/doag/

Still tomorrows strip for the next 30 minutes!

Willis is still trying to write about depression even though he's never gone to a doctor about his own severe mental problems!

Hopefully patreanon will grace us with their presence at midnight.

>even though he's never gone to a doctor about his own severe mental problems!
Well, if you can't walk do you need a doctor to know you're handicapped?

you do if you're legs are full of puss and need to be drained

no, in fact, the predominate way to assess someone's mental health is simply to have them fill out a form that asks questions along the lines of "how often are you sad or angry" "do you have thoughts of suicide" "do you find difficulty in every day tasks" and so on.

There's a difference between recognizing a mental disorder and writing one.
For instance, if I saw a person on the street I could say "Yea, that's a person." But it doesn't mean I have enough understanding to write their life story.

His "depressed" characters, Ruth especially, are too quick to open up and burden everyone around them. She's not trying to save face in public, and she's not laying in bed trying to ignore Billie. This isn't realistic mental issues, it's tumblr levels of fetishizing depression.
Which is fine, if that's what you're into.
I'm still reading it.

The next strip is here!

Mary has no time for any of this bullshit.

I've suffered clinical depression for the last 6 years and I've more or less been open to others who became extremely close to me. They served as my support network for most of that time. I've attempted suicide twice, North times I was saved (hanged myself but someone heard the noise and cut me down, then overdosed but got my stomach pumped). Depression isn't one size fits all, really. Some completely shut down (my best friend for example) whole others are still open (like me).

Willis' problem is shit writing either way.

why the hell does Mary care if someone calls a person in charge?

Is she still hung up on the prayer at the ends of hall meetings?

Is Willis really this stupid?

I totally get opening up to people close to you

Billie and Ruth have known each other for a month and hated each other for at least a few days

and then a few more days should be shaved off because both of them were blacked out drunk

YES

Mary loses her blackmail material if Ruth and Billie are found out. Of course, Ruth being replaced as RA would be a net benefit to Mary anyway but I doubt Willis realizes that.

that's actually kinda accurate from my experience. but anecdotal evidence!

>Mary being calm and logical and maintaining a clear head
>Last panel reminder she's cardboard and evil

willis!

I assume this is supposed to be Mary trying to keep a hold of her leverage over Ruth.
It just comes off more as Mary trying to actually cover for Ruth and Billie.

Also:
>If she an' this Ruth lady--
>this Ruth lady--

Did Walky not actually know who Ruth is?

To be fair I never keep up with this and am far from up to date, I'm not even sure why I opened the thread.

shes just trying to control the situation. its not "calm and logical" to refuse to let someone call the manager and insist on being responsible for the situation

that's what I'm confused by, literally Mary has everything to gain from having someone contact someone above Ruth. She gets fucking fired, they replace the RA, the new RA reals in Carla's shit, Mary gets to study

Did Willis really not think this through?

>Did Walky not actually know who Ruth is?
hes met her, but shes not his RA. shes essentially a stranger to him

Probably not, he doesn't live on the floor.

shes got no idea if the new RA would be better or worse than ruth, but she knows she wouldnt have any dirt on them. plus her blackmailing ruth will probably come out in the investigation.

This is one of the big problems with Willis's eternal September. The comic moves in real time, so we perceive the separate events as a chain of events, when in the reality of the comic strip, many of the events are all one big event. We expect the story to meet reasonable expectations of pacing, but because his time is so dilated, what looks like relationships progressing is just a few scattered conversations over a couple of days.

One of these days, I'll figure out why I'm still reading this strip. It's certainly not for Willis's storytelling ability, nor is it for his art. Is it some kind of weird nostalgia for my own college years? Maybe that's it.

RUTH SLAPPED THE SHIT OUT OF HER AND DOESN'T DO HER JOB

What is Mary doing right now? Is she trying to cover up Billie and Ruth's relationship? Why is she pinning guilt on Walky? This strip is a fucking mess.

But Mary lost her blackmail material when they Billie moved all her stuff out of Ruth's room.

and now she feels like she has ruth under her control, so that wouldnt happen again. a new RA could easily do exactly the same things

Ruth didn't even follow the prayer at the end of the hall meeting like Mary demanded and nothing came of it

Ruth and Billie moved all evidence of Billie living with Ruth back into her room. There's no alcohol in Ruth's room either, though there will probably be a smell lingering in the air

Why can't you admit this plot point makes no sense

I swear this whole thing just reads like Willis is in an abusive relationship and trying to tell us about it.

i do think its stupid and marys blackmail was poorly done. im only defending marys motives.

Apparently, that test actually has a shitton of hidden material it looks for. It's full of questions that seem innocuous or straightforward, but the way you answer could be the difference between you having OCD and being a certified psychopath.

Mary's actions make sense in the context of the plot, even if the plot itself is full of gaping holes.

okay, I agree Mary has poorly explained motives that don't make sense but totally believe Willis believes this is the motivation for Mary

It's kinda frightening that you could make a very good argument for Willis either having an abusive partner and justifying them or Willis being an abusive partner and justifying himself.

I wouldn't be surprised if he's emotionally abusive to his wife.

He already abuses his baby twins by making them dance to the new Ghostbusters soundtrack

I wouldn't go that far. "Get Ghost" is really catchy.

Nah, if anything she's the one who emotionally abuses him...at least he thinks she does. She won't let him buy Transformers as much as he used to because they have babies.

I've seen that he also custom paints his pieces as well, really hope he does that outside.

I wouldn't be surprised if he thinks his wife is emotionally abusive but in reality she just wants him to act like an adult sometimes.

Aren't his kids too young to dance? I thought they were pre-walking age.

It'd be pretty easy to rewrite this as making it look like Mary is the one trying to help.

So willis tumblr is literally nothing but defending new Ghostbusters and Jon Stewart for some reason but I did find this gem

Meanwhile, this is the most recent preview panel.
It's for 13 October.

Redemption?

I'm not the only thinking he fucked up Becky's right eye there yeah?

>not only does Becky's eye show up from behind her hair, so does her fucking freckles

WILLLLLLLLIIIIIIISSSSS!

>that awkward moment when the new relationship phase wears off and you realize you're dating a retard

Wait, is purple-haired chick's (Other Rachel?) eye covering her hair in panels four and six?

oh shit! Those aren't glasses, those are giant exposed eyeballs!

...

God, just drive into an oncoming truck already!

Bless you, user.

Have we ever gotten any good BeckyxDina smut?

After a certain point in a web comic's lifespan, artists just stop drawing glasses and have the lenses be an extension of their faces.

That initial surge of Nerd Dad cred has faded, and Willis is realizing he has to be a mature human being now.

Also, Mrs Willis seems to not want to play the internet game and be Dave's personal shield maiden in his internet battles.

>after a certain point, Willis will just draw creepy doll eyes on everyone and call it a day

There we go, that makes more sense

He used to draw actual glasses once... granted Amber was also once an almost functional young woman, but that doesn't really fly with his target audience.

And yeah, the solid black eyes he uses at times is super freaky.

The black dot eyes he gave Ruth in OP's pic makes me think she's got eyes like a chameleon.

>Mary is worried about losing her leverage over Ruth, even though it hasn't resulted in anything good for her.

Great writing, Willis.

Her judging Walky is way more in line with how I remember her character in Roomies, but it seems like a weird aside. Especially since she's trying to present herself as a moral center.

Also, inb4 Walky and Dorothy break up when she realizes he doesn't trust her enough to share important things, and that he partially blames her for convincing him to dismiss his gut feeling about Billie.

It's completely out of place since she has no idea about Ruth's self-destructive behavior and has no reason to deflect blame on Walky, especially since she's trying to cover up what's happening to retain her blackmail material.

I still think the most grounded depiction of depression in a webcomic is Roast Beef from Achewood

>amber got thicker over time
Nice

I have never read this comic before. Why are two of the characters dressed as Mario and Launchpad McQuack?

We don't know what Mary's evil plan actually is because Willis doesn't know what her plan actually is. Also, he seems to now just be deliberately writing her as incompetent and confused and easily sidestepped as a middle finger to her ironic fans.

It was halloween.

There was one student who didn't the memo, however...

> that realization when willis will never do holiday themed story lines because they would take the better part of a year to get through

wew lad

In case anyone cares, Cerberus literally had so much to say about the strip in OP she had to separate it into two separate post just to be under the character limit

The lack of holiday arcs aside, can we just stop for a minute and recognize that Mary's jacket dress and loose turtleneck is a great design?

That's really fucking impressive. Let me guess, you can summarize it in about three sentences?

I'm sorry, it's FUCKING THREE full post now

she's been writing it from 1 55 to 2 18 . That's just 20 full minutes analyzing a 6 panel newspaper strip.

>oh hey i guess mary sounded kinda sympathetic a couple strips back didn't she
>better correct that

shes mentioned before doing this is part of her therapy, so shes not just doing it for fun or anything

She's been like that for awhile. It's kinda sad that she's so desperate for representation and validation that she'll obsess over a two-dimensional trans ace character in a half-assed webcomic.

that's actually really sad

She has to stay up and overanalyze a shitty webcomic everyday for ever in a vain attempt to make her feel better and Willis just refers to her as "the transgendered poster"

truly god is cruel

>She has to stay up and overanalyze a shitty webcomic everyday for ever in a vain attempt to make her feel better
...Pot callin' the kettle black.

Cerberus bafflingly (concerningly?) reads Ruth/Billie as this tragic, star-crossed lovers romance, so it makes sense that this strip would merit a giant comment.

...

Nah, it's something her therapist has her doing to work out her feelings. It makes a little sense, as it'd allow the therapist an unfiltered look at her feelings and projections.

We're doing basic lit-crit and mocking. I'm pretty sure that the most extensive posts in these threads are the occasional fanfic stuff.

Yeah, I like doing literary analyses, and people in the comments get butthurt when I try to ask questions or discuss things from that standpoint.

This is basically the only place to have an honest, critical discussion about the comic.

top kek

People want to be in control. It may be a win to have Ruth run out of the dorm but in the big picture, that means new R.A. that Mary will have zero control over and she'll have to start from square-one trying to figure out a weakpoint if there even is one.

>88
Sieg Heil

Mary never really wanted control over Ruth. She just wanted Carla to leave her alone.

or she's not a villain master mind and just goes back to being quiet in her room away from everyone and studying

lololol i have a feeling they're very much "the curtains are just blue!"

he still isn't wrong, we care about this comic way too much, more than any of us are willing to admit

>But I don't care about this stupid comi-
Yes you do, if you didn't care about it you wouldn't seek out the fucking GENERAL, we all care about this comic so much that we created an actual general to discuss it and wait with baited breath for the patreon poster to show up and give us tomorrows strip early

I hate to admit it guys, but...Willis won,

Maybe Mary's plan is actually not to blackmail Ruth into doing her job but simply to punish her and make her miserable

The sad part is paying for therapy for that. We do it without paying a dime.

>expecting anything less from Willis

>Mary's last line
Pot meets kettle.

We never said we didn't care about the comic. We've always been pretty upfront that the reason why we have these threads is because DoA could be a good, or at least decent, drama only to be held back by Willis' personal issues and limits as a writer. And yes, there is a difference between multiple people pointing out issues with the plot or character actions and someone needing three max length comment posts to express their opinion on a six panel comic strip. You want read too much into things? Fine, but you're probably better off in the Grant Morrison thread.

...

Not really. Mary didn't know about Ruth's suicidal tendencies. Just her relationship with Billie.

Hell, did Mary even know about the alcoholism? The only other issue that Mary brought up was Becky squatting in Billie and Sal's room. Technically Mary still has that leverage over Ruth.

>Hell, did Mary even know about the alcoholism? The only other issue that Mary brought up was Becky squatting in Billie and Sal's room.

She didn't mention it in the initial argument, but she somehow found out after and realized that she's an alcoholic.

You can't have a villain and only have them show up to do bad things. You have to show them having intent to do bad things in the interim. For example, Mary was shown spying on Billie leaving Ruth's room and doing an evil plotter pose. That was paid off when she made Ruth back down the first time. However, since then, Mary hasn't done anything but drink soda and say some words to Ruth.

>that "it's important to be honest" rant

I think it's important to be honest that the film bombed harder than Hiroshima.

It's done better than Batman Vs. Superman AND Man of Steel, combined though.

Is that an accomplishment?

While bad, those movies actually made money.

while bad, this webcomic actually makes money

Yep, more than Ghostbusters can say.

Also, make more depressing edits!

Yeah, she only wanted control because Ruth wasn't doing her job. The whiteboard weiners were the start of the downfall, because Mary told Ruth and got a slap in the face for it. It took Amazi-Girl, not the RA, to find the culprit. Mary wants an RA who will do her job.

Lol, in my experience, they jumped down my throat because discussing Mary and Carla's plotline meant that I was being a horrible person because those things have happened to people in real life, and I wasn't in the confines of ~the classroom~

I have no idea what Mary's play is here.

Mary hasn't had any leverage over Ruth since Billy moved out and they threw away the booze bottles. Is Willis trying to make her a Roger Chillingworth-type whose only goal is Ruth's protracted suffering?

I'm so confused.

Also, make more edits general.

>Is Willis trying to make her a Roger Chillingworth-type whose only goal is Ruth's protracted suffering?
Seems so. I bet Willis realized he wrote himself into a corner concerning Mary and is now trying something new that doesn't seem to be working.

>Mary hasn't had any leverage over Ruth since Billy moved out and they threw away the booze bottles. Is Willis trying to make her a Roger Chillingworth-type whose only goal is Ruth's protracted suffering?

>I'm so confused.

We have no idea what her motivations are. She tried to get Ruth to do a prayer, but then denied that was important to her , saying,"I'd rather cash this in for something bigger than a stupid prayer." That statement was way too dismissive for someone who's supposed to be a hyper-devout christian. Since then she's used anti-LGBT language, but only to Ruth, not to Carla, Dina or the lesbian couple who lives on the floor. She threatened Ruth with revealing her secret in order to force her to stop Carla, but Ruth did nothing and there was 0 follow-up.

Her leverage is kinda important in the story, because it lead to Billie and Ruth breaking up and to Ruth's subsequent break-down, but Willis has completely failed to show how that leverage is important to Mary. It would be easy if, say, she held a grudge against Ruth because of the physical abuse, and broke up her relationship as revenge. There would be some issues as breaking up a lesbian relationship would probably be seen as good from her perspective (saving Ruth's soul by getting her out of a sinful relationship, which could also be a decent motivation) but she's already going around calling prayers "stupid" so it wouldn't be that much of a stretch.

Damn... I guess that just makes it important that you think about how to answer each question, which I guess is the whole point of that thing.
Oh, son of a- You're absolutely right. Why do webcomic artists do this? More importantly, why do I get so mad about it?
Pasqualo from It Hurts! is also a great depiction.
Let's be honest here - most of her fans aren't "ironic".
Uh... huh...
It really is a damn good look. Not just for her, but as a look in general.
Hey, at least we're concise.