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[Method of Madness]

Is Mike showing actual concern in the last panel?

[BenRG]

The thing about Mike is that there is no way to dissuade him from his behaviour. He doesn't respond to any kind of reinforcement. In the Walkyverse, he carried on shooting hateful, puerile taunts even after being beaten to a bloody pulp one or two times! He literally knows and has no other way of functioning in a social context.

(click to show/hide)

When he starts a relationship with Amber in the Walkyverse, even his affectionate behaviour has a sour aspect to it! FWIW, I think that Amber enjoyed it on a certain, disturbing level.

[Neko_Ali]

Ethan really seems to be amazingly dim in DoA... Not only is he missing the incredibly obvious fact that Danny wants to get with him (though it could be argued he knows, just doesn't know what to do with that information). He has known Mike for some time and he's just now understanding what a horrible person he is? I mean really? It's not like Mike ever even tries to hide it, or be at all subtle.

[cesium133]

He knows that Danny wants to get with him, but he's deliberately ignoring it to avoid angering Amber (good luck with that...).

[bhtooefr]

Danny has outright, to Ethan's face, expressed a desire to be powdered up and put into Ethan's bathwater.

Yeah, Ethan knows.

[cesium133]

On the alt-text, I suppose Ethan's entry is better than Walky's: "Ass that won't quit farting."

[Welu]

Mike's expression in the last panel intrigues me. It's almost disgusted.

[Kugai]

Or fearful.

Remember,  Ethan outmasses him and could quite easily pound him flat.

[Welu]

I'm confident Mike is not threatened by Ethan at all. He's expressed disliking Ethan's self-destructive behaviour before and his asking of Mike's file gave a chance to once again be mocked for it. Although Mike is covering the screen too.

[chaospersonified]

No, clearly Mike does not fear Ethan. If he feared Ethan, he would take at least a second before deciding to bang him.

Oh, Mike.

[BenRG]

Remember,  Ethan outmasses him and could quite easily pound him flat.

Mike isn't daunted by physical risk or even the possibility of injury. If he's anything like his Walkyverse counterpart, there's a nasty edge of nihilistic sado-masochism about him that makes him enjoy people hurting him and being cruel to him as validating his personal philosophy of a world without good. He can and will keep on spitting barbs even whilst someone is beating him into a pulp because there is nothing that will strip him of his disdain for the world.

[ChaoSera]

I'm just here to say that I love any strip involving Mike.

[BenRG]

Is Mike showing actual concern in the last panel?

He'll deny it but, catch him unawares and he will respond in a way that indicates that there are some people who, on a subconscius level at least, he cares about. Ethan seems to be one of them.

[cesium133]

Remember,  Ethan outmasses him and could quite easily pound him flat.

Mike isn't daunted by physical risk or even the possibility of injury. If he's anything like his Walkyverse counterpart, there's a nasty edge of nihilistic sado-masochism about him that makes him enjoy people hurting him and being cruel to him as validating his personal philosophy of a world without good. He can and will keep on spitting barbs even whilst someone is beating him into a pulp because there is nothing that will strip him of his disdain for the world.

For example...

[Method of Madness]

Why does Mike think he could seduce Ethan?

[Kugai]

Despicable little shit

He'd probably vote for Trump too just for the hell of it.

[Method of Madness]

Although to be fair, by the time the day after the first Monday in November* comes around, it could very well be time for the 2024 election.

*To people outside of the States, yes, that is when Election Day is every year. It's usually the first Tuesday, but once in a while it's the second Tuesday. It's whatever day between November 2-8 lands on a Tuesday. I have no fucking idea why.

[BenRG]

Why does Mike think he could seduce Ethan?

I think that he's pretty confident in his ability to judge and manipulate human psychology. That's always been his strongest weapon.

[chaospersonified]

Regarding Dina:

[bhtooefr]

Although to be fair, by the time the day after the first Monday in November* comes around, it could very well be time for the 2024 election.

*To people outside of the States, yes, that is when Election Day is every year. It's usually the first Tuesday, but once in a while it's the second Tuesday. It's whatever day between November 2-8 lands on a Tuesday. I have no fucking idea why.

Why the first Tuesday after the first Monday? Lawmakers wanted to prevent election day from falling on the first of November for two reasons. First, November 1st is All Saints Day, a Holy Day of Obligation for Roman Catholics. Second, most merchants were in the habit of doing their books from the preceding month on the 1st. Apparently, Congress was worried that the economic success or failure of the previous month might prove an undue influence on the vote!

Source: http://www.infoplease.com/askeds/election-day-first-tuesday-november.html

And, from the same source...

Why Tuesday? Since most residents of rural America had to travel a significant distance to the county seat in order to vote, Monday was not considered reasonable since many people would need to begin travel on Sunday. This would, of course, have conflicted with Church services and Sunday worship.

tl;dr: avoiding religious conflicts

That'll also be why Election Day can't really be put on a weekend, and why it really should be made a national holiday.

[Kugai]

Dinaraptor attack

[Kugai]

And she's two Utah Raptors tall 

[Method of Madness]

Shit, is Becky's mom's suicide about to jump from theory to canon?

[cesium133]

I'm pretty sure it's been canon since the break-in storyline.

[Method of Madness]

Wait, what? Did I miss a strip? I thought it was only implied.

[hedgie]

During the break-in, all we knew for sure of is an attempt.  Depending on the pills, internal organs could have been trashed to the point where she didn't die immediately, and had a lingering death.

[Neko_Ali]

As a reminder, Ross has said that 'The Devil took' Becky's mom. That particular phrase combined with his belief system certainly shouted out to me that she did something his religion didn't approve over. If she had just died to cancer, it would have been something like 'God called her home'.

[Kugai]

Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder

And the need for a shower extremely obvious

[Kugai]

Don't make her go all T-Rex on ya Walky

[chaospersonified]

Good lord, Dina, I'm sure I would be friends with you, if only for the fact I'd re-learn all the dinosaur knowledge I once had, and update what has since been found to be incorrect.

[Kugai]

Dina would make an excellent Infiltration Agent

And I agree with her on Beckys message Ruth

[Kugai]

I think Dorothy's too nice a person to know the way to Hell anyway

[hedgie]

Assuming that she's from the Midwest, I'm pretty sure that she'd have a general idea of how to get to Hell.  Michigan isn't all that far away from Indiana after all.

[BenRG]

This is one of those nuanced characterisations that DMW can be very good at sometimes. Walky normally comes across as feckless, lazy and preferring to pretend to be stupid because that's less effort and seems to get him what he wants far more easily than using his brain would. However, if something happens that concerns someone he cares about, the better man inside starts coming out. He's clearly very bitter that someone he trusted to care for his surrogate sister failed him so totally.

Hopefully, this will teach him the importance of seeing things through to the end himself and not simply hoping that (for the first time in ever) the 'authorities' will sort everything out properly without you riding herd on them to stop them from messing up. Maybe he'll finally learn to step up and take personal responsibility.

Just to add, nuance is something that is going to take Joyce a very long time to learn. She's only just come to terms with the fact  that there may be more than one moral/ethical point of view in the world; attempting to navigate through the grey areas that lie between them is probably something that is still far out of her reach.

[Method of Madness]

Interesting that Walky views Ruth as an adult. Isn't she only a year older?

[BenRG]

I suppose it's a response to her position of authority. Authority figure = adult figure, in his mind at least. It isn't a completely unlikley mindset for a fairly-sheltered and spoiled 18-year-old to have.

[Kugai]

Not sure if I'm reading him right, but Hank looks like he wants to belt Walky upside his head.


Oh, and Wslky,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PreAABChTyQ

[Method of Madness]

I never took Hank to be the violent type.

[BenRG]

Not sure if I'm reading him right, but Hank looks like he wants to belt Walky upside his head.

I think that he was just a bit weirded out by the way Walky was talking and was maybe more than a little worried about this insight into the amount of drama there is constantly going down in Read Hall. That leads into today's strip when he basically begs her to run whilst she still can.

[Kugai]

I never took Hank to be the violent type.

I don't think he's really violent, but there must be occasions where he wishes or wants to Gibbssmack someone.

And I like the fact that, despite everything, Joyce feels secure enough among her friends to consider it home.

[hedgie]

I don't think that he's being given enough credit here (the Patreon posts are much kinder) .  Despite Joycemum going all "drag her out and take her home", Joycedad is simply offering her an out, were things to get too crazy.   She, despite everything she went through (attempted rape, kidnappings, having a gun pointed at her, and serious shocks to her belief system) is actually home.  Hank understands that, and I think, is glad that Joyce said what she did.

[Kugai]

That was nice of Hank

And I think she would have been too Becky

[Method of Madness]

Becky was wrong. She did want that. Well done, Joyce's dad. Well done.

[Kugai]

The freedom to study

[Kugai]

Aaannd

The other shoe drops

[Neko_Ali]

It isn't exactly like Ruth opened about her home situation to anyone mind you. Not that it makes it any less a shit thing to do outing Ruth and Billie. Bending Billie's ear about the situation and getting her to do something would have been better than forcibly dragging her there. And there is the other hand that Billie was just a band-aid on a gaping, septic wound.  Better than nothing, but really not doing fixing the problem. And worse, having the illusion of help was still going to kill Ruth in the long run. It just might take her slightly longer to get there. Now that she's been forced to get help hopefully she can address her issues. It's one of the eternal questions. At what point do you go against someone's wishes and force help that they need on them?

[Method of Madness]

Once Carla heard that Ruth wanted to die from Ruth, was doing nothing actually an option? I would say no.

[Kugai]

I hafta agree MoM, but I think Carla was caught between a rock and a hard place and really didn't have all the information.

One hopes some good can come out of this and both Billie and Ruth can find some sort of decent closure and help.

[sitnspin]

Doing nothing wasn't an option, but that doesn't mean that the option she did choose was the right one.

[Neko_Ali]

Forcibly outing someone is never the right option. Especially when doing so gets a person fired and thrown from their home. Even without the dangerous situation of her home life Carla should have known that Ruth getting fired was going to happen. She just didn't care. She wanted to stop worrying about it, so she took the most direct method of dealing with it, without care about how it would affect others. Her intentions were good. Her method of handling it was poor. To the point of being as bad as the problem she was trying to fix. Which is pretty much in alignment of what we know about her character.

I don't think that much anyone cares that Ruth and Billie were together. Even Mary seemed less disgusted by it and more interested in how she could use their situation to her advantage. When I refer to 'outing' I'm really talking about making it public knowledge that the RA was romantically/sexually involved with one of her charges. Which is a serious rules violation.