…no regrets.
on October 20, 2013 at 12:01 amwell she might have a few
This was a story I’d planned to do since near the end of the first year of Roomies!. Â I wanted a piece of that sweet Make Other People Have Feels action, and so I planned to have a heroic sacrifice. Â I couldn’t off anybody in the cast already — I knew where they’d end up later, whether it was fighting aliens or building intelligent talking automobiles, and so that’s where Ruth came from. Â She was created to die.
She became part of Danny’s character arc, but just as importantly to me, she had an arc of her own. Â She wouldn’t die solely in service of literally saving Danny but also in service of figuratively saving herself. Â Or, at least, what I understood at the time constituted “saving oneself.”
This climax took on a few different forms early on. Â To the left you can see some of my early scribblings which depict Danny and Ruth staring down a truck together. Presumably Ruth would push Danny out of the way. Â …also at some point Danny let his hair grow out, I guess. Â If you thought he couldn’t get any more hateable, well, you were wrong! Â (And of course there’s some unrelated things, like drawings of Howard, Joyce, some random doofus, and a single quote from a lecture I was listening to at the time from which I should have been taking notes.)
I didn’t realize it would become such an intensely personal story to me. Â The arc became more and more about disillusionment and depression, and ultimately Ruth’s death was kind of a murdering of my own problems on paper. Â I murder a lot of my own problems on paper. Â Just wait until we get into It’s Walky!.
These days, I’m quite content to be writing a Ruth who lives.
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well holy god-darn. created to die, well, ain’t that just a… dang. platitudes just don’t do it, here.
yeah, well, you certainly got a piece of that pie. DoA is so emotional but the last few days it has been this strip I’ve been anxiously punching it at 9pm on the dot pacific time. jees.
He had to earn that peace of pie, though. Many amateur writers, myself included, are so enticed by the power of FEELS that we will try to add drama and conflict to our stories willy-nilly, without really considering the consequences or whether it’s in our abilities to do it well. Damnyou Willis earned his right/ability to control our feels with DOA by practicing and improving for 15 years. It’s arguable whether or not he was ready for this type of writing at this stage in his life, but he has certainly proven that of himself over time.
One of the reasons I identify with Damnyou so much is that I see the same trends happening in his writing as I see in my own. Starting out very amateurish, rather closed-minded, with a lot of characterization/dialogue coming across in ways he hadn’t intended. But then slowly realizing all his flaws and mistakes, and working tirelessly to improve himself on them. His artwork, his writing, his worldviews in general – he never stopped improving, and still hasn’t, even now 15 years later. I look up to that and I see myself in it, and I hope that one day I can feel as proud of my accomplishments as Damnyou surely is of his. Damn you, David Willis.
I totally agree in every respect! Good luck to you in all your future art!
So what is “talent, not celebrity” about? Google turns up incomprehensible shit like “Beyonce Knowles wins a journalism award” =p
Damn it, I thought the truck was a giant vacuum at first and now that is all I can see.
Oh god, Robo-Vac is real, and now he’s MAD.
What’s your gravatar? It’s too blurry.
Can we see the return of random doofus?
You can bring it back by clicking “First”
Yeah, I think this is where I first realized that this comic was a Thing. A Thing that would make me feel Things.
Wow, it’s amazing that you had everything planned out in advance that far. And I’d say the new site works better for tugging at the heart strings since we do get to see more Ruth. It was fine originally but her back story adds more.
But still, your best moment for the feels? Dina. Always Dina.
“I-I’m sorry.”
“This was the best I could do.”
At least it was better than most people’s average.
The fact that the previous few storylines were basically just her sense of self-worth being smashed into a million pieces made it even worse ;_;
Death spoilers, just in case.
I’ve actually read a lot of characters that were created specifically to die, two other examples are Vriska (HS) and Eddard Stark (GoT). They were created, characterized, allowed to grow, love, learn, just so they could die. I must say, it’s an odd character arc to write. For most characters you don’t know much of how they’ll end up, or at least know it’ll be happy, probably. But even so sometimes it’s like Deathnote, where the creator literally ‘figures out’ the character has to die. Writing knowing death, seems, interesting.
It opens a lot of opportunities to set up things that become absolutely heartwrenching on subsequent readings, too. Making Other People Have Feels can be kind of fun provided you don’t mind being a terrible and oft-damned person.
I think Willis had already accepted that as a possibility. Especially when he made his twitter handle.
HS deaths don’t count. Practically everybody dies in that strip, many of them more than once. And they almost never stay that way.
Vriska, however, did stay that way. She was the first, and probably so far only, major character to die and stay dead. Sure, he ghost got to do a few things, more than most ghost certainly. She was still removed from the main story in her death. I don’t see why her death wouldn’t count.
Just because most death “doesn’t count”, it doesn’t mean it is the same for all of them.
See, that’s what I mean though. As long as she can still walk around as a ghost and do things that influence the story (in a pretty major way), she’s not really “dead” per se. I don’t think a character death really counts unless that character is completely gone and not coming back in any form (excepting maybe flashbacks).
I don’t really think her death was intended from the beginning, though. I just think her story arc developed in a direction where it became the most thematically appropriate ending.
“Vriska, however, did stay that way. She was the first, and probably so far only, major character to die and stay dead.”
Hah! Magical retcon, bitches!
I need to catch up on Homestuck. But that also requires finding where I left off.
What’s Tavros, chopped liver? He was about as important as Kanaya when he died…
So many other ‘bots were made to sell toys. Impactor? He dies because he is awesome.
And the rest … is silence.
You know, I’ve always wondered: Is that intended to be dialogue or stage direction?
… That explains a lot, in hindsight. Actually, I think I went through a similar kill-off-problems-by-proxy thing. Seeing it summed up like that… huh.
Then I realized it was much harder on the poor characters to be given forced immortality separated from those they care about instead, and killing them off became the NICE way to break them. That… may raise even more concerns about my mental state.
…Y’know, when you put it like that, it really makes me curious.
Same, really. I’m not sure if it’s that I believe in hurting my characters so they can rise to the occasion and earn themselves happy endings, or if I really just like toying with them a la Funky Winkerbean, and any chance of lasting happiness is just an illusion or comes off as entirely forced because how can these people still feel joy.
Well, I was thinking more along the lines of “What did you write/make that made you think about this?”, but that’s another thing I wondered about.
Long story, I was fifteen. But I can basically illustrate it with my treatment of my one main character who’s since been modified into a major supporting one in a story that’s still in the planning stages. (There’s a lot of worldbuilding that still needs to be done, and she’s in the part of it at the end of a five-hundred year timeskip that’s only got a very loose idea of where things are going anyway.)
Before, she died by being written out of reality and everyone who knew her forgetting about her. Fairly straightforward Retgone, and her death was pretty much me venting some frustration with how she’d been written and going “Okay, you don’t exist anymore, problem solved,” with a side order of psychological issues going on at the time.
As she exists now, she gets stuck under burning debris and dies pretty painfully, gets thrown out of the afterlife for bad behavior, and is sent back to the mortal plane in the service of gods who openly hate her as a result. The revival process left some of the injuries she sustained just before death, to which said gods just say “You’re cannon fodder that can be revived at will, sucks to be you.” She can’t see anyone she knew because of the new job and the being dead for five years, and her one really useful skill is a form of telepathy that’s tied up in the psychological issues all this has caused. (Among other things, it manifests itself as flames, which understandably freaks her the fuck out, and involves projecting memories and emotions onto other people.) This is all backstory. Things get better from there, because anything worse would just snap the remains of her brittle psyche and I really don’t feel like turning this character into an omnicidal maniac, I’ve already got a villain that needs dealing with and a major conflict that needs solving. Hell, I’m probably going to have to scale some things back a bit before she can be worked into the story.
Being erased from existence was probably nicer in terms of “Ways to make a character suffer”, but it also means you can’t use the character anymore, and nothing they did before mattered. It’ll either be erased from reality or changed somehow to fit. The current backstory is brutal, but she can still affect the story and change her fate.
Goddamn, that was way too long.
Sad.
yeah. : (
DAMN YOU, WILLIS!
I swore to myself that I would not read any of your other material so that I could keep DoA all to its own little world, without all the “alternate universe” bullshit crowding in and clouding my enjoyment.  Then something like this shows up on the Tumblr/Twitter feed, and I find myself here despite myself.
I say again, DAMN YOU WILLIS!!
I started reading DoA first and got into this later. You know… the characters are so different between there and here that it doesn’t even seem like the same strip. You can probably still keep your DoA bubble 😀
i’m sorry man : ( that is completely my bad.
that said, enjoy sp! if you ever jump over there!
It’s Walky future death spoilers ahead:
So what problems did you murder when you offed Dina, DW? Hat problems? Dinosaur problems? Shy Asian girl problems? Dina’s death seemed at the time very heavy-handed and methodical, and I have always wondered why you felt that it was necessary.
Dinosaurs inevitably go extinct.
From what I understand, he kept toying with killing her off because it would have made sense, narritiviely to kill her, so Walky would run back to Joyce, and they’d continue their romantic arc. However, he wanted to remain in purely “realistic”, (and I use quotes the size of Stonehenge there), territory, so the relationship would have to terminate on its own. Afterwards, I think she died as both a way to end the romantic arc with Walky, the romantic and motivational arc with Mike, and to make the attack from the Britjas seem more threatening. Essentially, Dina’s death was a worf effect, to a high degree.
I think. Unless Willis states differently. I don’t know. These are thoughts.
Alright, so I just re-read a bunch of IW! And I really can’t believe that’s how I put it. It’s more about lack of self confidence then anything else.
The way I saw it was her–yeesh, this sounds skeevy–her last way to be useful. Before that, the relationship with Mike had worn down on her confidence, and Joe had begun doing some of her job. A highly specialized professional who put a great deal of pride in her work and wasn’t too sure about anything else was starting to get “replaced”. Her last act was keeping the death count down to herself.
I’m not sure how you can read that arc and not know what it was about, thematically. It’s lampshaded with her last words, same as Ruth’s.
So… Questioning of self-worth and feeling like your best is insufficient? And, yeah, that was ugly. I think I started seriously reading Walky after that happened (tried earlier, got turned off, changed my mind later I THINK shortly before it ended but it might have been a little after) I knew about Ruth by reputation, but that one I actually watched happen.
… The truck’s on fire. Did the truck driver die as well?
And now that I’m done questioning that, back to the sadness. Damn you, Willis.
Is that Ruth’s silhouette in the last panel, with blood(?) dripping down?
it’s a wavy silhouette thingy! it enhances drama or something, along with the irregularly angled panels and the…negative color scheme!
I think it’s Danny. Ruth is On Fire.
The problem is that Ruth and Danny look pretty similar in silhouette.
I’d always kind of figured it was Danny smashed against the windshield. Though…. yeah, also was never entirely certain on that one. (Either way a rather chilling image. Because it’s either a last glimpse of Ruth or an image of someone who is still completely oblivious to all that’s transpired at this point.)
Oh damn. She must’ve had one of those combustible heads.
I read an article all about them.
Is that her car they’re towing? I’m pretty sure that’s her car.
I WAS NOT PREPARED
Wham. I have been thoroughly spoiled for this event but it still shocked me.
Same here. I think the spoilers actually increased the impact for me, since I got to dread this coming during the strips leading up to it.
So Willis IS confirming that DOA Ruth gets to live?
That’s how we get to read that commentary, right?
Right?
…. crap.
He already said he’s not killing anyone in DOA a while ago.
Except maybe Tony, because he’s boring.
Hadn’t heard the good news. Yays.
Actually, yes, he’s said he’ll never kill off DOA Ruth (or that other person he killed off in IW!).
I’ve… seen things you people wouldn’t believe… [laughs] Body Shots off the Naval of a Sorority girl. I watched My brother get ejected from a convention after giving captain Janeway a sloppy virgin kiss.. All those… moments… will be lost in time, like [coughs] tears… in… rain. Time… to die…
It’s incredible to get such insight into what you were thinking and going through at the time. Bring Back Roomies has been incredible so far even though it isn’t the first time reading all of it
“I wanted a piece of that sweet Make Other People Have Feels action”
Well, you succeeded.
Mah feels!
Godspeed, ye punchy redhead.
“a Ruth who lives”. Beautiful words.
Okay, all drama aside, this showed up in my feed right next to PostSecret. The secret showing in the preview–right there when I opened the feed, as though it follows right along from “No Regrets”–is “I regret not being slutty in college.”
Insert bad “integrity field breach” pun
Gotta say, even with all the problems with Willis’s old art, this stip is still pretty powerful.
Don’t kill her again!
Two things:
1: Is there some way in the header you can have the original post date, when available? This is what, 1998 or so? Yikes.
2: Seriously, you had Ruth get killed by Optimus Prime. Explain yourself.
*rushes in, panting*
I’m sorry I’m late! I waited all this time and then forgot, but I’m here now! With my very important comment!
I guess after this strip the comic felt a lot more Ruthless
Okay, have a nice rest of the week everybody!
http://i.imgur.com/l1mISWi.gif
That, along with intense poverty, vision problems, and a worse spatial sense than most, is why I will never drive.
I still worry about getting hit as a pedestrian, of course, or of distracting drivers somehow, but at least I won’t hit anybody myself.
Ruth’s story was a powerful one.
One with a concrete ending.
But I do like ongoing stories that don’t have a set ending. After all, there’s always more to read.
And as a result, I think I ultimately enjoy Ruth Lessick’s story more than Ruth Lesse’s. That story’s not over yet.
One of the reason’s I will appreciate the death of a character is if they die well. In ____________________ was killed as a big sign that things are going to hell. In ______ one of the characters dies first thing, and the entire rest of the movie is based on both his life and his death. This is why i didnt mind ____________. He suffered, he failed himself, he failed others. He had years to make amends and finally got a real chance. He saved countless lives and taught the people of ________ to fend for themselves. But this new war brought out the old hatred in him, he was being consumed by it. Luckily he fought, and died doing what was right, protecting those who’s souls could still be saved.
One of the main things is everyone Effected by a character’s death is a monument to how powerful that character was. To the significance of their life, through their death. Ruth’s death wouldnt have meant much if she wasnt a powerful character who had her demons, who wanted to do the right thing, who wanted to SAVE Danny and WITHOUT much hesitation was THERE.
EVERY. SINGLE. PAGE. YOU SEE . OF DANNY after this is because of her.
Originally posted:
March 19, 1999
Ah, the joys of pressing random and going straight from a favorite character’s introduction to their death. Huzzah!