Wait a second, Ruth doesn’t smile unless she’s one-upping, threatening, or generally pissing on somebodies day (Billie an occasional exception to this.). that can only mean…..she’s lying.
Announcer: Stepping into the ring are Mary Bradford and Jennifer Billingsworth!
Billie: Call me Billie.
Billie studies Mary. Mary gives a slight smirk; she raises her hand and does the “bring it” gesture with her hand. Billie runs at her, opening with a serious of quick punches….none of which connect.
Billie: Dammit! Why can’t I hit you?
Mary continues to dodge, not even breaking a sweat, while Billie looks exhausted.
Billie: CHEERLEADER KICK!
Billie kicks up as hard as she can with her right foot, striking Mary in the face. At first Mary appears to be injured, before she tilts her head back down and smiles.
Mary: Now it’s my turn.
Billie is besieged by a series of punches so fast, she feels like she’s being hit everywhere at once. By the time Mary’s attack ends, Billie is exhausted, and about to pass out.
Billie: how…how are you this powerful?
Mary seems to teleport next to Billie and whispers into her ear.
Mary: I’ll tell you a secret Jennifer Billingsworth…this is only a fraction of my true power.
Billie: h…h…how!?
Mary kicks Billie out of the ring.
Ruth: Billie!
Billie coughs up blood and passes out, Mary grins evilly and walks off the stage.
“Because that was a really short fight, (mainly to show how dangerous Mary is) I’m going to do the next one…right now!
The fifth Dumbing of Age Tournament Battle!
Sal vs. Marcie!
Announcer: The next to contestants are some of the better-known fighters, and great friends! Sal Walkerton vs. Marcie Diaz!
Sal: Lets finally find out, which one of us is stronger.
Marcie smiles, not evilly like Mary, but genuinely warm. She pulls out her skateboard and sets it on the ground. She starts to roll quickly towards Sal.
Sal: I know full well how to counter you when you use your board.
Marcie (thinking): do you now, Sal?
Marcie does a back flip, kicking her board towards Sal, who just barely manages to dodge it.
Sal: Close one! But at least Marcie doesn’t have her board anymore…
Sal senses something behind her and barely manages to duck; before Marcie’s skateboard goes flying over hear head.
Sal: she must be using magnets to control the board!
Sal takes her cigarette out of her mouth and points it at Marcie.
Sal: Smoking flames!
Sal (thinking): By concentrating my energy though this cigarette, I can greatly enhance the heat of the tip into a raging inferno.
Marcie rolls out of the way and tosses her skateboard at Sal again. Sal leaps out of the way, and realizes that smoke has blocked Marcie’s eyesight.
Sal (thinking): this is my chance, if I can hit her before this smoke clears…
Sal studies the smoke and finds Marcie’s figure. She’s preparing her skateboard again. Sal starts to run at Marcie; Marcie spots her and tosses her board as hard as she can. Sal notes that the board is traveling parallel to the ground, and leaps up. Marcie looks shocked as Sal manages to leap off of the board while it travels in midair.
Sal: Downward kick!
Sal’s foot slams into Marcie and knocks her out of the ring. Marcie stands up, and brushes herself off; she gives a salute to Sal, and walks of.
Some of the non-glasses wearing characters (e.g. Joe) don’t have sclera either but they have bigger pupils so their faces at least look properly balanced even if they’re still cartoonish caricatures.
Note she doesn’t have eyes at all in the shower, but does once she dresses. So clearly she takes her eyes out at night and leaves them soaking in something. Since she is in a funk this morning, she hasn’t put them back in yet.
This….isn’t really positive. Ruth is fairly clearly lying about being fine. And since Carla believed her the person most concerned for her well being thinks she’s doing well.
The problem isn’t that Ruth’s lying about being fine. That’s par for the course for her. Billie was always calling her out on that bullshit.
The problem is that she isn’t even putting any effort into making it believable. At least with Billie she’d back it up with an edge of “don’t question me” menace.
(Also, I think Carla didn’t buy it, but took the excuse to get the hell out of there, obligations fulfilled.)
I’m not so sure this is a bail and never come back (she’s been shown to much in comic to circle back on things like this and check in), but more a “see, I did the thing, she’s great, now get off my back to Billie.
I’m suspecting she’ll be either swinging back in next comic or in her next appearance arc to call Ruth out on her “bluff” and ask how things are actually going.
Temporary nopeing out? Yeah, okay, I could definitely see that.
After all, Ruth is not in any immediate danger and does not seem to have an active plan, so nopeing out of dealing with the murder cave for a bit until her conscience comes a’callin’ again would be entirely in keeping with her character.
As someone who has tried to end my life more than once I’m fine is something i said a lot when i needed help the most. Two words mean nothing if you don’t take context and the face/actions/etc into account.
Yup, this is definitely her trying to quickly mask how much pain and numbness she’s in.
The positive is that she’s numb (if she was genuinely up and relaxed and “happy”, that’d be a sign that she’s got a plan in place), but the negative is that it looks like she’s fully out of spoons to play-act functional.
I’m not someone who feels sad anymore like i used to, but honestly I am not sure if I ever really feel happy either. Even just feeling kind of meh is good now compared to what i did so at least to me at least she doesn’t seem to be fully as far down as she could even if she is heading there.
When I was depressed, the numb was the worst. Like Ruth goes out of her way to get angry so she can feel something, I would do really self-destructive things just to feel something because I could still feel terror.
Yeah. I totally get the “I’m fine.”
… Kinda wish I could give Ruth a hug right now, but she’d probably punch me for it.
Serious mode: I found that anger was one of the few ways to feel anything in depression. It can wash the gloom away in a surge of adrenaline. You aren’t happy, but at least you are something. In the short term.
Long term, it eats away at you in lots of ways, physically, mentally, and socially. Or very quickly if it motivates you to do something stupid.
Confirming Slartibeast’s experience of anger, I was pretty much the same way until halfway through college, at which point I had used up all the angry fuel my body and brain could possibly procure, and could no longer be angry, and so I crashed COMPLETELY for a good long while (unit of years).
Fun stuff. And that’s IF you live long enough with the switch broken in the “angry” position to even *see* the burnout.
… Worried now.
i had theraphy that actually helped me with anger for a while. some people say they have short fuses well for me i had an amazingly long fuse, but the explosion was equal to the fuses length.
Yeah, this is… the face and voice of someone who has said “yes! Everything is good now!” either to call off the worriers or because it actually is great, there’s a way forward now! or both.
Oh shit I just realized he really did put in a reference to THAT song in the title.
Panel three may possibly be the most frightening smile in the comic, and I’m saying that with Dina’s attempts at a Joycegrin still freshly burned into my retinas.
Too be fair, she’s probably lit like a candelabra and internally freaking out and assuming that Ruth is one second from offing herself without her around to babysit things.
So, Carla simply not screaming and running out of the room like she saw a dead body probably was positive sign enough for her.
I mean, Billie has been shown in comic to not really get numb persistent depression fully and so more likely to take “I’m fine” at face value or Carla saying “she’s awesome” at face value.
For Carla… it’s damn telling how incredulous she is of Ruth’s attempted deflection. I suspect she, like a lot of trans folks, has been through that ugly depressed phase and so more than recognizes what is going on.
I suspect that she’s a bit on the “less shit happened to me” side of the trans bell curve, simply from having awesome and supportive parents who could probably afford to send her to a private school, and Carla doesn’t strike me as the most emotionally sensitive of individuals. I wonder if she really has Billie’s wealth of knowledge about how to deal with awful situations.
That said, it’s pretty clear she realizes that SOMETHING’S up. I read her as realizing that she’s completely unequipped to deal with it and getting the hell out of there because either she doesn’t know what and it’s creepy, or she does have a clue and holy crap.
Ehh, being rich buys you out of some oppressions, but she’s still a girl who grew up trans in central Indiana who has personal experience tending her own wounds alone after having “mysterious” accidents and empathizes strongly with that experience and has extensive experience with being authority figures’ “collateral damage”. Enough so, that she’s tired of it and has fully given up on authority figures in general.
So… I’m pretty sure she’s had a good deal of the standard Transphobia Special. Not to mention that dysphoria tends to fuck with you in new and exciting ways during puberty and living in central Indiana it would have been a chore and a half just to get blockers before turning 18.
I meant that if anyone in the trans community was NOT familiar with this type of thing, it would most likely be someone with a background like Carla’s, and so her knowing this stuff wouldn’t be a good assumption to make. But I’d forgotten about her… not so much disdain for authority (which is no more than her disdain for everyone else) but her practice of self-reliance absent of authority. You’re right, that suggests she’s had a hard road, advantages or no.
Ah, intersectionality. Having some privilege, and wealth is one of the biggest, doesn’t make the other prejudices disappear. It does usually make it easier to cope with the other problems.
damn it Carla, I don’t expect you to dive into the emotional troubles here, but don’t lie when you clearly know Ruth isn’t actually fine. Sure in the short term you may be making Billie stop worrying, but Ruth needs Billie to worry and keep checking in on her. Long term, or even mid-term, this will come back to bite you, Billie, and Ruth…
Maybe… I dunno, I think Billie actually could do with some distance. Right now, she’s been trying to mold her life around supporting Ruth and worrying over her (to the point where she is compulsively making copies of her room key every day and snapping at the person she asked to occasionally check in on her). Like, I’m not saying she should never worry about Ruth again, but she could use some separation where she’s not freaking out 24/7 and forgetting to get on with her life and actually tackle her own depression and alcoholism.
And I think Carla will definitely be back to check in on her and maybe give her a nudge to getting some genuine help.
You know who Ruth is reminding me of, here? Robert the Doll. Specifically the version of Robert who exists in The Last Halloween, but the real Robert, too…
Hm. Billie is a little older than Kyuubey’s usual targets, but she should have enough emotional anguish to be worth the while.
It’s a pity the damn things are invisible to humans unless they choose not to be, because someone on the floor is bound to know that Incubators should be exterminated on sight and kept away from the emotionally vulnerable.
Well I’m going to be at breakdown stage by the weekend anyways, and I feel like both of these storylines are gearing up for characters to implode/explode, so let’s just have it this weekend so I can get all my crying out of the way at once, okay, Willis?
But seriously… Ruth… go hug a Billie. Or tell someone. Or eat the cookies. Something. You’re not fine.
:'(
This is actually one thing I’ve never been able to do. I can’t hide my emotions at all. When I went through being suicidally depressed, no one who interacted with me thought I was “fine.”
I had the opposite thing. Cause I’m DID, I am really good at pushing my intense suicidal ideation to the side and playacting a super functional happy persona. It really helped me still do a good job as a “fun” science teacher even when I was suicidally ideating literally most every moment of every day, but it also means it’s still difficult to fully let down that mask and let people know how scared or bad I am when things are really off.
Heh, thanks, but my drugs and not being around my toxic hateful family and a job gaslighting me as part of a discrimination campaign has helped a lot with the suicidal ideation. Letting people know when I’m not okay…? Working on it.
I’ve stated occasionally that this comic has basically become part of my therapy with my therapist and it and the comment threads have been really good for letting myself be more vulnerable and honest about just how much everything I’ve been through has messed me up.
To reference a Ruth saying, the fact that I’m here talking about how messed up I’ve been is a good sign. 🙂
I’m glad to hear that, and if me overanalyzing the lives of fictional people in a webcomic and ranting on the many ways Becky is awesome can help you in any small way, I’m there for you!
Good to hear that, Cerb. I’m seconding Bagge’s hugs though. >^_^<
If there's… well, I wish I could volunteer my ear if you ever need one, but truth is I'm mostly not online nor do I read every single comment you make, so that would be disingenuous of me to state at present (been avoiding going on Skype for a month+ now… there's complicated reasons). :/ But as Baggle sed, us random internet strangers can be a caring bunch. Many of us have even gone through tangentially similar experiences. Point is you've made an impact here and people care, me included. Bit by bit we all get to know each other… it's a rather unique environment.
Hopefully you won't need it, but you do have our support, for all it's worth.
Yeah, my therapist in HS was worried as shit about me because generally it’s not the kids who can’t leave the room that blindside the shit out of everyone when they have a crisis, it’s the kids who are for the most part able to hold it together with a fairly smiley persona (which was me – I was legit doing things like walking on railings of bridges so I could feel something and not one person clued in because I was 1, naturally smart enough to not have my grades drop despite sleeping through most of my classes and 2, weird enough to begin with that depression weirdness was just chalked up as me being me and weird, 3, from a medical family so my morbid jokes were just written off as a product of my upbringing and 4, introverted enough that me getting home from school and going to decompress in my room until dinner, emerging until I was done eating and then going back to my room and essentially being nocturnal when allowed to set my own schedule was basically already status quo.
I have gotten better at handling social but yeah there is literally one person who I can be around when I need to decompress.
Ruth, you can’t just try to psych yourself out of depression by lying to yourself and others that you’re fine. I know. I tried. It doesn’t work, all it does is make the inevitable breakdown worse. Just…try to talk to someone. Anyone. Just admitting how you’re really feeling won’t solve the problem, but it’s a good first step. And damn but it feels good afterwards, and can give you the little boost you need to go on and take the next step.
I’m curious to see if Carla tries to play therapist a little like she did in the “murder cave” arc or if she’s gonna try and push her to seek out some therapy options.
Honestly, I’m imagining the next page will be Carla grabbing Billie, switching places with her and locking the door behind herself, key left in. Well, that’s the hopeful side of me.
I was already going “Oh, fuuuuck” just reading this strip and the comments, but then I remembered Willis tweeting about potential arc titles coming from That Song from Neon Genesis Evangelion a couple months back, and um.
Yeah it’s appropriate as a title for this arc in many ways but they’re all screaming at me now “we REALLY need to worry about Ruth.” There’s a reason I don’t let myself listen to that one when I can feel I’m not in a good mental state.
Panel 1: I kinda love that Carla keeps referring to Ruth as Chief. It’s that nice line between begrudging respect for her authority and also complete lack of respect for authority and it totally works as an awkward term of endearment.
Also, ah Carla, you blunt goddess you. Someday you’ll have to learn tact, but it is not this day!
Panel 2: Okay, I love the amount of communication that is happening in the facial expressions. Like here, she is just so dead-eyed, you can just taste the monotone “I’m out of spoons, but I suppose I should approximate human, what are humans like” fatigue in her response.
Panel 3: And that delayed smile, like her brain was going, wait, people who are fine smile. I should smile to get Carla to go away so I can get back to ripping myself apart. Tight-lipped dead-eyed smile completed. Nailed it. Humanity achievement unlocked. Today is a good day, I made it that far.
Panel 4: That expression. Carla is buying literally none of it and probably has had experience with giving that stock answer to folks before. “How was school sweetie?” *hiding black eye* “Fine. It was fine”. And we see a similar tactful Carla that we saw hinted at when she was caring for Amber. She seems to actually understand what that “fine” means (bad, suicidal, but no active plan) and lets her tone communicate that she wants to know the truth.
Panel 5: And initially I read it as Ruth still in denial, but on second look, there’s that wavy speech bubble and her shoulders are more drooped and head’s more down and sad. I think she is being more honest here in this panel and dropping the mask.
And I think she might even mean what she’s saying. She’s not at risk… yet. She’s not functional by any stretch of the imagination. But she’s awake, she’s now sitting up, she’s processing the day and interacting with another human. By Ruth standards she is at her aggressively neutral base state, neither good enough to be out in the halls doing her job nor bad enough to be slipping back into her alcoholism… yet, but just neutrally, numbly “fine”.
Panel 6: And Carla gets Billie off her back, because holy fuck is it not okay to just volunteer someone else to suicide watch a friend without letting them know that is what you want. So, getting Billie to bug out and let her handle this without her worrying at the door and putting Ruth at risk is a critical step towards Carla actually handling the enormous weight that was just dropped on her shoulders.
Given Carla’s tendency to worry and history, I have no doubts that she’ll be circling back for a more in-depth check-in later in the day, but it was never going to happen with Billie hovering around the door convinced her recent ex was no longer breathing “because of her”.
I doubt it. Abusers and bullies are very good at distancing themselves from the guilt or the culpability of how they drive their victims to suicide, even when trying to drive their victim to suicide was part of the abuse or suicide.
There’s a really good arc in the manga series “Confidential Confessions” basically about that, showing that after a suicide, the bullies who caused it won’t feel a lick of guilt about it and will instead internalize it as their victim being “weak” or “crazy” instead.
It’s why the best revenge against a bully is to stay alive, no matter how hard that is to do.
Content Warning: Fucked up shit beyond all reason involving really shitty people
NO FOR SERIOUS, I’m going to be talking about groups that are really fucked and some of the awful they do surrounding suicidal kids. BIG FAT CONTENT WARNING OVER THAT.
For example with some of this, there’s certain hate groups out there that have an MMO of finding young vulnerable feeling mentally ill kids and trying to push them over the edge into suicide. A lot of them targeting either folks with mental illnesses specifically, people on the autism spectrum, or trans kids.
And well, these hate groups sometimes find out about the rather direct line their harassment had to exacerbating the suicide. Some take the tactic of blaming the victim for being weak or their families for faking the news in order to make them look bad. Some blame it on the person having the traits that caused the groups to target them in the first place and use it as proof that said groups could never be happy as they are.
And the worst of the groups actually celebrate their destructions, patting each other on the back for “confirmed kills” as if driving people to suicide was a video game and they were racking up a high score.
And still other hate groups don’t directly do that, but will parade around the dead of groups they hate as if they were props for their hate-filled arguments (very frequent among transphobes, who love parading around trans kids who kill themselves or the statistics about them as “proof” that the “transgender lifestyle” “only leads to death” and “makes people miserable”.
Very few of them actually show any culpability or genuine remorse for their heinous acts.
And that’s in reality. If anything, Mary will likely be infinitely less awful than that.
The thing is that study after study shows that, on a certain level, on-line bullies actually do think that it’s a video game. There is something deeply poisonous about how the social centres of our brain react to communication via a computer monitor that detaches our sense of empathy and our subconscious limits that we normally put into communications when the other person’s face isn’t hanging in front of ours.
Horribly, there really does seem to be a mindset of: “It’s the Internet; it’s only make-believe!”
I think it’s more the other way around: Our sense of empathy is really only designed to kick in in the physical presence of others because that’s how it was useful throughout the vast majority of (pre)history. That we can adapt it at all to something as abstract as text on a screen is pretty amazing.
LIKEWISE TALKING ABOUT HORRIBLE HUMAN BEHAVIOR. NO SERIOUSLY, IF YOU GET TRIGGERED BY TALK OF BULLYING, ABUSE OR GENERAL HORRIBLENESS, PLEASE CONSIDER THIS A LEGIT TRIGGER WARNING AND EXERCISE DISCRETION.
… I got bullied to the point of self-injury and suicidal ideation and actually to within about 2 minutes of actually making a very-likely-to-kill-me attempt which I will not discuss in detail but suffice to say I don’t have it in me to do shit by halves, and a person to whom I will forever be grateful saved my life by figuring out there was something unusual about me not being online at my usual time and spamming my inbox with 30 emails of increasing level of worry until I finally responded because I felt bad for them about how obviously distressed I was making them, and they managed to get me to agree to put it off by 48 hours and seek help andyeah. The stupidest shit can save your life sometime, and in my case the fact that I was skipping out on my normal chatting/fangirling/talking about girl crushes routine with a queer online friend saved mine.
Because my high school therapy office was shite for confidentiality (they called you out of class, in the middle of class for the appointment and it didn’t take a master detective to figure out who was missing time on a semi-regular basis), word got out, and once word got out, my bullies had a fucking field day with it. They thought it was the funniest shit in the world that I was suicidal, and it then became a challenge for them to see of they could bully me to do it (and that’s when I discovered that I can, in fact, be powered entirely by spite and hatred).
Stuff they did once they found out I was suicidal:
* Come up behind me and whisper, “Just do it, everyone hates you anyway, the world would be better with you gone.”
* Put notes with drawings of nooses or mangled bodies in my locker
* Print a pamphlet with detailed instructions on how to successfully off oneself on them in my locker, with handwritten note of, “Because you can’t even do this right.”
… and I could go on.
I sincerely believe that if I had killed myself, they would’ve talked about me being a dumbass for taking them seriously and joked about how stupid I was, and never once would they have contemplated the fact that their actions caused someone’s death.
… buuuuut yeah.
Summary being: Abusive shits are terrible, terrible people.
And, genuinely speaking, I think Mary is exactly the same kind of sadistic, genuinely nasty asshole that I dealt with as a teen. I have very little doubt that she’d find it every bit as funny as they did to try to torment someone to death.
(I am reminded of a set of Twitter posts I read a short while ago Ka href=”https://twitter.com/meakoopa/status/742238554093281280″>from Twitter user @meakoopa: “Oh sorry if we are being unfair unfortunately you guys murdered all the nice gays and now there’s just us: the assholes. The queers who were nice/patient/gentle all got shot or bullied to death all that’s left r me & the other pissed off cockroach motherfuckers.” In response to the Pulse shooting but yeah. Fits about pretty much any fucking time straight people are upset that queer people are pissed off about something.
Pardon the language. It’s not a time I look back on fondly. With good fucking reason.
But that should tell you exactly how much hatred I have for the Marys of the world. They made me one of the pissed-off cockroach motherfuckers.)
Thank you for harnessing your inner spite! Those kind of bullies, unfortunately, are largely insulated from the reality of bad things in the world, or have gone so far around the wrong way as to find a sadistic PLEASURE in the worst possible tragedy… I’d be sad but not surprised if they did laugh at you after you would’ve been gone. I mean, people used to get fed to lions for sport, after all–if that isn’t the height of privilege, I don’t know what is.
This feels a bit rambly, but I wanted to acknowledge your beautiful heart-outpouring!
First, I withdraw my comment about a Mary not feeling guilt being an indication of a 1-dimensional character.
Second, I have a question about triggers. If rather than reacting with horror, depression, PTSD attacks, or so forth, I am instead suddenly inclined to go “Hulk Smash” from what I’ve just read, does that count as a trigger?
Trigger warning in the sense I used it is to refer to people who have mental illnesses that can get triggered by reading certain content, with consequences that can have a severe effect on their quality of life – I know one person, frex, who on exposure to an article that had a body-shaming statement about people who have a high-end-of-healthy BMI, had a relapse of her eating disorder which lasted for 2 years and nearly killed her. Other people I know can have panic attacks or a PTSD episode lasting days. Back when I had a phobia, exposure to needles could send me into a full-blown panic attack. The reason why I avoided discussing the details of the suicide plan I had as a teen was because I know from when I was suicidal, reading about others’ plans can cement your own, and I don’t want to be responsible for someone hurting themself.
Therefore, I would say it depends on whether it’s an actual aggravation of a disability – the mental equivalent of an asthmatic like me being exposed to cigarette smoke – or if it’s just a normal and healthy reaction to outrageous and terrible human behavior. If the latter, you’re not really being triggered – you’re having a healthy human reaction.
FYI, I don’t have PTSD from my bullying stuff (as far as I know anyway – I’m no therapist, and like Sal my experience with most therapists is that they were less-than-useful in the sense that they wanted to take away the coping mechanisms that were keeping me alive without first teaching me healthier ones and they had no comprehension of exactly how difficult it can be to live your life and “just ignore” the fact that there were a half-dozen people actively trying to harass me to death so I tend to avoid them because the therapists I dealt with did a whole lot of victim-blaming and not much else on the bullying front – and were also terrible on the fact that I’m a sexual abuse survivor, even trying to get me to look at the “bright side” and take out “valuable lessons” that could “help” me “avoid” a similar instance in the future), and I can usually bounce back pretty quickly from talking about it. There is one big exception: usually if I’m the one who decides to pick the proverbial scab, I’m fine, but if I’m blind-sided by a news article or anecdote or something that’s way too close to home, my day is going to be ruined with brooding and possibly crying jags depending on how close to home it hit and irritability and possibly that thing where you’re just aware of everything and can’t shut it off and intrusive thoughts about ways in which I could hurt myself and just generally feeling miserable and depending on how close to home possibly get some of my teenage-years self-loathing mental routines stuck on repeat. But if I have time to prepare myself and just basically take steps to mentally separate myself from what I’m about to read, I can be okay. The blindside thing doesn’t happen nearly as much now that I’ve largely stopped getting news from sites that don’t use content warnings and taken the approach that any story about bullying is probably gonna hit hard and I need to mentally prepare accordingly. And that’s just an after-effect of trauma, when it’s not so bad that it significantly and negatively effects my day-to-day (I cope and function fairly well and genuinely speaking those things do not happen as often as they used to because I’ve learned what news stories are likely to hit home and learned how to do the mental-separation thing).
At the same time, though, you totally have the right to curate your own viewing/reading content, and trigger warnings could just as easily be treated as a content warning at the start of a TV show. “Warning: This show contains scenes of violence and coarse language. Viewer discretion is advised.”
You have the right to exercise your own discretion about what you see and and hear and read. If it is distressing to you, you are entirely within your rights to avoid being distressed by it, even if it doesn’t rise to the level of a mental illness trigger.
All I can hope is that in like a few years when all this is (hopefully) cleared up and Ruth is in a good place, removing femurs and striking terror into the hearts of all who cross her, we will look back at this moment and know that it all gets better.
This is like the running gag me and some friends have about wrestling company TNA. Every time it seems they’re slowly falling and inching closer to going out of business, we shout “BUT EVERYTHING IS FINE!”
Well… she was able to survive! She isn’t ‘good’ – far from it, in fact. However, I think that she’s surprised herself by just how ‘okay’ she actually is.
Billie, however, wants so very much for Ruth to be “fine” that she’s not going to pick up on any signal Carla (may or may not be aware she) is sending.
The hill is a steep one to climb. Ruth has only started stumbling up the slope. IMO, she isn’t ‘good’ but she isn’t in a bad state either and I think that she’s just surprised herself by realising that you can be ‘okay’ (functional and willing to stay alive) without actually needing to be full of joy at living.
this reminds me of an English teachers joke. It’s a joke that all TEFL teachers laugh at:
A Taiwanese guy goes to America for the first time. He is walking down the street in New York City. He starts to cross the street when BLAMO! he’s hit by a car. The driver jumps out and runs over to the Taiwanese guy. He is lying in a pool of blood on the side of the street. The driver says “Oh my God! I didn’t see you there. Are you okay? How are you?”
The Taiwanese guy says “I’m fine thank you. How are you?”
Billie: “Of course she’s fine. Why do you think she’s my girlfriend? Now stop telling me how great she looks and tell me how she’s holding up emotionally!”
Carla, I swear to God you better not drop it after this, you’d better not assume your obligation’s over with and leave Ruth catatonic and Billie convinced she’s fine…
Her obligation is over. She has in fact gone far over and above anything she owed Billie. Who had absolutely no right to ask anything like this of Carla.
That said, Carla’s a soft touch and concerned about Ruth. She won’t drop it.
Considering how bad Ruth’s depression has gotten, the sudden swing to complete numbness (and that fucking smile jfc), and the next chapter’s title implying a significant lack of glowering…
…I’m seriously wondering if we’re going to actually see Ruth attempt suicide.
Actually, that’s probably not gonna happen. Ruth doesn’t want to kill herself, she just considers it an inevitability.
Considering that preview with a super pissed off Carla, I’m wondering if this here was her trying to get Billie off her back, and then she goes and informs the college that Ruth actually is in serious danger.
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She’s fine.
I was worried for a while that she might not be 100% in a good place right now. Good to know she’s fine.
The smile in panel 3 is how we know she’s fine.
as do the squigly lines of the speech bubble in panel 5
confusion.
Hans fined first.
Hate to break this to you but sometimes being “fine” is the problem…..I-I mean everything’s great she’s fine!
Ruth, you are fined five thousand credits for repeated violations of the verbal morality statute.
She’s fine!
She’s fined.
Be well!
So much for the three sea shells…
Wait a second, Ruth doesn’t smile unless she’s one-upping, threatening, or generally pissing on somebodies day (Billie an occasional exception to this.). that can only mean…..she’s lying.
Freaked out
Insecure
Neurotic
Emotional
Yep.
love this! Going to use this again with your permission…
he didn’t make it up or anything. In fact my first instinct after reading the coming was to ctrl+f for that.
Yeah she’s fine…she’s smiling.
But, she don’t smile.
She’s fine…ly ground.
(F)ucked-up
(I)nsecure
(N)eurotic and
(E)motional
EVERYTHING IS FINE! LARS GERHARDT WAS NEVER HERE!
s̴̶̶͝h̕͞͠e̵’̢̀s̸̴̕͝ ͟͝҉f̨͜͞͏í̡͟n̕͞e̷͟͜͢
In other news, funky fonts slow down your posting speed.
I thought Ana usually just copy-pasted these, though.
Fancy fonts still take up bandwidth or something? Look, I don’t claim to understand it, but you can’t argue with empirical facts.
…. well, you CAN, but you’d look silly carrying on a debate with a table of data.
no, slow internet slows down posting speed X(
That just looks like butts pooing everywhere
That’s the graphic definition of her level of fine
Jeff Jaquice would be so jealous
And now for the fourth Dumbing Tournament Battle!
Announcer: Stepping into the ring are Mary Bradford and Jennifer Billingsworth!
Billie: Call me Billie.
Billie studies Mary. Mary gives a slight smirk; she raises her hand and does the “bring it” gesture with her hand. Billie runs at her, opening with a serious of quick punches….none of which connect.
Billie: Dammit! Why can’t I hit you?
Mary continues to dodge, not even breaking a sweat, while Billie looks exhausted.
Billie: CHEERLEADER KICK!
Billie kicks up as hard as she can with her right foot, striking Mary in the face. At first Mary appears to be injured, before she tilts her head back down and smiles.
Mary: Now it’s my turn.
Billie is besieged by a series of punches so fast, she feels like she’s being hit everywhere at once. By the time Mary’s attack ends, Billie is exhausted, and about to pass out.
Billie: how…how are you this powerful?
Mary seems to teleport next to Billie and whispers into her ear.
Mary: I’ll tell you a secret Jennifer Billingsworth…this is only a fraction of my true power.
Billie: h…h…how!?
Mary kicks Billie out of the ring.
Ruth: Billie!
Billie coughs up blood and passes out, Mary grins evilly and walks off the stage.
“Because that was a really short fight, (mainly to show how dangerous Mary is) I’m going to do the next one…right now!
The fifth Dumbing of Age Tournament Battle!
Sal vs. Marcie!
Announcer: The next to contestants are some of the better-known fighters, and great friends! Sal Walkerton vs. Marcie Diaz!
Sal: Lets finally find out, which one of us is stronger.
Marcie smiles, not evilly like Mary, but genuinely warm. She pulls out her skateboard and sets it on the ground. She starts to roll quickly towards Sal.
Sal: I know full well how to counter you when you use your board.
Marcie (thinking): do you now, Sal?
Marcie does a back flip, kicking her board towards Sal, who just barely manages to dodge it.
Sal: Close one! But at least Marcie doesn’t have her board anymore…
Sal senses something behind her and barely manages to duck; before Marcie’s skateboard goes flying over hear head.
Sal: she must be using magnets to control the board!
Sal takes her cigarette out of her mouth and points it at Marcie.
Sal: Smoking flames!
Sal (thinking): By concentrating my energy though this cigarette, I can greatly enhance the heat of the tip into a raging inferno.
Marcie rolls out of the way and tosses her skateboard at Sal again. Sal leaps out of the way, and realizes that smoke has blocked Marcie’s eyesight.
Sal (thinking): this is my chance, if I can hit her before this smoke clears…
Sal studies the smoke and finds Marcie’s figure. She’s preparing her skateboard again. Sal starts to run at Marcie; Marcie spots her and tosses her board as hard as she can. Sal notes that the board is traveling parallel to the ground, and leaps up. Marcie looks shocked as Sal manages to leap off of the board while it travels in midair.
Sal: Downward kick!
Sal’s foot slams into Marcie and knocks her out of the ring. Marcie stands up, and brushes herself off; she gives a salute to Sal, and walks of.
Next time on Dumbing Tournament!
Mike Warner Vs. Carla Rutten!
Jesus, you must have spent a lot of time writing that.
Yesterday.
Billie should have used her rage art.
first I have Dina lose in the first round, today I had Mary beat the crap out of Billie…apparently I want the comment section to murder me.
I call bulls**t!! Sal and Marcie would NEVER fight. They may make lots of dumb mistakes, but their friendship was never one of them.
This is a tournament battle!! In this world, it’s kill or be killed!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0sgRQ8ReqM
Oh lord.
Return of beady eyes
I think that’s just because she’s not wearing her glasses and a bunch of the glasses-wearing character designs aren’t set up to have proper eyes.
Some of the non-glasses wearing characters (e.g. Joe) don’t have sclera either but they have bigger pupils so their faces at least look properly balanced even if they’re still cartoonish caricatures.
Nope, I’m wrong. Normal Ruth eyes without glasses – she has sclera and those weird
bluepupils.(I meant to cross out blue and write green after, but it’s the same effect as Other Rachel and Joyce’s eyes, which are blue)
Note she doesn’t have eyes at all in the shower, but does once she dresses. So clearly she takes her eyes out at night and leaves them soaking in something. Since she is in a funk this morning, she hasn’t put them back in yet.
http://static1.squarespace.com/static/55208042e4b0bf9fbff41c53/t/56d6398f86db43480a9dae20/1456880129389/
She’s fine
Great, even:
http://www.depressioncomix.com/posts/005/
dina, she requires your tutelage
THE END
Well guys it was a good run, comic is clearly over now but it was a great time while it lasted
Yeah, it was a good run.
*looks for some Spin Doctors to play on the hacked Muzak*
https://youtu.be/eu7TOncR7FU
Shouldn’t you be playing “I Will Survive” by Gloria Gaynor?
Things are too positive, there must be a turn coming up. Is the building on fire?
This….isn’t really positive. Ruth is fairly clearly lying about being fine. And since Carla believed her the person most concerned for her well being thinks she’s doing well.
Carla doesn’t believe it, though. That is not a convinced expression.
Especially not with that forced smile when she’s talking to Billie. But Billie believes it. It’s like a game of telephone. =/
Billie needs to believe it for her own sanity right now.
We all believe what we have to.
The problem isn’t that Ruth’s lying about being fine. That’s par for the course for her. Billie was always calling her out on that bullshit.
The problem is that she isn’t even putting any effort into making it believable. At least with Billie she’d back it up with an edge of “don’t question me” menace.
(Also, I think Carla didn’t buy it, but took the excuse to get the hell out of there, obligations fulfilled.)
I’m not so sure this is a bail and never come back (she’s been shown to much in comic to circle back on things like this and check in), but more a “see, I did the thing, she’s great, now get off my back to Billie.
I’m suspecting she’ll be either swinging back in next comic or in her next appearance arc to call Ruth out on her “bluff” and ask how things are actually going.
Oh, sure, I’d give at least 50/50 that she’ll be back.
But right now?
As a wise individual once coined the phrase: NOPE. Nopenopenopenopenope.
Temporary nopeing out? Yeah, okay, I could definitely see that.
After all, Ruth is not in any immediate danger and does not seem to have an active plan, so nopeing out of dealing with the murder cave for a bit until her conscience comes a’callin’ again would be entirely in keeping with her character.
One counselling group I was in did not much care for ‘I’m fine’, claiming that it stood for F-ed up, Insecure, Neurotic and Emotional…
That’s silly. Everyone knows it stands for Feeling Incredible No Exceptions.
yes, i have heard that before. i like to respond “that’s a fine interpretation” if i’m not in the mood for that conversation
Sounds about right. Is anyone else in this thread fine?
sure, I’m Fucking In New England
(*not actually in New England)
I was fine until a few months ago. It was wicked fine.
That’s what the Internet is for.
I’m In New England, but not Fucking.
I’m alright, okay fine, you got me. Look I could complain but I don’t have the time to write novel.
I always thought it meant “I’m choosing not to answer your question (but not in a rude way)”.
More like “you get the short socially acceptable answer because I don’t want to look crazy” but it could go either way.
(possible triggery mention)
As someone who has tried to end my life more than once I’m fine is something i said a lot when i needed help the most. Two words mean nothing if you don’t take context and the face/actions/etc into account.
I’m worried this means she’s going to spiral down quickly, and this is… the calm before the storm so to speak.
Trying not to use potential trigger language.
Yup, this is definitely her trying to quickly mask how much pain and numbness she’s in.
The positive is that she’s numb (if she was genuinely up and relaxed and “happy”, that’d be a sign that she’s got a plan in place), but the negative is that it looks like she’s fully out of spoons to play-act functional.
*Also hugs to both of you*
I’m not someone who feels sad anymore like i used to, but honestly I am not sure if I ever really feel happy either. Even just feeling kind of meh is good now compared to what i did so at least to me at least she doesn’t seem to be fully as far down as she could even if she is heading there.
When I was depressed, the numb was the worst. Like Ruth goes out of her way to get angry so she can feel something, I would do really self-destructive things just to feel something because I could still feel terror.
Yeah. I totally get the “I’m fine.”
… Kinda wish I could give Ruth a hug right now, but she’d probably punch me for it.
But then the punch would make Ruth fell better, and that’s what’s important isn’t it?
Serious mode: I found that anger was one of the few ways to feel anything in depression. It can wash the gloom away in a surge of adrenaline. You aren’t happy, but at least you are something. In the short term.
Long term, it eats away at you in lots of ways, physically, mentally, and socially. Or very quickly if it motivates you to do something stupid.
Confirming Slartibeast’s experience of anger, I was pretty much the same way until halfway through college, at which point I had used up all the angry fuel my body and brain could possibly procure, and could no longer be angry, and so I crashed COMPLETELY for a good long while (unit of years).
Fun stuff. And that’s IF you live long enough with the switch broken in the “angry” position to even *see* the burnout.
… Worried now.
i had theraphy that actually helped me with anger for a while. some people say they have short fuses well for me i had an amazingly long fuse, but the explosion was equal to the fuses length.
It helped me ration it out easier so to speak
Yeah, this is… the face and voice of someone who has said “yes! Everything is good now!” either to call off the worriers or because it actually is great, there’s a way forward now! or both.
Oh shit I just realized he really did put in a reference to THAT song in the title.
I am very, very worried about Ruth.
And as always, *solidarity hugs indeed*
Yeah, I have depression and anxiety, and “I’m fine(/okay/alright)” is pretty much my go-to for when I’m /not/. I’m very wary of ‘I’m fine’.
If it was t obvious before, it is now.
Ruth is Ditto, smile and everything. She’s not fine.
It’s only a matter of time before some brat traps her in one of those cramped Pokeballs again.
She’s definitely not fine.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who came to this conclusion.
I’m fine. It’s just that nothing I do matters and life is meaningless.
finally, a logical clear-headed youngster
*hugs* You do matter. Believe me.
To be fair, ultimately that’s true whether you are fine or not. One doesn’t have to let the meaninglessness of existence get one down.
Panel three may possibly be the most frightening smile in the comic, and I’m saying that with Dina’s attempts at a Joycegrin still freshly burned into my retinas.
I blame Context.
Context? Conquest’s long-lost twin sister?
She was switched birth with…oh wait, wrong comic.
I have a bad feeling about this..
Williis’s job here is done. … For today.
Ruth’s eerie face in panel 3 reminds me of something, but I can’t put my finger on what. Peanuts character, maybe?
It is reminiscent of a Peanuts smile. Like Charlie Brown thinking he was going to kick that football THIS time.
Took me a whole day to figure out that Ruth’s eyes being dots again was a metaphor.
Unless it isn’t?
In which case, it took me a whole day to be wrong.
I’ve taken much longer to be wrong. So no worries.
Hair is fine!
How’s you’re hair? Fine.
I’m not unwell.
Here, have a future seeing laser Ruth.
I don’t know why. Just thought it would be nice.
Let’s see:
Carla fooled? NOPE. She dgaf, but she’s not fooled. Just a way out.
Rest of floor fooled? NOPE! Anyone watching sees Billie overjoyed. So much for subterfuge.
Billie fooled? YEP!
C’mon Billie. You’re giving cheerleaders a bad name, and that takes some doing.
yeah, drunken quasi-manslaughter pales in comparison to your current ass-hattery!
Too be fair, she’s probably lit like a candelabra and internally freaking out and assuming that Ruth is one second from offing herself without her around to babysit things.
So, Carla simply not screaming and running out of the room like she saw a dead body probably was positive sign enough for her.
I mean, Billie has been shown in comic to not really get numb persistent depression fully and so more likely to take “I’m fine” at face value or Carla saying “she’s awesome” at face value.
For Carla… it’s damn telling how incredulous she is of Ruth’s attempted deflection. I suspect she, like a lot of trans folks, has been through that ugly depressed phase and so more than recognizes what is going on.
MAYBE.
I suspect that she’s a bit on the “less shit happened to me” side of the trans bell curve, simply from having awesome and supportive parents who could probably afford to send her to a private school, and Carla doesn’t strike me as the most emotionally sensitive of individuals. I wonder if she really has Billie’s wealth of knowledge about how to deal with awful situations.
That said, it’s pretty clear she realizes that SOMETHING’S up. I read her as realizing that she’s completely unequipped to deal with it and getting the hell out of there because either she doesn’t know what and it’s creepy, or she does have a clue and holy crap.
Not that I think she’ll be able to STAY away.
Ehh, being rich buys you out of some oppressions, but she’s still a girl who grew up trans in central Indiana who has personal experience tending her own wounds alone after having “mysterious” accidents and empathizes strongly with that experience and has extensive experience with being authority figures’ “collateral damage”. Enough so, that she’s tired of it and has fully given up on authority figures in general.
So… I’m pretty sure she’s had a good deal of the standard Transphobia Special. Not to mention that dysphoria tends to fuck with you in new and exciting ways during puberty and living in central Indiana it would have been a chore and a half just to get blockers before turning 18.
I meant that if anyone in the trans community was NOT familiar with this type of thing, it would most likely be someone with a background like Carla’s, and so her knowing this stuff wouldn’t be a good assumption to make. But I’d forgotten about her… not so much disdain for authority (which is no more than her disdain for everyone else) but her practice of self-reliance absent of authority. You’re right, that suggests she’s had a hard road, advantages or no.
Ah, intersectionality. Having some privilege, and wealth is one of the biggest, doesn’t make the other prejudices disappear. It does usually make it easier to cope with the other problems.
Just to note, the last panel takes place at Billie’s room with Carla just inside the door. So the rest of the floor didn’t really say anything.
Unless Ruth keeps her light switches outside her door.
say = see
Nice observation. I’d missed that. Thought Carla had basically turned around to talk to Billie right outside.
“We’re going to send an RA up.”
“Negative, negative. We’ve got a cookie leak here, very crumby…”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYAbFqkvzQA
Leaky cookies doesn’t sound too appetizing.
She’s not fine.
But… she says she is fine.
Conclusion. She’s suffering from FDS – Femur Deficiency Syndrome. She needs to take some stat.
You know, I’m gonna go out on a limb here– correct me if I’m wrong–
I think she’s fine.
Checks out.
Really, she’s fine, for certain values of “fine”.
0 is a value, right?
Everything you can possibly type is a value.
For that matter, complex numbers are value.
I’m going to go with -2i, because her being fine is leaving me imagining things that are doubly negative.
*slow clap* Oh well played with that math pun. Well played, indeed.
Math puns are the BEST puns!
*crickets*
…. okay, fine, puns about the wars between Rome and Carthage are the best puns.
more like punnic wars amirite
You only beat me to it by about an hour, Opus.
is it safe to say ruth has depression?
Yes.
And the fact that you won’t lose your femurs for saying it is what confirms it.
well thats good, if i didnt have my femurs i wouldnt be able to do my job
Yeah, having a femur can really give you a leg up.
No bones about it.
For the moment, because she doesn’t have the energy to rip out your femurs right now.
Oh yeah, she most certainly does.
“It was a stupid conversation anyway.”
(Read the alt-text to understand this comment)
I love the wince right after “…how are you?”
Did Harrison Ford ad-lib that? I forget.
Harrison ford adlib most of his han solo, he famously told George Lucas “You can type this shit but, you sure as hell can’t say it.”
Alright, let’s build that reactor.
Is Ruth in Room 1138?
Boring conversation anyway.
I was wondering who would get a HANdle on where that was from.
LUKE, WE’RE GONNA HAVE COMPANY!
Oh, I’m glad I’m not the only one who caught this, then 🙂
Uh, negative negative, we have a, uh, a reactor leak, just give us a few seconds to lock it down. Large leak, very dangerous.
Ohhhhhh no no no NO
NNNNNOPE
Straight up nope
My thoughts :c
damn it Carla, I don’t expect you to dive into the emotional troubles here, but don’t lie when you clearly know Ruth isn’t actually fine. Sure in the short term you may be making Billie stop worrying, but Ruth needs Billie to worry and keep checking in on her. Long term, or even mid-term, this will come back to bite you, Billie, and Ruth…
She has an out with plausible deniability.
Maybe… I dunno, I think Billie actually could do with some distance. Right now, she’s been trying to mold her life around supporting Ruth and worrying over her (to the point where she is compulsively making copies of her room key every day and snapping at the person she asked to occasionally check in on her). Like, I’m not saying she should never worry about Ruth again, but she could use some separation where she’s not freaking out 24/7 and forgetting to get on with her life and actually tackle her own depression and alcoholism.
And I think Carla will definitely be back to check in on her and maybe give her a nudge to getting some genuine help.
You know who Ruth is reminding me of, here? Robert the Doll. Specifically the version of Robert who exists in The Last Halloween, but the real Robert, too…
Here’s hoping she doesn’t end up like dear Robert did helping Mona.
She does seem to be dead set on self-destruction, but also seems unlikely to do it for someone else’s sake…
Bad smile. Not fine. NOT FINE.
Not fine? Fine, then.
Isn’t Ruth’s smile a sign of the apocalypse? Could have sworn I read that somewhere.
you’re over-blowing it. it’s probably just a child dropping his ice cream
Only if her smile resembled a triangle, then we are all doomed.
Ruth smiles!
…. right when she’s about to hurt someone.
youtube.com/watch?v=C7sE0agEVNg
: )
She’s fine y’all. Everything is “FINE.”
She’s Fein. The other two Ruths are Howard and Howard.
Doctor!
she smiled, clearly shes okay
🙂
holy shit that smile, it’s so creepy
It’s a fake smile, that’s why.
Welp, I found a new icon to use! (Here’s hoping I did the Gravatar thing right). On a more serious note, I really hope Ruth won’t do anything drastic…
Oh god I suck, it didn’t work.
Sometimes you have to refresh or even close and reopen your browser to get the new gravatar to show.
OH YAY IT WORKED. Also ha we’re both Ruth.
The Two Faces of Ruth.
It’s like watching Gollum and Smeagol talk.
They are both fine
“The Precious agreesss!”
The Three Faces of Eve, the Four Riders with the Apoplexy, er… Epoxy-Lips. … Or someone like him.
Shift+F5 can help too. (That should force your browser to refresh the entire contents of the page, ignoring cached copies of images.)
The gravatar thing warns you that it can take up to 10 minutes or so for the new image to show up.
TOO MUCH SAD RUTH!!
FUTURE SEEING LASER EYES ACTIVATE!!
Ruth has future seeing laser eyes because she is a Terminator. She was sent back to prevent the birth of resistance leader Joshua Seigal.
She is sad because since she has completed her mission, she has no purpose anymore.
That’s the kind of smile + fine that i give to my parents when i know i am near breaking down but don’t actually trust them to talk about it.
Ruth don’t trust Carla enought to open up with her or anyone in this college.
This smile creeped me out, down to my soul for some reason and I didn’t know why. Then I realized;
Become a magical girl, Billy ／人◕ ‿‿ ◕人＼
^^^^ yes kyubae
Hm. Billie is a little older than Kyuubey’s usual targets, but she should have enough emotional anguish to be worth the while.
It’s a pity the damn things are invisible to humans unless they choose not to be, because someone on the floor is bound to know that Incubators should be exterminated on sight and kept away from the emotionally vulnerable.
She’s fiiiiiiiine
Boring conversation anyway.
Well I’m going to be at breakdown stage by the weekend anyways, and I feel like both of these storylines are gearing up for characters to implode/explode, so let’s just have it this weekend so I can get all my crying out of the way at once, okay, Willis?
But seriously… Ruth… go hug a Billie. Or tell someone. Or eat the cookies. Something. You’re not fine.
:'(
*hugs* You are awesome and will get through this weekend.
*Hugs* thank you <3 one of my main supports is moving to another country after this weekend 🙁
*Gives internet blankies*
Thank you <3 love the blankies … I feel like making a blanket fort.
I reccomend ginger snaps and, if possible, a heavy punching bag.
Stomach crunches are good, too.
<3 Cookies make life better for sure.
Thank you!
It all checks out!
who is this? what’s your operating number?
This is actually one thing I’ve never been able to do. I can’t hide my emotions at all. When I went through being suicidally depressed, no one who interacted with me thought I was “fine.”
I had the opposite thing. Cause I’m DID, I am really good at pushing my intense suicidal ideation to the side and playacting a super functional happy persona. It really helped me still do a good job as a “fun” science teacher even when I was suicidally ideating literally most every moment of every day, but it also means it’s still difficult to fully let down that mask and let people know how scared or bad I am when things are really off.
Um… you’ll let us know if there is something a bunch of strangers can do over internet, right?
*hugs*
Heh, thanks, but my drugs and not being around my toxic hateful family and a job gaslighting me as part of a discrimination campaign has helped a lot with the suicidal ideation. Letting people know when I’m not okay…? Working on it.
I’ve stated occasionally that this comic has basically become part of my therapy with my therapist and it and the comment threads have been really good for letting myself be more vulnerable and honest about just how much everything I’ve been through has messed me up.
To reference a Ruth saying, the fact that I’m here talking about how messed up I’ve been is a good sign. 🙂
I’m glad to hear that, and if me overanalyzing the lives of fictional people in a webcomic and ranting on the many ways Becky is awesome can help you in any small way, I’m there for you!
And as always – thanks for your comments! 🙂
Good to hear that, Cerb. I’m seconding Bagge’s hugs though. >^_^<
If there's… well, I wish I could volunteer my ear if you ever need one, but truth is I'm mostly not online nor do I read every single comment you make, so that would be disingenuous of me to state at present (been avoiding going on Skype for a month+ now… there's complicated reasons). :/ But as Baggle sed, us random internet strangers can be a caring bunch. Many of us have even gone through tangentially similar experiences. Point is you've made an impact here and people care, me included. Bit by bit we all get to know each other… it's a rather unique environment.
Hopefully you won't need it, but you do have our support, for all it's worth.
Yeah, my therapist in HS was worried as shit about me because generally it’s not the kids who can’t leave the room that blindside the shit out of everyone when they have a crisis, it’s the kids who are for the most part able to hold it together with a fairly smiley persona (which was me – I was legit doing things like walking on railings of bridges so I could feel something and not one person clued in because I was 1, naturally smart enough to not have my grades drop despite sleeping through most of my classes and 2, weird enough to begin with that depression weirdness was just chalked up as me being me and weird, 3, from a medical family so my morbid jokes were just written off as a product of my upbringing and 4, introverted enough that me getting home from school and going to decompress in my room until dinner, emerging until I was done eating and then going back to my room and essentially being nocturnal when allowed to set my own schedule was basically already status quo.
I have gotten better at handling social but yeah there is literally one person who I can be around when I need to decompress.
ive hid it for 3 years, im a champion!
Pft, I’ve been doing that for five years! I’m the master of denial!
Ruth, you can’t just try to psych yourself out of depression by lying to yourself and others that you’re fine. I know. I tried. It doesn’t work, all it does is make the inevitable breakdown worse. Just…try to talk to someone. Anyone. Just admitting how you’re really feeling won’t solve the problem, but it’s a good first step. And damn but it feels good afterwards, and can give you the little boost you need to go on and take the next step.
I’m curious to see if Carla tries to play therapist a little like she did in the “murder cave” arc or if she’s gonna try and push her to seek out some therapy options.
Honestly, I’m imagining the next page will be Carla grabbing Billie, switching places with her and locking the door behind herself, key left in. Well, that’s the hopeful side of me.
I gotta say, you can tell who read the alt-text joke.
I was already going “Oh, fuuuuck” just reading this strip and the comments, but then I remembered Willis tweeting about potential arc titles coming from That Song from Neon Genesis Evangelion a couple months back, and um.
Yeah it’s appropriate as a title for this arc in many ways but they’re all screaming at me now “we REALLY need to worry about Ruth.” There’s a reason I don’t let myself listen to that one when I can feel I’m not in a good mental state.
Ruth is fine. See that smile? Wait, Ruth doesn’t smile, unless it portends….
Comic Reactions:
Panel 1: I kinda love that Carla keeps referring to Ruth as Chief. It’s that nice line between begrudging respect for her authority and also complete lack of respect for authority and it totally works as an awkward term of endearment.
Also, ah Carla, you blunt goddess you. Someday you’ll have to learn tact, but it is not this day!
Panel 2: Okay, I love the amount of communication that is happening in the facial expressions. Like here, she is just so dead-eyed, you can just taste the monotone “I’m out of spoons, but I suppose I should approximate human, what are humans like” fatigue in her response.
Panel 3: And that delayed smile, like her brain was going, wait, people who are fine smile. I should smile to get Carla to go away so I can get back to ripping myself apart. Tight-lipped dead-eyed smile completed. Nailed it. Humanity achievement unlocked. Today is a good day, I made it that far.
Panel 4: That expression. Carla is buying literally none of it and probably has had experience with giving that stock answer to folks before. “How was school sweetie?” *hiding black eye* “Fine. It was fine”. And we see a similar tactful Carla that we saw hinted at when she was caring for Amber. She seems to actually understand what that “fine” means (bad, suicidal, but no active plan) and lets her tone communicate that she wants to know the truth.
Panel 5: And initially I read it as Ruth still in denial, but on second look, there’s that wavy speech bubble and her shoulders are more drooped and head’s more down and sad. I think she is being more honest here in this panel and dropping the mask.
And I think she might even mean what she’s saying. She’s not at risk… yet. She’s not functional by any stretch of the imagination. But she’s awake, she’s now sitting up, she’s processing the day and interacting with another human. By Ruth standards she is at her aggressively neutral base state, neither good enough to be out in the halls doing her job nor bad enough to be slipping back into her alcoholism… yet, but just neutrally, numbly “fine”.
Panel 6: And Carla gets Billie off her back, because holy fuck is it not okay to just volunteer someone else to suicide watch a friend without letting them know that is what you want. So, getting Billie to bug out and let her handle this without her worrying at the door and putting Ruth at risk is a critical step towards Carla actually handling the enormous weight that was just dropped on her shoulders.
Given Carla’s tendency to worry and history, I have no doubts that she’ll be circling back for a more in-depth check-in later in the day, but it was never going to happen with Billie hovering around the door convinced her recent ex was no longer breathing “because of her”.
Just taking a moment to say
SPOON THEORY YES
It was a lousy conversation anyway.
What’s really preying on my mind is…
… if there IS an incident… and if Mary realizes that she was part of the chain of events… will she feel guilt?
I mean, we’ve mostly seen just awful from her. But how 1-dimensionally awful has Willis made her as a character?
I doubt it. Abusers and bullies are very good at distancing themselves from the guilt or the culpability of how they drive their victims to suicide, even when trying to drive their victim to suicide was part of the abuse or suicide.
There’s a really good arc in the manga series “Confidential Confessions” basically about that, showing that after a suicide, the bullies who caused it won’t feel a lick of guilt about it and will instead internalize it as their victim being “weak” or “crazy” instead.
It’s why the best revenge against a bully is to stay alive, no matter how hard that is to do.
Content Warning: Fucked up shit beyond all reason involving really shitty people
NO FOR SERIOUS, I’m going to be talking about groups that are really fucked and some of the awful they do surrounding suicidal kids. BIG FAT CONTENT WARNING OVER THAT.
For example with some of this, there’s certain hate groups out there that have an MMO of finding young vulnerable feeling mentally ill kids and trying to push them over the edge into suicide. A lot of them targeting either folks with mental illnesses specifically, people on the autism spectrum, or trans kids.
And well, these hate groups sometimes find out about the rather direct line their harassment had to exacerbating the suicide. Some take the tactic of blaming the victim for being weak or their families for faking the news in order to make them look bad. Some blame it on the person having the traits that caused the groups to target them in the first place and use it as proof that said groups could never be happy as they are.
And the worst of the groups actually celebrate their destructions, patting each other on the back for “confirmed kills” as if driving people to suicide was a video game and they were racking up a high score.
And still other hate groups don’t directly do that, but will parade around the dead of groups they hate as if they were props for their hate-filled arguments (very frequent among transphobes, who love parading around trans kids who kill themselves or the statistics about them as “proof” that the “transgender lifestyle” “only leads to death” and “makes people miserable”.
Very few of them actually show any culpability or genuine remorse for their heinous acts.
And that’s in reality. If anything, Mary will likely be infinitely less awful than that.
There are no words sometime. Ugh. Okay, there’s a word.
The thing is that study after study shows that, on a certain level, on-line bullies actually do think that it’s a video game. There is something deeply poisonous about how the social centres of our brain react to communication via a computer monitor that detaches our sense of empathy and our subconscious limits that we normally put into communications when the other person’s face isn’t hanging in front of ours.
Horribly, there really does seem to be a mindset of: “It’s the Internet; it’s only make-believe!”
I think it’s more the other way around: Our sense of empathy is really only designed to kick in in the physical presence of others because that’s how it was useful throughout the vast majority of (pre)history. That we can adapt it at all to something as abstract as text on a screen is pretty amazing.
Holy… That’s a real thing? There are people who can delight in the knowledge of being indirect murders? Why… how… what the hell is wrong with them?!
LIKEWISE TALKING ABOUT HORRIBLE HUMAN BEHAVIOR. NO SERIOUSLY, IF YOU GET TRIGGERED BY TALK OF BULLYING, ABUSE OR GENERAL HORRIBLENESS, PLEASE CONSIDER THIS A LEGIT TRIGGER WARNING AND EXERCISE DISCRETION.
… I got bullied to the point of self-injury and suicidal ideation and actually to within about 2 minutes of actually making a very-likely-to-kill-me attempt which I will not discuss in detail but suffice to say I don’t have it in me to do shit by halves, and a person to whom I will forever be grateful saved my life by figuring out there was something unusual about me not being online at my usual time and spamming my inbox with 30 emails of increasing level of worry until I finally responded because I felt bad for them about how obviously distressed I was making them, and they managed to get me to agree to put it off by 48 hours and seek help andyeah. The stupidest shit can save your life sometime, and in my case the fact that I was skipping out on my normal chatting/fangirling/talking about girl crushes routine with a queer online friend saved mine.
Because my high school therapy office was shite for confidentiality (they called you out of class, in the middle of class for the appointment and it didn’t take a master detective to figure out who was missing time on a semi-regular basis), word got out, and once word got out, my bullies had a fucking field day with it. They thought it was the funniest shit in the world that I was suicidal, and it then became a challenge for them to see of they could bully me to do it (and that’s when I discovered that I can, in fact, be powered entirely by spite and hatred).
Stuff they did once they found out I was suicidal:
* Come up behind me and whisper, “Just do it, everyone hates you anyway, the world would be better with you gone.”
* Put notes with drawings of nooses or mangled bodies in my locker
* Print a pamphlet with detailed instructions on how to successfully off oneself on them in my locker, with handwritten note of, “Because you can’t even do this right.”
… and I could go on.
I sincerely believe that if I had killed myself, they would’ve talked about me being a dumbass for taking them seriously and joked about how stupid I was, and never once would they have contemplated the fact that their actions caused someone’s death.
… buuuuut yeah.
Summary being: Abusive shits are terrible, terrible people.
And, genuinely speaking, I think Mary is exactly the same kind of sadistic, genuinely nasty asshole that I dealt with as a teen. I have very little doubt that she’d find it every bit as funny as they did to try to torment someone to death.
(I am reminded of a set of Twitter posts I read a short while ago Ka href=”https://twitter.com/meakoopa/status/742238554093281280″>from Twitter user @meakoopa: “Oh sorry if we are being unfair unfortunately you guys murdered all the nice gays and now there’s just us: the assholes. The queers who were nice/patient/gentle all got shot or bullied to death all that’s left r me & the other pissed off cockroach motherfuckers.” In response to the Pulse shooting but yeah. Fits about pretty much any fucking time straight people are upset that queer people are pissed off about something.
Pardon the language. It’s not a time I look back on fondly. With good fucking reason.
But that should tell you exactly how much hatred I have for the Marys of the world. They made me one of the pissed-off cockroach motherfuckers.)
Thank you for harnessing your inner spite! Those kind of bullies, unfortunately, are largely insulated from the reality of bad things in the world, or have gone so far around the wrong way as to find a sadistic PLEASURE in the worst possible tragedy… I’d be sad but not surprised if they did laugh at you after you would’ve been gone. I mean, people used to get fed to lions for sport, after all–if that isn’t the height of privilege, I don’t know what is.
This feels a bit rambly, but I wanted to acknowledge your beautiful heart-outpouring!
Billie and Carla, on the other hand, will.
Life is unfair like that.
Guilt? She’d probably be proud of herself for a job well done.
Yeah. Having met folks who delight in driving others to suicide, I have a hard time to imagine Mary feeling any guilt, and satisfaction is probable.
….
Okay, two things.
First, I withdraw my comment about a Mary not feeling guilt being an indication of a 1-dimensional character.
Second, I have a question about triggers. If rather than reacting with horror, depression, PTSD attacks, or so forth, I am instead suddenly inclined to go “Hulk Smash” from what I’ve just read, does that count as a trigger?
Trigger warning in the sense I used it is to refer to people who have mental illnesses that can get triggered by reading certain content, with consequences that can have a severe effect on their quality of life – I know one person, frex, who on exposure to an article that had a body-shaming statement about people who have a high-end-of-healthy BMI, had a relapse of her eating disorder which lasted for 2 years and nearly killed her. Other people I know can have panic attacks or a PTSD episode lasting days. Back when I had a phobia, exposure to needles could send me into a full-blown panic attack. The reason why I avoided discussing the details of the suicide plan I had as a teen was because I know from when I was suicidal, reading about others’ plans can cement your own, and I don’t want to be responsible for someone hurting themself.
Therefore, I would say it depends on whether it’s an actual aggravation of a disability – the mental equivalent of an asthmatic like me being exposed to cigarette smoke – or if it’s just a normal and healthy reaction to outrageous and terrible human behavior. If the latter, you’re not really being triggered – you’re having a healthy human reaction.
FYI, I don’t have PTSD from my bullying stuff (as far as I know anyway – I’m no therapist, and like Sal my experience with most therapists is that they were less-than-useful in the sense that they wanted to take away the coping mechanisms that were keeping me alive without first teaching me healthier ones and they had no comprehension of exactly how difficult it can be to live your life and “just ignore” the fact that there were a half-dozen people actively trying to harass me to death so I tend to avoid them because the therapists I dealt with did a whole lot of victim-blaming and not much else on the bullying front – and were also terrible on the fact that I’m a sexual abuse survivor, even trying to get me to look at the “bright side” and take out “valuable lessons” that could “help” me “avoid” a similar instance in the future), and I can usually bounce back pretty quickly from talking about it. There is one big exception: usually if I’m the one who decides to pick the proverbial scab, I’m fine, but if I’m blind-sided by a news article or anecdote or something that’s way too close to home, my day is going to be ruined with brooding and possibly crying jags depending on how close to home it hit and irritability and possibly that thing where you’re just aware of everything and can’t shut it off and intrusive thoughts about ways in which I could hurt myself and just generally feeling miserable and depending on how close to home possibly get some of my teenage-years self-loathing mental routines stuck on repeat. But if I have time to prepare myself and just basically take steps to mentally separate myself from what I’m about to read, I can be okay. The blindside thing doesn’t happen nearly as much now that I’ve largely stopped getting news from sites that don’t use content warnings and taken the approach that any story about bullying is probably gonna hit hard and I need to mentally prepare accordingly. And that’s just an after-effect of trauma, when it’s not so bad that it significantly and negatively effects my day-to-day (I cope and function fairly well and genuinely speaking those things do not happen as often as they used to because I’ve learned what news stories are likely to hit home and learned how to do the mental-separation thing).
At the same time, though, you totally have the right to curate your own viewing/reading content, and trigger warnings could just as easily be treated as a content warning at the start of a TV show. “Warning: This show contains scenes of violence and coarse language. Viewer discretion is advised.”
You have the right to exercise your own discretion about what you see and and hear and read. If it is distressing to you, you are entirely within your rights to avoid being distressed by it, even if it doesn’t rise to the level of a mental illness trigger.
All I can hope is that in like a few years when all this is (hopefully) cleared up and Ruth is in a good place, removing femurs and striking terror into the hearts of all who cross her, we will look back at this moment and know that it all gets better.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8KuH_RxUNE
She’s fine …. for a given value of “fine”.
This is like the running gag me and some friends have about wrestling company TNA. Every time it seems they’re slowly falling and inching closer to going out of business, we shout “BUT EVERYTHING IS FINE!”
She’s fine.
Look, she’s smiling, that means she’s fine!
Oh. Well. So long as she’s fine.
Then let’s have a fine party! 😀
Note that she doesn’t even have enough spoons to deny/protest the “without Billie” implication.
OUCH. That hurts.
A positive side of the same coin is that she might now be comfortable enough with Carla to allow her to support her.
That smile on Billie’s face in panel six is heartbreaking. She looks so happy and relieved.
Too bad that can’t be said for Ruth as well.
She is. Ruth is not dead right now, that counts as a victory
*screams internally*
Well… she was able to survive! She isn’t ‘good’ – far from it, in fact. However, I think that she’s surprised herself by just how ‘okay’ she actually is.
Painfully close to home.
Can I just… push my meds through the screen at her? I think she might need them more than I do right now.
“Lessik 421, why aren’t you at your post?”
“Take over, we’ve got some bad neurotransmitters… like, a lot.”
I am very scared.
EVERYTHING IS FINE
https://youtu.be/C7sE0agEVNg
hay, was going to post that myself 😀
Suuuuuuuuuure. That’s what we all say.
She looks kind of like one of Kamala Khan’s clones from one of the latest Ms. Marvel storylines.
Carla you saint
Carla, here’s a piece of advice that you may have missed. Whenever somebody says “They’re/it’s/everything’s fine.”, it’s NOT fine.
Carla doesn’t believe her. She is not convinced in panel 4. She’s likely just saying so to Billie to put her mind at ease for her sanity.
Billie, however, wants so very much for Ruth to be “fine” that she’s not going to pick up on any signal Carla (may or may not be aware she) is sending.
The hill is a steep one to climb. Ruth has only started stumbling up the slope. IMO, she isn’t ‘good’ but she isn’t in a bad state either and I think that she’s just surprised herself by realising that you can be ‘okay’ (functional and willing to stay alive) without actually needing to be full of joy at living.
http://gunshowcomic.com/648
That smile in panel 3 is so creepy because of how obviously fake it is.
She seems fine.
“Remain calm…all is well!” [couldn’t find clip]
this reminds me of an English teachers joke. It’s a joke that all TEFL teachers laugh at:
A Taiwanese guy goes to America for the first time. He is walking down the street in New York City. He starts to cross the street when BLAMO! he’s hit by a car. The driver jumps out and runs over to the Taiwanese guy. He is lying in a pool of blood on the side of the street. The driver says “Oh my God! I didn’t see you there. Are you okay? How are you?”
The Taiwanese guy says “I’m fine thank you. How are you?”
“Who is this? What’s your operating number?”
I am not a number, I am a free man!
Everything’s fine now that I know how to read alt text on mobile now. 🙂
This looks like the second to last scene in Paranormal Activity.
Reminds me of the comic strip where the dog is sitting in a burning house.
Linked above by John Brewer.
I have never seen Ruth look scarier than she does with that smile.
Even though the art in this strip is very simple, I liked it a lot. I really like your style Willis, but for some reason this strip looks really good.
Long time reader, first time commenter. Just wanted to say today’s alt text made me happy. That is all.
looks like she finished detoxing and is getting used to feeling sober after who knows how long
Welp, based on the Neon Genisis Evangelion song reference and the people this arc is focused on, I am now officially terrified.
Carla: “She’s fine.”
Billie: “Of course she’s fine. Why do you think she’s my girlfriend? Now stop telling me how great she looks and tell me how she’s holding up emotionally!”
Tomorrow: We resolve this dramatic tension by checking in on La Porte!
Well, I didn’t need my heart anyway.
On first reading, I thought the way she said “I’m fine” the second time was her realizing that she actually is fine, but now I am not so sure.
Carla, I swear to God you better not drop it after this, you’d better not assume your obligation’s over with and leave Ruth catatonic and Billie convinced she’s fine…
Her obligation is over. She has in fact gone far over and above anything she owed Billie. Who had absolutely no right to ask anything like this of Carla.
That said, Carla’s a soft touch and concerned about Ruth. She won’t drop it.
By the way, do we know what Carla’s shirt says besides “F”?
It’s a bomb that reads F. So, you know, a F-bomb.
i’m more scared
Did anyone else get the Star Wars reference when hovering over the comic? Or is everyone else too young to have seen the first Star Wars ?
Considering how bad Ruth’s depression has gotten, the sudden swing to complete numbness (and that fucking smile jfc), and the next chapter’s title implying a significant lack of glowering…
…I’m seriously wondering if we’re going to actually see Ruth attempt suicide.
Actually, that’s probably not gonna happen. Ruth doesn’t want to kill herself, she just considers it an inevitability.
Considering that preview with a super pissed off Carla, I’m wondering if this here was her trying to get Billie off her back, and then she goes and informs the college that Ruth actually is in serious danger.
Best alt-text ever.
she’s not fine, she’s got tiny-eyes-and-mouth meme, that’s terrible!
But…the smile looks so adorable.
Her smile in the third panel is so simplistic it’s unnerving. Like a Lego face on a human face.