Dumbing of Age

Yes to both accounts.

I'm common in to the comic a bit late and there's no mention of her on the main work or character sheet, so I have to ask: Who is Anna and why do we hate her?

Last seen here.

Basically, the friend of Mindy, who is a person that Becky tried to hook up with Leslie. Annah more or less Malaya-lite, and I could stand seeing less of her.

Did a slipshine happen or something?

Edited by Whowho on Mar 7th 2019 at 4:58:25 PM

And rhe awkwardness spreads

I want to believe Anna being human garbage is intentional and eventually Leslie will wise up, but more likely Anna's just going to churn out a sad backstory and we'll have to instantly like her.

How is Malaya so likable but I hate Anna this much?

At the moment Anna isn't really a character, she's a one night stand nobody. If she isn't an established figure from past comics I'd expect her to just come and go and vanish.

Malaya was "merely" rude and condescending and she was fairly spot on with her assessment of Sal. Anna is needlessly and unprovokingly hostile to people she hasn't met before and seems to mistreat and insult the people she does know.

I have noticed this comic seems to frequently want us to ignore previous and ongoing douchebaggery when a sympathetic backstory is presented.

Edited by Kaiseror on Mar 7th 2019 at 12:00:33 PM

I mean Leslie is clearly just attracted to asshole women. Like that is very obviously the point of this.

That happened with Ruth only Ruth is fantastic and complex and even from the beginning displayed glimpses of her better nature. It was the right way of doing the "oh this character isn't so bad" thing, where Ruth's actions were contextualized by her struggles with mental illness and alcoholism. Anna's just been an unrelenting bullheaded ass every single panel.

Yeah but... can she not be?

Edited by RodimusMinor on Mar 7th 2019 at 1:13:20 PM

Is she being a bullhead, or is she just being a dentist?

At first glance I'd have thought she was just playing to the housecall story.

Yeah, she is. Snarkily, but it isn't evil.

The problem is that Anna is nothing but "snark" every time she's on panel with no indication that there's an actual human being behind those words. The very first thing she does in comic is tell Becky to get out of her way and then insult Mindy's physical appearance.

Try to imagine a version of Carla without checking up on Ruth and weathering the annoying comments from her dorm. If Carla were just the annoying brat who constantly annoyed everyone around her.

Edited by RodimusMinor on Mar 8th 2019 at 9:37:44 AM

Oh I'm not excusing her earlier acts. Just that this one she isn't running on as maximum bitch mode as she is clearly capable of.

Edited by Adannor on Mar 8th 2019 at 5:43:52 PM

How is Indiana tap water anyway?

I'm mostly just amused that Leslie has only now noticed her missing lamp.

What happened to the lamp?

He got promoted to be Robin's campaign aide.

Indiana is big enough that the water quality will vary. All the tap water I've ever had is on a scale from "fine" to "horribly bitter", but water from southern and northern Indiana is definitely different from what I got used to in Indianapolis and Muncie. I only spent one day in Bloomington about a decade ago, and even if I drank from a fountain, I can't remember now.

But especially since she lives in Bloomington too, the taste is probably more from the pipes between the water plant and the tap. And maybe they're supplied by different plants

It hits you fast.

God damn it Rachel, you're hard to love but you're even harder to hate.

Not really - remember how she thought that this was somehow an appropriate thing to tell a suicidal person?

Rachel's a dick, she's just not ranking the higest in the hierarchy of terrible people frequenting the comic. :/

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Mar 10th 2019 at 10:07:45 AM

Nah, I love Ruth but she's gotten away with every terrible thing she's done thus far. Rachel's under no obligation to forgive her and the prospect of a character I really like being put up against an antagonist with realistic and justifiable grievances who isn't specifically intended to b a one-note jackass the heroes need to knock down is incredibly interesting.

Edited by RodimusMinor on Mar 10th 2019 at 11:17:34 AM

Rachel clearly has some backstory that feeds into her outlook on life, but it hasn't been explored yet and probably will be at some point; I wouldn't pass some sort of final judgment on her yet. Her character is in something of a similar state that Becky's was for first few years of the comic (where we knew she was Joyce's best friend and had periodic reminders that she wasn't answering Joyce's phone calls to know something weird was happening, but she wasn't in the forefront and we didn't have most of the details.)