)
Two things immediately jump out at me from my time serving in Chloe’s capacity here:
1. Students call their RMs Ms./Mr. [last name]? Everyone just called me by my first name as a rule. Most had a nickname for me (an affectionate one, not those behind-the-back-I-hate-that-guy sort of nickname I’m sure they also had for me but never used to my face). Even the professionals above me were known by their first names.
2. If Chloe’s had to deal with crap from all of her RAs, man, I feel super lucky that my whole staff was amazing. I just turned them loose without a second thought because I knew I could trust them. I would have started going grey much sooner than I did had that not been the case.
Worth considering: The person saying “Ms.” is Mary. Her speech patterns are necessarily informed by her authoritarian worldview.
This. Mary uses Ms. here because she recognizes that Chloe is above her in rank and is showing her that due respect in that and only that regard.
Well, that and because most people in the Midwest (and the South) slur Mrs. and Miss to Miz, which sounds like Ms.
(Well, it can become Miss before unvoiced consonants.)
I thought students called their RM “Oh crap hide the stuff.”
Some are named “It’s not mine!”
OMG. OMGOMGOMG. Does this mean that Ruth is gonna get help? That she may, yes, lose her job but not lose all support or at least her case be handled in a way that doesn’t worsen her situation? DARE I HOPE?
None? Does that mean there’s gonna be a cameo of my adorable face in here somewhere?
(fingers crossed; hoping for another line like “Burk Biday”.)
The residence manager!!!! *fanfare*
Oh great, now I’ve got Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man” running endlessly in my head.
Great fanfare though.
Mary’s theme should be the Star Wars Imperial March played on a kazoo.
Go listen to Emerson, Lake, and Palmer’s version. The LP one, not the single. Then you’ll have the sound of Keith Emerson making a 50 grand(in 1977 dollars) Yamaha GX1 synthesizer sound like a wheezing elephant running through your head.
Thank you, I now have that wheezing elephant running though my head 🙂
Needs more sedan chairs.
And that’s why Rachel is my favorite secondary/tetriary character. No bullshitting, no drama.
Everybody is so happy about this and I dunno maybe it’s just because her grandfather sounds a bit like my mum but I don’t really see this as a happy thing. People are saying that she’ll get help but medication and therapy cost money and it kinda seems to me like all she’ll actually GET from her grandfather is more abuse for being a whiny loser who can’t handle things and losing her RA job (because that’s how those kind of people see depression).
I mean, maybe Billie will pay for it? But that’s. I don’t even know. A heavy debt to get into for someone who’s already feeling like a burden.
Sidenote: this whole arc is making me really sad and incoherent.
IU Bloomington does health care insurance, so that maybe an option.
I don’t know if it’s the same in the states, but I remember in Puerto Rico you couldn’t be in the dorms unless you had insurance and if you didn’t have any, the college had insurance you could sign with.
I think that might be something all public universities do. That sounds exactly like what they did at the University of Minnesota when I went, at least.
I’m sure IU must st least offer insurance, since when Amber had to get new glasses, she mentioned instance through the u.
I’d be pleasantly surprised if it actually covered mental health though, beyond prescription coverage
Depends on whether she winds up leaving school or not. “Sir” is not going to be helpful, but if Chloe steers her to therapy & the other resources on campus and there’s a way to keep her in school, it could be a good thing.
Yeah, this is what I’m worried about, enough so that I’m actually commenting instead of lurking like usual.
content warning: discussion of suicidal thoughts
I went to my university’s Counseling Services in my junior year because I was experiencing suicidal ideation. It wasn’t my first time having those kinds of thoughts (I have a long history of clinical depression and anxiety; thankfully I’m doing much, much better now) but it was the first time I went to university counseling about it. I was looking for someone just to talk to, but in the end they sent me home for two weeks.
I didn’t really have a choice. I tried to argue against that because I was afraid of missing two weeks of class; I kept telling them that I’d been through this before, that I shouldn’t even have come to their office, and that I could have dealt with it on my own. The deciding factor seemed to be that I told them I had a plan. It’s kind of a hazy memory, due to the stress surrounding it and the fact that it was two years ago, so I don’t know if I would have had the choice to be hospitalized instead, but they definitely weren’t going to let me walk out of that office alone. When I went to pack some clothes and stuff to take home, they had someone walk over to my dorm room with me. I went home for two weeks, caught my breath, set up regular Skype sessions with my therapist (who lives in my hometown), and recovered.
So it depends on a lot of things, really: obviously, my university’s policy may not be identical to IU’s. If it’s similar, it might come down to whether it seems even a little likely that she’ll act on her thoughts. it depends somewhat on if Ruth has a plan – and if Ruth tells someone in a position to help her that she has a plan, or if she’s even just entertained notions of a plan. She may not be willing or even able to talk to anyone other than Billie about what she’s experiencing. She might lie or try to downplay the seriousness of it all.
And if they do want to send her home, I worry that she wouldn’t resist that, due to any number of convoluted paths of distorted reasoning the depressed brain considers “logical thought.” I’d trust Billie to jump in at that point, but what happens if the deciding conversation happens behind closed doors? I know Willis has definitively said he’s not going to kill anyone off, but has anything been said about a character leaving the comic, even temporarily?
…yeah, it’s a lot of “what if”s and “maybe”s. I just hope that Ruth can get the help she needs in a healthy environment (i.e., not with Sir). And as a side note, it’s probably been said hundreds of times, but I’ve gotta say that the way this comic portrays things I’ve been through and things family and friends have been through with such depth and empathy that it’s a goddamn joy to read, even when it’s ripping my heart into tiny little shreds.
TL;DR: I wish I could bake a cake filled with rainbows and smiles and everyone would eat and be happy.
That sounds like a Nice and Accurate summation of the problems.
Hopefully, they can arrange for treatment on campus, hospitalized or not, especially if Ruth can make it clear that her grandfather is a large part of the problem. But, even if policy isn’t to send her home, contacting the family is likely to be a first step.
And with Ruth in the throes of depression she’s not likely going to be able exert much effort to change that, even if there are other options.
“That sounds like a Nice and Accurate summation of the problems.”
I see what you did there.
(CW: suicidal friend, shitty college)
I had a (casual) college friend who was suicidal after his girlfriend had an abortion. They kicked him out of his dorm for being “disruptive.” Fortunately, he was part of a fraternity that allowed him to live at the sorta frat house to finish out the semester. (He had already planned to transfer.)
And, note, it was not the type of frat you hear about on TV. It is closer to a professional organization for the students’ particular major. Hence “sorta frat house.” It think it was just a house that a bunch of the members got together and rented. Sorta like Malaya’s situation.
To be fair, I only have the story from his perspective. But it still soured me on that college so much.
nitpick: ITYM Marcie’s situation. Malaya lives in the dorm with, umm, Sierra I think it is.
I thought Marcie wasn’t a student though. So wouldn’t it be no one in the cast’s situation. I could be wrong though.
Malaya’s dorming with Lucy. Whose only appearance has been to gush about comics while Malaya (and Marcie who is only there because she likes Malaya) are around to ignore her. So it’s not surprising it’s hard to remember XD
I like the detail of Dorothy’s face in panel 3. She’s seeing straight through Mary’s game and working up a furious hatred.
Yeah, she looks like she’s all ready to jump in with a counter of Mary’s nonsense, but Chloe just slides right by and she doesn’t need to.
To me she looks more shocked and sad, as if she’s trying to wrap get head around the idea that someone can actually be as callous and hateful as Mary, and its not going well.
Yesterday she looked clearly disgusted and angry at Mary, but now she just seems sad
Not sure why people are being upset with Mary right now. It looks to me like she’s defending Ruth, and attempting to diffuse the situation with the residence manager?
Yeah, she’s trying to defuse the situation in order to blackmail her later.
Let’s get this in perspective. There’s a suicidal woman, locked in a room with another possibly suicidal woman and Mary wants to take advantage of her to blackmail her later.
This.
Even if staving off the RM was the right thing (and I’m not fully convinced of that, especially as we’re now seeing her empathy), she’s doing it for the hella wrong reasons and that matters a lot.
I think tunnel vision might be a factor there, but yes, she is the awfullest of the non-rapist and non-abusive-father cast.
…..
It’s kinda sad that those qualifiers are required.
…friend, ruth is suicidal, depressed in a horrible position all around, and the RA is the best person to get help for her, even if it will probably cost her her job.
oh geeze, I took her at her word when she said she wasn’t looking for blackmail. In my reading Mary was taking on a task for which she was OBVIOUSLY (to everyone except her) unprepared which is like some kind of? spiritual guide to her wing of the dorm which Yeah would have been dumb and not worked but is also hard for me to take as malicious in intention.
It does kind of take a bit of suspension of disbelief though to assume like I did that Mary had a sudden change of heart when she saw how serious the situation was, and I get why not everyone came to that conclusion.
I went to college in the Midwest for a few months and saw some shit in that time, and might be projecting.
If Mary hadn’t already been blackmailing Ruth I might’ve seen her as a spiritual guide, albeit a woefully unprepared one.
I was on track with you. I thought maybe Mary is cutting the bullshit now that she sees what’s going down. Because that seems more realistic to me then carrying on this stupid plan.
That was maybe possible earlier. But the second she said what she did to Walky–and no apology in the next strip for overreacting–it was clear she had not had any sort of realization.
I just want to get some marshmallows and toast them over the smouldering remains of Mary’s blackmail plan. Mmmm delicious comeuppance.
I kinda love that Chloe’s response to Mary’s blathering is just to skip to talking to someone with actual answers.
I’m surprised Rachel was the one to tell the RM. Perhaps she intended to subvert Mary’s plans to blackmail Ruth and get Ruth and Billie some real help.
Also, I could have sworn that I used to sign into the comments here using disqus or something. It has been a while.
Shortpacked! used disqus.
Which is why he hates it, and will not use it again.
Willis, I mean.
As someone who’s tried to comment on things that used disqus before, I really don’t blame him.
I hope that’s the case. It would make Mary a more realistic character and less of a strawman 😛
Lots of people have commented on other pages that they know or are related to real-life Marys. She is sadly realistic.
I love how Rachel is the pragmatic, drama-free zone in this situation whose first instinct was to actually do the responsible thing. Yes, this could cost Ruth her job — but if it also gets her help? Better her job than her life.
And Mary’s realization that she’s lost that little bit of power she thought she had over the floor? That she’s so unimportant that the authority figure isn’t even giving a nod to her bullshit? Is a beautiful thing.
More then likely it’s just going to cost her her job. Most employers dont care about your health as much as they do their legal issues.
no offense to Ruth, but she’s been absolutely crap as an RA (really, threatening to take femurs? That’s how you welcome a bunch of new, scared freshmen?). I hope there’s another way to keep her around and get her help but she’s not been doing her job and it’s not fair for everyone else to suffer :\
YES, MAYBE YOU SHOULD HAVE DONE THAT.
(seriously, why didn’t she investigate at one)
One is an accident that can be dismissed. Two is where investigation is called for.
What is the saying? Once is happenstance, twice is a coincidence, thrice is enemy action.
“To lose one hinge may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.”
I think it’s a Yiddish saying that goes:
If one person calls you a donkey, ignore it.
If two people call you a donkey, think about it.
If three people call you a donkey, go out and buy a saddle.
Ah, so she did use her phone after all. Maybe a text message ?
You can see her, phone in hand, here (3rd panel): http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/04-it-all-returns/moralcenter/
I am afraid that Ruth is about to be fired, yet I am greatly enjoying watching Mary slowly drown in her own bullshit
I’m GLAD Ruth is about to be fired, for everyone’s sake, including her own.
For one, Ruth is a horrible, horrible RA. Whether this is a result of her own mental health problems or just of her, well, Ruthness, is yet to be determined, but she’s clearly unfit for the position.
For two, she needs time (and help) to work through her problems without having to deal with floor complaints, whether they’re real issues or just blown-out drama.
As long as it actually leads to her getting that time and help. If she winds up unable to stay at school without the free room & board and stuck home with her abusive grandfather, then she’ll likely just get worse.
This seems… unlikely, from a PR point of view. I mean, they just had “christian nutjob dad shoots up campus in order to ‘reform’ gay daughter.” I can’t imagine anyone on the board wanting to follow that up with “University kicks suicidal girl out because of depression.”
Then again, you lot are probably getting President Trump, seeing as Clinton seems determined to throw the race, so I can tell non-awfulness isn’t really trending on the USA.
Curse you lack of editing feature! Curse you!
I didn’t notice until I posted that the addressing pronoun on the second paragraph is based on the assumption that you’re USAmerican. My apologies. Kindly replace “you lot” with “USAmericans.”
IIRC, they wouldn’t have to kick Ruth out of school. The RA position is the only way she has enough money to attend. If she loses that, rightfully though it may be, she’s out of school.
Crippling financial student loans are the way I got through school.
Unfortunately that happens often enough to not really be newsworthy whereas “blackmailed queer student commits suicide” might actually make news. I can definitely see the campus staff “encouraging” her to take a semester off “for her mental health and recovery”.
Which might actually be a good plan in a case where it was the stress and pressure of school and being removed from her support structure at home was the problem.
When the problem is more closely tied to family abuse …
As Jezi suggests and as I directly said, if she leaves because she’s unable to cover room & board, that’s when she’s in trouble.
I’m not sure what her options would be even for loans as a dependent of someone likely unwilling to co-sign. Especially in the middle of the semester. They may simply not be bureaucratically willing to house her or to arrange for it fast enough to matter.
More importantly she’s already cripplingly depressed, so unless someone else can arrange matters and get the paperwork set up, she’s likely to fall through the cracks and wind up back home.
Why struggle? It’s what she deserves anyway.
That said, I don’t expect that to happen. Doesn’t work narratively for Ruth to drop out of the story and go home.
As for Trump, I am from the US, but while there certainly is a spike in awfulness that Trump is both amplifying and taking advantage of, the Democratic convention was a nice antidote to that. I expect a good size polling bounce for Clinton, leaving her nicely poised to win. As she really has been all along. The prediction markets have her at about 70% to win.
That attitude (regarding Trump) continues to worry me. People keep underestimating how well Trump will do, and then being wrong. A lot of people are sufficiently angry about sufficiently vague issues that there is far too real chance he could get elected.
I for one do not look forward to the election of President ToeMonster
Disenfranchised people getting angry over vague issues and voting en masse for something really stupid? It’ll never happen. It didn’t happen here in Britain and it won’t- oh, wait.
Right.
Also, I believe it’s called “misunderestimating” these days.
It’s politics. Anything is possible.
In the primaries, the polling supported Trump winning as did the prediction markets fairly early on. People & pundits dismissed on grounds that it was just too crazy.
Let’s not make the same mistake in the other direction: The best data currently shows the odds are against him. If that changes, I’ll start to panic.
Meanwhile, do something about it. Vote. Organize. Volunteer.
The odds are against him, but not by as much as they were. Trump was on an uptick even before the convention. He started at 20% and now is around 40%, even with the convention bump factored out. That’s more than a 1 in 3 chance, which happen, well, 1 out of every 3 times.
I don’t want you to panic either, but don’t dismiss him. For some reason, the relatively small things against Clinton seem to stick while Trump’s much worse things are not. People support Trump in the same breath they call Clinton a corrupt liar, despite the former being a corrupt business man who lied more than he told the truth for his entire campaign.
Trump is not nearly as noncompetitive as he seemed earlier this month. He got upticks both with FBI announcement and when he chose Pence.
It’s not so much “kick her out”, as it is “stop paying her to be RA” which forces her to leave. She’s not fit to be RA by any standards (threatening to break femurs, for one, is in no way cool). But I hope she’s able to stay in school post-RA
I think that I discovered DoA after It’s Walky was an active concern. So given that I am not a spring chicken who can pull all-nighters anymore, how difficult would it be to go back and read in mini-binges? Are we talking about hundreds of comics or a couple of thousand? Thanks!
Understanding the Walkyverse is easier that figuring out Jean Grey and Phoenix. But not much.
Quite a few, but it’s being rerun (with commentary) at It’s Walky. Probably wouldn’t take too long to catch up to that and then you could just follow along.
The early quality is pretty uneven. Especially in Roomies. It’s worth reading though and a lot of the later Walky is pretty awesome. As are parts of Shortpacked!
I’ve read Roomies and Shortpacked but only the start of It’s Walky. The comments on Shortpacked and this comic kind of spoiler so much of It’s Walky that I almost feel like I have read it.
It’s Walky! is one of the greatest webcomics of all time. It’s well worth a read.
No DoA character left not feeling any guilt.
My Walky Fu is clearly deficient cause I dunno who the hell this lady is from the old days…
Wait who was this in walkyverse?
Chloe was not in the Walkovers.
Potential spoilers for those reading the IW reposts….
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She’s the convenience store clerk who sold Walky and Joyce a super-sized box of condoms during a very very very awkward sequence once they finally got down and busy with it.
Ah yes, the “transgender love” clerk.
I theorize that Dina will become the new RA.
Nah, she’s a freshman. Possibly Rachael?
But I’d guess that Ruth’s going to get fired and/or suspended, and Chloe will have to take over supervision personally until she can either hire a replacement (complete with application process, interviews, background checks, and training) or decide that Ruth’s well enough to resume her duties. Alternatively, some poor schmuck is going to get tasked with watching too floors.
…. but if they ARE hiring people from the hall, my vote is for Rachael. She’s level-headed, doesn’t put up with bullshit, and Chloe’s got cause to be moderately impressed with her.
*two floors
I can do grammar, honest!
can the name of the next book be “with my man-kickers”
There’s a queue for titles, and it keeps getting longer.
This person was not in the Walky verse as far as I can remember.
What’s going on with Mary’s face in the last panel? She looks spooked. Could it be Walky’s rush of testosterone, or the revelation Chloe already knew something was up? Nah, I’m guessing it’s the keys. Mary is this frightened of losing her blackmail window. She doesn’t have any idea what a fucking creepy figure she’s cutting here, right in front of everyone, while they’re worried about their near-catatonic suicidally depressed friend. She’s just in complete panic over watching her opportunity to abuse the people around her slip away.
The odds of Mary being thrown out a window in the near future are rising I think. And that makes me happy.
Possibly dismay that Chloe isn’t reacting properly to the situation, being concerned for people’s welfare instead of something like anger and disgust.
Or appalled at an authority figure showing weakness and uncertainty.
No one has spoken to or even looked at her in this strip, so I suspect it’s a creeping feeling of powerlessness.
She might also be shocked at how nobody is obeying her OR angrily arguing with her. Either of those responses would fit neatly into her worldview, but she doesn’t know what to make of people simply ignoring her.
Or she is dead but doesn’t know it.
That must be where Carla went! Between strips she snuck off, transformed into Ultra Car, and ran Mary over without being seen.
Or maybe once she heard Walky say Billie was also suicidal, she went “oh crap I almost killed someone.”
But nah, that’s too much to expect of her.
How does Rachel Jackson know all these things? I feel like I missed something, possibly because I did.
Carla and Billie were loudly talking about how Ruth is suicidal, and then they saw Billie rush into her room. Rachel decided it was probably for the best to get an authority figure to intervene.
Also Rachel is smart. She has no time for drama.
Actually, that’s got me thinking. Walkyverse!Rachel isn’t an abductee, right? Because she built Ultra Car and two giant robots with Joe in like a weekend IIRC.
Willis has made it pretty clear that the abductee thing didn’t happen in this universe. Which makes sense–none of them come across as superspies. Just typical college students (for comics, anyways.)
I was asking if Rachel from the other verse was an abductee, not this one.
There’s no indication of it. She wasn’t a SEMME agent, though that doesn’t necessarily mean she wasn’t an abductee. They did miss some.
It may have been a, “Rachel did the hard parts; Joe did the impossible parts,” partnership.
I don’t think Rachel was involved in the giant robots.
Ruth’s probably gonna lose her RA position, but at least Mary can’t blackmail her anymore.